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Sonnambuli Verso Un Nuovo Mondo: L'affermazione Dei Comuni Italiani Nel XII Secolo (La Storia. Temi)
English summary: In this book, Chris Wickham provides detailed portraits of Milan, Pisa, and Rome. He argues that, in all but a few cases, the elites of northern Italian cities and towns developed one of the first nonmonarchical forms of government in medieval Europe. Sleepwalking into a New World reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, ultimately making the civic culture of the Renaissance possible. French description: Nel quadro della disintegrazione del Regno d'Italia, tra XI e XII secolo, una nuova forma di governo collettivo - il comune - si affermo nelle citta del Centro e del Nord. Sonnambuli verso un nuovo mondo considera questo processo in modo profondamente nuovo, mutando completamente la nostra lettura di una delle piu importanti novita politiche e culturali del mondo medievale. Grazie al quadro articolato delle strutture sociali e di potere di tre citta - Milano, Pisa e Roma - poste poi a confronto col vivace sfondo delle altre citta italiane, Chris Wickham mostra come lo sviluppo di una delle prime forme di governo non regio dell'Europa medievale si sia compiuto senza che gli esponenti delle elite cittadine fossero realmente consci di creare qualcosa del tutto nuovo, muovendosi come sonnambuli, senza una chiara consapevolezza del radicale mutamento in atto.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 25, 2015
12 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
Chris Wickham
36 books199 followers"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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 5, 2015
Oberto's lifetime political practice took Milan away from traditional hierarchies; furthermore, he was sufficiently opposed to Frederick Barbarossa to be recalled as a consul when Milan was rebuilt after 1167... But in his thought-world, those traditional hierarchies took center stage. When, earlier, Barbarossa used Roman law to justify his claims to sovereignty at Roncaglia n 1158, and the consuls of the Italian cities conceded his right to do so, Oberto, given both his Romanist training and his thought-world, must have been particularly easy to convince - at least before the war between the emperor and Milan showed him what that sovereignty meant in practice. This sharp opposition between practice and thought sums up what I mean by sleepwalking. Oberto was (along with his peers) taking his city in a profoundly new direction, but his mind was elsewhere. And that contradiction - or, perhaps better, the fact that it was not perceived as one as far as we can tell - also allows us to see that the fact that Milan's commune developed into a structure which was no longer aristocratic-dominated matters less than one might expect: it was run by people who were very often not from that world, and who in may ways works against it, but they identified with it all the same.
This is a wonderful, fascinating book and all of you should read it.
Chris Wickham pushes back against the traditional narrative of Italian city-state exceptionalism: rather than seeing the emergence of Italian communes in the late 11th and early 12th centuries as a sign of proto-democracy or latent republicanism, he sees them largely as accidental, as defensive responses to the power vacuums left by the civil wars of the 1080s-1090s. These ad-hoc solutions slowly crystallized into new power structures without anyone really having any idea what they were doing. I like this explanation, because - historically speaking - people usually don't really know what they're doing.
Wickham briefly touches on about 15-20 communes throughout Italy, but the heart of the book is three case studies: Milan, Pisa, and Rome. Each city is different in its own way, and Wickham is appropriately hesitant about drawing huge sweeping conclusions about What Caused the Communes. He does, though, point to the importance of the structure of the city's elite families, and their relationship towards each other.
Wickham divides the urban elite into three categories:
1. The upper crust aristocracy (sometimes called capitanei) who owned castles and extensive areas of land
2. The second-tier aristocracy that controlled land but rarely castles (sometimes called valvassores) and - especially in port cities like Pisa - often made their fortunes through commerce as well as traditional feudal ties
3. The third-tier 'middle elite' - often judicial experts or occasionally merchants - who had recently begun to hold land in lease but had their wealth predominantly in other ways - shops, legal expertise, etc.
While the civil wars in Italy in the 1080s-1090s caused most cities for form some kind of ad hoc leadership structure (often, at the beginning, via public assembly) how these structures crystallized depended upon the existing relationships between these classes. Rome is a fun example: unlike the vast majority of other cities (Cremona being the only real analogue), it's commune consisted almost entirely of the the 'middle elite,' since the upper two classes had chosen rather to attach themselves to the papal court and its potential for gifts and advancement rather than attend to city governance. This led to a more tendentious commune, and one that in theory was more of a sudden 'break' than cities like Pisa, whose aristocrats - especially of the second tier, slid naturally into consular governance.
It's a wonderful, interesting book, and Wickham writes it well. There were a couple of moments where I laughed out loud, the true test of whether or not I'll really love an academic book.
