Imago Temporis 2024 English

CELEBRATIONS AND EPITAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION. REFLECTIONS ON THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY VULGARIZATION AND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PRINTING OF TUSCAN COMMUNAL STATUTES FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI UNIVERSITÀ DI FIRENZE ITALY Date of receipt: 18th of August, 2022 Date of acceptance: 24th of May, 2023 ABSTRACT The article examines the meaning assumed by the printing of the municipal statutes during the sixteenth century in some of the main cities in the duchy and grand duchy, as well as other subregional states in Tuscany (the republic of Lucca and the signoria of Massa and Carrara). Aside from the impression of proclamations (bandi) and regulations relating to non-territorial institutions, the work sets out to show how the printing of ancient and recent normative texts (some of which partially abrogated as resolved by oligarchical regimes and signorie) was often motivated, not by prevailing administrative necessities, but in laud and celebration of a tradition of municipal autonomy, of which the statutes were the most emblematic expression. As such, a parallel is proposed between movable type printing and fourteenth-century vulgarization of Latin texts, since this was also first of all a ‘marketing’ operation aimed at achieving political consensus rather than actual application of the law. KEYWORDS Municipal statutes, Tuscany, legislative vulgarizations, early modern printing. CAPITALIA VERBA Instituta civilia, Etruria, Divulgationes legislativae, Typographia prioris moderni aevi. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 309 310 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI 1. Premise1 This reflection takes its cue from two different spheres of historiographical analysis. The first refers to a decades-long research project conducted by myself on the composition methods, structuring, publication and study of Tuscan municipal statutes, as well as on their translation from Latin into the vernacular.2 The second is linked to the work which, starting from this context, Marco Francalanci is carrying out on the printing of dispositive texts in central-northern Italy during the early modern age.3 The essay takes into consideration the meaning assumed by the printing of the municipal statutes, above all during the sixteenth century, in some of the main cities in the duchy – which became a grand duchy in 1569 – as well as in other subregional states of Tuscia (the republic of Lucca and the signoria of Massa and Carrara). The investigation does not focus on the provisions, proclamations (bandi),4 chapters or ordinationes relating to single magistracies or guilds (either 1. My heartfelt thanks go to Andrea Baldinotti, Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, Marco Francalanci and Davide Martini for giving me advice and information, and to Karen Whittle for her help with the translation. 2. See, in particular, Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria in Toscana nel secolo XVI”. Quaderni Medievali, 46 (1998): 101-117; Statuti della Repubblica fiorentina, 1322-25, ed. Romolo Caggese. Nuova Edizione, eds. Giuliano Pinto, Francesco Salvestrini, Andrea Zorzi. Florence: Olschki, 1999; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Gli Statuti municipali”, Storia della civiltà toscana, 1. Comuni e Signorie, Franco Cardini, ed. Florence: Le Monnier, 2000: 99-114; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Gli statuti delle ‘quasi città’ toscane (secoli XIII-XV)”, Signori, regimi signorili e statuti nel tardo medioevo, Rolando Dondarini, Gian Maria Varanini, Maria Venticelli, eds. Bologna: Pàtron, 2003: 217-242; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Statuti e cartae libertatum di emanazione signorile nella Toscana dei secoli XIII e XIV”. Società e Storia, 124 (2009): 197-229; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Storiografia giuridica ed erudizione storica nel secolo XIX. Lodovico Zdekauer editore degli statuti medievali toscani”, Lodovico Zdekauer. Discipline storiche e innovazione fra Otto e Novecento, Francesco Pirani, ed. Ancona-Fermo: Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Marche, 2016: 111-154; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Struttura, normazione e stratificazione testuale negli statuti di alcune città comunali italiane del XIII e XIV secolo”, Les statuts communaux vus de l’intérieur dans les sociétés méditérranéennes de l’Occident (XIIe-XVe siècle). Statuts, écritures et pratiques sociales - III, Didier Lett, ed. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2019: 19-35; Salvestrini, Francesco. “A Rare Illuminated Normative Codex from the Florentine Renaissance: the 1472 Statute of the Confraternity of Santa Maria Assunta in San Pier Gattolino”. Bibliothecae.it, 10/1 (2021): 1-35; Gli statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina del 1355 in volgare, Federigo Bambi, Francesco Salvestrini, Lorenzo Tanzini, eds. Florence: Olschki, 2023; Salvestrini, Francesco. “The Use of the Vernacular: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century Italy”, The Illuminated Legal Manuscript from the Middle Ages to the Digital Age. Forms, Iconographies, Materials, Uses and Cataloguing, 1st International Conference of Ius Illuminatum-Oficina de investigação, Alessandra Bilotta, ed. Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming. 3. Francalanci, Marco. Stampa e testi normativi in Toscana fra Medioevo e prima Età moderna. Florence: Università di Firenze (master’s degree thesis), 2016-2017, supervisor professor Francesco Salvestrini; Francalanci, Marco. “Produzione e strategie di diffusione di testi normativi nella Milano del Cinquecento: un caso di studio”. La Bibliofilía, 121/2 (2019): 237-257. 4. On which see: Turrini, Patrizia. “La legislazione granducale nelle raccolte a stampa”, Leggi, magistrature, archivi. Repertorio di fonti normative ed archivistiche per la storia della giustizia criminale a Siena nel Settecento, eds. Sonia Adorni Fineschi, Carla Zarrilli. Milan: Giuffrè, 1990: 241-356; Leggi e bandi del periodo mediceo posseduti dalla Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, ed. Gustavo Bertoli. Florence: Titivillus, 1992; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria…”: 104; Milner, Stephen J. “Fanno bandire, notificare, et expressamente comandare”: Town Criers and the Information Economy of Renaissance IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 311 civil or religious)5 but on local legal compendia with territorial validity inherited from the communal period. This text sets out to show how the printing of ancient and more recent normative texts preserving the complex layers of norms going under the name of ius proprium (some of which had already totally or partially been abrogated towards the end of the fifteenth century) was often motivated, within broadly speaking political contexts, not by the need to give further force or visibility to the written and approved forms of the social rules but, mainly, to laud and at the same time celebrate and therefore protect a local civic tradition at one with the late-medieval cities’ ‘autonomy’ of which the statutes had been the most emblematic expression. To this end, I have examined some ordinances produced in the biggest cities in the region. The analysis was limited to the handful of fifteenthcentury incunabula and some books published in the sixteenth century. It excluded seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prints when the printing of statutes was no longer seen as a technically juridical-normative operation, but mainly as a historicalerudite undertaking casting light on past institutions and laws.6 In order to better frame the meaning assumed by the printing of normative compendia in relation to the systems of power, I will also propose a comparison between this activity and the earlier work to vulgarize Latin provisions that the cities promoted during the fourteenth century.7 The choice of these periods is motivated by the fact that they Florence”. I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, 16/1-2 (2013): 107-151. See also: Le Leggi di Cosimo. Bandi, statuti e provvisioni del primo Granduca di Toscana. Contributi e catalogo della mostra. Florence: Regione Toscana-Società Bibliografica Toscana, 2019. 5. For some collections of texts and studies, with relative critical introductions, see: Chelazzi, Corrado. “Introduzione”, Catalogo della raccolta di statuti, consuetudini, leggi, decreti, ordini e privilegi dei comuni, delle associazioni e degli enti locali italiani dal medioevo alla fine del secolo XVIII, 9 vols. ed. Corrado Chelazzi. Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1943-2022: I (A-B); Balestracci, Duccio; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Toscana”, Bibliografia statutaria italiana, 1985-1995. Rome: Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica, 1998: 125-144; Raveggi, Leonardo; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “Bibliografia statutaria della Toscana (1996-2005)”, Bibliografia statutaria italiana, 1996-2005, Enrico Angiolini, Beatrice Borghi, Alessandra Brighenti, Alessandra Casamassima, Rolando Dondarini, Roberto Sernicola, eds. Rome: Biblioteca del Senato della Repubblica, 2009: 237-271. 6. See: Pene Vidari, Gian Savino. “Introduzione”, Catalogo della raccolta di statuti, VIII (T-U), Sandro Bulgarelli, Alessandra Casamassima, Giuseppe Pierangeli, eds. Florence: Olschki, 1999: 11-96, especially 11-12; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Ameno pascolo di gentiluomini curiosi”. L’erudizione storica a Pistoia durante l’età moderna (1620-1815)”. Bullettino Storico Pistoiese, 105 (2003): 101-143; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Erudizione storica e tradizioni normative. La stampa degli Statuti medievali toscani tra età moderna e contemporanea, Studi in onore di Sergio Gensini, Franco Ciappi, Oretta Muzzi, eds. Florence: Polistampa, 2013: 237-278: 245-248; Pucci, Silvio. “L’edizione a stampa degli statuti civili e criminali di Piombino”, Commentari agli statuti civili e criminali della città di Piombino, Atti della tavola rotonda La penna, la memoria, la legge. Gli statuti medievali di Piombino secc. XIII-XVIII. Andrea Landi, ed. Florence: Regione Toscana, 2021: 95-101. 