History of Florence, 1200 - 1575

John M. Najemy is Professor of History at Cornell University and the author of Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli-Vettori Letters of 1513–1515 (1993) and Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (1982). For the former he won the Marraro Prize of the Society for Italian Historical Studies and for the latter the Marraro Prize of the American Historical Association. He has also edited Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, 1300–1550 (2004).

"Based on wide reading of the available secondary and printed sources, A History of Florence represents the achievement of a lifetime's devotion to the study of the city. Moreover, Najemy's categories of analysis should provoke debates and conversations for future lifetimes."  (Renaissance and Reformation, 2009) "There is much to praise about this book. It is a model historical synthesis of the history of a great premodern European city. It is also a sophisticated political history in which class-based ideas and values matter as much as individual details of political events." (The Catholic Historical Review, July 2010)"[This] is the best history of Florence in any language, and it will long remain so, for Najemy has mastered the relevant literature more thoroughly than any other historian in living memory." (Times Literary Supplement)"John Najemy is a pre-eminent historian of Renaissance Florence ... a scholar of learning, imagination and intellectual penetration, with a profound knowledge of Florentine history from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century and with a remarkable range of interests in political, social and intellectual history. There has been no credible attempt to write a history of Florence in this period since the time of Perrens's multi-volume work, finished in 1883. Najemy has risen admirably to the challenge. He has assimilated the vast secondary literature on Florence, from the beginning of the thirteenth to the late sixteenth century. The range of his analysis and explication stretches across a vast range of fundamental social, political, economic, diplomatic, military and biographical topics. Nor is Najemy indifferent to intellectual history, especially questions involving political thought and ideology. This book is no mere synthesis of other scholars' work. Indeed, Najemy offers a distinctive interpretation, one which has already stimulated controversy and will doubtless continue to do so." (Reviews in History)"Highly recommended." (Choice)"An extraordinary accomplishment. Deserves rich praise as a fundamentally new and authoritative interpretation of four key centuries of this remarkable city's development.” Speculum“[Najemy], a veteran Renaissance historian offers a big and impressive survey of the Florentine city-state …. One of the justifications for the book [is] the need for an updated and accessible synthesis of the superabundance of recent specialized scholarship on Florence. He succeeds admirably at that task … [and] manages to explain and contextualize detailed scholarship while remaining a lively and engaging political narrative. [It] will surely become the definitive narrative of medieval and Renaissance Florence, a point of departure for students of Florentine politics and culture as well as a major interpretive statement providing much for specialists to engage with for some time." (Sixteenth Century Journal)

• List of Illustrations viiiList of Maps ixAcknowledgments xIntroduction 11 The Elite Families 5Lineages 6Knighthood and Feuds 11Political Alignments and Factions 20Culture and Religion 272 The Popolo 35Definitions 35Guilds 39Culture and Education: Notaries 45Religion 50Critique of Elite Misrule 573 Early Conflicts of Elite and Popolo 63Before 1250 64Primo Popolo 66Angevin Alliance 72Priorate of the Guilds 76Second Popolo and the Ordinances of Justice 81Elite Resurgence: Black and White Guelfs 884 Domestic Economy and Merchant Empires to 1340 96Population: City and Contado 96Textiles, Building, and Provisioning 100Merchant Companies and the Mercanzia 109Taxation and Public Finances 1185 The Fourteenth-Century Dialogue of Power 124Elite Dominance, 1310–40 124Crisis of the 1340s and the Third Popular Government 132Funded Public Debt and Bankruptcies 139Elite Recovery and Popular Reaction 144War against the Church 1516 Revolution and Realignment 156Workers’ Economic Conditions 157The Ciompi Revolution 161The Last Guild Government 166Counterrevolution 171Fear of the Working Classes 176Consensus Politics 1827 War, Territorial Expansion, and the Transformation of Political Discourse 188First Visconti Wars 189Territorial Dominion: The Conquest of Pisa 194Civic Humanism 200The Civic Family 2118 Family and State in the Age of Consensus 219The Family Imaginary 219Households, Marriage, Dowries 225Women, Property, Inheritance 232Children, Hospitals, Charity 238Policing Sodomy 2449 Fateful Embrace: The Emergence of the Medici 250A New Style of Leadership 250Fiscal Crisis and the Catasto 254Cosimo’s Money and Friends 262Showdown 26910 The Medici and the Ottimati: A Partnership of ConflictPart I: Cosimo and Piero 278Institutional Controls 280External Supports: Papacy and Sforza Milan 286Cosimo’s Coup 291The Ottimati Challenge Piero 29811 The Luxury Economy and Art Patronage 307Poverty and Wealth 307Public and Private Patronage 315Family Commemoration and Self-Fashioning 32312 The Medici and the Ottimati: A Partnership of ConflictPart 2: Lorenzo 341Lorenzo’s Elders 344Lorenzo’s Volterra Massacre 348Pazzi Conspiracy and War 352The (Insecure) Prince in All but Name 361Building a Dynasty 36913 Reinventing the Republic 375French Invasion and Expulsion of the Medici 375The Great Council 381Savonarola’s Holy Republic 390Domestic Discord and Dominion Crises 400Soderini, Machiavelli’s Militia, and Pisa 40714 Papal Overlords 414The Cardinal and a Controversial Marriage 415Fall of the Republic and Return of the Medici 419A Regime Adrift 426Aristocratic and Popular Republicanisms 434The Nascent Principate 44115 The Last Republic and the Medici Duchy 446Revolution 447Siege 453Imposition of a New Order 461Ducal Government 468Finances and Economy 473Courtly and Cultural Discipline 478Victor and Vanquished 482Epilogue: Remembrance of Things Past 486Index 491