“Citadini, mercanti, huomini di mezzo e con loro dimolti artefici”. Mobilità sociale e ricambio politico nelle città comunali tra Tre e Quattrocento

According to established historiographical opinion, the first decades of the 14th century were characterised by a slowdown in social mobility, especially collective mobility. Mainly from the 1320s onwards, moreover, in many Italian cities the hardening of social stratification went hand in hand with evident processes of oligarchic closure. A growing body of studies, however, appear to show that an entirely new phase opened up in the mid-14th century, which saw a clear reversal of the social and political closure that had manifested in the preceding decades. This article dwells on this phase, and attempts to demonstrate how different political contexts – governments of the Popolo, cities ruled by lordships, subject towns – were equally characterised by the political protagonism of ‘new men’ of recent economic and social ascent, extraneous to the established elites, belonging in particular to the world of textile entrepreneurship, retail trade, and the liveliest artisan workshops. Through different routes, these ‘new men’ managed to carve out a political space for themselves that was more or less extensive, depending on the circumstances. It will then be argued that the recent fortunes of the ‘new men’ are linked to specific economic transformations characterising the second half of the 14th century that led to a real boom in the textile industry and a considerable expansion of the retail sector.