7. Bambi, Federigo. “Le aggiunte alla compilazione statutaria fiorentina del 1355 volgarizzate da Andrea Lancia: edizione diplomatico-interpretativa del manoscritto A.S.F. Statuti del comune di Firenze, 33”. Bollettino dell’opera del vocabolario italiano, 6 (2001): 319-389; Ordinamenti, provvisioni e riformagioni del Comune di Firenze volgarizzati da Andrea Lancia (1355-1357), Luca Azzetta, ed. Padua-Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 2001; Bambi, Federigo. “Un testo statutario inedito (o quasi) della metà del Trecento: i capitoli della compagnia «la quale si rauna al luogo della chiesa di Santo Michele» di Carmignano”. Bollettino dell’opera del vocabolario italiano, 8 (2003): 241-285; Bambi, Federigo. Una nuova lingua per il diritto. Il lessico volgare di Andrea Lancia nelle provvisioni fiorentine del 1355-57, I. Milan: Giuffrè, IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 312 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI both marked a new dawn: in the fourteenth century the vernacular began to be used for municipal laws; at the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century print began to be applied to the code of law. The aim of the following pages is to show the continuity in the actions of the local ruling classes from the communal age to the modern era in the sense of their constant search for prestige, which was seen as the basis of political consensus. And this went way beyond the laws’ full or residual validity, dissemination and knowledge, as well as the practical application of the relative coercive dictates.8 Before going on with my line of argument, first of all I must underline how both the translations and movable type prints were conditioned in the same way: first of all, the resulting publications were limited in number (two vulgarizations of city law books in the whole of the fourteenth century and ten or so incunabula and printed books in the sixteenth century), highlighting the remarkable cleft between Tuscia and, for example, papal-controlled Piceno or Urbinate.9 Second, these choices were made to immobilize the dispositive texts, first of all to crystallize them in a different linguistic version, and then to ‘close’ in print writings that were traditionally ‘open’, that is, subject to frequent amendments and reforms (to be seen as moments of reorganization, clarification and partial updating rather than innovation), accompanied by glosses, comments and integrations.10 Therefore, the procedures we are looking at are to some extent in contradiction to the very nature 2009; Bambi, Federigo. “Alle origini del volgare del diritto. La lingua degli statuti di Toscana tra XII e XIV secolo”. Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome - Moyen Âge, 126/2 (2014) (<http://journals.openedition. org/mefrm/2112>). Salvestrini, Francesco; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “La lingua della legge. I volgarizzamenti di statuti nell’Italia del Basso Medioevo”, Comunicare nel medioevo. La conoscenza e l’uso delle lingue nei secoli XII-XV, Isa Lori Sanfilippo, Giuliano Pinto, eds. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2015: 250-301; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “Volgarizzare i documenti, volgarizzare gli statuti nella Toscana tra Due e Trecento”, Toscana bilingue (1260 ca.-1430 ca.). Per una storia sociale del tradurre medievale, Sara Bischetti, Michele Lodone, Cristiano Lorenzi, Antonio Montefusco, eds. Berlin-Boston: de Gruyter, 2021: 151-166; Salvestrini, Francesco. “The Use of the Vernacular…”. 8. In this connection, see: Mannori, Luca. “Il Comune dopo il Comune. Ragioni di un tema e panorama storiografico”, Il Comune dopo il Comune. Le istituzioni municipali in Toscana (secoli XV-XVIII), Daniele Edigati, Lorenzo Tanzini, eds. Florence: Olschki, 2022: 1-24, especially 13-14. 9. See: Anselmi, Anselmo. “Il costo di stampa di uno Statuto Municipale nel Cinquecento (A proposito della progettata stampa dello Statuto di Roccacontrada)”. La Bibliofilía, 7/3-4 (1905): 104-108, especially 104105. 10. Ascheri, Mario. Diritto medievale e moderno. Problemi del processo, della cultura e delle fonti giuridiche. Rimini: Maggioli, 1991: 257-285; Bambi, Federigo. “’A chi legge’ (ovvero qualche considerazione sugli statuti e la stampa)”, Gli statuti in edizione antica (1475-1799) della Biblioteca di Giurisprudenza dell’Università di Firenze, Federigo Bambi, Lucilla Conigliello eds. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2003: 1-16; Montecchi, Giorgio. “I primi statuti a stampa: le procedure tipografiche di un genere editoriale aperto”, La norma e la memoria. Studi per Augusto Vasina, eds. Tiziana Lazzari, Leardo Mascanzoni, Rossella Rinaldi. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2004: 269-294; Zorzi, Andrea. “Scrivere le regole: l’Italia degli statuti”, Atlante della letteratura italiana, Sergio Luzzato, Gabriele Pedullà, eds. Storia della Toscana. 1. Dalle origini al Rinascimento, Amedeo De Vincentiis, ed. Turin: Einaudi, 2010: 48-54; Cammarosano, Paolo. “Gli statuti italiani”, Statuts, écritures et pratiques sociales dans les sociétés de l’Italie communale et du Midi de la France (XIIe-XVe siècle), Didier Lett, ed. Rome: École française, 2021: 51-72. However, on what an ‘open’ text effectively means in the context of municipal statutes, see: Salvestrini, Francesco. “Struttura, normazione e stratificazione testuale…”: 33-35. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 313 of statutory codes; actions set to remain exceptional in a landscape of texts still dominated by Latin ordinances copied and transmitted in handwritten form.11 2. Fourteenth-century vulgarizations Is it possible to detail the motivations leading to the translations and then the printing of the municipal statutes? What value and meaning should be given to these procedures in the political and institutional context of the Tuscan cities? I will start from the vulgarizations to try to give some answers. Aside from some rural codes, above all in the Siena area, some of which dating from the thirteenth century, and a growing but nevertheless still limited number of normative texts concerning single magistracies, guilds and above all confraternities,12 statutes were only translated in two major cities in the fourteenth century: Siena (1309) and Florence (1355). The vernacular versions of statutes only increased in number during the fifteenth century, becoming the norm especially for communities and smaller localities, whereas they were once more eclipsed in urban areas. To date the most widely studied text is without doubt the vulgarization of the Sienese constitution made between 1309 and 1310.13 As stated at the beginning of the code, this version was wanted by the Popular government (Pars Populi) of the city, who had collected and reorganized the previous normative tradition “so that the poor people and other people who do not know grammar, and the others who so desire can see, copy and have it at will”.14 Aside from this clear and noble motivation, we know that the Sienese regime of the Nine (1287-1355) set out to promote a vernacular version of the fundamental law above all because they needed a text that was a clear expression of the ruling class (the so-called mezzana gente, roughly equivalent 11. For an emblematic example, see: Cencioni, Claudia. Statuti della città di Chiusi (1538), presentation by Mario Ascheri. Chiusi: Luì, 1996. On handwritten books in the decades following the introduction of printing, Richardson, Brian. Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: the Editor and the Vernacular Text, 14701600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Richardson, Brian. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; Richardson, Brian. Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 12. See for example the 1278-1284 statutes of the Florentine fraternity of San Gilio: Compagnia di San Gilio, Testi fiorentini del Dugento e dei primi del Trecento, ed. Alfredo Schiaffini. Florence: Sansoni, 1926 (republished in 1954): 34-54. See also: Zorzi, Andrea. “Le fonti normative a Firenze nel tardo Medioevo. Un bilancio delle edizioni e degli studi”, Statuti della Repubblica fiorentina, ed. Romolo Caggese, Nueva Edizione, eds, Giuliano Pinto, Francesco Salvestrini, Andrea Zorzi. Florence: Olschki, 1999: I, 53-101, especially 93-94. On the emergence of the written vernacular in the region, Miglio, Luisa. “La Toscana: una civiltà della scrittura”, Storia della Toscana. 1. Dalle origini al Settecento, Elena Fasano Guarini, Giuseppe Petralia, Paolo Pezzino, eds. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2004: 133-146,especially 138-140. 13. Il Costituto del Comune di Siena volgarizzato nel MCCCIX-MCCCX, ed. Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh. Siena: Fondazione Monte dei Paschi, 2002; Ascheri, Mario. “Novità sul Costituto volgarizzato del 1310 e sui Nove a Siena”, Studi in onore di Sergio Gensini…: 201-210; Giordano, Nora; Piccinni, Gabriella, eds. Siena nello specchio del suo Costituto in volgare del 1309-1310. Pisa: Pacini, 2014. 14. Il costituto del Comune di Siena… 1, dist. 1, rub. 134: 122-123. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 314 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI to the bourgeoisie), who in turn represented the artisan, mercantile and financial sectors of the local society and possessed a good level of culture but no mastery of the use of grammar. The government had displayed great diffidence, and at times, outright hostility, towards the category of judges and jurists, accused of being close to the magnates and of making a distorted interpretation of the laws imposed by the People’s regime.15 The vulgarization of the statute, rendered by Ranieri di Ghezzo da Gangalandi, notary of the reformations and therefore a figure close to the heart of the government, was opposed by the Podestà and Capitano del Popolo, foreign officials who struggled to understand this law written in a language they were not familiar with. The syntax was complex and tricky, many passages were convoluted and almost impenetrable, indeed it did not respond well to the requirement pronounced above, that is, to make the law understandable to the humble and simple people. Furthermore, the fact that the code to a large extent lacks any reforms or glosses in the margins reveals its limited or practically inexistent use by those who actually had to apply it, that is, those judges and notaries whom the Sienese government nevertheless could never do without. Moreover, the way the manuscripts were put together, without any pages or sides left blank at the end, generally to host any chapters resulting from subsequent reviews or reforms, and the single-copy transmission highlight – at least for those codes that have come down to us – the lack of interest in creating a statutory tradition in the vernacular. Thus, the translation into the local language was first of all a demonstration of the paternalistic propaganda wanted by the regime of the Nine. There were no real connections with the practice of the ius proprium, which, moreover, was now mainly expressed through the more agile current legislation (resolutions and ordinamenta), and less and less through rigid statutory dictates.16 The vulgarization of the new statute of the Florentine republic, begun in 135556 – after the city’s Signoria had been granted the status of imperial vicariate by the sovereign Charles IV of Bohemia17 – and perhaps concluded during the 1380s, appears different in some respects. There was no conflict between the ruling class and the legal practitioners in this city. The translation was carried out by order of the Signoria, the supreme governing body, and entrusted to a notary and scribe, Andrea Lancia, renowned man of letters and commentator of Dante, who had come to fame as the interpreter of classical texts, having made one of the first compendia of the 15. Catoni, Giuliano. “Il collegio notarile di Siena”, Il notariato nella civiltà toscana. Rome: Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, 1985: 337-363, especially 341-342; Costantini, Valentina. “Tra lavoro e rivolta: i carnaioli”, Siena nello specchio…: 219-247. 16. Salvestrini, Francesco; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “La lingua della legge…”: 268-276; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “La vie politique et les formes de l’écrit de gouvernement dans les villes italiennes du Moyen Age. Entre ritualisation et conflit”, La voix des assemblées. Démocratie urbaine et registres de déliberation. MéditerranéeEurope XIIIe-XVIIe siècle, François Otchakovsky-Laurens, Laure Verdon, eds. Aix-en-Provence-Marseille: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2021: 201-217; Salvestrini, Francesco. “The Use of the Vernacular”, The Illuminated Legal Manuscript from the Middle Ages to the Digital Age. Forms, Iconographies, Materials, Uses and Cataloguing, Maria Alessandra Bilotta, ed. Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming. 17. Villani, Matteo. Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta. [Milan]-Parma: Fondazione Pietro Bembo-Ugo Guanda, 2007. 1: 583-584. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 315 Aeneid in the vernacular.18 The translation of the new statute was motivated in a text deliberating the need ut ipsi artifices et layci possint per se ipsos legere et intelligere ipsa statuta et ordinamenta (for the artisans and laymen to be able to read and understand the statutes and ordinances themselves) in Florence too.19 All the same, like Siena, the city of the lily preserves a sole specimen of the statutory dictate written in the local language (in the dual form of a code of the Podestà and a code of the Capitano del Popolo), whereas the surviving Latin manuscripts of the same reform and rewriting of the law, which might be fragmentary but are glossed and commented, plus very well used, count no fewer than twelve. Similarly to the Sienese code, the Florentine code, albeit translated (at least the book of the Podestà) by a cultured and expert figure, presents an articulate and complex syntax, consisting of circumlocutions and idiomatic expressions, as well as new-fangled lexical solutions that struggle to render the semantic density of the Latin phraseology consolidated by centuries of use and interpretation. In the exact same way as in Siena, the Florentine vernacular codes seem to have been put to little use, and above all, hardly seem to respond to the expressed need to communicate the letter of the law to less qualified citizens. Furthermore, the translation was made from texts which had not yet been formally ratified by the councillors (ratification was only given in 1366).20 The vulgarization was therefore commissioned and to a large extent carried out regardless of the validity of the statute itself. Indeed, there is no doubt that the Latin texts remained the ones used for the normal application of the law.21 Therefore, one can conclude that the celebrated versions of the great Tuscan city statutes, drawn up using languages considered in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia – not without bitter criticism – among the most noble, were the expression of the tricky search for a living language that could be considered illustrious, preeminent, elevated and courtly (insofar as it was taken from the best of the municipal parlances in Italy).22 However, in terms of normative practice, they mainly figured as political ‘marketing’ manifestos, which added little to the knowledge or the validity of the law. 3. Printing statutes. Preliminary considerations After briefly examining some characteristics of the vulgarizations, now let us come to the printed statutes. For the smaller towns and cities, we have a single 18. Azzetta, Luca. “Le chiose alla Commedia di Andrea Lancia, l’Epistola a Cangrande e altre questioni dantesche”. L’Alighieri. Rassegna dantesca, 21 (2003): 5-76; Lancia, Andrea. Chiose alla ‘Commedia’, ed. Luca Azzetta, Edizione nazionale dei commenti danteschi, 9. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2012. 19. Ordinamenti, provvisioni e riformagioni del Comune di Firenze…: 10, 45-46. 20. Biscione, Giuseppe, ed. Statuti del Comune di Firenze nell’Archivio di Stato. Tradizione archivistica e ordinamenti. Roma: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2009: 51-53. 21. Salvestrini, Francesco; Tanzini, Lorenzo. La lingua della legge…: 284-292. 22. Alighieri, Dante. “De vulgari eloquentia”. Le opere, 3, ed. Enrico Fenzi, Luciano Formisano, Francesco Montuori. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2012: 1, 13, 16-17, 92-98, 112-124. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 316 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI incunabulum, not by chance from Lucca.23 Instead, for the sixteenth century we can count twelve impressions of territorial statutes relating to the localities of: Anghiari (Arezzo),24 Arezzo, Carrara, Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo),25 Lucca, Massa, Pistoia and Siena (after the Florentine conquest). As I was saying at the beginning, the number of specimens is extremely small, laughable almost, if compared to the tens of handwritten statutes, almost one for every civitas, land and castle, as well as rural community and league of peoples, preserved from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; without counting the wider administrative districts, such as the capitanati, vicariates and podesterie.26 One fact stands out: we have three politically independent cities – Lucca, Massa and Carrara (the last two ruled by the same signore) – whose old and new laws were reformed and printed during the period under examination. Nevertheless, the capitals of the two biggest political bodies, Florence and Siena (independent until 1555), that is, the same cities which two centuries before had wanted the vulgarization of the statutes, present no prints of the municipal codes, despite their considerable and lengthy use of printing.27 The Florentine statutes from 1415 would 23. See later in this article. 24. Statuti, et Ordinationi della Communità, e Podesteria d’Anghiari Divisi in IIII. Libri. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1551 (Edit16 online CNCE 77894); see: Raveggi, Leonardo; Tanzini, Lorenzo, eds. Bibliografia delle edizioni di statuti toscani, secoli XII-metà XVI. Florence: Olschki, 2001, expanded digital version: Storia di Firenze. Il portale per la storia della città <http://www.storiadifirenze.org>: 167. 25. Communitatis Terre Castilionis Statuta ad publicam utilitatem impressa. Perugia: Girolamo Francesco Cartolari, 11 October-24 November 1535 (Edit16 online CNCE 10048), which are printed in a very archaic gothic font. Each of the five parts making up the 1385 statutes was published separately following the model of the Perugian statutes of 1523-28. The single books display woodcuts depicting the archangel Michael slaying the dragon, the community’s coat of arms since at least the fifteenth century: Passerini, Luigi. Le armi dei municipj toscani. Florence: Ducci, 1864 (republished in 1969): 60. See: Catalogo della raccolta di statuti... 2 (C-E), Corrado Chelazzi, ed. Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1950: 121-122; Gli statuti in edizione antica…: 64. 26. Fasano Guarini, Elena. Lo stato mediceo di Cosimo I. Florence: Sansoni, 1973: 49-50; Zorzi, Andrea. “The ‘Material Constitution’ of the Florentine Dominion”, Florentine Tuscany. Structures and Practices of Power, William J. Connell, Andrea Zorzi, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000: 6-31, especially: 22-24; de la Roncière, Charles-Marie. “Dalla città allo stato regionale: la costruzione del territorio (XIVXV secolo)”, Firenze e la Toscana. Genesi e trasformazioni di uno stato (XIV-XIX secolo), Jean Boutier, Sandro Landi, Olivier Rouchon, eds. Florence: Mandragora, 2004: 11-30, especially: 18-19; Tanzini, Lorenzo. Alle origini della Toscana moderna. Firenze e gli statuti delle comunità soggette (secoli XIV-XVI). Florence: Olschki, 2007; Fasano Guarini, Elena. L’Italia moderna e la Toscana dei prìncipi. Discussioni e ricerche storiche. Florence: Le Monnier, 2008: 72-73. 27. Bandini, Angelo Maria. De florentina Iuntarum typographia eiusque censoribus. Lucca: Francesco Bonsignori, 1791; Moreni, Domenico. Annali della tipografia fiorentina di Lorenzo Torrentino impressore ducale. Florence: Francesco Daddi, 1819 (also anastatic reprint ed. Mario Martelli, Florence: Le Lettere, 1989); Ridolfi, Roberto. La stampa in Firenze nel secolo XV. Florence: Olschki, 1958; Rhodes, Dennis E. Gli annali tipografici fiorentini del XV secolo. Florence: Olschki, 1988; Bastianoni, Curzio; Catoni, Giuliano. Impressum Senis. Storie di tipografi, incunaboli e librai. Siena: Accademia degli Intronati, 1988; Danesi, Daniele. “Tipografi, editori e librai a Siena, 1502-1650 circa”. La Bibliofilía. 