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Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara: The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450
Among the many states of late medieval Italy, one stands out for its unfamiliarity to an English audience and for its neglect in historical that of the Este family, lords (later Dukes) of the cities of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio in northern Italy. This book is the first modern attempt to provide a detailed analysis of the political structure of this state based on archive sources. Much of the book is concerned with the ways by which the Este used their vast landed resources in and around Ferrara to build up and reinforce their personal political authority both within and outside their dominions. Among the major themes examined are the continuing presence of political feudalism in the relations between the Este and their supporters, the place of the court in Ferrarese noble society, and the violent imposition of Este authority over the powerful nobles of the Apennine hills.
228 pages, Paperback
First published December 25, 1987
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February 2, 2026
Trevor Dean Studies Feudalism, Politics, And Power During The Reign Of The Este, From 1350-1450.
The noble House of Este ranks incontrovertibly amongst Northern Italy's oldest and most venerated clans, with an illustrious history that spans an entire millennium and a close interrelationship with many of Europe's most influential families. The Este line's earliest recorded appearance can be traced to the eleventh century, when it became the paternal house of the German-Bavarian Younger House of Welf after Kunigunde of Altdorf married Albert Azzo II Obertenghi, the Margrave of Milan. The House of Welf was legendary for its synonymity with the Guelf faction in the Guelf-Ghibelline struggle that was waged throughout Italy between the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, but Margrave Azzo changed his cognomen to reflect the name of his new home upon relocating to the northern Italian city of Este and constructing a castle in the nearby Eugenaean Hills circa 1073.
Ferrara and its surrounding countryside, the Ferrarese contado, were in the mid-to-late-twelfth century dominated on the political sphere by two powerful clans - the Torelli and the Adelardi. Due to a lack of male heirs the Adelardi were unable to perpetuate their patrimony, and the Este were subsequently able to attain control over the majority of Adelardi factions and estates, leaving the Torelli, who were allies of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, as the dominant faction in Ferrara. The Torelli became perhaps too strong for their neighbors' comfort, and they garnered the ire of Venice, Bologna, and the papal legate, who formed a league with the Este in the mid-thirteenth century to expel the paterfamilias Salinguerra Torelli from Ferrara in favor of a new administration controlled by the Este.
This digitally printed, 2002 paperback edition of Trevor Dean's 1988 monograph, Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara - The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450 is published by the Cambridge University Press and is part of the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought series. The 184-page main text is split into an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion, also featuring seven maps of various regions which include north-east Italy, the Polesine di Rovigo and the southern Padovano, among others. Finally, there are appendices and an 18-page bibliography at the back of the volume.
Chapter 1, Introduction serves to acclimate the reader with how the Ferrara region gradually evolved from a commune to a signoria, and from a signoria to a principality, while also familiarizing them with two series of historical events that occurred from 1200-1393 and from 1393-1450, using the reign of Niccolò III d'Este as their dividing point. Chapter 2, The Este patrimony discusses the division of the Este lands in Ferrara and the surrounding contado, the Polesine di rovigo, and their ancestral holdings in the southern Padovano. Both of these sections provide excellent information on their respective topics and will likely find appeal with those who enjoy a well-written historical narrative.
The Este had originated from the Padovano, an area to the northeast of Ferrara in close proximity to the neighboring city-state of Padua, and as such they still held sovereignty over a number of these areas during the period covered in this study, although their power there diminished as they solidified their rule in Ferrara and the Venetian Terraferma expanded to incorporate new regions in north Italy. "In contrast to the gradual expansion of Este property in the Polesine and in the Ferrarese contado, the history of the Este lands in the Padovano, the original lands of the family, is one of slow reduction and dispersion."
The Este holdings in the Padovano region included three of its four most populous cities - Monselice, Este and Montagnana, and were constantly being encroached upon by its neighbor, the Italian city-state of Padua, and later by the Carraresi signori who controlled the city from approximately 1318-1405. These lands also became a safe haven for outlawed Este branches such as the natural line of Leonello d'Este, and were also the object of territorial disputes between competing members from the main Este dynastic line, such as Niccolò III d'Este and his brother Azzo.
As the Este slowly amalgamated Ferrara and the surrounding regions into their own domains they obtained possession of many Ferrarese noble clans' lands and holdings, which they would then bestow to their own retainers, minor nobles, and condottieri, sometimes collectively referred to as an affinity, as a gift for their loyalty and years of faithful service. This was among their chosen methods of reducing the strength of families in the former régime's old guard while proportionally increasing the power of the Este's inner circle. When a vassal or minor lord died without heirs, his estates would revert to the ruling lord's possession in a process known as escheatment. Then, that sovereign lord could reintroduce those estates back into the political and economic landscape to a chosen recipient by employing a method called infeudation and performing an act of enfeoffment.
Amongst the Este's chosen methods to reward a vassal's capable service was the conversion of fiefs, which were alienable, or transferrable land grants bestowed by a ruler, to allods, which differed in that they were estates solely owned by their recipients in perpetuity, without acknowledgement to a superior. The process of converting fiefs to allods was known as allodialization, but there were specific instances where land was, without ever being a fief, simply granted in toto to an extremely capable vassal, usually a lord's second-in-command, and these highly-coveted rewards were called allodial grants.
Chapter 3, The Este vassals and their fiefs delineates some of the main types of Este vassals and retainers held in fief at the time of their rule, also canvassing a variety of foreign nobles who, despite not being under complete Este suzerainty were nonetheless important to the duchy's sustained success and viability in the greater feudal landscape. The Este vassals varied greatly in their wealth, prestige, political power and feudal status, and Dean does tremendous work here in ensuring that each section is clearly and properly explained, making for a remarkably cohesive, narrative tapestry that maintained the reviewer's interest throughout the entire chapter.
The increased emphasis on mercenary warfare in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to a rise in demand for capable, dependable military commanders and condottieri who could be relied upon over long periods of time, and some of the ways rulers would persuade them was through marriages, political positions, and enfeoffment, which would provide land that was subject to the lord's power to revoke or alienate at his own discretion. Lords would also frequently enfeoff retainers, or provisionati, which, unlike condottieri, were held in service during peacetime and regularly assumed the duties of political office or financial administration when not actively engaged in military affairs.
The minor lords and feudal vassals which comprised the Este affinity were a diverse group of individuals from clans located in many different areas of north Italy and beyond. There were, for instance, a number of Venetian noblemen from powerful families held in fief of the Este lords in Ferrara during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It fell within the lagoon city's prerogative to have its own nobles occupy lands in the Terraferma, which was the mainland portion of Venice's empire, and while these territories were in Venetian eyes considered part of a vital buffer zone protecting the maritime power from land-borne invasions, some of them were actually owned by the Este.
The fact that Venice's own nobles were also vassals of a foreign power created complications, as their feudal duties sometimes conflicted with their allegiance to the Serene Republic. It is believed that, prior to moving into the Ferrara region, the Este who lived during the Italian Duecento reached an agreement with the Republic of Venice which allowed the Serenissima to redirect trade that would have otherwise flowed through the area in return for Venetian aid in the establishment of an Este signoria in Ferrara.
By contrast, the Ferraran noble lords who had already been entrenched in powerful positions under the old Torelli régime generally experienced a gradual diminution of political power, economic wealth, and land held in fief throughout the period of Este rule. Dean analyzes several scenarios of families' enfeoffments being dispersed, concentrated, or sometimes vanishing altogether as they were alienated to provide marriage dowries or for other purposes. In one situation, a clan's considerable holdings in Ferrara were over time reduced to one small allodial grant consisting of a single house.
Other noble families were utilized abroad in Este-controlled or -influenced cities such as Modena, Reggio and Parma for important military and bureaucratic positions like podestà, commissario, and visconte. Strict inheritance laws, deaths without legitimate heirs, and entire clans simply leaving Ferrara for better opportunities elsewhere led to numerous fiefs' escheatment to the Estensi ducal camera, which resulted in their ultimate recirculation into the family's favored inner circle of courtiers and partisans.
