sehepunkte 26 (2026), Nr. 7/8

Giovanni Ziggiotto: Une expérience communale

In this substantial book, Giovanni Ziggiotto studies the development of the political institutions of the Mediterranean port city of Marseille between 1100 and 1400. The main aim of the book is to determine to what extent the political community of that time can be described as a 'commune' and how it came into being.

Ziggiotto's approach is innovative because he draws primarily on Italian historiography - as the political history of Marseille is usually studied from the local context (Provence). Given that the port city had extensive contacts with cities on the Italian peninsula in general, and Genoa in particular, this perspective is well justified, as economic ties between the cities of the Mediterranean were intense. Consequently, it is to be expected that political ideas also travelled alongside the constant flow of goods and people arriving in Marseille from the cities further to the east. Ziggiotto therefore combines an excellent knowledge of Italian historiography with a thorough analysis of, for example, Genoese sources, leading him to conclude that Italian political influence on the development of Marseille's political institutions was far greater than had previously been assumed.

It is also enlightening to see how Ziggiotto writes a social history of politics. Rather than merely a history of the institutions that governed Marseille, this book has become a study of the urban elite and its political language during a lesser-known period in the history of this port town. An interesting analysis of the social and economic background of the city's administrators from this period, combined with archaeological data and a study of the political discourse of those in power, leads Ziggiotto to conclude that Marseille was an oligarchically governed city which, admittedly, granted a great deal of power to certain individuals. Nevertheless, there were countless frictions within the administration and factional strife was real. The reader is also provided with a wealth of new information on numerous other aspects: how the city's militias operated, the economic background of prominent merchants (such as Raolin d'Aix) and the relationship between this group and a growing section of the population that no longer accepted being excluded from power. Consequently, this book is an indispensable resource for any researcher wishing to explore the history of this Provençal city.

However, the strong focus on Italian historiography in this book means that research into other 'communes' in the High Middle Ages has received too little attention. Ziggiotto is, in fact, guided primarily by what Chris Wickham and Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur have written on this subject. For example, he adopts Wickham's definition of exactly what a commune is as a guiding principle for the entire book - unfortunately the reader must wait until page 161 (and even then in a footnote) to learn what Wickham considers to be the 'ideal type' of a commune. Ideas and findings of scholars studying communes in other regions in medieval Europe almost lack completely. Indeed, every researcher into the communes in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries invariably refers to Alain Saint-Denis's pioneering work on Laon, or to Gerhard Oexle's numerous publications on the 'conjuratio' established by citizens from many cities within the Holy Roman Empire. None of these studies are cited by Ziggiotto in this book, skillful as he is at situating the history of Marseille within the context of Italian historiography. It is true that the influence of the communes of northern France or southern Germany was less significant than that of the Italian cities on political developments in Marseille, but that does not mean that comparative research across the national borders of the time is unimportant. Where are the works by Philippe Depreux, Hans-Werner Goetz and Jörg Peltzer on similar phenomena?

Reading the publications of these researchers would have enabled Ziggiotto to compare his own findings with those of others and, consequently, to adopt a less teleological approach. Indeed, Ziggiotto consistently mirrors his results against the Italian communal model, which he considers as an almost logical end point of the political evolutions taking place in Marseille. The large number of publications on communes in France and the Holy Roman Empire might have led the author to realise that the Italian 'model' was not inevitable and that there was considerable variation on the 'model' of the commune in twelfth-century Europe - the word 'model' is therefore used frequently in this book, but the question is whether the people of Marseille had a 'model' in mind when they adapted their institutions to the needs of the time.

By linking the debate to Italian historiography, Ziggiotto loses sight of the broader European picture. That is a pity, but of course no reason not to read this book, as any researcher into the political history of cities will find valuable insights within its pages.