Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca

by Chris Wickham

This book investigates a gap in Italian historiography by examining rural rather than city communes. Wickham's discussion of a group of villages around Lucca is the first detailed study of the origin of organized village communities in Italy to appear in over 70 years. It shows how the 12th-century social and political structures of the countryside ran alongside those of the city.

292 pages, Hardcover

First published November 12, 1998

About the author

"Chris Wickham is Chichele Professor of Medieval History, and Faculty Board Chair 2009-12.

I have been at Oxford since 2005. Previously, I was Lecturer (1977), Senior Lecturer (1987), Reader (1988), and from 1995 Professor of Early Medieval History, University of Birmingham; and I was an undergraduate and postgraduate at Keble College, Oxford, from 1968 to 1975.

I am a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and a socio of the Accademia dei Lincei."