Dean commences Chapter 4, Feudal tenure at Ferrara with an intriguing discussion of the medieval barrister's perspective on the interpretation of feudal law. The author uses one Hugolinus of Orvieto's definition of a fief as it was copied by Baldus, another jurist, and follows with a brief synopsis of ownership and usufruct, or possession and use of a property's benefits and advantages, and he proceeds to explain the different types of heirs to a feudal contract, along with different scenarios and circumstances which challenge the term's very definition.
"'A fief is a benefice (beneficium), which, by the goodwill of one man is granted to another in such a way that the ownership of some immovable property remains with the grantor, while the usufruct passes to the recipient and remains with him and his male heirs (and female heirs if they are specifically mentioned) in perpetuity, with the intention that he and his heirs should faithfully serve the lord whether that service is specified by the lord or is only indeterminately promised.'" (Dean, 1988, pg. 109)
The promulgation of new laws, ordinances, and influential edicts such as Emperor Conrad II's Edictum de beneficiis in medieval France and Lombardy led to a positive trend which strongly favored an increase in the rights and privileges of feudal vassalage from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. These regulations generally reduced the lord's legal power to restrict a vassal's right to alienate or otherwise transfer a fief to another party, designate heirs, and they also legalized the fief's materialization, which de-emphasized the service to the lord while reinforcing the vassal's rights on the inherited land, rendering it a ius in re aliena, or a legal right to work on a lord's property. Dean does an outstanding job explaining these concepts and relating them to how the Este proved to be the exceptions to this trend.
In Ferrara and the surrounding contado, the gears were spinning in the opposite direction, and the policies in those respective areas reflected the Este's prerogative to maintain control of their vassals by reserving as many of the old-style rights of feudal lordship as was possible. "Most fiefs were held iure feudi ad usum regni (that is, according to the usage of the old regno italico)..At Ferrara, however, now a fief-based signoria, statutes in the years after 1264 were aimed not at weakening feudalism, but controlling it in the interests of the signoria." There were also regulations in place in many areas that were suspended or altered to fit the Este's specific political situation in Ferrara. Statutes existed that denied any new vassal's entry into a territory that was currently in a state of political unrest, but the Este actually changed that law to provide benefits to incomers arriving during those periods, in an attempt to garner support for the then-burgeoning Este signoria.
Other ways the Este maintained control was by regular employment of the feudal warranty, which Dean describes as "..the dependence of tenure upon the lord's acceptance of the vassal", and what this meant was that anytime a vassal entered the lord's service by inheritance or through other means, that choice had to be endorsed by a member of the House of Este before the grant or transfer of feudal land could proceed. The wording of the related clauses in feudal documentation was designed to circumvent any overriding of the lord's wishes, and often ended with the ambiguous phrase, 'provided he gives us a good vassal'. The author cites a large number of substituted names in the cameral records, upon which historians can infer that the first choice was unsuitable to the ruling lord's standard or preference.
In Chapter 5, Noble society at the centre, the author canvasses the political and financial status of the Este's most powerful vassals, whether they hailed from foreign lands or were members of the local Ferrarese nobility. Many of the Este's 'new men', or gente nuova were awarded palaces and castles previously owned by Ferrarese nobles who had been part of the old régime. These families had risen up through the Este hierarchy by performing admirably in important political positions and were financially wealthy, but they did not own large amounts of land. The feudal grants of fortresses and palaces allowed them to live in a manner more befitting of their newly attained noble status.
There were however, select families in the Ferrarese old nobility that were elevated to a very high position both in terms of land as well as political power, and none rose in a fashion more dramatic or caused greater exception than the example made by Niccolò III d'Este when selecting his second-in-command, Uguccione Contrari. The eighteen-year-old Niccolò likely felt a close attachment to the twenty-one-year-old Uguccione, who had already established himself as a valuable asset to the Este patrimony by his capable performance in whatever role he was asked to fill, and he was entrusted with the administration of the Ferraran government as a reward for his esteemed service. The Contrari had enjoyed prominence in Ferrara dating back to the twelfth century, and Uguccione's father Mainardo had served as massaro, or steward, of the commune under the Este during the 1380s.
