Why read The Florentine Magnates?

Book cover of The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune

Book description

In the 1290s a new guild-based Florentine government placed a group of noble families under severe legal restraints, on the grounds that they were both the most powerful and the most violent and disruptive element in the city. In this colorful portrayal of civic life in medieval Florence, Carol Lansing…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Florentine Magnates as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tinney Sue Heath

Author

It’s impossible to understand the turbulence that frequently swept over Florence in those years without some sense of what the magnate class was all about: its pride and its violence, its lawlessness, its emphasis on knighthood, and its private military forces. Lansing shows how the magnate class evolved as a distinctive culture, becoming powerful and disruptive to the city’s peace well beyond even what its considerable economic clout would suggest. She places a lot of emphasis on the role of women among the magnates, even though women could never be full members of the lineage, since they married into other…

From Tinney's list on The best books on medieval Florence.