This is a wonderful, fascinating book and all of you should read it.
Chris Wickham pushes back against the traditional narrative of Italian city-state exceptionalism: rather than seeing the emergence of Italian communes in the late 11th and early 12th centuries as a sign of proto-democracy or latent republicanism, he sees them largely as accidental, as defensive responses to the power vacuums left by the civil wars of the 1080s-1090s. These ad-hoc solutions slowly crystallized into new power structures without anyone really having any idea what they were doing. I like this explanation, because - historically speaking - people usually don't really know what they're doing.
Wickham briefly touches on about 15-20 communes throughout Italy, but the heart of the book is three case studies: Milan, Pisa, and Rome. Each city is different in its own way, and Wickham is appropriately hesitant about drawing huge sweeping conclusions about What Caused the Communes. He does, though, point to the importance of the structure of the city's elite families, and their relationship towards each other.
Wickham divides the urban elite into three categories:
1. The upper crust aristocracy (sometimes called capitanei) who owned castles and extensive areas of land
2. The second-tier aristocracy that controlled land but rarely castles (sometimes called valvassores) and - especially in port cities like Pisa - often made their fortunes through commerce as well as traditional feudal ties
3. The third-tier 'middle elite' - often judicial experts or occasionally merchants - who had recently begun to hold land in lease but had their wealth predominantly in other ways - shops, legal expertise, etc.
While the civil wars in Italy in the 1080s-1090s caused most cities for form some kind of ad hoc leadership structure (often, at the beginning, via public assembly) how these structures crystallized depended upon the existing relationships between these classes. Rome is a fun example: unlike the vast majority of other cities (Cremona being the only real analogue), it's commune consisted almost entirely of the the 'middle elite,' since the upper two classes had chosen rather to attach themselves to the papal court and its potential for gifts and advancement rather than attend to city governance. This led to a more tendentious commune, and one that in theory was more of a sudden 'break' than cities like Pisa, whose aristocrats - especially of the second tier, slid naturally into consular governance.
It's a wonderful, interesting book, and Wickham writes it well. There were a couple of moments where I laughed out loud, the true test of whether or not I'll really love an academic book.
February 23, 2023
Looks at Pisa, Milan, and Rome for how the communes developed in Italy. Really cool to look at the class composition and demographics of the councils and overall an interesting read about a period of Italian history that isn't the republic, the empire, or the Renaissance. That said, there was only one gem to feed the magpie part of my brain that likes to loot books for shiny objects, and that was the bit about all the caca- and caga- (shit) surnames in Milan. I'd always wondered about mal- names, I guess it was intentional.
May 28, 2020
Highly detailed and sensitive depiction of the 11-12th century emergence of various Italian autonomous urban communities.
March 30, 2015
Short, detailed. Wickham defines the ideal type of an Italian city commune. It has three parts:
A conscious urban collectivity, constituting for example all or most (male) urban city dwellers or oaths sworn by residents.
A regularly rotating set of magistrates, sometimes called consuls. The magistrates are chosen or validated by the collectivity, although the process need not be democratic. Rather, the distinction is that the magistrates are not chosen by the king or bishop.
The city is autonomous. Typically, the magistrates were responsible for justice and warfare. Eventually, they also became responsible for taxation and legislation.
Earlier historians have tended to identify the creation of the commune with the first mention of a consul in a document, e.g. Pisa in 1080, Asti 1095, or Milan 1097. Wickham argues against this conclusion. If we assume a contemporary document, the author's meaning when writing 'consul' is unlikely to be the same as our meaning when we look back to their documents trying to find the first mention of a commune. This book does an excellent job of detailing what facts we do have about cities and their governments during the 12th century. It describes the specific, local choices that were made as communes emerged--sleepwalking in the sense that the cities had no specific plan in mind as these choices were made.
A conscious urban collectivity, constituting for example all or most (male) urban city dwellers or oaths sworn by residents.
A regularly rotating set of magistrates, sometimes called consuls. The magistrates are chosen or validated by the collectivity, although the process need not be democratic. Rather, the distinction is that the magistrates are not chosen by the king or bishop.
The city is autonomous. Typically, the magistrates were responsible for justice and warfare. Eventually, they also became responsible for taxation and legislation.
Earlier historians have tended to identify the creation of the commune with the first mention of a consul in a document, e.g. Pisa in 1080, Asti 1095, or Milan 1097. Wickham argues against this conclusion. If we assume a contemporary document, the author's meaning when writing 'consul' is unlikely to be the same as our meaning when we look back to their documents trying to find the first mention of a commune. This book does an excellent job of detailing what facts we do have about cities and their governments during the 12th century. It describes the specific, local choices that were made as communes emerged--sleepwalking in the sense that the cities had no specific plan in mind as these choices were made.
