Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326
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A01=Gregory Roberts
Author_Gregory Roberts
Category=N
Category=NHD
communal statutes Italy
criminal justice
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
inquisition
judicial archives research
medieval governance
medieval Italian policing practices
police
public officials
social control mechanisms
urban law enforcement
violence and justice history
Product details
- ISBN 9781041184324
- Weight: 610g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Medieval states are widely assumed to have lacked police forces. Yet in the Italian city-republics, soldiers patrolled the streets daily in search of lawbreakers. 'Police Power in the Italian Communes, 1228-1326' is the first book to examine the emergence of urban policing in medieval Italy and its impact on city life. Focusing on Bologna in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Gregory Roberts shows how police forces gave teeth to the communes' many statutes through a range of patrol activities. Whether seeking outlaws in the countryside or nighttime serenaders in the streets, urban police forces pursued lawbreakers energetically and effectively. They charged hundreds of individuals each year with arms-bearing, gambling, and curfew violations, convicting many of them in the process. Roberts draws on a trove of unpublished evidence from judicial archives, rich with witness testimony, to paint a vivid picture of policing in daily life and the capacity of urban governments to coerce. Breaking new ground in the study of violence, justice, and state formation in the Middle Ages, Police Power in the Italian Communes sheds fresh light on the question of how ostensibly modern institutions emerge from premodern social orders.
Gregory Roberts is a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. State Department and previously served as a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2013 and was a 2010-2011 Fulbright scholar in Italy.