115/1 (2013): 25-40; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Erudizione storica e tradizioni normative…”: 240-242; Hellinga, Lotte. Fare un libro nel Quattrocento. Problemi tecnici e questioni metodologiche, ed. Elena Gatti, postface Edoardo Barbieri. Udine: Forum, 2015: 91-92. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 317 only go to the printing press in 1783;28 while in Siena the last statute of the still free republic (1545) would never be printed.29 Starting from these observations, the spontaneous thought is that if it had been decided to make printed impressions in order to foster the dissemination, application and conservation of the basic laws, there should have been more of them. A sizeable number of specimens should have been produced (instead of the handful that the few copies still available today would seem to suggest), and the same should also have been true, where present, of the versions in the vernacular too. Instead, compared to the widespread use of printing for proclamations and other tools of current legislation, the composition of statutes remained a circumscribed phenomenon and, except in the case of Lucca, only concerned Latin texts.30 Then, the fact that so few smaller localities (all around Arezzo) printed their regulations and only did so in situations of emergency, as seems to have happened in Castiglion Fiorentino owing to the loss of the handwritten text in a fire, perhaps resorting to the help and funding of private persons,31 can be explained by the impression’s scarce practical utility, which usually did not justify the necessary outlay.32 4. Sixteenth-century prints of subject city statutes Some codes printed in the politically subject city communities had lost part of their validity in the progressive and fluid passage from ‘communal’ forms of government to subregional political systems.33 There is nothing strange about the fact that a new draft of a statute blindly included norms contradicted by later ones and/or substantially abrogated rubrics. This practice was common in the manuscript 28. Statuta Populi et Communis Florentiae Publica Auctoritate Collecta Castigata et Praeposita Anno Salutis MCCCCXV. Fribourg: apud Michaelem Kluch, 1777-81; Florence: Stamperia Bonducciana, 1777-83]. On the context of this edition, whose editor is not indicated, although it might issue from the studies and work of Niccolò Salvetti, a worker at Bonducciana, see: Morelli Timpanaro, Maria Augusta. Per una storia di Andrea Bonducci (Firenze, 1715-1766). Lo stampatore, gli amici, le loro esperienze culturali e massoniche. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1996: 348-351; Bambi, Federigo. “’A chi legge’…”: 11-15. 29. L’ultimo statuto della Repubblica di Siena (1545), ed. Mario Ascheri. Siena: Accademia degli Intronati, 1993. 30. On the relationship between the city authorities and the printers, see: Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria…”: 107-109. 31. Ghizzi, Giuseppe. Storia della terra di Castiglione Fiorentino. Arezzo: Bellotti, 1885. I: 84-87; II: 11-12; Catalogo della raccolta di statuti… 2: 122. 32. Anselmi, Anselmo. “Il costo di stampa di uno Statuto municipale…”: 108. 33. On the terms, meaning and scope of this evolution, see: Brown, Alison. “Firenze e la crisi del repubblicanesimo”, L’Italia alla fine del Medioevo: i caratteri originali nel quadro europeo, Francesco Salvestrini, ed. Florence: Firenze University Press, 2006: I, 203-240, especially 205-207; Zorzi, Andrea, ed. Le signorie cittadine in Toscana. Esperienze di potere e forme di governo personale (secoli XIII-XV). Rome: Viella, 2013; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “La Toscana degli Stati cittadini: Firenze e Siena”, Lo Stato del Rinascimento in Italia, 13501520. Andrea Gamberini, Isabella Lazzarini, eds. Rome: Viella, 2014: 87-105. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 318 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI tradition too. Furthermore, as I hinted at the start, printing prevented glossing, hence the statutes could not be updated. All of this brings one to the conclusion that, in the subject communities at least, the ars artificialiter scribendi only served in part to publicize and have the norms of the community applied and, moreover, that it was not used to increase their legal obligation or juridical value.34 As to the four books of the sanctae leges et statuti optimi of Arezzo, drawn up by local statute writers and printed in 1536, they were the only sixteenthcentury edition printed in this city.35 The legislative reform and its movable type edition were the fruit of agreements five years earlier that had put an end to various community attempts at rebellion against Florentine rule. The ILLUSTRATION 1. LIBER STATUTORUM ARRETII, IMPRESSUM text amended the unpublished codes ARRETII, PER CALIXTUM SIMEONIS, ANNO D[OMINI] drawn up in 1503 in the direction of MDXXXVI MENSE MARTIO. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY greater autonomy.36 The new local THE AUTHOR. government was guaranteed by the prince’s supreme authority; indeed, the collection of regulations was dedicated to Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of the Florentine Republic, here defined as the signore of Arezzo. Seen as a substantially impartial superior power, the duke was therefore better tolerated than the traditional Florentine authorities.37 Perhaps it was precisely to set the local government’s remaining scope of action in stone 34. Salvestrini, Francesco. “Erudizione storica e tradizioni normative…”: 239. 35. Liber Statutorum Arretii. Arezzo: Calisto Nardi, March 1536, ff. 86, [2] (Edit16 online CNCE 2493; SBN OPAC IT\ICCU\CNCE\002493). See: Catalogo della raccolta di statuti… I: 46-47; Ascarelli, Fernanda. La tipografia cinquecentina italiana. Florence: Sansoni, 1953: 139; Ascarelli, Fernanda; Menato, Marco. La tipografia del ’500 in Italia. Florence: Olschki, 1989: 289; Gli statuti in edizione antica…: 35; Berti, Luca. “La lunga transizione di Arezzo da città dominante a città soggetta (1384-1536)”, Il Comune dopo il Comune…: 53-67, especially 63. 36. Statutes of Arezzo from 1503 (Florence. Archivio di Stato. Statuti delle comunità autonome e soggette, 26). See: Fasano Guarini, Elena. L’Italia moderna e la Toscana…: 98-100. 37. Mannori, Luca. Il sovrano tutore. Pluralismo istituzionale e accentramento amministrativo nel principato dei Medici (Secc. XVI-XVIII). Milan: Giuffrè, 1994: 102-105; Tanzini, Lorenzo. “Potere centrale e comunità del territorio nello stato fiorentino alla fine del medioevo”, Poteri centrali e autonomie locali nella Toscana medievale e moderna, Giuliano Pinto, Lorenzo Tanzini, eds. Florence: Olschki, 2012: 83-105, especially 92, 95-97. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 319 that it was decided to confirm and solemnize the new set of norms, entrusting the task to the printing press of the Sienese Simone or Simeone di Niccolò (it appears signed by his son Callisto Bindi),38 who undertook to produce one hundred copies.39 Nevertheless, the print’s prevalently formal function emerges from the woodcut that decorates the whole of the frontispiece.40 This woodcut, as suggested by Alessandra Baroni Vannucci, appears to be a product of the workshop of a modest artist, belonging to the serried ranks of anonymous engravers contracted to work in the print shops of the time. Nevertheless, the choice of figurative elements arouses interest. Dominating the front of the statute is the medieval version of the city’s coat of arms: an untamed rampant horse.41 Significantly, the animal appears to be held by reins that come together in the coat of arms of the Florentine Republic, while the top is emblazoned with the emblem of the house of Medici, with the old arms of the Commune of Arezzo (a shield per pale gules and argent) to the right and a ducal shield with fess to the left. The statute was due to last five years, but there are no known printing approvals from the first forty years of the century. The second edition, dating from 1580 and printed by Giorgio Marescotti, was the occasion for the Arezzo government to add new provisions relating to sodomy and blasphemy, which brought the local regulations into line with the ILLUSTRATION 2. LIBER STATUTORUM ARRETII, FLORENTIAE, IN Florentine model.42 In any case, OFFICINA GEORGII MARESCOTI, MDLXXX. ILLUSTRATION the modifications of the text only PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR 38. See in this connection Danesi, Daniele. “Tipografi, editori e librai…”: 27-28, especially 30. 39. Ascarelli, Fernanda. La tipografia cinquecentina…: 146; Scapecchi, Piero. “La tipografia in Arezzo nel secolo XVI”. La Bibliofilía, 83/3 (1981): 225-230. 40. On whose characteristics see: Barberi, Francesco. Il frontespizio nel libro italiano del Quattrocento e del Cinquecento. Milan: Il Polifilo, 1969, I: 108-114, especially 120. 41. In this connection, see: Passerini, Luigi. Le armi dei municipj…: 4-5. 42. Liber statutorum Arretii. Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1580, ff. [4] 200 [4] (Edit16 online CNCE 2493). See: Valsecchi, Antonio. Bibliografia analitica degli Statuti italiani esistenti nella privata biblioteca del Dr. Antonio Valsecchi. Padua: Seminario, 1862: 1-37; Catalogo della raccolta di statuti… I: 47; Fasano Guarini, Elena. L’Italia moderna e la Toscana: 102. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 320 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI concerned five rubrics and were not significant alterations.43 The end-of-century statute substantially maintained the same outline that was set in 1536. Therefore, recourse to printing seems to have been motivated above all by the desire to formally add prestige to the compilation, without any consequence on its validity or application. The again full-page architectural design on the frontispiece is much more intricate and complex than the previous one. The figuration recalls the late Mannerist and Baroque catalogues which would emerge between the sixteenth and seventeenth century, like the famous Livre d’architecture by Alessandro Francini.44 However, the choice of subject has first to be traced back to the printer. Indeed, the composition derives from the copperplate used for the first time in 1550 by Lorenzo Torrentino for the frontispiece of L’Architettura, that is, the translation into the Florentine language of De re aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti, one of the most important publishing undertakings of the renowned typographer from the Brabant and first grand ducal printer under the privilege granted by Cosimo I de’ Medici.45 The pen-and-ink drawing, which still exists,46 is the work of Giorgio Vasari, who had also made, again in 1550, the frontispiece for the first print – the world-famous ‘Torrentinian’ edition – of his Vite. The identity of the engraver, however, is unknown. After Torrentino’s death (1563), most of the tools from his workshop, including the presses, copperplates for initials, wooden stamps and dies, were passed onto Giorgio Marescotti (1580-81), the printer of French origin whom van den Bleeck himself had convened to Florence. He used the frontispiece in question for the Dialogo della musica by Vincenzo Galilei which came out in 1581.47 The composition used in the statutory code was, therefore, a well-known, prestigious subject which, albeit not original, boasted the authorship of an illustrious figure from Arezzo and presented elements that could vaguely be traced back to an image of the city. The scene consists of a central image depicting a fluvial divinity that somehow evokes the waterways in the Arezzo area, that is, the Arno (expressly indicated as such in Alberti’s print) and the Tiber, as well as the two cities that the rivers flowed through, namely Florence and Rome (an idealized view of the latter appears in the background). Various symbols of power appear scattered around the old man’s feet.48 At the sides 43. See in particular Liber statutorum Arretii… (1580), book 3, 24: 152; book 26: 152. The preparatory draft of the second rubric is in Arezzo. Archivio di Stato. Statuti e riforme, 30, and also shown in the printed code: procedatur et sit prout Serenissimorum in lege. 44. Francini, Alessandro. Livre d’architecture contenant plusieurs portiques de differentes inventions, sur les cinq ordres de Colomnes. Paris: Melchior Tavernier, 1640. 45. L’Architettura di Leonbattista Alberti, Tradotta in Lingua Fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli Gentil’huomo & Accademico Fiorentino. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550 (çEdit16 online CNCE 723). 46. Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence). Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, 394 Orn. 47. Dialogo di Vincentio Galilei nobile fiorentino Della Musica Antica et Della Moderna. Florence: Giorgio Marescotti, 1581 (Edit16 online CNCE 20220). In this connection see: Baroni, Alessandra. I ‘libri di stampe’ dei Medici e le stampe in volume degli Uffizi (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi. Inventario generale delle stampe, 3). Florence: Olschki, 2011: 11-12, and notes 64-67; Pignatti, Franco. “Lorenzo Torrentino”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. 96, 2019: 327-333 <treccani.it/biografico>. 48. A papal tiara, a bishop’s mitre and pastoral staff, a patriarchal cross, a cardinal’s hat and two ducal crowns. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 321 we find two allegorical images that can be interpreted as Strength (on the left) and Abundance (on the right).49 These are situated above the rampant horse of the Arezzo arms and the Medici coat of arms portrayed on the bases of the pillars. All of this is crowned by the personification of Truth (on the left) accompanied by Time and Fortune (on the right) which, joined by a rich, auspicious wreath, govern the world under the guidance of Wisdom,50 represented by the figure at the top of the tympanum holding up the cosmos and an olive branch. There were two more Medici coats of arms at the top of the Torrentino print but in the work of Galilei and the statutory code they were removed. While there is no doubt as to the elegance of the frontispiece, it was the result of a readaptation. Of course, behind the image was the need for legitimacy and nobility that was typical of late-sixteenth-century visual language.51 Nevertheless, the composition had substantially nothing to do with the talking symbols of the local civic tradition which were still found in the few prints of the 1530s, in further confirmation of the now full subjection of the local law to the regulations proclaimed by the Florentine rulers. The other major city which took care to print its statutes during the period under examination was Pistoia. Forever loyal to Florence, the city was torn apart by a deep-rooted factional hate which, nevertheless, as of 1538, the principate of Cosimo I somehow managed to firmly stem.52 The municipal code, drawn up by jurist and chancellor Giovanni Forteguerri, was printed by Bernardo and Benedetto Giunti in 1546,53 when local government was reinstated following its almost eight-yearlong suppression by the dominant city subsequent to the grave uprisings that had bloodied the city.54 Like the Arezzo code, the compendium is dedicated to the ruler here too, illustrissimo ac excellentissimo principi Cosmo Medici imperii florentini duci secundo (to the most illustrious and excellent prince Cosimo Medici, the second leader of the Florentine empire). The reference to the ‘Florentine empire’, that is, to the supreme political control of the city on the Arno, is interesting. Evoking the ‘federal’ nature 49. Ripa, Cesare (ca. 1560-1625). Iconologia, practical edition by Piero Buscaroli. Milan: Tea, 20192: 3, 148. 50. Ripa, Cesare. Iconologia…: 392. 51. See: Bolzoni, Lina. “Emblemi e arte della memoria: alcune note su invenzione e ricezione”, Ead. Il lettore creativo. Percorsi cinquecenteschi fra memoria, gioco, scrittura. Naples: Guida, 2012: 109-132, especially 110-111. 52. Storia di Pistoia, III. Dentro lo Stato fiorentino. Dalla metà del XIV alla fine del XVIII secolo, ed. Pinto, Giuliano. Florence: Le Monnier, 1999; Milner, Stephen J. “Rubrics and Requests: Statutory Division and Supra-Communal Clientage in Pistoia”, Florentine Tuscany…: 312-332; Mannori, Luca. “La Pax medicea a Pistoia. Avvento del principato e fine delle fazioni”, Pistoia violenta. Faide e conflitti sociali in una città italiana dall’età comunale allo Stato moderno, eds. Giampaolo Francesconi, Luca Mannori. Pistoia: Società Pistoiese di Storia Patria, 2017: 65-120, especially 100-110. 53. Statuta civitatis Pistorii. Florence: Bernardo e Benedetto Giunta, February 1546, ff. 171 [but erroneously 175], [1] (Edit16 online CNCE 27977). See: Catalogo della raccolta di statuti…, V (N-Q). Florence: Olschki, 1960: 439-440. 54. Vivoli, Carlo. “Cittadini pistoiesi e ufficiali granducali nel governo di Pistoia medicea”, Il territorio pistoiese nel Granducato di Toscana, eds. Alberto Cipriani, Vanna Torelli Vignali, Carlo Vivoli. Pistoia: Società Pistoiese di Storia Patria, 2006: 1-47, 3. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 322 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI of the Tuscan state,55 it was an implicit guarantee of local autonomy.56 Once again, we are looking at an agreement granted to a politically subject city (defined non ignobile municipium – not a lowly municipality), ratified in a seven-book normative text whose aim was to conserve what could still be recovered from the long communal statutory tradition. This included the formal tasks of the Podestà and the Capitano del Popolo (bk. I, rub. 1), even though they were now flanked by a Florentine commissioner (bk. I, rub. 6),57 or the validity of the code as ius generale for the old city district. The print did not conflict with the mobile nature of the statutory text for the simple reason that the Pistoian compendium was ILLUSTRATION 3. STATUTA CIVITATIS PISTORII, IN FIORENZA, no longer an open text (the draft had PER BERNARDO ET BENEDETTO GIONTI, FLORENTINAE, NEL been given thirty-year validity).58 MDXLVII SECONDO LA CORTE ROMANA, DEL MESE DI Instead, it was principally a storage FEBRARO. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR. vault of old, void but symbolically loaded privileges of the past. The form of the printed text, an almost perfect rendering of the manuscripts, with the notary signatures, the signa tabellionis,59 the archaic style of the gothic font, evident above all in the titles of the rubrics accompanied by vignettes decorating the capital letter at the start of each book (the same in books I, II, IV, VI and VII, depicting a horse and rider with a horse’s head, possible emblems of loyalty to the ruler), presents an ostentatious reference to the communal documentation. The obedience, 55. On this concept and its use in the city’s communal rhetoric, see: Brown, Alison. “The Language of Empire”, Florentine Tuscany…: 32-47. 56. In 1546 all those subject communities that still had not done so were obliged by Cosimo I to produce a copy of their statutes and send it to the Central Office of Secret Practice to request its revision and approval (Mannori, Luca. Il sovrano tutore…: 120-123; Fasano Guarini, Elena. L’Italia moderna e la Toscana…: 103, 105-114). 57. On whose functions and coordination authority in representation of the central power, see: Gai, Lucia. “Centro e periferia: Pistoia nell’orbita fiorentina durante il ’500”, Pistoia: una città nello stato mediceo. Pistoia: Comune di Pistoia, 1980: 9-147, especially 30 and 40; Connell, William J. Il commissario e lo Stato territoriale fiorentino. Ricerche storiche. 18/3 (1988): 591-617, especially 616-617; Il territorio pistoiese nel Granducato di Toscana… Rubric XVII of book I suggests that the Capitaneus and Commissarius could now be the one and the same. 58. Statuta civitatis Pistorii…, f. 172v. 59. Statuta civitatis Pistorii… ff. 172r and 172v. