Consensus and Dissent in Participation: The Protocols of the Communal Bodies of San Gimignano (1232–1240)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Florian Hartmann
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522218480

Almost unnoticed by research, there is a unique set of sources from the Tuscan city of San Gimignano, which dates from the first half of the Duecento and which provides unique insights into the arguments of the citizens, into parties and personal voting behavior, into the verbalization of opinions and strategies of political Consensus building and into forms of their documentation in city protocols. The aim of the project is to use these documents to combine research on the verbalization and documentation of political participation with research on the political handling of consensus and dissent in the quarrelsome times of the up-and-coming popolo. Especially given the rise of popolo, one goal is to understand how political changes and tensions are reflected in the language. When the theoretical Podestà literature presents sample speeches specifically for a speech situation in which a newly arriving Podestà appears in front of a divided society, it becomes clear how important it was for contemporaries to deal with the dissent appropriately in terms of language. The comparison between the theoretical explanations of the Podestà literature and the protocols from San Gimignano, which are the focus here, makes it possible to close a long-lamented gap in research on the relationship between theory and practice of public rhetoric. The objective of the second part of the project is closely related to this. Since the minutes for each question note the voting behavior in a personalized way, the rise of the popolo becomes comprehensible on the basis of the analysis of the group-specific voting behavior of the council members. Over several years, the minutes show how individual members voted, who established themselves as spokesman, who made the most contributions and to what extent individual members always joined the same people, i.e. stable party affiliations become visible, and to what extent people tend to be more volatile in their behavior. It is remarkable how openly the protocols record dissent and thus make it visible. This seems to contradict the prevailing idea in research that a facade of consensus has been maintained in communal public communications. The aim of the second part of the project is therefore to reassess the value of consensus and the recognition of dissent in the public discourse of the city communes and to ask in what form dissent, which could not be denied in the quarrelsome city communes anyway, was accepted and how dissent was controlled by regulated procedures. On a second scientific-political level, the project is intended to intensify research cooperation between Italy and Germany, particularly in the field of lively research on the city communes, for which the German Historical Institute has promised support.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants