'Citing The "Ringhiera": The Politics of Place and Public Address in Trecento Florence', Italian Studies, 55 (2000) : 53-82

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'Citing the "ringhiera": the politics of place and public address in Trecento
Florence', Italian Studies, 55 (2000): 53-82
Article in Italian Studies · January 2000

DOI: 10.1179/007516300790557519
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CITING THE RINCHIERA: THE POLITICS OF PLACE

AND PUBLIC ADDRESS IN TRECENTO FLORENCE
Stephen J. Milner
To cite this article: Stephen J. Milner (2000) CITING THE RINCHIERA: THE POLITICS OF PLACE
AND PUBLIC ADDRESS IN TRECENTO FLORENCE, Italian Studies, 55:1, 53-82
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ITALIAN STUDIES, VOLUME LV, 2000
CITING THE RINCHIERA: THE POLITICS OF PLACE AND

PUBLIC ADDRESS IN TRECENTO FLORENCE~:'
The intention of this article is to study the significance of the raised

platform, or ringhiera, of the Palazzo Pubblico in Florence as both an
architectural and symbolic construct, and to examine how its physical
situation and literary citation imagined it as the locus of legitimation in the
Downloaded by [The University of Manchester Library] at 11:10 21 March 2016
context of continued political struggle within the nascent popular commune

of the Trecento. The premise of the argument is that the consideration of
the sociology of space provides an important tool in understanding the
cultural construction of community, the socio-political configuration of
power relations, the origins and maintenance of social inequality, and the
possibilities for resistance. 1 In assuming this perspective, the ringhiera of the
Florentine Palazzo Pubblico is understood as neither an inert material place
within and around which communal rituals and social relations revolved,
nor a symbolic space which determined such activity. Rather, it is conceived
as an active component in the continual redescription of ideological
boundaries. An examination of the platform's liminality, therefore, is
necessary, for whilst conferring legitimacy upon its occupants during periods
of civic peace, it was the site where anxiety concerning the permanency of
the prevailing political order was most clearly evidenced in times of political
upheava1.2
* The present article is an expanded version of a paper given at the Renaissance Society of
America's Annual Conference, UCLA, 25-28 March 1999. Thanks are due to the Arts Faculty
Research Fund of Bristol University for its financial support.
1 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. by D. Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell,
1991); M. Foucault, 'Space, Knowledge and Power', in The Foucault Reader, ed. by P. Rabinow
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), pp. 239-56 and id., 'Texts/Contexts: Of Other Spaces',
Diacritics, 16 (1986), 22-27; P. Bourdieu, 'Political Representation: Elements for a Theory of the
Political Field', in Language and Symbolic Power, ed. by J. Thompson, trans. by G. Raymond and
M. Adamson (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 171-202. For a discussion of the major theories
of social spatialization see R. Shields, Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity
(London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 29-70 and the essays collected in Social Relations and Spatial
Structures, ed. by D. Gregory and J. Urry (London: Macmillan, 1985). See also D. Gregory,
Ideology~ Science and Human Geography (London: Hutchinson, 1978) and on the relation of
space to architecture, myth, and visibility, themes relevant to the current study, Yi-Fu Tuan, Space
and Place: The Perspective of Experience (London: Edward Arnold, 1977), especially pp. 85-117
and 161-78.
2 On liminality and space see K. Hetherington, The Badlands of Modernity: Heterotopia and
Social Ordering (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 32-37: 'Liminality is associated with a
transgressive middle stage of a rite: it is often marked out spatially as a threshold, or margin, at
which activities and conditions are most uncertain and in which the normative structure of society
is temporarily suspended or overturned. People here are subjected to ritualized ordeals that mark
the distinctiveness and the in-betweeness of their non-identity'.
53
54 STEPHEN MILNER
Given its liminal status as the filter through which the relation of
governors to governed was negotiated, the ringhiera has remained strangely
unstudied. Recent scholarship on the Palazzo della Signoria and Florentine
urban development during the Republican period have focused much
attention on the palazzo and its relation to the piazza, but made only
passing reference to the ringhiera. The brief comments made regarding its
significance reveal differing readings. Whilst Trachtenberg has described it as
an attribute of power, 'a sign of the performative power of the regime',
Rubinstein cites its construction as evidence of the new governmental spirit

of consensus.3 Spilner merely mentions it in passing, deferring her
examination of 'civic theatre' to a discussion of the Loggia della Signoria
which was only completed in 1382.4 Trexler, although providing the most
detailed study of its ritual use to date, stops short of examining its
involvement in the political struggles of the Trecento.5 In focusing
specifically on the ringhiera as a contested place, the aim is to examine the
ambiguity of a site which was both an icon of open government and a
possible place of oppression, relating its ambiguity to the moral
indeterminacy of Florentine civic republican rhetoric itself.
THE PALAZZO AND THE COMMUNAL SPHERE

One of the clearest manifestations of the increasing self-confidence of the
communes of central and northern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries was the wholesale remapping of civic space, often centred around
the newly built public palaces. Such palaces were symbols of the prosperity
of the independent and self-governing city-states of northern and central
Italy. The consequence of this 'palace-building age' and 'progressive
resecularization of the urban institutional topography' was to shift the
symbolic centre of the city away from the Cathedral to distinct civic centres
created by the clearance of older business and domestic premises.6 At the
3 See M. Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern
Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 257 and 260, and N. Rubinstein,
The Palazzo Vecchio I298-I532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of
the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 15, 80, and 89.
4 See P. Spilner, '''Ut civitas amplietur": Studies in Florentine Urban Development, 1282-14°°',
2 vols, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1987, II, 405, 416-19, and 426-27.
5 See R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press, 1980), pp. 49-50, 258-59,315-18,485-87, and 522-3°.
6 P. Jones, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997),
pp. 440-44; E. Guidoni, 'L'urbanistica dei comuni italiani in eta federiciana', in Federico II e
l'arte del Duecento Italiano, ed. by A. Romanini (Congedo: Galatina, 1980), pp. 99-12°; V.
Franchetti Pardo, Storia delturbanistica dal Trecento al Quattrocento (Rome: Laterza, 1982). On
the subject of place and urban geography in Renaissance historiography see the useful overview of
E. Muir and R. Weissman, 'Social and symbolic places in Renaissance Venice and Florence', in
The Power of Place: Bringing together Geographical and Sociological Imaginations, ed. by J.
Agnew and J. Duncan (Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 81-103 and D. Friedman, 'Palaces
and the Street in Late-Medieval and Renaissance Italy', in Urban Landscapes: International
Perspectives, ed. by J. Whitehand and P. Larkham (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 69-113.
CITING THE RINGHIERA 55
heart of these stood the newly built palazzi pubblici that overlooked
purpose-built squares. As the communal city-states became more firmly
established, the sophistication and scope of communal institutions and
administrative functions expanded, necessitating a parallel alteration in the
stylistic development of civic palace architecture. Increasingly, the open-
porticoed palaces of the Duecento gave way to those of a more imposing
fortress style, replete with defences and living quarters to house officiating
magistrates and office holders/ a change which reflected not only the need
for provision against both internal and external threat, but also the growth
in the bureaucratic machinery of communal government. In addition, the
palaces of the Trecento reflected the enhanced status of communal
government. Whereas previously a broad range of judicial, administrative,
and mercantile activities took place around the palaces, from the mid-
thirteenth century onwards they were deliberately distanced from market
places, in seeming obedience to Aristotle's advice in the Politics that 'the
agora for merchandise must be different from the free agora, and in another
place',8 thereby attuning popular perception to the dignity of civic
magistracies and the majesty of the commune.9
The tardiness in establishing a permanent site for a civic palace in
Florence bears testimony to the relative difficulty experienced in establishing
a secure and well-defined popular regime within the city during the
Duecento, the power of the city's leading families precluding the
7 G. M. Tabarelli, Palazzi pubblici d'Italia: nascita e trasformazione del Palazzo Pubblico in

Italia fino al XVI secolo (Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 1978), pp. 9-16; M. Rodolico and G.
Marchini, I Palazzi del popolo nei comuni Toscani del medio evo (Milan: Electa, 1962); G. Lise,
Lodi: i palazzi, cortili, portali, facciate (Lodi: Edizioni Lodigraf, 1988), pp. 7-9.
8 Aristotle, Politics, ed. and trans. by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1977), VII. xi. 2; 1331a, p. 592. See also C. Cunningham, 'For the Honour and Beauty of the
City: the Design of Town Halls', in Siena, Florence and Padua: Art Society and Religion (I28o-
I400), ed. by D. Norman, 2 vols (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Open
University, 1995), II, 29-53.
9 The dignity and centrality of the civic piazza was subsequently reflected in both Alberti and
Filarete's fifteenth-eentury treatises on the ideal city in which mercantile and unseemly commercial
activities were placed at some distance from the public square. See Leon Battista Alberti,
L'architettura (De Re Aedificatoria), ed. and trans. by G. Orlandi and P. Portoghesi, 2 vols
(Milan: Edizioni il Polifilo, 1966), I, Book v, vi, 356-59; II, Book VIII, vi, 712-16 and Antonio
Averlino detto il Filarete, Trattato di architettura, ed. by A. Finoli and L. Grassi, 2 vols (Milan:
Edizioni il Polifilo, 1972), I, Book X, 278-82 and II, plates 139-44 where the communal piazza is
differentiated from the 'Piazza di mercatanti'; J. Ackerman and M. Rosenfeld, 'Social Stratification
in Renaissance Urban Planning', in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. by S. Zimmerman and R.
Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 27-33; L. Firpo, 'La citta ideale del
Filarete', Studi in memoria di Gioele Solari (Turin: Edizioni Ramella, 1954), pp. 21-23 and 40-
43; G. Muratore, La citta rinascimentale: tipi e modelli attraverso i trattati (Milan: Gabriele
Mazzotta, 1975) and G. Simoncini, Citta e societa nel Rinascimento, 2 vols (Turin: Einaudi,
1974). Specifically on piazze see H.-W. Kruft, 'L'idea della Piazza rinascimentale secondo i trattati
e Ie fonti visive', Annali di architettura, 4-5 (1992-93), 215-29.
STEPHEN MILNER
consolidation of an official communal sphere.10 This is most clearly

reflected in the number of places where communal councils met during the
century, the Consiglio del Comune gathering variously in Santa Cecilia, San
Michele in Orto, and Santa Reparata in addition to a host of private family
residences including those of the Soldanieri, degli Abati, and degli Amidei.11
Although the first indications of a communal palace existing in Florence
date back to 1208, it was not until the institution of the Anziani of the
Primo popolo in October 1250 that the decision was made to construct a
communal palace, 'per pili fortezza di popolo', as, in the words of Giovanni
Villani, 'prima non avea palagio di Comune in Firenze, anzi stava la
signoria ora in una parte de la citta e ora in altra'.12
The resulting palace, now known as the Bargello, passed to the Podesta
after the fall of the Primo popolo in 1260. Subsequent communal councils,
including both the Quattordici of 1279 and the Priori dell'Arti instituted in
August 1282, resided in the so-called 'casa della Badia', the fragility of the
Priorate and the communal sphere clearly demonstrated when the Priors
were forced to take refuge in the neighbouring Torre della Castagna 'accio
non temessono Ie minaccie de' potenti'.13 In this respect, the eventual
prevailing of guild based republicanism over the powerful magnate dynasties
as represented by the 1293 Ordinances of Justice found its architectural
correlation in the construction of the Palazzo Pubblico, a clear statement of
the determination to defend the institution of the Priorate from attack.
The ideological significance of the Palace's placing is graphically
illustrated by the choice of site. In the years preceding 1298, as Giovanni
Villani noted, the Priors had met in the private residence of the Cerchi
bianchi, subsequently implacable opponents of the Donati and synonymous
10 Trexler identifies such resistance to communal institutions and practices in the Trecento. See
R. Trexler, Public Life, p. 256. In arguing for a three stage evolution in communal ritual
commencing with Walter of Brienne's celebration of the feast of San Giovanni in I343, Trexler
underestimates the ideological importance of establishing an autonomous 'popular' space in the
late Duecento as a prerequisite for such stagings of community. For an exemplary study of this
phenomenon in another Italian commune during the same period see J. Heers, Espaces publics,
espaces prives dans la ville: Ie Liber Terminorum de Bologne (I294) (Paris: Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, I984), p. 7, an examination of 'Ie processus qui, au prix de multiples
demarches, de conflits parfois dramatiques, conduit a substituer a l'ancien tissu multi-eellulaire des
grandes familIes et de leurs clienteles, un paysage urbain plus rationnel, plus construit'.
11 See D. de Rosa, Alle origini della Repubblica Fiorentina: dai Consoli al 'Primo Popolo'
(Florence: Arnaud, I995), pp. 34-35·
12 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, ed. by G. Porta, 3 vols (Parma: Ugo Guanda Editore, I990-
9I), I, Book VII, xxxix, 329. For a discussion of the possible location of the palace in the first
decades of the Duecento see de Rosa, Alle origini, p. 53, n. 20.
13 See Compagni, La Cronica, ed. by 1. Del Lungo, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, new series
(henceforth RIS), IX, ii (Citta di Castello: S. Lapi, I9I6), I, iv, I7-I8 and n. 22. On the housing
of the Primo popolo and the Quattordici see Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, I, Book VII, xxxix,
327: 'e ricogliensi nelle case della Badia sopra la porta che vae a Santa Margherita, e tornavansi
aIle loro case a mangiare e a dormire', and id., I, Book VIII, lvi, 50I. On the Torre della Castagna
see 1. Macci and V. Orgera, Architettura e civilta delle torri: torri e famiglie nella Firenze
medievale (Florence: Edifir, I994), pp. I48-49.
with the factional struggles of the Black and White Guelfs as recounted by
Compagni in his Cronica.14 In moving out of a private family space into a
purpose-built civic one, the Priorate as an office distanced itself from
sectional interests, yet the symbolism did not stop there. For the palace and
the piazza were themselves built on the site cleared as a result of the exile of
the Uberti family in 1258, the leading Florentine Ghibelline dynasty. The
symbolism of placing the new seat of communal government on the former
centre of Ghibelline power did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. is The
spatial and symbolic erasure of the Ghibelline stronghold, accompanied by