During the one-hundred-year period discussed in Dean's study, Italy's eastern Emilia region - more specifically, the areas including and surrounding the city-states of Modena and Reggio - was mired in an irregular distribution of power that was diluted in the cities themselves but slowly became stronger the further into the contado one went. This was because the lords who owned estates in the rural country had been able to circumvent many of the commune rules which protected the geographic areas close to the cities. These nobles had grown strong due to the lack of power the cities could exert on them from their secluded locations out in the provinces, and in Chapter 6, Noble society in the provinces, the author explores how the Este were able to successfully leverage this uneven power dynamic to satisfy their own purposes.
Among the methods utilized by the Este to establish a presence among the rural aristocrats, or zentilhomini, was to award lands in the vicinity to a member of their inner circle, which in the case of Niccolò III was his skilled subaltern, Uguccione Contrari, to whom he bestowed castles and estates, and even an entire town in the Modenese, Vignola, from 1401-9. Uguccione provided his peers an example of how a capable vassal carried out his duties, and he also ensured that the country lords no longer took advantage of their remote geographic location to exploit the commune or the citizens of Modena. In time many other Ferrarese nobles such as the Strozzi and the Sala also received lands in key areas of interest to the Este, including Parma, Reggio and Bologna.
Overall, Trevor Dean's Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara - The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450 is an engaging, smartly-written standalone study which provides a wonderful historical overview limning how the Este not only came to power but retained it all the way through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. They were the dominant power in Ferrara until the end of the sixteenth century, when their principate was ultimately replaced with a papal vicariate by Pope Clement VIII in 1597. Dean's research also serves as an excellent learning tool for readers to better understand the nature and inner workings of late medieval feudalism, as the reviewer, who is a layman, had little to no knowledge of the subject prior to reading this monograph. I believe this volume would make the perfect entry point for anyone curious about the Este or about feudalism in general, and the information is very self-contained; a reader could conceivably undertake this book with no background in medieval or Renaissance history and walk away from it with an excellent foundation with which to undertake more specialized works. Thank you so very much for reading, I hope that you enjoyed the review!
The noble House of Este ranks incontrovertibly amongst Northern Italy's oldest and most venerated clans, with an illustrious history that spans an entire millennium and a close interrelationship with many of Europe's most influential families. The Este line's earliest recorded appearance can be traced to the eleventh century, when it became the paternal house of the German-Bavarian Younger House of Welf after Kunigunde of Altdorf married Albert Azzo II Obertenghi, the Margrave of Milan. The House of Welf was legendary for its synonymity with the Guelf faction in the Guelf-Ghibelline struggle that was waged throughout Italy between the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, but Margrave Azzo changed his cognomen to reflect the name of his new home upon relocating to the northern Italian city of Este and constructing a castle in the nearby Eugenaean Hills circa 1073.
Ferrara and its surrounding countryside, the Ferrarese contado, were in the mid-to-late-twelfth century dominated on the political sphere by two powerful clans - the Torelli and the Adelardi. Due to a lack of male heirs the Adelardi were unable to perpetuate their patrimony, and the Este were subsequently able to attain control over the majority of Adelardi factions and estates, leaving the Torelli, who were allies of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, as the dominant faction in Ferrara. The Torelli became perhaps too strong for their neighbors' comfort, and they garnered the ire of Venice, Bologna, and the papal legate, who formed a league with the Este in the mid-thirteenth century to expel the paterfamilias Salinguerra Torelli from Ferrara in favor of a new administration controlled by the Este.
This digitally printed, 2002 paperback edition of Trevor Dean's 1988 monograph, Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara - The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450 is published by the Cambridge University Press and is part of the Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought series. The 184-page main text is split into an introduction, six chapters and a conclusion, also featuring seven maps of various regions which include north-east Italy, the Polesine di Rovigo and the southern Padovano, among others. Finally, there are appendices and an 18-page bibliography at the back of the volume.