August 3, 2022
This book is on Christian-style democracy (as opposed to ancient Greek or Roman).
Chris Wickham takes a very useful approach when it comes to the demography of aristocrats, the clergy, rich people and lawyers in communal governments. The book pinpoints their different levels of representation in different cities, revealing both the variety and the limiting factors in having a democratic system through assemblies, or what was called 'parlamento' already in the year 1117, in Genoa, and elected leaders, or consuls, of medieval Italy. With 'sleepwalking into a new world' he argues also for the lack of a democratic plan in reviving some of Rome's institutions and the possibility of adapting them to the realities of feudalism, rather than dismantling the church and mastery over serfs, for that Roman politics hadn't been abolitionist enough and christianity too ubiquitous. Though Rome at that time was genuinely anti-aristocratic when establishing in 1143 a 'senate', as they called the commune they created in September on the Campidoglio, or Capitoline hill, since the aristocrats, apart from a tiny number of them, all sided with the pope.
It is nonetheless a humble reminder that both the designations 'Senate' and 'Parliament' reflected a more democratic reality in the 12th century than they do now.
I wish to carry the analysis of stratification in the polity further into Russia, with their version of democracy in the same period in Novgorod. Described by the French diplomat Gilbert de Lannoy visiting in the cold of winter, in 1413, is the rotation of the executive office, similar to Italy's revived consular regime: "par tour, ainsy que le commun veult" or it is chosen 'in turn, as the common people desire'. So that lords get deposed and chosen as it suits the assembly.
Swiss cities, like Uri, Luzern, Zürich, what Machiavelli sums up under the term 'German republics' (along with some German and Austrian ones, that failed to fully acquire some of the Swiss characteristics in the revolution of 1525), are also important to mention, although, e.g., 16th century Geneva is a wholly different model that starts off with a commune and ends up with a sort of theocracy or hierocracy, if we go be a similar analysis as Wickham, at which point it influences Scotland, my next case study, which turns belligerent in the early 17th century, as well as every other wanna-be Christian republic, from the Netherlands to Boston. Geneva revolts against its system later on, becoming a secular society alongside France.
Chris Wickham takes a very useful approach when it comes to the demography of aristocrats, the clergy, rich people and lawyers in communal governments. The book pinpoints their different levels of representation in different cities, revealing both the variety and the limiting factors in having a democratic system through assemblies, or what was called 'parlamento' already in the year 1117, in Genoa, and elected leaders, or consuls, of medieval Italy. With 'sleepwalking into a new world' he argues also for the lack of a democratic plan in reviving some of Rome's institutions and the possibility of adapting them to the realities of feudalism, rather than dismantling the church and mastery over serfs, for that Roman politics hadn't been abolitionist enough and christianity too ubiquitous. Though Rome at that time was genuinely anti-aristocratic when establishing in 1143 a 'senate', as they called the commune they created in September on the Campidoglio, or Capitoline hill, since the aristocrats, apart from a tiny number of them, all sided with the pope.
It is nonetheless a humble reminder that both the designations 'Senate' and 'Parliament' reflected a more democratic reality in the 12th century than they do now.
I wish to carry the analysis of stratification in the polity further into Russia, with their version of democracy in the same period in Novgorod. Described by the French diplomat Gilbert de Lannoy visiting in the cold of winter, in 1413, is the rotation of the executive office, similar to Italy's revived consular regime: "par tour, ainsy que le commun veult" or it is chosen 'in turn, as the common people desire'. So that lords get deposed and chosen as it suits the assembly.
Swiss cities, like Uri, Luzern, Zürich, what Machiavelli sums up under the term 'German republics' (along with some German and Austrian ones, that failed to fully acquire some of the Swiss characteristics in the revolution of 1525), are also important to mention, although, e.g., 16th century Geneva is a wholly different model that starts off with a commune and ends up with a sort of theocracy or hierocracy, if we go be a similar analysis as Wickham, at which point it influences Scotland, my next case study, which turns belligerent in the early 17th century, as well as every other wanna-be Christian republic, from the Netherlands to Boston. Geneva revolts against its system later on, becoming a secular society alongside France.
May 7, 2020
This is a short summary of research investigating the rise of the Italian City Communes in Northern and Central Italy from the end of the eleventh century to the middle of the twelfth century. These communes are often taken as distinctive developments in Italy that permitted the rise of the Renaissance and that signaled the beginning of modernity in western political life. This makes it important to understand why communes developed to see if these interpretive story are reasonable. It is also nice background knowledge for anyone trying to understand the histories of these cities as part of a visit to Italy. I myself put this book on my queue as initial homework for a trip to Northern Italy - a trip that has now been postponed indefinitely due to the Coronavirus.