the spatial and symbolic distancing from the Cerchi's power base sought to
locate the Priorate, both geographically and temporally, in a space beyond
factional politics, the communal realm thereby assuming an ideological
dimension as the site of impartiality.
In keeping with the wider Italian pattern, therefore, the construction of
the Florentine Palazzo was one element in a broader programme of public
building in Florence by the end of the Duecento which sought to open the
city through the creation and expansion of public spaces.16 As Trachtenberg
and Friedman have shown, such alterations to the city's topography were
highly politicized, with urban planning functioning as part of a broader
programme of civic ordering.17 Within this order the palace was a symbol
of the dignity and authority of communal government, a place from which
Magnate families, and ultimately the Ciompi, were excluded.18 This is
14 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, II, Book IX, xxvi, 45-46, describes the Priors' residence as
'ne la casa de'Cerchi bianchi dietro a la chiesa di San Brocolo'. Del Lungo dates the Priors'
departure from the Cerchi residencies to mid-March 1299. See Compagni, La Cronica, p. 277 and
B. Preyer, 'Two Cerchi Palaces in Florence', in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh
Smyth, 2 vols, ed. by A. Morrogh, F. Superbi Gioffredi, P. Morselli, and E. Borsook, I, 613-25.
15 Giovanni Villani notes the destruction in 13 58 of the palaces and towers of the exiled
Ghibelline families, the Uberti included. Later in his chronicle he states: 'E cola dove puosono il
detto palazzo furono anticamente Ie case degli Uberti, ribelli di Firenze e Ghibellini; e di que' loro
casolari feciono piazza, accio che mai non si rifacessono.' Nuova Cronica, I, Book VII, lxv, 360
and II, Book IX, xxvi, p. 46. On Uberti landholdings see C. Lansing, The Florentine Magnates:
Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991),
pp. 95-97 and Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, pp. 92-105 for details concerning the relation
between the former Uberti complex and the programme of communal building on the site. Further
purchasing of properties by the commune took place as late as 1302 and although the Priors are
recorded as being in situ by March 1302, work on the palace's tower was still under way in 131I.
See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 98-10I.
16 F. Sznura, L'espansione urbana di Firenze nel Dugento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975) and
id., 'Civic Urbanism in Medieval Florence', in City-States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval
Italy, ed. by A. Molho, K. Raaflaub, and J. Emlen (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991) pp. 403-18. For
a map showing the piazze created in this period see Lansing, The Florentine Magnates, pp. 6-7.
17 M. Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, pp. 245-73 and D. Friedman, Florentine New Towns
(New York: MIT Press, 1988). See also the much earlier observations of N. Ottokar, 'Criteri
d'ordine, di regolarita e d'organizzazione nell'urbanistica ed in genere nella vita Fiorentina dei
secoli XIII-XIV', in id., Studi comunali e fiorentini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1948), pp. 143-49.
18 See R. Caggese, Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, 2 vols (Florence, 1910-21) I, Book II, xi,
99: 'Quod Magnates non intrent Palatium'. See also M. Becker, 'A Study in Political Failure: The
Florentine Magnates 1280-1343', Mediaeval Studies, 27 (1965), 246-308.
STEPHEN MILNER
graphically demonstrated by the almost vitriolic comments of the

anonymous author who completed Acciaiuoli's chronicle account of the
Ciompi uprising, his description of the palace's occupation serving as a
metaphor for the corruption of Florence as a whole:
Maravig1iosa cosa era vedere 1a cas a de' priori nostri signori, che per 10 tempo addietro
tanto netta e cosl ornata, tanto onesta e cOSIbene ordinata, ora era fatta brutta d'ogni
cattivita, e puzzo1enta, e vituperosa d'ogni disonesta, disordinata e mancante d'ogni
buono costume; che a vederla dalla sommita puzzava di disonesto puzzo, che era cosa
abbominevo1e e dispiacevo1e, vedendo a qua1e usanza andava.19
By characterizing the Ciompi as unclean, the author stigmatizes them as

matter out of place and therefore violating the normative form of social
ordering as represented by the elite guilds.
The construction of the palace and the enlargement of the piazza,
therefore, were potent symbols of the increasing assurance of guild-based
government, establishing a new charismatic centre within the city through
the securing of a communal space independent of specific clans. The irony,
as always in the definition of spaces, lies in the fact that the communal
sphere was created through exclusion, in the first instance exclusion from
communal office-holding on the part of named noble households. Although
the terms comune and popolo are forebears of the democratic lexis of
community, to conflate the consolidation of the communal sphere with the
creation of a public sphere would be anachronistic as Florentine politics in
the late Duecento and Trecento never involved total participation or
universal electoral suffrage. However, whilst the ideology of the popolo
developed in sophistication from the mid-Duecento onwards, the actual
composition of the Popolo as a social aggregate was in a constant state of
flux.20 This is apparent not only from the constant sub-divisions in the
terminology of social differentiation within Florence during the Trecento,
from Popolo grasso and Popolo minuto to Guelfs and arch-Guelfs, but also
from the constant laments within the chronicles at the redescription of noble
families as members of the Popolo.21 As the endless lists found in chronicles
19 See Aggiunte anonime alia Cronaca precedente, in Ii tumulto dei Ciompi: Cronache e
memorie, ed. by G. Scaramella, RIS, XVIII, iii (Bologna: Zanichelli, I934), 36. On the use of
concepts of pollution in order to exclude see M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, repr. I99S), pp. 30-4I.
20 See the attempts to identify the ruling elites during this period in S. Raveggi, M. Tarassi, D.
Medici, and P. Parenti, Ghibellini~ Guelfi e Popolo Grasso: i detentori del potere politico a Firenze
nella seconda meta del Dugento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, I978). For an overview and critical
assessment of the historiography relating to the popolo see P. Racine, 'Le "Popolo", groupe social
ou groupe de pression?', Nuova rivista storica, 73 (I989), I33-S0 who concludes: 'II n'est rien
d'autre qu'un parti politique, apres avoir ete une faction en lutte pour obtenir Ie droit de
participer a la vie politique'.
21 Such laments applied equally at the turn of the century to the terms Guelf and Ghibelline as
witnessed by Compagni's incredulous lament: 'Chi ebbe bali a di torre e dare in picciol tempo, che
i Ghibellini fussono detti guelfi, e i grandi Gue1fi detti ghibellini? Chi ebbe tal privilegio?' See
Compagni, La Cronica, II, xxxi, I54.
attest (of Guelfs, Ghibellines, elected officials, exiles, Magnate households,

and knights), Florentines were obsessed with categories and who was 'in'
and who was 'out' . Yet in the midst of such social change the ideology of
popular guelf republicanism grew increasingly articulate. In associating
government with the running of the city as a community rather than an
aggregate of dynastic interests, the Priorate was imagined as the guardian of
the 'beni comuni' in the interests of the bene comune, with Florence
increasingly being characterized as a res publica - an entity which belonged
to the people.22 Within this new realm, both the palace and piazza were
publicly owned, the piazza being referred to as the 'plateum comunis

Florentie' as early as 1299, whilst the spatial consolidation of a communal
sphere was accompanied by legislative provisions which established a
commensurate jurisdictional sphere.23 For example, the Ufficiali di torre 0
delle cinque cose, established in 1289, were defined in 1293 as the 'officiales
electi et deputati ad reinveniendum et inquirendum, exigendum et
recipendum iura et iurisdictiones et honores et bona comunis Florentiae'. 24
That urban space subsequently became synonymous with communal space
is clear from the problems faced in the Quattrocento by those seeking to
construct private piazze within the city.2s It is as part of this ideological
association of civic space with popular government that the ringhiera
assumed such importance, for facing the piazza it was the stage upon which
the commune was represented to its members and seemed, through its very
visibility, to ensure the moral probity of its officials and embody the
republican ethos of accountability and open government.
THE RINGHIERA AS ICON
In late medieval Italy, the term ringhiera was used to refer to any form of
tribune, rostrum, or dais from which speeches were delivered to a wider
audience, the term only assuming its modern sense of railing or balustrade
in the more recent past. Unlike the word bigoncia which referred
predominantly to what might be termed a lectern or despatch-box, ringhiera
was used to refer to both internal and external platforms. Giovanni da
22 The bibliography on early communal political theory is vast. For current purposes, however,
see M. Kempshall, The Common Good in Late Medieval Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1999), pp. 293-338 for the best treatment of the Florentine Remigio dei Girolami's
writings.
23 K. Frey, Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florence (Berlin: W. Hertz, 1885), p. 190, doc. 40.
24 See G. Guidi, It governo della citta-repubblica di Firenze del primo Quattrocento, 3 vols
(Florence: Olschki, 1981), II, 283-9I.
25 For example, whilst Cosimo de' Medici reputedly refused Brunelleschi's plans to clear a piazza
in front of the Medici palace, Luca Pitti was less circumspect. See C. Elam, 'Piazze private nella
Firenze del Rinascimento', Ricerche storiche, 16 (1986), 473-80. See also H. Saalman, The
Transformation of Buildings and the City in the Renaissance I300-I550: a Graphic Introduction
(New York: Astrion Publishing, 1996), p. 119 on the subject of piazze built in front of palaces in
Florence of the 1460s: 'The important point is this: the longer the perspective view of the house,
the further the extension of the personality of the owner'.
60 STEPHEN MILNER
Vignano in his Flore de Parlare, subtitled Somma d'arengare, devotes a

section to the practice of speech-making, describing in detail how the
speaker should approach the ringhiera, 'E per~o, quando elo avra bern
incorpora' quelo ch'el vora dire, SI se levara et andara a la renguera, no
tropo planamente ne tropo rato, me al convignevele me~o paso, no
guardandose de torno, me inan~o e baso, no andando descun~amente rna
honesto'.26 The phrase 'andare in sulla ringhiera' was commonly used in
chronicles of the period to refer to the act of speaking to civic councils from
a specific position, the verb aringare having a more general sense of

