Social, Economic and Political Upward Mobilities. On Communal Italy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Late-medieval social mobility in Central and Northern Italy would not only have slowed in impetus, dissolving previous links with the processes of economic change, but would have also, conversely, accentuated its links with the governing sphere and with the channels of social mobility created by political and institutional apparatus. The strength of this hypothesis in part rest on the continued presentation of the late Middle Ages as marked by crisis and economic downturn. On the contrary, this contribution argues : a) that the economic trends do not support the idea of a natural slow-down, of a near-freeze of social impetus coming from the economic change; b) that fundamental change was, however, introduced in late medieval Italy through institutional transformation.