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 323 not only and not so much to Florence but to the house of Medici, is highlighted by the woodcut frontispiece, almost entirely occupied by the dynasty’s coat of arms with a crown atop. The two bears in the bottom corners of the figure, depicted supporting the two Pistoian chequy coats of arms, are a reference to the symbology adopted after the breaking of the siege imposed upon the city by Giovanni Visconti in 1360, a victory obtained with help from Florence. This version of the coat of arms, also recurrent in seals, is explained by the Pistoian memorialist Jacopo Fioravanti (eighteenth century) as a representation of a typical animal of the Apennine wilds situated to the north of the Pistoian countryside, chosen because of its similarity to the Florentine Marzocco lion.60 In the composition the two bears are portrayed with a collar, hence all of the iconography underlines the Pistoians’ loyalty to the ruler and, in particular, as said, the house of Medici. The subsequent print (1579) – the second Giunti edition61 – of the statute confirmed the previous set of norms, amending around fifteen rubrics and eliminating all those on bandits that were still present in 1546.62 The alterations were further-reaching than the second edition of the code of Arezzo, but still not so many as to make a significant mark on the bottom layer of rules that it set out to conserve. The reason for printing the text is laid out in the last rubric of the seventh book: pro commoditate civitatis Pistorii (for the convenience of the city of Pistoia).63 Nevertheless, an important difference ILLUSTRATION 4. LEGES MUNICIPALES PISTORIENSIUM, QUAE between this and the previous VULGO STATUTA NUNCUPANTUR SEPTEM LIBRIS COMPREHENSAE, impression can be noted on the title NUNC PRIMUM, ANTIQUATO, QUOD NUPER OBTINEBAT, VETERI IURE. FRANCISCI MEDICIS SERENISSIMI MAGNI DUCIS ETRURIAE page which, like in Arezzo, lost its CONCESSU , QUINETIAM IUSSU EXCUSAE, FLORENTIAE, APUD reference to the local civic identity and COSMUM IUNCTAM, MDLXXIX. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY became a standardized expression of THE AUTHOR. 60. Fioravanti, Jacopo Maria. Memorie storiche della città di Pistoja. Lucca: Filippo Maria Benedini, 1758 (reprinted in 1968): 23; Passerini, Luigi. Le armi dei municipj…: 212-214. 61. Leges municipales Pistoriensium, quae vulgo statuta nuncupantur septem libris comprehensae, Nunc primum, antiquato, quod nuper obtinebat, veteri iure. Francisci Medicis serenissimi magni ducis Etruriae concessu, quinetiam iussu excusae. Florence: Eredi di Bernardo Giunta, 1579, ff. [12], 195, [1] (Edit16 online CNCE 27571). 62. Fasano Guarini, Elena. L’Italia moderna e la Toscana…: 102. 63. Leges municipales Pistoriensium…: 195. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 324 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI the dominating power. The very much simplified front of this code only hosts the coat of arms of the Medici dynasty. The printing of the city and state of Siena government reforms dating from 1561 deserve their own separate discussion. These were not a new statute, but a leaflet of a few pages drawn up in order to seal the city’s surrender (1555) and the establishment of the Medicean rule.64 Once again, the dynasty’s lone, large coat of arms stands out on the frontispiece of the legislative programme which makes local autonomy a gracious concession of the prince. The subjected city’s own, handwritten statute was respected in form only. An irreparable representation of the era of freedom, it is precisely for this reason that it was never printed.65 Lastly, in some cities of the Florentine state, the municipal regulations were updated, at times rewritten and set down in print, above all in order to continue to justify their very existence in a by now profoundly changed political context. The operation, like the vulgarization at that time, added nothing to the validity and did little to aid the real dissemination or knowledge of the laws. The printed texts safeguarded the remaining autonomy that the dependent localities still had in an eminently administrative field. Less subject to reforms, because at this point they bore no particular political worth, these codes could be collected and set in print for two different but complementary ends: to put together the municipal legislation still partially in force and bear prestigious witness to the cities’ illustrious past.66 5. Sixteenth-century printed free city statutes The case of those cities that were still politically independent – in particular Lucca, Massa and Carrara – seems to be different. The statutes published in these places were fully in force; indeed, the print version came to ratify new and complex regulations. However, the picture is by no means homogenous. As far as Lucca is concerned, a significant number of fourteenth-century statutes (1308, 1372) were produced,67 whose importance had been cemented after 1369, when freedom was restored after the end of Pisan rule and the granting of the relative imperial 64. Reformatione del Governo della Città e Stato di Siena Fermata per sua Ecc.za Illu.ma Il dì primo Febraio MDLX. Florence: Giunta, [1576?], ff. [20]. Catalogo della raccolta di statuti…, VII (S), Giuseppe Pierangeli, Sandro Bulgarelli, eds. Florence: Olschki, 1990: 224-225; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria in Toscana…”: 105; Ascheri, Mario. “Siena in età medicea: quale continuità istituzionale?”, Il Comune dopo il Comune…: 25-52, especially 32-33. 65. Ascheri, Mario. “Cosimo I legislatore tra emergenze di governo e grandi progetti. Normative ‘classiche’, regole per i nobili e per lo Stato Nuovo di Siena”, Le leggi di Cosimo…: 23-37, especially 27-37. 66. Bambi, Federigo. “’A chi legge’…”: 2-4; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Erudizione storica e tradizioni normative…”: 243-244. 67. Statuto del Comune di Lucca dell’anno MCCCVIII ora per la prima volta pubblicato, ed. Salvatore Bongi, Leone Del Prete, Memorie e documenti per servire alla storia di Lucca. 3, parte 3. Lucca: Giusti, 1867; Statuto del Comune di Lucca del 1372 (capitoli XXVII-LVI): Romiti, Antonio. “L’Officium Conducte a Lucca nei secoli XIV e XV”, Giornale storico della Lunigiana e del territorio lucense, ser. 2, 21 (1970): 39-109, especially 82-89. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 325 privilege.68 The city government gained its own Statutum regiminis in 1446-47, a text that remained in force until the 1530s, whose six books had defined the institutional architecture of the republic.69 Lucca had boasted the presence of more or less resident printers since 1477, when Matteo Civitali had obtained the licence to set up the activity, which his brother Bartolomeo then opened. In any case, in 1490 the General Council entrusted the printing of the Volumen Statutorum cum additionibus et reformationibus Magnifice lucane Civitatis to the presses of the wanderer Henry of Cologne.70 In the sixteenth century, printing was begun in the workshops of Salvatore Succa (1523-24) and Giovan Battista Faelli (1539),71 and started to be seen as a possible alternative capital investment to the slow but inexorable crisis of the local silk industry.72 The workshops developed hand in hand with paper manufacturing, on which we have testimonies from 1409, 1466 and 1489, in the form of requests put forward to the Senate for exemption from the tax burden on this industry.73 Doubtless, the sector also grew thanks to the impressions of legislative texts, especially after the establishment of the Rota, which asked an unknown printer to publish its chapters on an unspecified date between 1529 and 1531 (it is not clear if in Lucca or elsewhere) and subsequently, in 1549,74 when the workshop of Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524 ca.-1601), Lucca’s first real resident printer, was established.75 68. Meek, Christine. Lucca 1369-1400. Politics and Society in an Early Renaissance City-state. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978; Isaacs, Ann K. “Le altre Toscane: gli stati non fiorentini della Toscana fra 1350 e 1650”, Storia della Toscana…: 167-182, especially 168-173. 69. Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Statuti del Comune di Lucca, 13-15. 70. Statuta Lucae. Lucca: Enrico da Colonia, 1490, ff. [190] (ISTC is00715000; GW online M43707). See: Matteucci, Luigi. “Brevi cenni sulla tipografia in Lucca dal sec. XV al sec. XVIII”. Rivista delle Biblioteche e degli Archivi, 31 (1920), excerpt from the review: 22-23; Catalogo della raccolta di statuti… IV (L-M), ed. Corrado Chelazzi. Florence: sede del Senato della Repubblica, 1958: 120-122. On the political context in Lucca: Bratchel, Michael Edwin. Lucca 1430-1494. The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995: 86-131. 71. Berengo, Marino. Nobili e mercanti nella Lucca del Cinquecento. Turin: Einaudi, 1965: 72-73. 72. Sabbatini, Renzo. La sollevazione degli straccioni. Lucca 1531. Politica e mercato. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2020: 41-47. 73. Burgalassi, Silvano. “Problemi di interazione culturale: l’editoria a Livorno, Lucca e Pisa”. Bollettino Storico Pisano. 43 (1974): 341-360, especially 344-345; Sabbatini, Renzo. “Dagli stracci al libro: la carta di Vincenzo Busdraghi”, Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo a Lucca, eds. Davide Martini, Tommaso Maria Rossi, Gaia Elisabetta Unfer Verre. Lucca: Comune di Lucca, 2017: 18-28, especially 20-21. 74. Martini, Davide. “Vecchi e nuovi censimenti delle edizioni impresse da Vincenzo Busdraghi (15491601)”, Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo…: 29-41, especially 29-30, 33; Cappellini, Valentina; Rossi, Tommaso Maria; Unfer Verre, Gaia Elisabetta. “La mostra “Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?1601). Uno stampatore europeo a Lucca”, Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo…: 7386, especially 76-77, 82. 75. On the Busdraghi editions in the period, see: Matteucci, Luigi. “Saggio di un Catalogo delle Edizioni Lucchesi di Vincenzo Busdrago (1549-1605)”. La Bibliofilía, 18/6-9 (1916): 225-239; Ascarelli, Fernanda. La tipografia cinquecentina in Italia…: 142-144; Martini, Davide. “Aggiornamento cronologico al catalogo delle edizioni impresse da Vincenzo Busdraghi”, Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo…: 87-174. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 326 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI In 1527 the General Council resolved to review the compilation of the city’s statute. In 1536, after the end of the political and social tensions generated by the socalled ‘Sollevazione degli straccioni’ (Uprising of the Weavers) (1531-32), and during the year which saw the triumphant arrival of emperor Charles V in the city, the assembly commissioned Giovan Battista Faelli of Bologna to print a new draft, which he finished in March 1539.76 The famous, loaded terms, libertas Lucensis, part of the city’s identity and giving the name to its most important civil festival, celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter to remember the imperial diploma granted by Charles IV in 1369,77 appear at the end of the code. Here the city’s coat of arms, displaying a variant to the traditional per fess,78 is held up by two cherubs above the verse from Psalms Iustitia et pax osculatae sunt (Justice and peace have kissed; Psalms 85/84,11). Five months later, the authorities, using the now traditional motivations, namely to render for the public good, from […] the Latin language understood by few, into the vernacular and native, more common Tuscan […] so that its citizens are not unaware of the reason in which they converse, and by which they are governed approved the vulgarization of the text and the relative printing, perhaps ordered right from the start of the whole editorial operation.79 It was the only case in Tuscany in which both versions, accompanied by an identical plant-framed frontispiece, were given similar legal value, even though the translation by jurist Tobia Sirti erased a large part of the constitutional law. Lucca is the only city in Tuscany in which the two themes dealt with hitherto, namely vulgarization and printing, seem to originate from similar requirements, against a background of uncommon legal awareness which can be explained by the necessity to ensure that a people of politically restless artisans were fully aware of the law. Indeed, it appears interesting that in the printed edition of the vulgarization the translator specifies how his version was not “written in the Tuscan way”, in other words, it was not elegant or refined, but simple and hence more immediate: “writing these Statutes for the people […] I deemed it more convenient to write in my own maternal, common language than in the polite and studied Tuscan language which today we see restricted by so many observations and rules making it no longer seem the language of one’s homeland given to the province but a real science, and to me I cannot understand how such a perfect and polished language can be called Vulgar.”80 76. Lucensis Civitatis Statuta nuperrime castigata, et quam accuratissime impressa, ed. Enrico Boccella. Lucca: Giovanni Battista Faelli, at the expense of the Republic of Lucca, 1 March 1539, ff. [6], 339 [but erroneously 340], [1] (Edit16 online CNCE 32542). See: Catalogo della raccolta di statuti… IV (L-M), ed. Chelazzi, Corrado: 123-126; Gli statuti in edizione antica…: 101; Sabbatini, Renzo. La sollevazione…: 9, 1213, 85-86, 132. 77. Giuli, Matteo. “A tutela della libertà. Il Magistrato dei Segretari nella storia della Repubblica di Lucca (1371-1799)”, Il Comune dopo il Comune…: 91, especially 93-94. 78. Passerini, Luigi. Le armi dei municipj…: 140-141. 79. Gli Statuti della città di Lucca nuovamente corretti, et con molta diligentia stampati, ed. Enrico Boccella, translation Tobia Sirti. Lucca: Giovanni Battista Faelli, at the expense of the Republic of Lucca, 26 August 1539 (Edit16 online CNCE 37377), ff. [6], 335, [1], f. 4. See: Gli statuti in edizione antica…: 102. 80. Gli Statuti della Città di Lucca…, f. 333. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION ILLUSTRATION 5. LUCENSIS CIVITATIS STATUTA NUPERRIME CASTIGATA, ET QUAM ACCURATISSIME IMPRESSA, IOANNES PHAELLUS BONONIENSIS LUCENSI AERE PUBLICO LUCAE IMPRESSIT, SUB ANNO A NATIVITATE NOSTRI IESU CHRISTI MDXXXIX. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR. ILLUSTRATION 6. GLI STATUTI 327 DELLA CITTÀ DI LUCCA NUOVAMENTE CORRETTI, ET CON MOLTA DILIGENTIA STAMPATI, STAMPATI IN LUCCA DI DINARI DELLO COMMUNE DI LUCCA GIOUAM BATTISTA PHAELLO BOLOGNESE, NEL’ANNO DEL SIGNOR NOSTRO IESU CHRISTO MDXXXIX, ADDÌ XXVI. DI AGOSTO. ILLUSTRATIN PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR. PER In any case, the limited number of prints (around one hundred for each code) and the lack of significant reforms as of the 1540s, either in Latin or in the vernacular,81 highlight that, beyond the usual rhetoric, even Lucca’s municipal regulations, which remained in force for a longer period, were progressively replaced by other more flexible, specific and current legislative tools.82 Hence, the main task left to the statute and its impressions was to conserve the original identity and historical layers of the city’s rules. The abovementioned Busdraghi was the printer of numerous official texts from Lucca: decrees, single laws, orders, notices and proclamations, but also the charters 81. Leggi et decreti dell’Eccell. Consig. Generale aggiunti alli statuti del quarto libro. Lucca: Vincenzo Busdraghi, 1588 (Edit16 online CNCE 23420). 82. See, for example, Leggi, et decreti del Magnifico Consiglio generale della città di Lucca sopra li malefitii et il portare dell’armi Fatti dell’anno 1532, 1540, 1543, 1544, 1545, 1546, 1549, 1550, 1551, 1556, 1558, & del 1560 li quali non sono nelli Statuti stampati. Lucca: Vincenzo Busdraghi, [1561] (Edit16 online CNCE 23388). IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 328 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI of confraternities, guilds and the fondaco (warehouse) of the republic.83 Moreover, he took care of the impression of the two large corpora of norms making up the statutes of Carrara (1573-74) and Massa in Lunigiana (1592) wanted by the signore of both cities, Alberico Cibo Malaspina (1534-1623), who had inherited them between 1553 and ’54.84 As for the two Apuan cities, new collections were printed that the prince had had drawn up by commissions of jurists and administrators presided over by chancellor Francesco Mascardi, aided in Carrara by Giovan Battista Serratio, jurist from Arezzo. These laws were – at least formally – in full force, going to form a single, organic set of norms, a first, at least for the valley of Massa which was divided into three communities within a vicariate of Luccan origin. For the other city, on the other hand, they reorganized Viscontean customs dating from 1396, in particular private law, the relative autonomy of neighbouring areas and the discipline of the marble economy.85 This setting in print seems to have given the Carrara text complete juridical efficacy, given that after the twenty-sixth rubric in the fourth and last book, the statute writers deemed it opportune to add a long list of errata, ruling that only the corrected text had coercive value. Nevertheless, the number of copies produced was limited (around 200 for both codes), and there is no certain proof that the impressions were destined for the government offices. Once again, the printing seemed to have an above all symbolic and celebratory worth. This can be gleaned from the choice of Busdraghi as printer, in consideration of the works he had already been commissioned by the prince – a volume of Bandello’s Novelle, other books of rhymes and some scientific dialogues – and the graphics of the sumptuous, late-Mannerist-style architectural frontispieces, with their highly complex iconic messages.86 These give away the cultural interests of the signore and his desire to bring nobility to his family, something he awaited at length and went about in various ways, giving rise to legends and fantastical genealogical traditions put forward by the research of distant relative and learned memorialist, Francesco Maria Cibo di David († 1575).87 83. Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria in Toscana…”: 112-114; Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo…: 177-223. 84. Catalogo della raccolta di statuti…, II (C-E), Chelazzi, Corrado, ed.: 67-68; Catalogo della raccolta di statuti…, 9 (L-M), Chelazzi, Corrado, ed.: 235-236; Petrucci, Franca. “Alberico Cibo Malaspina”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani… 25, 1981: 261-265. 85. Piccioli, Cesare. “La riforma statutaria: Carrara 1574 - Massa 1592”, Il tempo di Alberico, 1553-1623. Alberico I Cybo-Malaspina: signore, politico e mecenate a Massa e a Carrara, Claudio Giumelli, Olga Raffo Maggini, eds. Pisa: Pacini, 1991: 29-34, in particolare 30; Salvestrini, Francesco. “Statuti e cartae libertatum…”: 207210. On the cultural relations between Alberico Cibo and Busdraghi: Salvestrini, Francesco. “Su editoria e normativa statutaria in Toscana…”: 114-115. 86. On the figurative features of the frontispieces that the printer placed on his works, see: Urbaniak, Martyna. “La produzione tipografica di Vincenzo Busdraghi: tra parole e immagini”, Vincenzo Busdraghi (1524?-1601). Uno stampatore europeo…: 63-72. 87. On whom, Sforza, Giovanni. “Un genealogista dei principi Cybo”. Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, 27 (1895): 229-246. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 329 As for the statute of Carrara from 1574,88 the figure is etched on copper, touched up with a burin, using the matrix of an anonymous engraver which seems visible in other works of Busdraghi. At the top of the pediment with divided tympanum, the complex iconology includes a young seated woman holding a tiara and keys in her hand, an allusion to the religious past of the prince, who had begun an ecclesiastical career in his youth, frequenting the Roman Curia as well as Pope Innocent VIII (1484-92), aka Giovanni Battista Cibo. At the sides, held by cherubs, we find the ‘achievement’ of Lorenzo, Alberico’s father, on the left: an obelisk with the figure of the sun at the top surrounded by the motto Semper (which in other similar specimens, above all on coins from the same period, is replaced by the analogous Sine fine), an allusion to the duration of the state and ILLUSTRATION 7. ALBERICUS CIBO PRINC. PRIMUS, STATUTA family memory.89 Instead, appearing on CARRARIAE, LUCAE, APUD VINCENTIUM BUSDRAGHIUM, the right is a peacock with its tail fanned MDLXXIIII. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR. out, with the motto in French Leauté passe tout, evoking the privileges of his Genoan great-great-grandfather Arano, father of Giovanni Battista, viceroy of Naples and prefect of Rome, the first important figure in the Cibo family honoured by Charles of Anjou for the aid offered during Alfonso of Aragon’s siege of Naples.90 Standing out below the seated figure, in the centre of the pediment, is a plaque with the name of the prince granting the statutory charter (Albericus Cibo Princ. Primus) between two leonine heads underlining his power; this protome is also repeated below the epigraph, supporting two ornamental wreaths. Alongside the title of the work are 88. Albericus Cibo Princ. Primus. Statuta Carrariae. Lucca: Vincenzo Busdraghi, 1574 (Edit16 online CNCE 9713 and SBN OPAC IT\ICCU\CNCE\009713), ff. [8], 282, [10]. Also available in the anastatic reprint, ed. Cesare Piccioli, Bernardo Fusani. Massa: Comune di Carrara, 1993. 