addressing larger gatherings, the speaker sometimes described as a aringatore
and his speech as an aringa.27 Within Florentine historiography, however,
the term ringhiera became synonymous with the platform constructed
between the two doors on the north face of the Palazzo Pubblico in 1323.28
The descriptions of Landino, Burchiello, Machiavelli, and Varchi no doubt
formed the basis for the definition of the terms aringa and ringhiera found
in the Atti del primo vocabolario of the Accademia della Crusca (159 1-
1618): 'Dicesi ancora propriamente aringa una diceria scritta 0 parlata fatta
a voce e fatta in publico e publicamente, dalla quale si chiama ringhiera il
luogo dove particularmente in Firenze si parlava in pubblico' .29
According to Sacchetti, prior to the construction of the palace, a ringhiera
had been housed within San Piero Scheraggio where the Priors were
formally sworn into office and communal business had largely been debated:
'Anticamente nella citta di Firenze si ragunava il consiglio in San Piero
Scheraggio, e ivi si ponea, 0 era di continuo la ringhiera'. 30 The decision to
construct a raised platform opening out onto the piazza was taken in a
deliberation of 27 May 1323 which provided for the construction of 'unam
nobilem pulcram et decentem arengheriam in muris seu iuxta muros palatii
26 See the edition of Giovanni da Vignano's Flore de Parlare included as an appendix in Matteo
dei Libri, Arringhe, ed. by E. Vincenti (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1974), p. 235.
27 Alamanno Acciaioli, Cronaca (I378), in It tumulto dei Ciompi: Cronache, p. 20: 'essendo tutti
nel cerchio dell'audienza a pie de' priori, uno delli otto, cioe fu Andrea di messer Francesco
Salviati, ando in sulla ringhiera e propose per parte sua de' compagni'. For Compagni's use of the
term ringhiera see for example La Cronica, II, x, 104-5.
28 The best visual representations of the ringhiera are found in fifteenth-century works, namely
Domenico Ghirlandaio's Confirmation of the Franciscan Order in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa
Trinita, Florence, Piero di Cosimo's Man in Armour housed in the National Gallery, London and
the anonymous panorama which depicts the burning of Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria in
the Museo di San Marco, Florence.
29 Gli Atti del primo vocabolario della Accademia della Crusca, ed. by S. Parodi (Florence:
Sansoni, 1974), p. 229. See also the entries in the Grande Dizionario della lingua italiana, ed. by
S. Battaglia, 19 vols (Turin: Editirice Torinese, 1961-), II, 228 and XVI, 547-48, and in Benedetto
Varchi, L'Hercolano, ed. by A. Sorella and introduced by P. Trovato, 2 vols (Pescara: Libreria
dell'Universita, 1995), I, 426-27.
30 See Franco Sacchetti, It Trecentonovelle, in Opere, ed. by A. Borlenghi (Milan: Rizzoli, 1957),
LXXX, p. 257. For the records of the deliberations that took place there see Le Consulte della
Repubblica Fiorentina dall'anno MCCLXXX al MCCXCVIII, ed. by A. Gherardi, 2 vols
(Florence: Sansoni, 1896-98). According to Compagni, in 1282 the Priori dell'Arti met in another
church, San Procolo. See Compagni, La Cronica, I, iv, 17.
CITING THE RINGHIERA 6I
populi, in eo loco seu parte dicti palatii ubi videbitur offitio dominorum
Priorum et Vexilliferi Iustitie'. 31 Structurally it was composed of three rows
of stone benches that ran along the full length of the palace fa~ade and were
accessible via steps from the principal door of the palazzo. Shielded by a
stone balustrade replete with iron rings for the securing of horses, the
construction stood at a height of almost nine feet or 'sei scalini'. 32 In this
respect it differed from the wooden balconies constructed on many privately
owned towers, additions which rendered the occupants vulnerable to arson
attack, for unlike a balcony, the ringhiera was not built as an adjunct to the
palace wall at some remove from the street but at ground level in the form
of a raised platform.33 As Tabarelli has noted, its construction was
commensurate with the addition of loggias to other Italian communal
palaces during this period as 'appendici', thereby providing the previously
defensive and introspective palaces with a 'balcone dal quale si ascoltano gli
ordini decisi nel segreto delle stanze interne'. 34
This was precisely the case in Florence. The internal ringhiera that had
previously served for both ritual occasions and everyday deliberative
meetings was now complemented by an external one, the new ringhiera
addressing the public space of the piazza, whilst the confidential
deliberations of the Priors and related councils continued within the palazzo,
speakers addressing their audience from the bigoncia. In this context the
ringhiera provided a physical stage on which to perform the ritual of
republican government. In addition to the entrance of the Priorate every two
months, it served for the swearing-in of the city's Podesta and Capitano, the
reception of foreign dignitaries and Ambassadors, the reading of important
missives announcing victories, marriages, and honours, and the reading of
new laws as well as serving as the focal point during the public parlamenti
31 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Provvisioni, Registri, 20, fol. 2r-v• Cited by del Lungo in his
appendices to Compagni, La Cronica, p. 280.
32 Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 111-12. Machiavelli in the Istorie fiorentine notes that the term
ringhiera was used by Florentines to describe 'quelli gradi che sono a pie del palagio de' Signori'.
See Niccolo Machiavelli, Tutte Ie opere, ed. by M. Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), p. 683.
33 The suggestion that such additions compromised the security of buildings may well account
for the initial absence of a formal platform of this kind from the palace given its predominantly
defensive early role. For a sample agreement for the construction of a private balcony from June
1209 see Documenti del!'antica costituzione del comune di Firenze, ed. by P. Santini (Florence: G.
P. Vieusseux, 1895), Appendix II, p. 534. That later writers on architecture were alive to the
political significance of managing space is apparent in Alberti's comments concerning the dangers
of balconies, arches and towers as possible sources of attack. In order to consolidate power, he
notes, rulers should seek to control all elevated spaces: 'Denique ita paranda omnis harum rerum
aedificatio est, ut aedita omnia qui dominetur possideat solus, et suis percurrendi universam per
urbem facultatem remoretur nemo. Itaque his tyrannorum urbs a regum urbe differt'. See Alberti,
L'architettura (De Re Aedificatoria), I, Book v, i, 337.
34 Tabarelli, Palazzi pubblici, p. 12.
62 STEPHEN MILNER
called in times of crisis.35 It was also where Cavalieri del Popolo were
invested, and militarily the point of departure for all Florentine Capitani di
Guerra leaving on military campaigns and their first calling point on their
return, as well as the place where the Priors symbolically rendered and
received the city's flag.36
As an icon of republicanism it became a sacred place within the ritual of
government.3? Just as the ideology of republicanism was infused with the
religious terminology of sacrifice and caritas, so the sites of republicanism
were infused with religious associations, the ringhiera becoming in turn both
pulpit and altar. Periodically the icon of the Madonna di Impruneta was
mounted there ('La detta Tavola si pose in su l'altare, che si fece in su la
ringhiera del palazzo de' Signori, molto onorevole'), whilst chronicles note
instances of sermons being delivered to the collected populace by preachers,
most famously Savonarola in the latter part of the Quattrocento.38 This
conscious consecration of civic space was part of the wider sacralization of
the political realm that sought to make a civic religion of the republican
35 For example, on 21 March 1375 one chronicler noted: 'Oggi [... J si si lessono, in sulla Piazza
de' nostri Signiori, in sulla ringhiera, 1111 lettere venute da Bologna'. See Diario d'Anonimo
Fiorentino dall'anno I358-I389, ed. by A. Gherardi, Croniche dei secoli XIII e XIV: Documenti
di storia italiana, 15 vols (Florence: Tipi di M. Cellini, 1876), VI, 306, and other instances on pp.
310, 341, 365, 366, 370, and 378. Similarly, when Giovanni degli Obizi took Arezzo in
November 1384 the letter announcing the victory was read in public from the platform: 'i Signori,
Priori ed i loro Collegi, ed i Dieci della balia venne no giuso in su la ringhiera del pal agio de'
Signori Priori equine si lesse la lettera mandata alIi Signori Priori per messer Ioanni degli Obizi
Capitano della guerra del Comune di Firenze'. See Ser Naddo di Montecatini, Croniche Fiorentine,
in Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, ed. by I. di San Luigi, 24 vols (Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi,
1784), XVIII, 73. Similarly when Angelo Acciaiuoli, Bishop of Florence, was made Cardinal in
November 1385 he was honoured by the Signori: 'E in sulla pia<;a discesono e' Signiori e su la
ringhiera e parlorono insieme e prese chomiato da loro e chavalcho versso Pisa'. See Alle bocche
della piazza: diario di Anonimo (iorentino (I382-I40I), ed. by A. Molho and F. Sznura (Florence:
Olschki, 1986), p. 60. For the ritual use of the ringhiera in the second half of the Quattrocento
see The Libro Cerimoniale of the Florentine Republic by Francesco Filarete and Angelo Man(idi,
ed. by R. Trexler (Geneva: Droz, 1978), pp. 75, 80, 82-83, and 85-97.
36 Adriano Razanti of Venice was granted the honour in November 1384: 'E a di XXVII fu fatto
chavaliere di popolo per mano di messer Churado Lupo, sindacho del Chomune di Firenze, in
sulla ringhiera de' Signori con grandissimo onore'. See Alle bocche, p. 56. Salvestro de' Medici,
appointed leader of the Ciompi, was knighted by 'la brigata del popolo' and artisans on 21 July
1378: 'e menoro'lo in sulla ringhiera e feciollo cavalieri', a ritual repeated by the Priors of
September-October 1378 for the other knights created by the Ciompi earlier in July. See Diario
d'Anonimo, p. 366, and Filippo di Cino Rinuccini, Ricordi storici dal I282 al I460, colla
continuazione di Alamanno e Neri suoi (igli (ino a I506, ed. by G. Aiazzi (Florence: Stamperia
Piatti, 1840), p. xxxviii: 'e a di 18 d'Ottobre 27 di loro in persona, e 4 per procuratore vennono
insieme dalla chiesa de' Servi insino sulla ringhiera de' Signori, ed erano vestiti tutti di verde
bruno, accompagnati da molti cittadini'.
37 For an examination of the imperial counterpart to the ringhiera as symbol see F. Saxl, 'The
Capitol during the Renaissance - A Symbol of the Imperial Idea', in F. Saxl, Lectures, 2 vols
(London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1957), I, 200-14-
38 Montecatini, Croniche Fiorentine, pp. 64-65 and 106, May 1383. See also the account from
October 1377 in Diario d'Anonimo, P.341: 'e ivi fu fatto un bello pa1chetto in su la ringhiera, e
ivi fatto un bello altare, e cantossi la santa messa'. See Trexler, Public Life, pp. 49-50, n. 15 for a
reconstruction of the arrangement of participants and icons on such occasions.
CITING THE RINCHIERA
ethos.39 Central to such an enterprise was the parading upon the ringhiera
of communal symbols, a tradition which endured throughout the lifetime of
the popular republic, from the display of flags and statues, to the hanging of
tapestries replete with republican iconography as a backdrop to ritual
activities. As early as 1349, after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, a
sculpture of a Florentine lion was placed at the northern end of the
ringhiera and ceremonially crowned during the ritual entrance of the new
Priorate,40 whilst its elevated status as civic place was reflected in a city
statute of 14 15 which threatened dismissal and a fine of five lire for any
members of the Capitano di Guardia's company caught gambling within ten

