Urban Religious Life in the Italian Communes: The State of the Field

Abstract

The independent citizen-governed civic communes of medieval Italy have long been a popular focus of scholarship. However, that scholarship has tended to focus either upon the political or the religious history of the cities. A new wave of work has insisted that historians consider the birth and development of these cities from the late eleventh through the fourteenth centuries as both a political and religious phenomenon. These works have encouraged historians to see the institutional history of religion and everyday religious observance as integral aspects of the ongoing articulation of communal identity. Moreover, recent work focusing on lay religious life in the communes has identified promising new paths for historians interested in the connection and dependence of political and religious issues in the communes.