89. On the symbol, see also Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ed. Giovanni Pozzi, Lucia A. Ciapponi. Padua: Antenore, 1980: 18. 90. Le imprese illustri con espositioni, et discorsi del S.or Ieronimo Ruscelli, Al serenissimo et sempre felicissimo Re Catolico, Filippo d’Austria. Venice: Comin da Trino di Monferrato, 1572 (Edit16 online CNCE): 34-40; Tondo, Luigi. “Le monete: ricordi d’imprese”, Il tempo di Alberico…: 297-302; Ricci, Roberto. “L’oro del principe”, Il tempo di Alberico…: 303-336, especially 304, 308, 309-310; Esposito, Gianluigi. “La zecca di Massa di Lunigiana, Alberico I Cybo Malaspina, marchese (1553-1568) e principe di Massa (15681623)”, Museo Nazionale Romano, La Collezione di Vittorio Emanuele III. Bollettino di numismatica, 46 (2016): 8-11. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 330 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI the personifications of Justice (left) and Prudence (right). At the bottom, Strength (on the left) and Temperance, or, following what would become the tradition of Cesare Ripa at the end of the sixteenth century, Generosity (on the right),91 frame the coat of arms with crown atop of Cibo Malaspina, officially marquis of Carrara since 1568. While reproduced graphically here, in the portraits of the era, it has a quarterly first and fourth gules, a bend chequy azure and argent, in three parts, with white head a cross gules; and in the second and third quarters or, a pale plain thorn. Finally, at the centre, the coat of arms of the Medici of Florence, of whom Cibo was a relative. Behind the two allegorical figures, inserted in the body of two herms, a male and a female, we find two more hermetic achievements, which also become easier to read through a comparison with coinage. On the left appears a fiery barrel accompanied by the German motto Von gut im besser, a possible allusion to alchemic practices, given that a barrel often appears in the illustrations of the relative treatises, used as a hypothetical furnace to transform the raw material into gold. It could also be a metaphorical allusion to the same figure of Alberico, man of value made even better by his virtues. On the right is the achievement of cardinal Innocenzo Cibo, Alberico’s uncle, comprising an anvil surrounded by the motto Durabo, a further mention of an auspicious longevity. At the bottom, significantly below and smaller than the large dynastic coat of arms, is a wheel, the coat of arms of Carrara. The five books of the Statuta Massae, the result of the reorganization and centralization of the municipal administration planned by Mascardi, were printed by Busdraghi in 1592.92 The work is introduced by a similar divided tympanum composition, dominated by an allegory of Justice with scales in one hand and a sword in the other.93 Alongside the figure are two little angels each holding up an emblem. The one on the right is again the symbol of Arano with the peacock. The one on the left represents the achievement of the temple, which recurs in coinage relating to the second half of the period of Alberico’s reign. It consists of a round temple with steps leading up to it and a four-star halo in the sky. The depiction is surrounded by the motto Aliis spretis te solam (eligo) and also has an esoteric meaning that seems to indicate striving towards an eternal and more perfect ideal of virtue and wisdom (the temple) through a process of spiritual elevation. The title, Statuta Massae, appears inside a sign, below which is the heraldic emblem of the Cibo Malaspina family, upon imperial concession princes of Massa and of the Holy Roman Empire (1568), here quartered with a double-headed eagle, resulting from the title of Most 91. Ringressi, Costanza. “L’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa: modi d’uso a confronto”, L’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa. Fonti letterarie e figurative dall’Antichità al Rinascimento, eds. Mino Gabriele, Cristina Galassi, Roberto Guerrini. Florence: Olschki, 2013: 49-63, especially 58-59. 92. Statuta Massae. Lucca: Vincenzo Busdraghi, 1592 (Edit16 online CNCE; SBN OPAC IT\ICCU\ RMGE\001257 and IT\ICCU\RMLE\072782), ff. [18], 266, [24]. Available in anastatic reprint by the Municipal Council of Massa. Massa, 1991. 93. On this iconographic tradition, Galassi, Cristina. “Il «ragionamento d’imagini» di Cesare Ripa”, L’Iconologia di Cesare Ripa…: 19-27, especially 25. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 CELEBRATIONS AND EPITHAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION 331 Illustrious granted by Rudolph II of Hapsburg in 1588.94 Alongside the family coat of arms are allegories of Strength (on the right) and Prudence (on the left); while at the centrebottom, in a similar position to the frontispiece of the Carrara statutes, we find the coat of arms of Massa with the hobnail club. 6. Some conclusions The printing of municipal statutes in Tuscany bore various meanings, the foremost of which were not necessarily to set down, reorganize or disseminate the municipal law, which was even printed when it had either entirely or partially lost its validity. Not rarely, it was a response ILLUSTRATION 8. STATUTA MASSAE, LUCAE, APUD VINCENTIUM BUSDRAGHIUM, MDXCII. ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED BY THE to broader political and ideological AUTHOR. rather than legal or regulatory logics. Indeed, while printing ensured the reproducibility and conservation of the statutory corpora, with the partial exception of Lucca and the dominions of the Malaspina family, it did not add coercive value to the handwritten texts. As such, these undertakings presented no few elements of similarity with the vulgarizations of the statutory texts made in the fourteenth century. All the same, the general preference was to imprint the Latin rather than the Tuscan language versions of the sets of provisions as the latter were often opposed by jurists and it was only in Lucca that they would be the expression of the local culture and hence guarantors of a fragile ‘freedom’. Nevertheless, in the modern urban ideology, statutes remained a symbol of autonomy, whether it was still felt to be present or an element of the past.95 Printing 94. Massa. Archivio di Stato. Diplomatico, perg. no. 627/678. 95. Chittolini, Giorgio. “Statuti e autonomie urbane. Introduzione”, Statuti città territori in Italia e Germania tra medioevo ed età moderna, Giorgio Chittolini, Dietmar Willoweit, eds. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991: 7-45, especially 31-32; Quaglioni, Diego. “La legislazione del principe e gli statuti urbani nell’Italia del Quattrocento”, Principi e città alla fine del Medioevo, Sergio Gensini, ed. Pisa: Pacini, 1996: 1-16, especially 4-5; Chittolini, Giorgio “«Crisi» e «lunga durata» delle istituzioni comunali in alcuni dibattiti recenti”, Penale Giustizia Potere. Metodi, Ricerche, Storiografie. Per ricordare Mario Sbriccoli, Luigi Lacchè, Carlotta Latini, Paolo Marchetti, Massimo Meccarelli, eds. Macerata: Edizioni università di macerata, 2007: 125-154. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13 332 FRANCESCO SALVESTRINI gave new but short-lived prominence to the texts, which could be put to press and passed down the centuries precisely because they were no longer ‘open’ as had instead at length been the case in the communes.96 Now, the public power wanted to make local regulations a thing of the past and push them to one side. It called upon the new art of printing to disseminate current general legislation, mainly consisting of proclamations and rescripts, which by now had become the main tools of government, and perhaps to glorify texts which officially put municipal regulations in the historical and ideological past. Just think, for example, of the sumptuous print version of the Justinian Pandects prepared for Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1553 by Marches jurist Lelio Torelli, who drew it from the famous littera Florentina archetypal manuscript stolen from the Pisans; an operation entrusted to the expert art of the printer Torrentino. The purpose of this undertaking may have been to go beyond centuries of university exegesis to propose the ius romanum in its primary essence and make it the possible basis for a Tuscan ‘common law’ which could erase all old, more or less literally and jealously safeguarded, local regulations.97 Far from indicating the vitality of a particular, glorious legislation, printing therefore ended up acting as a modern epitaph for a legislative tradition that could only wed printing provided that it lost many of its distinctive features as well as some of the very reasons for its production. However, this begs one last question. Why, if capitals like Lucca or Massa saw it fit to raise the status of local laws through print, and to entrust them with protecting an increasingly threatened freedom, did the same not happen in Florence and Siena which also boasted important versions of statutes, in Latin and the vernacular, from the fourteenth century and beyond? The answer may lie in the fact that the greatest Tuscan power, namely the Medicean state, did not intend to publicize regulations that dated from the republican era and was interested in going beyond a city outlook to a regional institutional set-up; and this explanation seems even more convincing for Siena, acquired in the mid-sixteenth century after a long and bloody war won thanks to the intervention of the Spanish army. However, I believe that, especially for Florence, there were some more profound and pragmatic reasons too: the fifteenth-century statute of the Florentine republic was not published in the sixteenth century because at the time it had not yet been fully abrogated, or nevertheless achieved a definitive form and closure. In connection with the city administration (food administration, roads, public buildings, etc.), it remained in force and formally open until the eighteenth century. Hence, it had to wait to be printed, until the time when the political climate of the Lorraine grand duchy made the impression of normative texts an operation for more or less historical-erudite ends only. 96. Bambi, Federigo. “’A chi legge’…”: 5-6. 97. Ascheri, Mario. Tribunali giuristi e istituzioni. Dal Medioevo all’età moderna. Bologna: Il Mulino, 19952: 55-84. IMAGO TEMPORIS. MEDIUM AEVUM, XVIII (2024): 309-332 / ISSN 1888-3931 / DOI 10.21001/itma.2024.18.13