braccia of the platform.41
Comments concerning the amount of honour shown the commune by
visiting dignitaries before the ringhiera prove that Florentines were sensitive
readers of the ritual surrounding the platform. When two cardinals arrived
in Florence within a month of each other in early 1379, their relative
comportment was readily noted by one observer. Whereas the Cardinal of
France 'lavossi il cappello di capo, ed anche uno poco di scapolare quando
fece motto alIi Signori Priori che erano in su la ringhiera' before signing and
blessing the Priors and then signing those in the piazza, the former bishop of
Vercelli a month later showed less respect: 'Quando fece motto alIi Signori
in su la ringhiera levossi il cappello, e non altro' .42 Similarly, the suspension
of ritual activities upon the platform was used as a barometer of civic crises:
'Mercoledi a di primo di Maggio 1364 entrarono i Priori in ufizio senza
uscir fuori del palazzo, e senza sonare campane, ne altra cosa, perche la
gente de' nemici erano alle porte'. 43
Yet it was during the bi-monthly swearing-in of the new Priorate that the
ringhiera's liminality and ideological importance was most clearly
manifested, as private citizens made the transition to public servants.44
39 See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 49-5 I for a discussion of this broader tendency in the
decoration of the Palazzo. For a parallel study of Italian Fascist attempts to establish a secular
religion through the management of classical symbolism see E. Gentile, The Sacralization of
Politics in Fascist Italy, trans. by K. Botsford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, I996).
40 Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. I5-I6.
41 See Statuta populi et communis Florentiae publica auctoritate collecta castigata et praeposita
anna salutis MCCCCXV, 3 vols ('Friburgi' [Florence]: per Michaelem Kluth, I778-8I), I, Book I,
lxv, 78-80. The playing of dice was exempt from the ban which covered all employees of the
commune: 'etiam si essent stipendiarius dicti communis, ludens in loggia prope palatium DD vel in
arringhiera de Signori, vel prope per decem brachia'. By the mid-I450S, the swearing-in took
place in front of a massive Flemish tapestry designed by Vittorio Ghiberti and Neri di Bicci which
covered more than 570 square metres of the palace wall, although no indications as to its
iconography remain. See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, p. 58, nn. II3-I4.
42 Montecatini, Croniche, pp. 29-3°.
43 Diario del Monaldi (I340-I379), in Istorie Pistolesi ovvero delle cose avvenute in Toscana
dall'anno I30o-I348 e Diario del Monaldi (Prato: Guasti, I835), p. 497. See also id., pp. 5I6-I7:
'Giovedi in Calende in luglio [I378] uscirono i Priori vecchi, ed entrarono i nuovi senza venire a
ringhiera, ne arringare, e stettesi in tremore'.
44 For the ceremonial procedures surrounding the swearing in ceremony of the Priors, see Statuta
populi MCCCCXV, II, Book v, x, 50I-04.
STEPHEN MILNER
Acting as a filter, it served a social renewal function by symbolically

cleansing the incoming Priors of their civic contamination as interested
individuals bound by networks of obligation, transforming them into
physical embodiments of the republican ethos of government supra partes.45
This symbolic otherness was reflected in their physical separation from the
daily life of the city as they were confined to the palace for the period of
their office, denied access to the piazza, their families and the city at large,
with strict provisions governing their movements, meal times, and their
entertainment and hospitality.46 That such a change in both status and

position required a commensurate change in identity is graphically
illustrated by the preacher Giovanni Dominici's remarks concerning the duty
of office holders: 'E quando entri nel consiglio, nota che tu debi mutare
nome, e non essere piu ne Piero, ne Martino, rna comune di Firenze'.47
As the site across which citizens passed in the rite of passage to rule,
therefore, the ringhiera was fiercely contested during periods when the
legitimacy of the prevailing form of social ordering was challenged. Whilst
the republic's institutions and practices were virtuous per se, the moral
probity of those called to occupy them was always in question. By
examining the citing of the ringhiera in the Florentine chronicles of the
Trecento, it is possible not only to map the landscape of political struggle,
but also to demonstrate how the contesting of the platform was
simultaneously a spatial and ideological issue.
CONTESTING THE RINCHIERA
In addition to providing a narrative of events, Florentine chronicles are also

partial accounts produced by authors who were precisely the politically
active 'gente comune' who found themselves caught in the internal struggles
45 During the period of their tenure the Priors and their notaries enjoyed ministerial immunity
from prosecution. In addition, those found guilty of verbally abusing the Priors saw the standard
penalties for such crimes doubled. Caggese, Statuti, I, Book II, iiii, 89-91: 'De immunitate et
privilegio Dominorum Priorum et Vexilliferii Iustitie et eorum notariorum, et de pena offendentis
eos'. The concept of filtering is discussed in Places through the Body, ed. by H. Nast and S. Pile
(London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 5-6.
46 See Caggese, Statuti, I, Book II, iii, 78-88: 'De officio dominorum Priorum et Vexilliferi
Iustitie'. The section relating to the limitations on their movements is notable for the detailed list
of events from which they were excluded, most relating to their isolation from familial affairs:
'Predicti quidem Priores et Vexillifer non vadant ad funus vel exequias alicuius nisi consortis
alicuius eorum de progenie sua vel uxoris alicuius ipsorum vel ad aliquam monialem seu
presbiterum novum seu ad batizzandum vel ad batisnia tenendum aliquem puerum vel puellam sub
pena libra rum quingentarum'. Even before the construction of the Palazzo del Popolo, the Priors
underwent this process of physical isolation: 'E furono rinchiusi per dare audienza, e a dormire e a
mangiare alle spese del Comune nella casa della Badia'. Previously both the Anziani of the Primo
popolo and the Quattordici returned home to eat and sleep. See Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica,
I, Book VII, xxxix, 327; I, Book VIII, lvi, 501 and lxxix, 533.
47 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1301, Predica 30, fo1. 89v•
CITING THE RINGHIERA
within the commune.48 As texts, therefore, the chronicles are political in the
sense of being interested narratives and, although not generic political texts,
they were written by political men, many directly involved in the events they
described.49 Consequently their readings are necessarily subjective,
conditioned by their respective experiences and their social and political
positioning at the time of writing. Given their mid-way status between
private and public documents the chronicles were not as obviously
ideological as the histories produced by successive humanistic Chancellors in
the Quattrocento.50
Yet although pre-representational narratives, they are

still infused with moral and political values. Whilst all of the authors
examine the subject of internal disorder as the major plight of the commune,
they reflect the perennial suspicion within the Florentine collective psyche
that individuals or groups were seeking to appropriate the communal sphere
to service their own interests.51 Significantly, the chronicle narratives
surrounding all of the major civic crises of the Trecento record the ringhiera
as a contested civic space and its successful occupation a tangible sign of
victory. In selecting specific episodes, the aim is to demonstrate the
continuity of the recognition of the ringhiera's iconic importance by the
respective contestants from the signoria of the Duke of Athens in the I340S
to the post-Ciompi era.
For Giovanni Villani the usurpation of Florentine liberty by the Duke of
Athens took place on 8 September I342, the date the Duke called a
communal parlamento to ratify his appointment as signore for a single year.
According to Villani, the Priors and other communal office holders
processed from the palazzo and sat 'col duca sulla ringhiera', one of their
number rising to speak to confirm the Duke's appointment for just a year:
48 On the Florentine chronicle tradition see L. Green, Chronicle into History: an Essay on the
Interpretation of History in Florentine Fourteenth-Century Chronicles (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972) and E. Cochrane, History and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), pp. 9-15.
49 Rubinstein's assertion in 1942 that 'Historiography as a primary source for the history of
political thought is all too often neglected' seems just as pertinent now as it was then. See N.
Rubinstein, 'The Beginnings of Political Thought in Florence: a Study in Mediaeval
Historiography', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 198-227.
50 On Florentine fifteenth-century historiography see D. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine
Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1969) and N. Struever, The Language of History in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and Historical
Consciousness in Florentine Humanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 40-
100. On the subsequent reception of Florentine quattrocento historiography by early humanistic
theoreticians of the genre see R. Black, 'The New Laws of History', Renaissance Studies, I (1987),
126-56.
51 On the structure of communal government and details of divieti, office rotation and other
safeguards against the appropriation of communal institutions see G. Brucker, Florentine Politics
and Society I343-I378 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 57-70. Regarding
the suspicious Florentine gaze, Brucker notes on p. 65: 'Rarely did one Signoria leave office
without being charged with illegal acts and violations of communal statutes'. On Florentines'
mutual distrust see R. Weissman, 'Judas the Florentine', in Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance
Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1982), pp. 1-41.
66 STEPHEN MILNER
'rna com'era ordinato il tradimento, non fu lasciato piu dire, rna a grida di
popolo per certi scardassieri e popolazzo minuto, e masnadieri di certi
grandi, dicendo: "Sia la signoria del duca a vita a vita, e viva il duca nostro
signore!'" .52 The ordered discourse of the representative of the republic on
the platform was drowned out by the multiplicity of voices from the piazza.
What is more, whereas the communal voice was articulated by a member of
the popular guild elite, the cries from the piazza were those of the Popolo
minuto befriended by the Duke and the bravi of certain nobles, both
constituencies excluded from the ranks of the popular guild community.

Villani goes on to note the physical and symbolic marginalization of the
Priors, as they were literally upstaged by the Duke, being placed where the
Esecutore di Giustizia was usually seated on the ringhiera 'con poco uficio e
minore balla, se non il nome, e sanza sonare Ie campane a martello 0
congregare il popolo, com'era usanza' .53 Significantly, the Duke removed
the ringhiera altogether as part of his radical rebuilding of the former
Palazzo Pubblico. In dispensing with this symbol of republicanism he was in
fact denying the legitimacy of the guild elite. In a further move which
challenged their privileged constitutional ordering of the city through guild
associations, he established festive brigate, creating 'a geographically based
following to counter the power of the constitutional gonfalons'. 54 Once he
was ousted in July 1343, the ringhiera was immediately restored, resuming
its key role as focal point of guild-based republican ritua1.55
This one episode demonstrates more clearly than any other the nexus
between political and spatial praxis, for the change in regime was
accompanied by alterations not only in the fabric of the palace itself, but
also in the social ordering of the city. Thenceforth political struggle within
Florence concerned the relative inclusivity or exclusivity of the guild-based
form of social ordering, the ringhiera becoming a permanent fixture and
focus of political struggle.
The uprising of the Ciompi in July 1378 had a far more profound
impact upon the subsequent organization of the Florentine political order,
resulting in the transition, in the terms used by Najemy, from a
'corporatist' to a 'consensual' form of government. 56 Acciaiuoli's chronicle
52 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, III, Book XIII, iii, 297-98.

53 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, III, Book XIII, viii, 308. See also the account in Marchionne
di Coppa Stefani, Cronaca (iorentina, ed. by N. Rodolico, RIS, xxx, i (Citta di Castello: S. Lapi,
1903), rubrics 553-58, pp. 192-97.
54 Trexler, Public Life, pp. 220-21.
55 See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 15-17.
56 This is the central thesis of J. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral
Politics, I28o-I400 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). See also id.,
'Guild Republicanism in Trecento Florence: the Success and Ultimate Failure of Corporate
Politics', American Historical Review, 84 (1979), 53-71. For one analysis of the Ciompi's political
agenda see G. Brucker, 'The Ciompi Revolution', in Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in
Renaissance Florence, ed. by N. Rubinstein (London: Faber, 1968), pp. 314-55.
in particular, illustrates the strategic importance of occupying the seat of

government and the struggle which took place in late July 1378 between
the incumbent Priors and what the chronicler referred to as 'il popolo
minuto, e molti artefici, e similmente altri non rei uomini, ne buoni, i quali
v'erano per paura pili che per amore' .57 The sense in which the regime
was besieged is clear from Accaiuoli's description of the provisions made
on the night of 20 July: 'i priori in quella notte si fortificorono dentro e
fornironsi di pane, vino, aceto, carne salata, formaggio, e di sale, e feciono
caricare i1 palagio di molte pietre, per dubbio di non essere combattuti,
con animo e intenzione di tenersi valentemente e innanzi morirvi che

uscirne' .58 Rather than use force, however, a dialogue was established
between the representatives of the Popolo minuto and the Signori inside.
These strategic discussions involved negotiators moving between the palace
and the piazza, and resulted in the list of headings contained in the
petition being put to both the Priorate and the Consiglio del popolo and
subsequently passing. According to Acciaiuoli the success of the petition
was in part due to the intense heat, but also a consequence of the
intimidating noise which rose from the piazza. The following day the same
headings were passed by the Consiglio del comune, despite the fact that the
shouts of the Popolo minuto in the piazza meant that 'non si udiva nulla
nella sala, quando Ie petizioni si leggevano alIi consiglieri'. 59 Although they
secured their demands through legitimate channels as a result of
petitioning, opposition to the incumbent Priors continued and despite their
earlier resolve the remaining officials finally surrendered 'e ferono dare Ie
chiave delle porti al proposto delI'arti'. In Acciaiuoli's words, 'Partiti che
furono i priori di palazzo, la porta fu aperta, e il popolo entro dentro', the
Popolo securing their voice through the agency of Michele di Lando: 'a
voce di popolo gli dierono la signori a' .60
Given that the government of the Ciompi witnessed a dramatic alteration
in the social status of those in power, it is noteworthy that they still
maintained traditional public rituals involving the ringhiera to testify to the
legitimacy of their tenure. ·On the same day that the palace was taken,
'venne il detto Michele di Lando in su la ringhiera, con tutte Ie trombe e
suoni del comune, e vennoro con lui gli otto di guerra, e molti altri cittadini;
e SI si parlamento del buono confaloniere'. When the newly appointed Tre
maggiori were installed on 25 July, the traditional ritual procedures were
also followed: 'vennono in sulla ringhiera, come era usanza per gli altri
57 Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, p. 25.

