1 - The Sources

Summary

The campanile still casts its shadow over the study of medieval Italy. For the towns and their citizens remain the focus of attention; less interest is displayed in the larger economic and political unit that comprised both the city and its surrounding countryside. Predominantly rural areas such as Sicily and southern Italy have suffered especially. The influence of the campanile extends further: there are signs of what the Italians call campanilismo, an aggressive species of parochialism. The local rivalries of the Middle Ages have been succeeded by manifestations of local pride; there have, in consequence, been few attempts to examine the economic relations between individual regions of Italy. As far as a composite picture of medieval Italy is available, it is weighted towards northern Italy and is made of units that fit together rather ill. It is true that the commercial centres of the north, such as Genoa, Pisa and Venice, have been examined in the light of their overseas interests, but the more distant and ‘heroic’ endeavours of the mercantile cities have received most attention. Not Sicily and southern Italy but Syria and Constantinople have been favoured in studies of north Italian trade. In part the explanation for this failure to consider Italy as a whole lies not in campanilismo but in considered attitudes to medieval Italian history. It might, for instance, be argued that Italy was no more an economic unity in the twelfth century than it was a political unity. Thus the study of north–south trade within Italy cannot claim any necessary priority over the study of north Italian trade with Syria or the Greek empire.