There are many issues with such a history. First, there were lots of cities where communes formed and all of these have different stories. Second, Professor Wichham’s efforts to identify just what it meant to be an Italian City Commune convincing shows that this was a complex phenomenon — there were many varieties of communes and perhaps it was hard to “know one when you see one”. Third, the period of interest is the hundred years between 1050.ad and 1150 ad - there is very little documentation that is available to document the rise of communes, literally not that many documents of any sort are available. Fourth, the people involved in these cities who were making changes in their city governments did not really realize at the time that they were making changes that were different from cities in earlier times. Add to this that there is always an argument for continuity over major change that affect how changes are interpreted and you can see what happens. Professor Wickham’s book is well done, detailed, and really thoughtful. The problem is that the book outlines much more of what is not known rather than what is known. The analysis is also filled with the names of the nobles, clerics, and merchants involved across dozens of cities (although he presents three nice cases) and there is a lot of detail to wrap my mind around but not much of an integrative story to help me succeed in understanding the story.
I enjoyed the book and have related books in my queue. There is still the Joni Mitchell problem though - I’ve looked at communes from all sides now, from win and lose ... I really don’t know Italian communes much at all. But at least I have more time until I visit Florence and Tuscany.
There are many issues with such a history. First, there were lots of cities where communes formed and all of these have different stories. Second, Professor Wichham’s efforts to identify just what it meant to be an Italian City Commune convincing shows that this was a complex phenomenon — there were many varieties of communes and perhaps it was hard to “know one when you see one”. Third, the period of interest is the hundred years between 1050.ad and 1150 ad - there is very little documentation that is available to document the rise of communes, literally not that many documents of any sort are available. Fourth, the people involved in these cities who were making changes in their city governments did not really realize at the time that they were making changes that were different from cities in earlier times. Add to this that there is always an argument for continuity over major change that affect how changes are interpreted and you can see what happens. Professor Wickham’s book is well done, detailed, and really thoughtful. The problem is that the book outlines much more of what is not known rather than what is known. The analysis is also filled with the names of the nobles, clerics, and merchants involved across dozens of cities (although he presents three nice cases) and there is a lot of detail to wrap my mind around but not much of an integrative story to help me succeed in understanding the story.
I enjoyed the book and have related books in my queue. There is still the Joni Mitchell problem though - I’ve looked at communes from all sides now, from win and lose ... I really don’t know Italian communes much at all. But at least I have more time until I visit Florence and Tuscany.
June 27, 2021
-the development of the communes was not a conscious effort (except in Rome) but a response to the breakdown of traditional authority and the slow accumulation of that power to informal assemblies that only slowly formalized
-how communes formed based on the relationship between various levels of elites (large landowners, those with less holdings, and those with wealth primarily based on commercial activities/not landholding). In most communes, second group the one that most involved in communal government
-Based on three major case studies (Pisa, Rome, Milan) and methodology prosopographical; final chapter briefly covers other cities and draws out similarities and differences between them
-how communes formed based on the relationship between various levels of elites (large landowners, those with less holdings, and those with wealth primarily based on commercial activities/not landholding). In most communes, second group the one that most involved in communal government
-Based on three major case studies (Pisa, Rome, Milan) and methodology prosopographical; final chapter briefly covers other cities and draws out similarities and differences between them
November 28, 2018
Nonostante il rigoroso lavoro di ricerca, la curatissima bibliografia e il valore dell'interessantissima tesi il testo presenta alcuni problemi di forma che lo rendono sconsigliato a chi si approccia alla tematica dei Comuni scegliendo questa opera come punto di partenza.
Per un commento più approfondito:
https://youtu.be/KCMVvsMnthU
Per un commento più approfondito:
https://youtu.be/KCMVvsMnthU
September 16, 2025
premise and thesis were very interesting but dear god someone take away the parentheses keys from this man- every single sentence had to be clarified in a parenthetical, which, to my knowledge, indicates that maybe you should just write clearer sentences. very painful to read, but i will admit the information in this book is very informative and well researched if not well written
March 27, 2022
Molto tecnico e di nicchia. nonostante questo una lettura piacevole e chiara.
February 23, 2023
Analysis of the messy emergence of proto-democratic commune governance in medieval Italy, with particular emphasis on Milan, Pisa, and Rome.
November 12, 2025
Obbligatorio per l'età dei comuni in Italia
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews