Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map of Romagna and the Marche in the later Middle Ages
- 1 The Papal State and Romagna in the thirteenth century
- 2 Rimini and the rise of the Malatesta
- 3 From commune to papal vicariate
- 4 Galeotto Malatesta, ‘ecclesie pugil’
- 5 The prime of Malatesta rule: Carlo Malatesta
- 6 The pontificate of Martin V
- 7 Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, ‘fex Italiae’
- 8 The papal reconquest
- 9 The government of the Malatesta: I. The papal vicariate
- 10 The government of the Malatesta: II. The signoria
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Papal State and Romagna in the thirteenth century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Map of Romagna and the Marche in the later Middle Ages
- 1 The Papal State and Romagna in the thirteenth century
- 2 Rimini and the rise of the Malatesta
- 3 From commune to papal vicariate
- 4 Galeotto Malatesta, ‘ecclesie pugil’
- 5 The prime of Malatesta rule: Carlo Malatesta
- 6 The pontificate of Martin V
- 7 Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, ‘fex Italiae’
- 8 The papal reconquest
- 9 The government of the Malatesta: I. The papal vicariate
- 10 The government of the Malatesta: II. The signoria
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Malatesta of Rimini possess a double history. They belong to a class of princes who appear in Italian politics during the later Middle Ages endowed with a composite character: as despots, signori, ruling urban communes, and as temporal subjects of the pope. At every stage of their history, from their rise in the later thirteenth century to their fall in the early sixteenth, they illustrate larger changes occurring in two forms of political life peculiarly Italian: city state and Papal State. And this especially in their rise. For both institutions, the establishment of despotism marked a critical turning-point.
For the popes the power of despots represented a new phase to an old problem: of making good their claim to rule and found a state in Central Italy. State-building, certainly, was not in 1300 a specially papal problem, but nowhere was it so intractable as in the patrimonium S. Petri. The area covered by that date was nominally large. It extended, in theory, from Bologna (or Ferrara) in the north to Terracina in the south, comprising principally the regions of Romagna and the March of Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, the ‘Tuscan’ March or Patrimony, and the Roman Campagna and Marittima. But in none of these provinces was papal authority secure or uncontested, as self-interested contemporaries were quick to point out. To the Frenchman Pierre Dubois, writing at the turn of the century, it was a matter of general scandal and called for a drastic remedy: alienation or enfeoffment to a secular (French) prince.
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- The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State , pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1974