10 - ‘Perfect Justice Weighs Everything on a Balanced Scale’: Italian Friars on Equity, the Common Good, and the Commune c. 1270–c. 1310

Summary

Abstract

The instability of Italian politics in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries induced several mendicant writers, beginning with Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome, to seek remedies in ancient philosophy. They turned to Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca, to address the systemic problems that disordered life and fomented injustice in the Italian communes. Two interlinked bundles of concepts, relating to equity, on the one hand, and to comune (It.: the common good, common goods, or the commune), on the other, were especially apt for thinking about how to manage relationships between individuals and groups. Although these ideas seem distant from the taxonomy and prescriptions of the De XII abusiuis saeculi, they shared the notion that justice requires a kind of balance in the body politic.

Keywords: Italy, communes, justice, disorder, equity, common good.

Occupying the lowest of the four registers of Giotto di Bondone's fresco panels adorning the walls of the nave of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, panels representing the seven virtues, on the south wall, face off against an equal number of opposing vices, on the north. In distinct contrast with the bright polychrome images above them which recount the Christian salvation story of the lives of Mary and Christ, the grisaille architectonic renderings of the virtues and vices not only make these appear to belong to the very structure of the building, but also serve, along with their accompanying inscriptions, to highlight their moralizing and didactic function. The seven virtues, moving in order from west to east, are the civic virtues Prudentia, Fortitudo, Temperantia, and Iustitia, followed by the theological virtues Fides, Karitas, and Spes. Opposing them, in the same order, are Stultitia, Inconstantia, Ira, Iniustitia, Infidelitas, Invidia, and Desperatio. Several things are worth noting about these two groups and the way they are arranged. First of all, the vices, with the exception of anger and envy, are not the canonical ‘deadly’ sins (the others being pride, greed, sloth, lust, and gluttony), but represent rather the opposite of the virtues with which they are paired. Secondly, the virtues are not arranged in the traditional order of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, and faith, hope, and charity. And thirdly, and most importantly for our purpose, justice's non-canonical position is no mistake.