58 Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, p. 26.
59 Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, p. 30. A summary of the demands are listed on pp. 28-29. The petition
itself is edited in C. Falletti-Fossati, II tumu!to dei Ciompi: studio storico-socia!e (Florence: Le
Monnier, r882), pp. 365-75.
60 Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, pp. 32-33. The reporting of these events is capped by the lament: 'E COS!
si puo dire essere perduto el felice e quieto e buono stato della citta'.
68 STEPHEN MILNER
priori, e ciascheduno giuro il suo uficio, i signori, e confalonieri, e dodici, e

di non essere mai contro allo stato che reggeva'. 61
All the chronicle narratives of the Ciompi's defeat centre on the means by
which they were both spatially and symbolically marginalized in late August
1378 during the bi-monthly changing of the Priorate. The first indications of
their dwindling support was the rebuff they received from the same Priors
they had instituted in late July. On demanding the Priors descend to the
ringhiera to discuss additional headings included in another petition, they
were told 'che Ie cose non si dimandavano in que I modo, ne era onore alla
signoria concederle per forza', Ser Viviano Viviani, chancellor of the
Reforms, adding that direct discussion with the Priors on the ringhiera was
invalid unless in the formal context of an official parlamento.62 When the
appointed ambassadors of the Ciompi returned to the palace and placed
their demands before the priors 'con grande arroganzia', they were attacked
and placed in prison.63 Two days later, on 25 August, they returned to the
piazza with their petition and presented it to the priors who ratified it,
Coluccio Salutati applying the communal seal to the document which was
then read from the ringhiera 'SI che ciascuno rimaneva contento'.
The final defeat of the Ciompi took place four days later on 29 August.
The previous day the new Priors had been instituted and immediately
formulated a plot to defeat the Popolo minuto. In demanding that all the
major and minor guilds presented their flags for display on the ringhiera, the
plan was to deprive the Ciompi of the one symbol that expressed their
collective identity and under which they congregated, taking advantage of
their coming together under the sign of the lamb to attack them. When they
refused to surrender their standard 'dicendo "Se cosa fosse niuna, ache
riccorreremo noi?"', the Priors altered the plan issuing a banda requiring all
citizens to congregate under the flag of their own guild and no other:
'Allora, tutti que'ch'erano sotto la segnia dell' Agnolo, SI si ristrinsono
insieme dall' Aservitore, e su per la ringhiera della porta del Duca.' Once
surrounded, the preordained assault took place and the Ciompi were routed,
61 Cronica prima d'Anonimo (I378-I387), in Ii tumulto dei Ciompi: Cronache, p. 76. See also
Montecatini, Croniche, p. IS: 'A dt 24 di detto mese i detti Priori e Collegi giurarono il loro
uffizio in su la ringhiera al modo usato'. The resumption of these rituals followed their suspension
earlier in the month due to the pending crisis. See Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, p. 17: 'EI primo di di
Iuglio e sopradetti priori entrorono in palazzo sanza sonare campane secondo l'usanza; che mai
piu s'udi dire, che quando i priori entrassino non si sonasse a martello, e in sulla ringhiera del
palazzo dare i mallevadori e pigliare el giuramento, altro che questa volta; rna nella sala del
palazzo, cioe nella sala del consiglio, si ferono tutte queste solennira che si fanno di fuora'.
62 Aggiunte anonime, p. 38.
63 Cronica prima, pp. 79-80, and Aggiunte anonime, pp. 38-39.

CITING THE RINGRIERA
'traditi da' loro medesimi'. 64 In seeking to secure their new-found pre-

eminence, the Priors of September 1378 placed a number of John
Hawkwood's mercenaries on the ringhiera in the immediate aftermath of the
Popolo minuto's defeat, thereby securing the palace and the piazza from the
newly disenfranchized citizens.65
Similar patterns of behaviour to those noted above are recognizable in the
subsequent struggle for political control this time by rival sections of the
elite, as epitomized by the attempts of the arch-Guelf aristocrats and major
guilds to secure official sanction for their respective reforms through

occupying the place of speech. On 15 February 1382 the Parte Guelfa drew
up a list of headings which were read out to a parlamento of its supporters
in the Mercato Nuovo. Managing to get them ratified by an official
parlamento in the Piazza dei Priori, however, proved more difficult. Their
hope was that the headings proposed 'sotto titolo di Parte Guelfa' would
become communal policy through its association with the republic's officials
and rituals. On 16 February they succeeded: 'Poi vene in aringhiera ser
Choluccio Chanceliere e lesse e ritificho tutti i chapitoli quivi in parlamento,
cioe tutti i chapitoli letti inanzi e alchuno pili, e nominossi quaranta uomini
a chui fu data piena balia dal popolo per riformare la ccitta'. The following
day, however, the confirmation was revoked as a result of the protests of
'buoni cittadini e l'Arte della Lana' who took exception to the manner in
which the proposals were presented to the Balia as the demands of a
parlamento. They claimed that they were drawn up by former exiles 'sotto
ombra di vendetta.' The reply of the arch-Guelfs on 10 March was to try
and proceed with their demands through proper governmental channels by
formally presenting their headings to the authorities who would then call a
legitimate parlamento in the Piazza della Signoria.66 Their prior insistence
on using unofficial parlamenti was seen as a means of circumventing
64 Cronica prima, pp. 81-83. On the symbolic importance of flags see R. Trexler, 'Follow the
Flag: the Ciompi Revolt Seen from the Streets', Bibliotheque d'Rumanisme et Renaissance, 46
(1984), 357-92. For an examination of the role of the other guilds in the Ciompi uprising see J.
Najemy, 'Audiant omnes artes: Corporate Origins of the Ciompi Revolution', in It tumulto dei
Ciompi: un momento di storia (iorentina ed europea (Florence: Olschki, 1981), pp. 59-93 and M.
Becker and G. Brucker, 'The Arti minori in Florentine Politics, 1342-1378', Mediaeval Studies, 18
(1956), 93-104.
65 See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, p. 90. On the parlamento called after the Ciompi defeat, see R.
Trexler, '11 Parlamento fiorentino del I settembre 1378', Archivio storico italiano (henceforth ASI),
143 (1985), 437-75· On subsequent readings of the Ciompi episode within Florentine
historiography see E. Sestan, 'Echi e giudizi suI tumulto dei Ciompi nella cronistica e nella
storiografia', in It tumulto dei Ciompi: un momento, pp. 125-37. When reports reached Florence
that 1,500 exiles and Ciompi were approaching Florence in late December 1378, reinforcements
were drafted in from the surrounding contado: 'e fu dato loro a guardia la ringhiera e la Piazza'.
See Cronica prima, p. 88.
66 See Aile bocche, pp. 27-29 and G. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 64-66. According to the anonymous
chronicler, Coluccio Salutati read the revised headings on 10 March: 'e ser Choluccio Chanceliere
venne in aringhiera a legiere i chapitoli a loro chonceduti'. See Aile bocche, p. 34.
STEPHEN MILNER
traditional civic procedures in calling on the mob, the OpposItIon objecting

to their attempts to turn the opinions of the piazza into communal policy.
In all of the above instances it is significant that broadly speaking all
participants within political struggle subscribed to the spatial and procedural
construction of popular republican ideology. Nobody was seeking to provide
an alternative theatre of legitimation. Importantly, as the arch-Guelfs found
to their cost, there was no counter-hegemonic site of legitimation within
Florence, no alternative political platform from which dissenting voices
could be heard and officially tolerated. Ironically, therefore, it was within

the context of political struggle that consensus was found, consensus
concerning the republican symbolic order to be contested. The sole
exception was the Duke of Athens whose personal rule witnessed the
destruction of the ringhiera in a symbolic act that manifested the closure of
the republican ethos of accountability.67 In the other instances examined,
the resistance of the ringhiera to appropriation in its guise as republican
icon saw its symbolic resonances defending the legitimacy of the prevailing
form of social ordering. In the Ciompi's case, the direct dialogue initially
established between those in the Piazza and the communal officials was
foreclosed on the grounds that no formal parlamento had been called,
Florentine political ritual precluding the legitimacy of any form of
negotiation with what was perceived as a sectional interest group. In the
case of the arch-Guelfs, the legitimacy of the parlamento held in the
Mercato Vecchio, under the auspices of the Parte, was challenged,
subsequent attempts to re-present their demands through the officially
sanctioned channels being defeated.
It was due to its legitimating properties, therefore, that the ringhiera was
the prime site of political contestation. For not only did it represent the
threshold over which citizens passed in the transition to being 'in' power,
but it was also the sole platform from which communal representatives
spoke 'out' to the public they nominally served. It was direct address to the
piazza, however, that obviated most clearly the tension between the
ringhiera as icon of republicanism and site of oppression. This was
demonstrated repeatedly by the calling of civic parlamenti at moments of
strategic importance for the commune. For the democratic principle that the
whole citizen body could actively participate in communal policy decisions
was, almost from its inception, an anachronism as demographic factors
resulted in the increasingly oligarchic character of civic government, thereby
67 For a parallel example of the strategic displacement of the rostra in the Roman forum by
Julius Caesar see R. Sennett, Flesh and Stone: the Body and the City in Western Civilization
(London: Routledge, 1994), p. 114.
precluding the exercise of sovereignty by the so-called universitas civium.68

Yet in calling such gatherings which seemingly embodied the republican
credo that self-government should be a process 'quod omnes tangit', it
appears that they were in fact attempts to exploit the liminality of such
occasions to alter the established political order as seen in the cases of the
Duke of Athens, the Ciompi and the arch-Guelfs.69 The benefit of
parlamenti to these groups was the combination of their legitimating
credentials and their exploitable instability. Impossible to house in a civic
building, such direct addresses to the piazza meant there was no guarantee
that dialogue would be ordered, or that those gathered in the piazza were in
any way constitutionally representative. What is marked in the chronicles
reporting periods of civic turbulence is precisely the verbal disorder, as
announcements and debates were swamped by the cacophony of voices from
the piazza, often in the service of particular groupings. Significantly, by the
late Quattrocento parlamenti were no longer considered an inalienable part
of republican ideological practice and were banned by Savonarola, a
vernacular inscription in the hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo della
Signoria warning of their danger as a means to despotic ends.70 Yet for the
elite wishing to maintain pre-eminence, it was clear that control of the
spoken word was of fundamental importance in sustaining political order.
THE RINGHIERA AND RHETORIC
The association of speech with communal government was a key component

within civic republican ideology, the civic palaces of the Italian communes
being variously referred to as the broletto, arengario, credentia, or palazzo
della ragione. These terms linked them directly to the popular assemblies
which characterized early communal politics, meetings which were referred
to variously by contemporaries as either a concio, credentia, arengo,
parlamentum, or commune colloquium.71 Such associations are amply
68 In this respect the Italian case mirrored that of classical Rome. See T. Cornell, 'Rome: The
History of an Anachronism', in City-States in Classical Antiquity, ed. by Molho and others, pp.
53-69. On the concept of the universitas civium in late medieval corporatist thought see J.
Canning, 'Law, Sovereignty and Corporation Theory, 1300-1450', in The Cambridge History of
Medieval Political Thought c. 350-C. I450, ed. by J. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), pp. 455-76 and P. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas: Expressions du mouvement
communautaire dans Ie moyen-age latin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1970). For an examination of the
centrality of the populus Romanus in the political life of republican Rome, specifically in relation
to their involvement in contiones, see F. Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998).
69 Jones, The Italian City-State, p. 403. On the significance of the 'quod omnes tangit' credo in
early parliamentary and legal thought see A. Monahan, Consent, Coercion and Limit: The
Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), pp. 97-111; A.
Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments: A Comparative Study (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968),
pp. 33-36 and Y. Congar, 'Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet', Revue
historique de droit frant;aise et etranger, 36 (1958), 210-59.
70 See Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 72-73 and 91-94 on parlamenti of the Quattrocento.
71 Tabarelli, Palazzi pubblici, p. 12, and Jones, The Italian City-State, p. 406.
STEPHEN MILNER
conveyed within the Florentine historiographical tradition. Giovanni Villani

