Output details

City and Community in Norman Italy

Part of chapter 2 had material in common with Oldfield's RAE 2008 output ‘Urban Government in Southern Italy (c.1085-c.1127)', English Historical Review 122 (2007), 579-608. It underwent revision which enabled it to fit with the wider parameters of the monograph, to introduce some additional charter and hagiographic material, and to allow for the findings to be further contextualised through the introduction of comparative literature from northern and central Italy.

We put forward this monograph for double-weighting on the grounds that it generates a particularly extensive and complex thesis. It offers the first comprehensive analysis of urban communities in Southern Italy and Sicily during the period of Norman domination, and proposes that they enjoyed greater autonomy than traditionally believed. It thus contributes to the realignment of the relationship between North and South Italy, arguing for greater parallels between the communes of the North and the urban communities of the South in the twelfth century than historians have hitherto acknowledged.