Popolo and Sindacato in the City of Siena: Rethinking Popular Agency in Medieval Italy

Abstract

The Italian sindacato was a procedure that from the end of the twelfth century held major officials accountable and exposed them to public control. While the sindacato presented citizens with the opportunity of bringing forward their claims against officials, the evidence of these claims and their outcomes are sketchy. Recent historiography often portrays this procedure as a rhetorical device of civic order and legitimation that only produced real consequences when used as a tool for the political purposes of the elite. The article focuses on Siena, often singled out for the popular character of its governments, as a unique case to test the actual popular participation and oligarchical involvement in sindacati and their significance in relation to the sindacati in other communal cities. First, it analyzes the wide spectrum of participants in the procedure and, in particular, the interests at play for common actors. Second, it explores the direct relationship between sindacati and other institutions and systems of accountability within the city, as well as their interdependent transformations over time. The result is a revision of sindacati that reintegrates the agency and participation of popular actors. The sindacato appears then as neither a zenith of communal democracy nor a crooked tool in the hands of oligarchical interests, but rather as a central act of civic life articulating a wide range of interests among all sorts of citizens, which allowed for its symbolic relevance to perdure until the Renaissance and beyond.

El judici de taula. El procediment del sindacato en el marc del dret públic català, segles XIII-XVIII

“…Aquesta tendència explicaria que a dia d'avui ens resultin prou conegudes institucions fiscalitzadores dels oficials públics a l'època moderna d'arreu d'Europa i Amèrica, com són ara les visites (Peytavin, 2003;Macri, 2008;Heredia López, 2022a), els juicios de residencia (Heredia López, 2022b), les inquisitiones (Beauchamp, 2021) o els sindacati italians (Martín Romera, 2022). En aquest sentit, per al cas concret del Principat de Catalunya, comptem amb sòlides contribucions pel que fa a la majoria de sistemes de control dels oficials públics, això és, les ja citades inquisitiones règies d'època baixmedieval, la visita dels oficials reials (Sánchez-Lauro, 2012;Torra Prat, 2019), la Visita del General (Capdeferro i Pla, 2007;Serra i Puig, 2011;Torra i Prat, 2020) i la visita del Consell de Cent (Torra-Prat, 2022).…”

Review of periodical literature for 2022: (ii) 1100–1500

“…He demonstrates a positive relationship between church exposure generally, and exposure to extended marriage prohibitions specifically, and commune formation, supporting his wider argument that weak kin networks are significant for economic development. Martín Romera explores the sindacato , a procedure by which individuals at the end of their terms in political office in Italian communes were subject to an audit that included a formal inquiry and allowed for all citizens to bring unprompted claims against ex‐officials. Taking Sienna as a case study, she argues that previous interpretations have been too quick to dismiss the sindacato as empty rhetoric.…”