in his Cronica traces the ancestry of the Florentine Palazzo Pubblico back
to Roman times and the construction of a civic palace in the city by
Caesar. Built to house the parlamenti of citizens, it was over sixty braccia
high and circular in shape; the rows of seats were occupied according to
nobility and ordered in such a way that each citizen was visible, the
architectural structure reflecting the governmental ethos: 'e in questo si
raunava il popolo a fare parlamento. E di grado in grado sedeano Ie genti:
al di sopra i pili nohili, e poi digradando secondo la dignita delle genti; e

era per modo che tutti quegli del parlamento si vedeva l'uno l'altro in viso.
E udivasi chiaramente per tutti cia che uno parlava'. In a neat etymological
twist Villani adds: 'questo edificio in nostro vulgare avemo chiamato
Parlagio', the very term 'palace' being thereby derived from the act of
speech. 72
Within and outside these 'speech palaces', ringhiere represented the focal
points for specific speech acts either to communal councils or the public at
large, a fact reflected by the evolution of what is periodically referred to as
the ars aringandi. Given that the term shares the same etymological root as
ringhiera, it is directly concerned with the art of addressing gatherings, yet
the lack of any formal codification denies it the status of a separate literary
genre, the term serving as a convenient label for the shared preoccupation
with public address found variously in dictaminal theory, model speech
collections, and rhetorical commentaries. This may in part explain the
ambiguity surrounding its status, yet if the ars aringandi is considered more
as a civic practice than a rhetorical form, the focus on the site of
performance permits a more nuanced reading of the political significance of
alterations in both the personnel and place of speech in the quest for
legitimation. For although the development and modification of the ars
dictaminis tradition in response to the changing exigencies of civic life in the
Italian communes has been extensively studied, little has been made of the
political significance of the alterations in the personnel granted the right to
speak.73
72 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, I, Book I, xxxvi, 56, and Stefani, Cronaca, rubric I9, p. 9.
73 Of the numerous studies of aspects of the ars dictaminis tradition, the following are more
sociological in orientation. See M. Camargo, 'Ars dictaminis', 'ars dictandi' (Turnhout: Brepols,
I99I); G. Constable, 'The Structure of Medieval Society according to the Dictatores of the I2th
Century', in Law, Church and Society: Essays in honour of S. Kuttner, ed. by K. Pennington and
R. Somerville (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, I977), pp. 253-67; H.
Wieruszowski, '''Ars Dictaminis" in the Time of Dante', Medievalia et Humanistica, I (I943),
95-Io8; J. Banker, 'Giovanni da Bonandrea and Civic Values in the Context of the Italian
Rhetorical Tradition', Medievalia et Humanistica, 5 (I974), I53-68, and R. Benson,
'Protohumanism and Narrative Technique in Early I3th century Italian Ars Dictaminis', in
Boccaccio: secoli di vita. Atti del Congresso Internazionale, ed. by M. Cottino-Jones and E. Tuttle
(Universira di California, Los Angeles, I7-I9 ottobre I975) (Ravenna: Longo, I977), pp. 3I-50.
CITING THE RINCHIERA 73
The OrIgIns of rhetorical humanism have long been linked with the
tradition of the early communal Podesta literature,74 the earliest collations
of model orations being contained in a series of tracts which date from the
early Duecento dedicated to the itinerant class of judicial officials who
served throughout the communes of central Italy, most notably the
anonymous Oculus pastoralis and Giovanni da Viterbo's De regimine
rectoris.75 Yet as the complexity of communal governmental institutions
increased, so did the number of civic scenarios in which an ability to speak
well was considered a valuable attribute. 76 Instruction was no longer

directed exclusively towards officials coming into the communes from
outside, but more towards the indigenous citizen body, citizens themselves
assuming increasing control over both the governing functions of the
communes and political speech. The second half of the Duecento and early
Trecento witnessed both the rhetorical commentaries of Brunetto Latini and
Bono Giamboni and the speech collections of Matteo del Libri, Giovanni da
74 H. Gray, 'Renaissance Humanism: the Pursuit of Eloquence', Journal of the History of Ideas,
24 (1963), 495-514; Q. Skinner, 'The Vocabulary of Renaissance Republicanism: a Cultural
longue-duree?', in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. by A. Brown (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 87-110; R. Witt, 'Medieval "Ars Dictaminis" and the Beginnings of
Humanism: a New Construction of the Problem', Renaissance Quarterly, 35 (1982), 1-35 and id.,
'Medieval Italian Culture and the Origins of Humanism', in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations,
Forms and Legacy, ed. by A. J. Rabil, Jr, 3 vols (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1988), I, 29-70.
75 For the texts of the two tracts mentioned see Iohannis Viterbiensis, Liber de Regimine
civitatum, ed. by G. Salvemini in Bibliotheca Iuridica Medii Aevi, 3 vols (Bologna: 1901), III,
215-80 and Oculus Pastoralis pascens officia et continens radium dulcibus pomis suis, ed. by D.
Franceschi in Memorie dell'Accademia delle scienze di Torino, 4th series, II (1966), 3-74. Both
texts are discussed in F. Hertter, Die Podestaliteratur italiens im I2. und I3. ]ahrhundert (Leipzig
and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1901). Volgare sections of the Oculus Pastoralis not contained in the
Latin edition cited above are included in D. Franceschi, 'L'Oculus Pastoralis e la sua fortuna', Atti
deltAccademia delle scienze di Torino, 99 (1965), 205-61. For specific studies of the genre see A.
Sorbelli, 'I teorici del reggimento comunale,' Bullettino dell'Istituto storieo italiano per il medioevo
e archivio Muratoriano, 59 (1944), 31-136; E. Artifoni, 'I podesta professionali e la fondazione
retorica della politic a comunale', Quaderni storici, 63 (1986), 687-719, and id. 'Sull' eloquenza
politica del Duecento Italiano', Quaderni medievali, 35 (1993), 57-78 and id., 'Retorica e
organizzazione del linguaggio politico nel Duecento italiano', in Le forme della propaganda
politica nel Due e nel Trecento: relazioni tenute al convegno internazionale organizzato dal
Comitato di studi storiei di Trieste, dall'Ecole fram;aise de Rome e dal Dipartimento di storia
dell'Universita degli studi di Trieste (Trieste, 2-5 marzo, 1993), ed. by P. Cammarosano (Rome:
Ecole fran~aise de Rome, 1994), pp. 157-82.
76 On the evolution of a public oral culture independent of religious control from the mid-
Duecento onwards see C. Delcorno, 'Professionisti della parola: predicatori, giullari, concionatori',
in Delcorno and others, Tra storia e simbolo: studi dedicati a Ezio Raimondi dai Direttori,
Redattori e dall'Editore di 'Lettere Italiane', Biblioteca di 'Lettere Italiane': Studi e testi 46
(Florence: Olschki, 1994), pp. 1-21. Delcorno draws on P. Zumthor, La lettre et la voix: de la
'litterature' medievale (Paris: Editions du seuil, 1987), pp. 37-59 for his discussion of 'L'espace
oral'; E Artifoni, 'Gli uomini dell'assemblea: l'oratoria civile, i concionatori e i predicatori nella
societa comunale', in E. Pasztor and others, La predicazione dei frati dalla meta del '200 alia fine
del '300. Atti del XXII Convegno internazionale (Assisi, 13-15 ottobre, 1994) (Spoleto: Centro
Italiano di Studi sull' Alto Medioevo, 1995), pp. 143-88.
74 STEPHEN MILNER
Vignano, and Filippo Ceffi.77 Education in addressing the ringhiera was no

longer restricted to a professional class of rhetor/rectors.
In Florence, the last decades of the Trecento in particular marked a
renewed impetus amongst the patriciate for the study of rhetoric.78 After
the defeat of the Ciompi, rhetoric, as both an art of persuasion and a
demonstration of pre-eminence, assumed increased importance not only in
the city's council chambers but also from the external ringhiera as a site for
the articulation of republican values and demonstration of elite hegemony.
For the formal institution of rhetorical training into the syllabus of young
patricians gave them the requisite skills to speak not only in councils, but
also in formal situations when assuming positions as priors, judicial officials
within the expanding territorial state, or as Florentine ambassadors.79 In
this context the rudimentary speeches of the ars aringandi tradition were
stylistically transformed by the humanist imitation of the more classical
oratorical form as practised by Cicero in his own orations, the popular
volgare tradition fusing with the new concerns of the studia humanitatis.80
The politicizing of this aspect of humanism had a direct impact upon the
practice of speech-making from the ringhiera, playing an important role in
securing the identification of elected representatives with the ideology of
republicanism. Consequently, an ability to articulate the terminology of
republican civic ideology from the platform became a prerequisite for the
patrician elite.
77 For Latini's commentary on Cicero's De Inventione see Brunetto Latini, La Rettorica, ed. by
F. Maggini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1968). For Giamboni's commentary on the pseudo-Ciceronian
Rhetorica ad Herennium see Bono Giamboni, Fiore di Rettorica, ed. by G. Speroni (Pavia:
Tipografia Pavese, 1994). For examples of Trecento model speech collections see Matteo dei Libri,
Arringhe and Giovanni da Vignano's Flore de Parlare, above n. 26 and 'Le Dicerie di Filippo
Ceffi', ed. by G. Giannardi, in Studi di lilologia italiana, 6 (1942), 5-63. Although based
extensively on the earlier two collections, Ceffi's collation contains significant variations.
78 See G. Tanturli, 'Cino Rinuccini e la scuola di Santa Maria in Campo', Studi medievali, 17
(1976), 625-74; P. Gehl, A Moral Art: Grammar~ Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence
(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 1-19. On Salutati as representative of
this renewed impetus see R. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: the Life, Works, and Thought of
Coluccio Salutati (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1983). On the rhetorical orientation of
late medieval pedagogy and its continuity into the Quattrocento see G. Alessio, 'Le istituzioni
scolastiche e l'insegnamento', in Aspetti della letteratura latina nel secolo XIII: Atti del primo
convegno internazionale di studi del/'Associazione per il Medioevo e l'Umanesimo latini (Perugia,
3-5 ottobre 1983), ed. by C. Leonardi and G. Orlandi (Perugia: La Nuova Italia, 1986), pp. 3-28.
For a corrective to the tendency to see a radical break between Medieval and Renaissance
pedagogical practices see the review article by R. Black, 'Italian Renaissance Education: Changing
Perspectives and Continuing Controversies', Journal of the History of Ideas, 52 (1991), 101-15.
79 See for example R. Davidsohn, 'Tre orazioni di Lapo da Castiglionchio ambasciatore
fiorentino a Papa Urbano V e alIa curia di Avignone', ASI, 20 (1897), 225-46 and F. Novati,
'Luigi Gianfigliazzi giureconsulto ed orator fiorentino del sec. XIV', ASI, 3 (1889), 440-47. On
Gianfigliazzi's Summa dictaminum retorice ex arte veteri et nova collecta see J. O. Ward,
Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), p. 66.
80 See R. Witt, 'Civic Humanism and the Rebirth of the Ciceronian Oration', Modern Language
Quarterly, 51 (1990), r67-84·
By the time of the communal statutory reform of I4 I 5, the timing, place,

and content of such ritual rhetoric was enshrined in legislation; those made
during the investiture of the Priorate, for example, were to be in Italian and
include citations from the Bible, the poets, and legal sources.81 In large part
the authority of such rhetorical performances was derived from factors
outside the language itself, the association with the ringhiera as republican
icon empowering the speakers.82 The significance of the physical setting
was, however, complemented and strengthened by the content of such
orations, their uniformity and formulaic nature testifying to their
predominantly ideological function and accounting for their relative neglect

