Gianluca Raccagni – författare

This is the first book devoted to the Lombard League, an association created by the city republics of northern Italy in the 12th century in order to defend their autonomy and that of the papacy in a momentous struggle against the German holy roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. Consequently, the League has enjoyed an iconic status, and in the 19th century was glorified as a precursor of the Italian struggle for independence in political and historical pamphlets as well as in paintings, novels and even operas.The League played a crucial role in the evolution of Italy's political landscape, but it did more than ensuring its continued fragmentation. Historiography, in fact, has overlooked the collegial cooperation among the medieval Italian polities and this volume offers new interpretations, by examining the League's structure, activity, place in political thought and its links with regional identities.Using documentary evidence, histories, letters, inscriptions and contemporary troubadour poems as well as rhetorical and juridical treatises, Dr Raccagni argues that the League was not just a momentary anti-imperial military alliance, but was rather a body that also provided collective approaches to regional problems, ranging from the peaceful resolution of disputes to the management of regional lines of communication, usurping, in some cases, imperial prerogatives. Yet the League never rejected imperial overlordship per se, and here it is revealed how it survived after the end of the conflict against Frederick I, one of its most lasting legacies being the settlement that it reached with the empire, the Peace of Constance, which became the Magna Carta of the northern Italian polities.

This is the first book-length study into crusading against Christians, examining this complex phenomenon from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries and across numerous regions, from France to Russia and from southern Italy to the Baltic. Whilst the crusades are an immensely popular topic, those launched against Christian rulers and communities have been comparatively overlooked in the past, with existing studies typically focusing on a particular area, period, or campaign. This volume brings together the expertise of thirteen scholars on a variety of primary and secondary sources not often accessible to Anglophone readership, as well as their knowledge of national discourses which have often shaped historiography. It aims to serve as the first port of call for anyone who wishes to approach crusades against Christians within and without the specialism of crusader studies, and to provide the basis for a thorough comparative analysis of this phenomenon, covering its variety as comprehensively as possible.