Chapter 1, Introduction serves to acclimate the reader with how the Ferrara region gradually evolved from a commune to a signoria, and from a signoria to a principality, while also familiarizing them with two series of historical events that occurred from 1200-1393 and from 1393-1450, using the reign of Niccolò III d'Este as their dividing point. Chapter 2, The Este patrimony discusses the division of the Este lands in Ferrara and the surrounding contado, the Polesine di rovigo, and their ancestral holdings in the southern Padovano. Both of these sections provide excellent information on their respective topics and will likely find appeal with those who enjoy a well-written historical narrative.
The Este had originated from the Padovano, an area to the northeast of Ferrara in close proximity to the neighboring city-state of Padua, and as such they still held sovereignty over a number of these areas during the period covered in this study, although their power there diminished as they solidified their rule in Ferrara and the Venetian Terraferma expanded to incorporate new regions in north Italy. "In contrast to the gradual expansion of Este property in the Polesine and in the Ferrarese contado, the history of the Este lands in the Padovano, the original lands of the family, is one of slow reduction and dispersion."
The Este holdings in the Padovano region included three of its four most populous cities - Monselice, Este and Montagnana, and were constantly being encroached upon by its neighbor, the Italian city-state of Padua, and later by the Carraresi signori who controlled the city from approximately 1318-1405. These lands also became a safe haven for outlawed Este branches such as the natural line of Leonello d'Este, and were also the object of territorial disputes between competing members from the main Este dynastic line, such as Niccolò III d'Este and his brother Azzo.
As the Este slowly amalgamated Ferrara and the surrounding regions into their own domains they obtained possession of many Ferrarese noble clans' lands and holdings, which they would then bestow to their own retainers, minor nobles, and condottieri, sometimes collectively referred to as an affinity, as a gift for their loyalty and years of faithful service. This was among their chosen methods of reducing the strength of families in the former régime's old guard while proportionally increasing the power of the Este's inner circle. When a vassal or minor lord died without heirs, his estates would revert to the ruling lord's possession in a process known as escheatment. Then, that sovereign lord could reintroduce those estates back into the political and economic landscape to a chosen recipient by employing a method called infeudation and performing an act of enfeoffment.
Amongst the Este's chosen methods to reward a vassal's capable service was the conversion of fiefs, which were alienable, or transferrable land grants bestowed by a ruler, to allods, which differed in that they were estates solely owned by their recipients in perpetuity, without acknowledgement to a superior. The process of converting fiefs to allods was known as allodialization, but there were specific instances where land was, without ever being a fief, simply granted in toto to an extremely capable vassal, usually a lord's second-in-command, and these highly-coveted rewards were called allodial grants.
Chapter 3, The Este vassals and their fiefs delineates some of the main types of Este vassals and retainers held in fief at the time of their rule, also canvassing a variety of foreign nobles who, despite not being under complete Este suzerainty were nonetheless important to the duchy's sustained success and viability in the greater feudal landscape. The Este vassals varied greatly in their wealth, prestige, political power and feudal status, and Dean does tremendous work here in ensuring that each section is clearly and properly explained, making for a remarkably cohesive, narrative tapestry that maintained the reviewer's interest throughout the entire chapter.
The increased emphasis on mercenary warfare in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries led to a rise in demand for capable, dependable military commanders and condottieri who could be relied upon over long periods of time, and some of the ways rulers would persuade them was through marriages, political positions, and enfeoffment, which would provide land that was subject to the lord's power to revoke or alienate at his own discretion. Lords would also frequently enfeoff retainers, or provisionati, which, unlike condottieri, were held in service during peacetime and regularly assumed the duties of political office or financial administration when not actively engaged in military affairs.
The minor lords and feudal vassals which comprised the Este affinity were a diverse group of individuals from clans located in many different areas of north Italy and beyond. There were, for instance, a number of Venetian noblemen from powerful families held in fief of the Este lords in Ferrara during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It fell within the lagoon city's prerogative to have its own nobles occupy lands in the Terraferma, which was the mainland portion of Venice's empire, and while these territories were in Venetian eyes considered part of a vital buffer zone protecting the maritime power from land-borne invasions, some of them were actually owned by the Este.
The fact that Venice's own nobles were also vassals of a foreign power created complications, as their feudal duties sometimes conflicted with their allegiance to the Serene Republic. It is believed that, prior to moving into the Ferrara region, the Este who lived during the Italian Duecento reached an agreement with the Republic of Venice which allowed the Serenissima to redirect trade that would have otherwise flowed through the area in return for Venetian aid in the establishment of an Este signoria in Ferrara.
By contrast, the Ferraran noble lords who had already been entrenched in powerful positions under the old Torelli régime generally experienced a gradual diminution of political power, economic wealth, and land held in fief throughout the period of Este rule. Dean analyzes several scenarios of families' enfeoffments being dispersed, concentrated, or sometimes vanishing altogether as they were alienated to provide marriage dowries or for other purposes. In one situation, a clan's considerable holdings in Ferrara were over time reduced to one small allodial grant consisting of a single house.
Other noble families were utilized abroad in Este-controlled or -influenced cities such as Modena, Reggio and Parma for important military and bureaucratic positions like podestà, commissario, and visconte. Strict inheritance laws, deaths without legitimate heirs, and entire clans simply leaving Ferrara for better opportunities elsewhere led to numerous fiefs' escheatment to the Estensi ducal camera, which resulted in their ultimate recirculation into the family's favored inner circle of courtiers and partisans.
Dean commences Chapter 4, Feudal tenure at Ferrara with an intriguing discussion of the medieval barrister's perspective on the interpretation of feudal law. The author uses one Hugolinus of Orvieto's definition of a fief as it was copied by Baldus, another jurist, and follows with a brief synopsis of ownership and usufruct, or possession and use of a property's benefits and advantages, and he proceeds to explain the different types of heirs to a feudal contract, along with different scenarios and circumstances which challenge the term's very definition.
"'A fief is a benefice (beneficium), which, by the goodwill of one man is granted to another in such a way that the ownership of some immovable property remains with the grantor, while the usufruct passes to the recipient and remains with him and his male heirs (and female heirs if they are specifically mentioned) in perpetuity, with the intention that he and his heirs should faithfully serve the lord whether that service is specified by the lord or is only indeterminately promised.'" (Dean, 1988, pg. 109)
The promulgation of new laws, ordinances, and influential edicts such as Emperor Conrad II's Edictum de beneficiis in medieval France and Lombardy led to a positive trend which strongly favored an increase in the rights and privileges of feudal vassalage from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. These regulations generally reduced the lord's legal power to restrict a vassal's right to alienate or otherwise transfer a fief to another party, designate heirs, and they also legalized the fief's materialization, which de-emphasized the service to the lord while reinforcing the vassal's rights on the inherited land, rendering it a ius in re aliena, or a legal right to work on a lord's property. Dean does an outstanding job explaining these concepts and relating them to how the Este proved to be the exceptions to this trend.
In Ferrara and the surrounding contado, the gears were spinning in the opposite direction, and the policies in those respective areas reflected the Este's prerogative to maintain control of their vassals by reserving as many of the old-style rights of feudal lordship as was possible. "Most fiefs were held iure feudi ad usum regni (that is, according to the usage of the old regno italico)..At Ferrara, however, now a fief-based signoria, statutes in the years after 1264 were aimed not at weakening feudalism, but controlling it in the interests of the signoria." There were also regulations in place in many areas that were suspended or altered to fit the Este's specific political situation in Ferrara. Statutes existed that denied any new vassal's entry into a territory that was currently in a state of political unrest, but the Este actually changed that law to provide benefits to incomers arriving during those periods, in an attempt to garner support for the then-burgeoning Este signoria.
Other ways the Este maintained control was by regular employment of the feudal warranty, which Dean describes as "..the dependence of tenure upon the lord's acceptance of the vassal", and what this meant was that anytime a vassal entered the lord's service by inheritance or through other means, that choice had to be endorsed by a member of the House of Este before the grant or transfer of feudal land could proceed. The wording of the related clauses in feudal documentation was designed to circumvent any overriding of the lord's wishes, and often ended with the ambiguous phrase, 'provided he gives us a good vassal'. The author cites a large number of substituted names in the cameral records, upon which historians can infer that the first choice was unsuitable to the ruling lord's standard or preference.
In Chapter 5, Noble society at the centre, the author canvasses the political and financial status of the Este's most powerful vassals, whether they hailed from foreign lands or were members of the local Ferrarese nobility. Many of the Este's 'new men', or gente nuova were awarded palaces and castles previously owned by Ferrarese nobles who had been part of the old régime. These families had risen up through the Este hierarchy by performing admirably in important political positions and were financially wealthy, but they did not own large amounts of land. The feudal grants of fortresses and palaces allowed them to live in a manner more befitting of their newly attained noble status.
There were however, select families in the Ferrarese old nobility that were elevated to a very high position both in terms of land as well as political power, and none rose in a fashion more dramatic or caused greater exception than the example made by Niccolò III d'Este when selecting his second-in-command, Uguccione Contrari. The eighteen-year-old Niccolò likely felt a close attachment to the twenty-one-year-old Uguccione, who had already established himself as a valuable asset to the Este patrimony by his capable performance in whatever role he was asked to fill, and he was entrusted with the administration of the Ferraran government as a reward for his esteemed service. The Contrari had enjoyed prominence in Ferrara dating back to the twelfth century, and Uguccione's father Mainardo had served as massaro, or steward, of the commune under the Este during the 1380s.
During the one-hundred-year period discussed in Dean's study, Italy's eastern Emilia region - more specifically, the areas including and surrounding the city-states of Modena and Reggio - was mired in an irregular distribution of power that was diluted in the cities themselves but slowly became stronger the further into the contado one went. This was because the lords who owned estates in the rural country had been able to circumvent many of the commune rules which protected the geographic areas close to the cities. These nobles had grown strong due to the lack of power the cities could exert on them from their secluded locations out in the provinces, and in Chapter 6, Noble society in the provinces, the author explores how the Este were able to successfully leverage this uneven power dynamic to satisfy their own purposes.
Among the methods utilized by the Este to establish a presence among the rural aristocrats, or zentilhomini, was to award lands in the vicinity to a member of their inner circle, which in the case of Niccolò III was his skilled subaltern, Uguccione Contrari, to whom he bestowed castles and estates, and even an entire town in the Modenese, Vignola, from 1401-9. Uguccione provided his peers an example of how a capable vassal carried out his duties, and he also ensured that the country lords no longer took advantage of their remote geographic location to exploit the commune or the citizens of Modena. In time many other Ferrarese nobles such as the Strozzi and the Sala also received lands in key areas of interest to the Este, including Parma, Reggio and Bologna.
Overall, Trevor Dean's Land and Power in Late Medieval Ferrara - The Rule of the Este, 1350-1450 is an engaging, smartly-written standalone study which provides a wonderful historical overview limning how the Este not only came to power but retained it all the way through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. They were the dominant power in Ferrara until the end of the sixteenth century, when their principate was ultimately replaced with a papal vicariate by Pope Clement VIII in 1597. Dean's research also serves as an excellent learning tool for readers to better understand the nature and inner workings of late medieval feudalism, as the reviewer, who is a layman, had little to no knowledge of the subject prior to reading this monograph. I believe this volume would make the perfect entry point for anyone curious about the Este or about feudalism in general, and the information is very self-contained; a reader could conceivably undertake this book with no background in medieval or Renaissance history and walk away from it with an excellent foundation with which to undertake more specialized works. Thank you so very much for reading, I hope that you enjoyed the review!
December 7, 2017
Dry and dense, but if you are interested in the early d'Este, this is THE source in English
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