by scholars of Florentine rhetorical humanism.83
No clearer indication of the nexus between the ringhiera, the patrician
elite and the new rhetorical humanism exists than the perennial proximity of
successive communal Chancellors to the platform, a positioning which not
only signified their association with the prevailing elite but also their role as
purveyors of popular Florentine Guelf republican ideology.84 For the
chancellor was amongst the most important figures who performed there, his
position as chief executive officer of the republic and custodian of Florence's
own historical memorization sanctioning the authorized version of the
communal written and spoken word. As such they were far from impartial
elements within the exercise of power. 85 However, just as the ringhiera can
81 Statuta Populi et Communis Florentiae, II, Book v, X, 501, 'volgare sermone cum autoritatibus
divinae scripturae, vel poetarum, vel legum, prout libuerit ad commendationem [... ] offiti
dominorum priorum et vexilliferi iustitiae et totius status popularis et guelfi'. These legislative
provisions are outlined in Guidi, Ii governo della citta-repubblica, II, 153-94. The 14 I 5 statutes
also required one of the priors to make a protestatio de iustitia fifteen days after investiture in
which he promised to observe the statutes and administer his office justly, followed by a reply by
either the Capitano or Podesta, or both, promising impartiality and equality in their execution of
the law. See Emilio Santini, Firenze e i suoi 'oratori' nel Quattrocento (Milan: Remo Sand ron,
1922), pp. 92-101.
82 See P. Bourdieu, 'The Social Conditions for the Effectiveness of Ritual Discourse', in id.,
Language and Symbolic Power, pp. 1°7-16.
83 On the ideological dimension of such formulaic speech acts see Political Language and
Oratory in Traditional Society, ed. by M. Bloch (London: Academic Press, 1975), pp. 1-28 and D.
Parkin, 'Political Language', Annual Review of Anthropology, 13 (1984), 345-65.
84 For example, when Florence took Tirli in September 1373 the great bell was rung to call a
parlamento: 'E signiori Priori, col loro Collegio, si vennono a sedere in sulla aringhiera, e ser
Nicolo di Ser Ventura Monachi, cancelliere di nostri Signiori, e lesse la lettera mandata a' nostri
signiori, di Vettoria'. See Diario d'Anonimo, p. 301. See also the account in Alle bocche, p. 54: 'e
in su Ia ringhiera ser Choluccio chanceliere Iesse Ie sopranominate Iettere'.
85 On the problematics of the relation of chancellors, and other humanists, to successive elites
within Florence see the comments of A. Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 27, n. 66. Field's assumption of the Gramscian
differentiation between organic and traditional intellectuals can be extended to consider Gramsci's
notion of hegemony, and the applicability of the concept to the role played by rhetorical
humanism in securing the political pre-eminence and legitimacy of successive groupings within
Florence. See J. V. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the
Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 130-64 and L. Gruppi, Ii concetto di
egemonia in Gramsci (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1972).
STEPHEN MILNER
be read as both a site of oppression and an ideograph of republican liberty,

so the figure of the Chancellor can also be read as a guardian of the
normative vocabulary of civic republicanism and as an apologist of patrician
domination.86
The possibility of such readings is borne out by the criticisms of the early
Quattrocento Florentine preacher Giovanni Dominici speaking from the only
other legitimate platform of public address, the pulpit. He was particularly
scathing in his attack on the politicians that held forth from the ringhiera,
charging them with hypocrisy and criticizing them for preying on the
masses' ignorance to secure their own pre-eminence: 'Quanti ci a di questi

maladetti ypocriti, bello pruova i1 comune quando sotto colore di bene si
consiglia male. Aratti dato Iddio la loquenza sapere bene dire in ringhiera,
adornare i1 parlare, et chola dove esso te l'a data perche tu guadagni chon
essa in a operarla in bene et tu la operi in inganare il papolo, il quale,
ignorante rende il consentimento. Questo e il consiglio dei malvagi farisei'. 87
Later in the same sermon Dominici rails against the sin of hypocrisy: '0
quanti ingannati da questo maladetta vizio. Va in ringhiera il falso ypocrito,
chon una dalceza di zelo del buona stato della citta, et mosteratti lucciole
per lanterne, et ingannano i semplici'. 88 Clearly in Dominici's eyes, the
occupation of the platform and the use of the rhetoric of civic republicanism
were political acts by the elite through which they clothed their own self-
interested agendas in the rhetoric of consensus and the common good.
In this guise, the external ringhiera became the stage where the visual and
verbal imagination of the republican ethos could become an instrument of
oligarchic power. Once the site of such rhetorical performance was won, it
was a small step to deploying such a privileged position to stigmatize one's
opponents, maintain social inequality, and use the terminology of civic
republicanism as a political tool to displace and exclude others from
86 R. E. Roberts and R. Marsh Kloss, Social Movements: Between the Balcony and the Barricade
(St Louis: C. V. Mosby, 2nd edn, 1979), p. I: 'The balcony is a symbol of reaction, conservatism
and the status quo. It may be the privileged position of the smug elites in the old regime who do
not seem to understand what may be going on down on the streets or in the mountains. It may
also symbolize the well-known ivory tower where detached scholars are supposed to reside -
usually next to the balcony'. See also the comments of A. Petrucci, 'Potere, spazi urbani, scritture
esposte: proposte ed esempi', in Culture et ideologie dans la genese de L'etat moderne. Actes de la
table ronde organisee par le Centre national de la recherche scientifique et ['Ecole franfaise de
Rome (Rome, 15-17 octobre 1984) (Rome: Ecole fran~aise de Rome, 1985), pp. 86-87 ..
87 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1301, Predica 30, fol. 88T• Thanks are due to Nirit Ben-
Aryeh Debby for this reference. See her PhD dissertation, 'Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) and
Bernardo da Siena (1380-1444): Preaching in Renaissance Florence', Jerusalem 1998.
88 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 1301, Predica 30, fol. 91v. A similar critique of self-
interested arengatores is made by Angelo da Porta Sole in his early Trecento sermon on John 11.
47 where he compares communal orators to the pharisees who plotted to kill Jesus to protect their
own power: 'Et hoc totum faciunt propter amorem privatum quem habent ad consanguineos et ad
amicos et propter hodium quod habent ad suos vicinos'. See Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, Conventi religiosi soppressi, MS B 8 1637, fol. 122v. Cited in Delcorno, 'Professionisti
della parola', p. 20.
CITING THE RINCHIERA 77
government. 89 Indeed, whilst the internal ringhiera became the definitive site
of elite dialogue with the defeat of the Ciompi, the external one became the
site for the elite's morally ambiguous (re)presentation of community to the
wider public.90 The same ambiguity that characterizes the figure of the
Chancellor is found in relation to republican rhetoric, for it can be read as a
productive attempt to create community within a socially fragmented civic
body and/or as a discourse of exclusivity.
Given this ambivalence, the ringhiera became the focal point for
Florentines' anxieties concerning the moral probity of their governmental

officials and the veracity of their rhetoric. The ability to distinguish the
honest from the corrupt official and the virtuous from the dissembling
orator, was, for the vast majority, predicated solely upon what they could
perceive, their perception necessarily conditioned by what was represented
to them. Within these parameters the Florentines' incredulity and distrust
figure prominently, the difficulty in making such judgements being
exacerbated by the space that existed between the piazza and the palace.
Such scepticism is amply summed up by Guicciardini's description in his
Ricordi of the fog he periodically saw descend on the piazza obscuring the
citizens' perception of government: 'Spesso tra '1 palazzo e la piazza e una
nebbia sl folta 0 uno muro SI grosso che, non vi penetrando l'occhio degli
uomini, tanto sa el popolo di quello che fa chi governa 0 della ragione
perche 10 fa, quanto delle cose ehe fanno in India. E perC>si empie
facilmente el mondo di opinione erronee e vane' .91
READING THE RINCHIERA
Whether or not the ringhiera had been occupied, the values articulated
within civic republican rhetoric were resistant to wholesale appropriation
and still enjoyed political instrumentality. To characterize civic republican
rhetoric as an instrument of the elite is to underestimate the extent to which
the terms of that rhetoric exercized a brake upon the actions of its
articulators and itself resisted appropriation, just as the ringhiera as place
offered resistance to those seeking its occupation. For civic republican
rhetoric was not simply an ideology deployed in the interests of the elite to
subordinate the masses, it was also the body of values through which
individuals made sense of their interaction with their social world, a form of
social cognition embedded in discursive practices. What is clear, is that the
89 For a contemporary critique of this aspect of modern-day American republicanism see E.

Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1988).
90 Although the political base of the Florentine government broadened in the immediate
aftermath of the Ciompi revolt, its growth in size was accompanied by its. social restriction. See D.
Herlihy, 'The Rulers of Florence, 1282-153°', in City-States in Classical Antiquity, ed. by Molho
and others, pp. 197-22I.
91 Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi (Milan: Biblioteca Rizzoli, 1977), serie C, 141, pp. 153-54.
STEPHEN MILNER
civic republican ideology as embodied in spaces, ritual practices and rhetoric

continued to play a significant part in conditioning elite behaviour
throughout the republican period, ensuring 'benevolent paternalism'
remained plausibly benevolent. In this context the piazza remained a
constant reminder of the possibility of resistance to overbearing oligarchy
and testament to the public character of Florentine republicanism, as the
much cited remark of Cavalcanti suggests: 'Colui che tiene la piazza, sempre
e vincente della citta'.92
The danger in focusing exclusively on the representational reading of

civic republican rhetoric to the exclusion of its productive dimension is that
such an approach denies the majority of Florentines any political agency
and presents them as essentially passive, or at best subjects of elite
manipulation.93 In this case, it could be argued, rituals like those
performed on the ringhiera fulfilled a consolatory role as 'the social form
in which human beings seek to deal with denial as active agents, rather
than as passive victims' .94 The difficulty for contemporaries, as for
modern-day scholars, lay in deciding whether the utopian imaginings of the
patria envisaged and described upon the ringhiera were successfully
engendering a sense of belonging and unity or were simulations created to
mask the real priorities of those in power whose deliberations were hidden
from view.
This problem is compounded by the fact that both readings of ideology
deal with illusion, the difference lying in the ends to which such illusion is
directed. Whilst ideology understood as false consciousness seeks to
maintain a particular social hierarchy through what Florentines might have
termed dissimulation, ideology understood as socially shared beliefs enacted
through symbolism, rituals, and discursive practices seeks to encourage good
citizenship through imitation, presenting a utopian vision of social harmony
92 I disagree with Stella's characterization of the piazza as a passive place after the Ciompi
revolt. See A. Stella, La revolte des Ciompi: Les hommes, les lieux, Ie travail (Paris: Editions de
l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1993), p. 58: 'Face au Palais, la Place a retrouve Ie
role ordinaire qu'elle convient d'avoir: un role passif'. On the continuity of the piazza's tradition
as site of resistance see La Piazza del popolo: rappresentazione della citta operaia in Italia, ed. by
N. Pasero and A. Tinteri (Rome: Melteni, 1998). The quotation is from Giovanni Cavalcanti,
Istorie {iorentine, ed. by G. Di Pino (Milan: Aldo Martello, 1944), p. 306.
93 On the tendency to read Quattrocento political struggle solely in terms of conflict within the
elite and the concomitant presentation of the rest of the population as essentially passive see the
critique of S. Cohn, Jr, 'Rivolte popolari e c1assi sociali in Toscana nel Rinascimento', Studi
storici, 20 (1979), 447-58 and J. Najemy, 'The Dialogue of Power in Florentine Politics', in City-
States in Classical Antiquity, ed. by Molho and others, pp. 269-88.
94 Sennett, Flesh and Stone, p. 80. On the fiction that public space acts as a 'communal vessel
for shared activity' see R. Moore, 'Open and Shuf, New Statesman and Society, 12 October
I990, p. 27·
and unity in an act which admitted to the fractured reality of civic life.95 To
characterize political struggle within Florence as class based, or in Najemy's
terms as a 'dialogue of power' between the popolo and the elite, is to accept
the representational reading of ideology alone, a reading which creates a
space between ideology and practice and presents the elite as knowing
manipulators rather than genuine believers in the values they articulated.96
Yet understood in the second sense, ideology is practice, embedded within
rhetorical and spatial discourses and dependent upon rhetoric for its
effective articulation. When the rhetoricity of both senses of ideology is

