Communal justice and extra-judicial practices in non-legal sources of 14th-century Florence

Abstract

The article is based on the modern concept of judicial pluralism in Italian communes, namely in Florence of the late Middle Ages, substantiated in the works of the modern Italian historian Andrea Zorzi. On theground of non-legal sources such as family books, moral and ethical treatises of the 13th - 14th centuries, chronicles and, in part, literary works, an attempt is made to show along with the actions of official tribunals the ordinary use of extrajudicial practices: sanctions provoked byarbitrary behavior of the ruling communal structures in relation to the opposition factions and parties, but primarily stemming from the field of family and tribal law - vendetta and faida. Non-legal sources make it possible to confirm a number of important points: blood feud was one of the generally accepted forms of justice recognized by communal legislation; it was constantly resorted to not only by the noble-knightly strata, but also by the popolo, forming large consortium families in the city, moral and ethical attitudes regarded the fulfillment of revenge as a virtue, not a vice; the borders between the vendettas and the reconciliation achieved were dynamic, determined by their dependence on changes in social status and political conjunctures