Cultures of Voting in Pre-modern Europe

Serena Ferente is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at King's College London.Lovro Kunčević is Faculty Member of the Institute for Historical Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Dubrovnik.Miles Pattenden is Research Fellow in Early Modern History at Wolfson College, Oxford.

"By examining the range of cultural contexts in which decision-making took place in every part of Europe, from ancient times to the eighteenth century, this fascinating collection of essays analyzes voting as a kind of ‘total social fact’, broadening our notions of ‘the political’ and offering a new perspective on the history of legitimacy, secrecy, political theology, and a host of other topics."Matthew Vester, West Virginia Universtity, USA"This eye-opening volume surveys the many spheres in pre-modern Europe in which decisions were made by forms of voting. With its emphasis on culture – on social meaning – it evokes the complexity and sophistication of the pre-modern political order. In its wake, the common equation of ‘medieval’ with ‘autocratic’ has never looked so wrong."John Watts, University of Oxford, UK

• Part one: Ideas and Representations; Chapter 1: Not just Voting but being Counted: the Cases of Ancient Greece; Chapter 2: Roman Reflections on Voting Practices: also a Pythagorean Affair; Chapter 3: Cultures of Unanimity in Carolingian Councils; Chapter 4: A Vote for the New World Order: the Dardanelles meeting in 1235 (the Council at Lampsacus-Gallipoli); Chapter 5: Voting at the Council of Constance (1414-18); Chapter 6: Cultures of Secrecy in Pre-Modern Papal Elections; Chapter 7: ‘Conforme al vivere civile et politico’: Machiavelli's newly discovered proposal for electoral reform in 1512; Chapter 8: A Culture of Voting in Seventeenth-Century England; Chapter 9: Dead and Buried after the Elections? Voting and Citizenship in the Batavian Revolution; Part two: Practices, Institutions, Procedures; Chapter 10: The Culture of Voting in Medieval Split: Appearance and Reality; Chapter 11: From Discussion to Vote: Practices of Political Deliberation and Written Records in Communal Italy; Chapter 12: Parties, Quotas and Elections in Late Medieval Genoa; Chapter 13: The Election of the Abbess: Political Reasons of Monastic Discipline in Renaissance Parma; Chapter 14: Political Decision-Making in the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries; Chapter 15:‘Il fait bon voir de tout leur sénat ballotter’. The Ubiquity of Voting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Venice; Chapter 16: The Citizens and the King: Voting and Electoral Procedures in Southern Italian Towns under the Aragonese ; Chapter 17: Voting in the Parliaments of the Crown of Aragon, c.1300-1716; Chapter 18: Voting and Elections in the Elite Ragusan Confraternities of St Anthony and St Lazarus; Chapter 19: Voting on the Move: Elections of Caravanbashi by Armenian Merchants in Poland and the Ottoman Empire, 1500-1700; Chapter 20: Municipal Elections and Contested Religious Space: Electoral Practices and Confessional Politics in Mediterranean France during the French Wars of Religion