recognized, the moral ambivalence within rhetoric regarding its stated ends
as a means of pursuing either the honestum or the utile is seen to find its
correlation in the alternative readings of ideology itself.
To focus exclusively on one reading alone ignores the vital importance of
examining the dynamic through which the potentiality of both readings was
constantly being negotiated in a political culture where the moral ambiguity
of both rhetoric and place was constant. It is precisely this negotiation
between these two potentialities which characterizes political struggle itself
and lies at the heart of Foucault's examination of the relation of the
repressive to the enabling dimensions of power: the tension bet,veen policing
and pastorship.97 In the Florentine case, such a tension is implicit within the
verb that describes the Signori's function: signoreggiare, for within the term
lie the dual senses of seeing over and overseeing the people, both possible
from the ringhiera; the one seemingly authoritarian the other more
paternalistic.
This ambiguity is amply demonstrated by the raised platform before the
Palazzo. As a contested place and icon of civic republicanism it stood at the
problematic intersection of communication, knowledge, and power, its
liminality precluding a stable and exclusive reading of its political
significance. Consequently it was subject, then as now, to divergent
interpretations depending upon the subject position and political orientation
of the reader. Whilst Trachtenberg, as noted above, reads the ringhiera as a
95 See T. van Dijk, Ideology: a Multidisciplinary Approach (London: Sage Publications, 1998),
pp. 15-27. The second understanding of ideology underpins two definitions of ideology suggested
by T. Eagleton, Ideology (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 1-2: "the production of meanings, signs and
values in social life' and "the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world'.
On the unifying function of the city as imagined space see 'Dell'utopia, 0 della citta come miglior
forma di consenso', in La citta come forma simbolica: studi sui teoria dell' architettura nel
rinascimento, ed. by P. Marconi (Rome: Bulzoni, 1973), pp. 387-91; A. Medam, 'Vne ville
representee', in Conscience de la Ville (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1976), pp. 57-64 and B.
Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn
(London: Verso, 1991).
96 See Najemy, 'The Dialogue of Power', especially pp. 278-81.
97 See M. Foucault, 'Politics and Reason', in id., Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and
Other Writings, I977-I984, ed. by L. Kritzman (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 57-85 and
'Governmentality', in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. by G. Burchell, C.
Gordon, and P. Millar (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 87-104.
80 STEPHEN MILNER
platform for the staging of power by a ruling elite eager to 'demobilize'

resistance, Rubinstein emphasizes its unifying role as symbol of consensus.98
An almost identical binary reading of the ringhiera's ethical status is found
applied to the Loggia della Signoria constructed in Florence as a
complement to the older platform subsequent to the defeat of the Ciompi.99
Yet just as the repressive reading ignores the efficacy of republican ideology
in conditioning political behaviour, the consensus vision underplays the
manner in which the rhetoric of civic republicanism was indeed open to
appropria tion.
In recognizing the rhetoricity of both primary and secondary readings of
the rhetoric and architecture of civic republicanism, the contingency of
contemporary and present day interpretations becomes apparent, for the
moral ambivalence of ideology is a direct consequence of the moral
ambivalence of both rhetoric and place. The legitimacy of those in power in
Trecento Florence and the legitimacy of modern-day interpretations of civic
republicanism both depend upon the assumption of the metaphorical and, in
relation to the ringhiera, literal moral high-ground. Consequently, civic
republican rhetoric from Baron onwards has been read as either 'benevolent
paternalism' or elite propaganda, the humanists themselves characterized as
either virtuous patriots or ideological mercenaries.loo What these readings
98 Trachtenberg, 'Trecento Urbanism as Ideological Praxis', in Dominion of the Eye, pp. 267-7I
and above n. 3.
99 Rubinstein, The Palazzo, pp. 86-87, interprets the addition as further evidence of the
'transformation of the political climate' towards a more open and consensus based government,
despite recalling Matteo Villani's earlier observations concerning resistance to the construction of
a loggia on the grounds that it was associated with more despotic regimes in the popular
imagination: 'che loggia si convenia a tiranno e non a popolo'. Matteo Villani, Cronica, ed. by G.
Porta, 2 vols (Parma: Ugo Guanda, I995), II, Book VII, xli, 62. Spilner, '''Ut Civitas Amplietur"',
II, 4I7-I9, suggests such views may well have derived from Matteo Visconti's addition of the
Loggia degli Orsi to the reconstructed Broletto Nuovo in Milan in I3I6, adding: 'such
associations might well explain why the loggia project was held in abeyance for so long'. The
loggia could equally well be read as an indicator of the increasingly oligarchic tendencies of the
Signoria especially when its architectural magnificence is contrasted with the austere fa<;;ade of the
Palazzo Pubblico, by then itself renamed Palazzo della Signoria.
100 On Baron's influential conceptualization of the patriotism and republican zeal of Florentine
humanists in the face of Visconti aggression see H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian
Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, I95 5). For a broader analysis of civic humanism's impact
on readings of the Renaissance see A. J. Rabil, Jr, 'The Significance of "Civic Humanism" in the
Interpretation of the Italian Renaissance', in id., Renaissance Humanism, I, I4I-74. For a
description of civic humanism as 'benevolent paternalism' see Najemy, Corporatism and
Consensus, pp. 307-IO. For less charitable readings of the rhetoric of civic republicanism as a
cover for an elitist and socially repressive regime see P. Herder, 'Politik und Rhetorik in Florenz
am Vorabend der Renaissance: Die ideologische Rechtfertigung der Florentiner Aussenpolitik
durch Coluccio Salutati', Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, 47 (I965), I4I-220, J. Seigel, 'Civic
Humanism or Ciceronian Rhetoric?', Past and Present, 34 (I966), 3-48, and more recently R.
Fubini, 'From Social to Political Representation in Renaissance Florence', in City-States in
Classical Antiquity, ed. by Molho and others, pp. 225-39. For a review of the fortuna of Baron's
argument see J. Hankins, 'The "Baron Thesis" after Forty Years and some Recent Studies of
Leonardo Bruni', Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (I995), 309-38.
share is a desire to identify the moral integrity, or otherwise, of successive

articulators of civic republican rhetoric. In admitting to the impossibility of
securing an exclusive and definitive reading, however, attention is directed to
the processes through which political communities establish the legitimacy of
their political orders, the means whereby scholars establish the authority of
their secondary readings, and the contingency of both.101
EPILOGUE
In conclusion, it is worth briefly considering the analysis of the most

perceptive commentator on the dynamic between rhetoric, representation
and space, the Florentine Secretary Machiavelli. Considered the most
infamous advocate of dissembling rhetoric, it was in De principatibus that
he counselled new princes on the centrality of managing their self-
representations to the end of securing their hold on power. That
responsibility for their reputations lay in their own hands was in large part
due to the possibility of exploiting the space between the piazza and the
palace. In terms which engage directly with the notion of touch as contained
in the 'quod omnes tangit' principle, Machiavelli noted: 'E gli uomini, in
universali, iudicano pili alIi occhi che alle mani; perche tocca a vedere ad
ognuno, a sentire a pochi. Ognuno vede quello che tu pari, pochi sentono
quello che tu se'; e queHi pochi non ardiscono opporsi aHa opinione di molti
che abbino la maesta dello stato che Ii difenda' .102 For Machiavelli 'touch'
was only possible within the palace, understood as those in proximity to
power. The credulous majority, on the other hand, were subject, and
subjected, to the fictive imaginings paraded before their eyes, seduced by the
erroneous belief that visibility ensured trustworthiness. In advising the
exploitation of the spatial and symbolic distance between ruler and ruled,
Machiavelli demonstrated how a prince could condition the people's
perceptions by controlling what they were shown. Admitting to the
importance of the people in maintaining rule, Machiavelli noted that the
new prince's surest defence lay in keeping his reputation in the 'eyes' of the
people; hence his dismissal of the trite proverb 'chi fonda in suI popolo,
fonda in suI fango' .103 Significantly, the dangers of failing to secure the
people's benevolence are illustrated in the longest chapter of the work,
chapter XIX, on the need to avoid contempt and hatred.104 For Machiavelli
in If principe, the majesty of state enabled the ritual and rhetorical
manipulation of perception through the exploitation of the dramaturgy of
101 See s.
J. Milner, 'Partial Readings: Addressing a Renaissance Archive', History of the Human
Sciences,12 (1999), 89-105.
102 Niccolo Machiavelli, II Principe, in Tutte Ie opere, Chapter XVIII, p. 284.
103 Machiavelli, II Principe, Chapter IX, p. 272.
104 Machiavelli, II Principe, Chapter XIX, pp. 284-89, especially p. 285: 'Et uno de' pili potenti
remedii che abbi uno principe contra alle coniure, e non essere odiato dallo universale: perche
sempre chi coniura crede, can la morte del principe, satisfare al populo'.
STEPHEN MILNER
power. However, in a timely reminder of the continued instrumentality of

republican civic ideology, even Machiavelli's virtuoso prince had to
recognize the durability of the obstacle presented in former republics by the
call to ancient liberta.105
Bristol STEPHEN J. MILNER

105 Machiavelli, Il Principe, Chapter v, pp. 263-64: 'E chi diviene patrone di una citta consueta a
vivere libera, e non la disfaccia, aspetti di essere disfatto da quella; perche sempre ha per refugio,
nella rebellione, e1 nome della liberta e gli ordini antichi suoi; Ii quali ne per la lunghezza de'
tempi ne per benefizii mai si dimenticano'.
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CITING THE RINCHIERA: THE POLITICS OF PLACE

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CITING THE RINCHIERA: THE POLITICS OF PLACE AND

The intention of this article is to study the significance of the raised

context of continued political struggle within the nascent popular commune

Rubinstein cites its construction as evidence of the new governmental spirit

THE PALAZZO AND THE COMMUNAL SPHERE

7 G. M. Tabarelli, Palazzi pubblici d'Italia: nascita e trasformazione del Palazzo Pubblico in

consolidation of an official communal sphere.10 This is most clearly

spatial and symbolic erasure of the Ghibelline stronghold, accompanied by

graphically demonstrated by the almost vitriolic comments of the

By characterizing the Ciompi as unclean, the author stigmatizes them as

attest (of Guelfs, Ghibellines, elected officials, exiles, Magnate households,

publicly owned, the piazza being referred to as the 'plateum comunis

THE RINGHIERA AS ICON

Vignano in his Flore de Parlare, subtitled Somma d'arengare, devotes a

a specific position, the verb aringare having a more general sense of

members of the Capitano di Guardia's company caught gambling within ten

Acting as a filter, it served a social renewal function by symbolically

entertainment and hospitality.46 That such a change in both status and

CONTESTING THE RINCHIERA

In addition to providing a narrative of events, Florentine chronicles are also

Yet although pre-representational narratives, they are

constituencies excluded from the ranks of the popular guild community.

52 Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, III, Book XIII, iii, 297-98.

in particular, illustrates the strategic importance of occupying the seat of

con animo e intenzione di tenersi valentemente e innanzi morirvi che

57 Acciaiuoli, Cronaca, p. 25.

priori, e ciascheduno giuro il suo uficio, i signori, e confalonieri, e dodici, e

63 Cronica prima, pp. 79-80, and Aggiunte anonime, pp. 38-39.

'traditi da' loro medesimi'. 64 In seeking to secure their new-found pre-

guilds to secure official sanction for their respective reforms through

traditional civic procedures in calling on the mob, the OpposItIon objecting

could be heard and officially tolerated. Ironically, therefore, it was within

precluding the exercise of sovereignty by the so-called universitas civium.68

THE RINGHIERA AND RHETORIC

The association of speech with communal government was a key component

conveyed within the Florentine historiographical tradition. Giovanni Villani

al di sopra i pili nohili, e poi digradando secondo la dignita delle genti; e

well was considered a valuable attribute. 76 Instruction was no longer

Vignano, and Filippo Ceffi.77 Education in addressing the ringhiera was no

By the time of the communal statutory reform of I4 I 5, the timing, place,

predominantly ideological function and accounting for their relative neglect

be read as both a site of oppression and an ideograph of republican liberty,

masses' ignorance to secure their own pre-eminence: 'Quanti ci a di questi

Florentines' anxieties concerning the moral probity of their governmental

READING THE RINCHIERA

89 For a contemporary critique of this aspect of modern-day American republicanism see E.

civic republican ideology as embodied in spaces, ritual practices and rhetoric

The danger in focusing exclusively on the representational reading of

effective articulation. When the rhetoricity of both senses of ideology is

platform for the staging of power by a ruling elite eager to 'demobilize'

share is a desire to identify the moral integrity, or otherwise, of successive