The Lombard League, 1167–1225

The Lombard League was an association created by the city republics of northern Italy in the 12th century in order to defend their autonomy and that of the papacy in a struggle against the German Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. The League has enjoyed an iconic status, and in the nineteenth century was glorified as a precursor of the Italian struggle for independence in political and historical pamphlets as well as in paintings, novels, and even operas. The League played a crucial role in the evolution of Italy’s political landscape, but it did more than ensure its continued fragmentation. Historiography, in fact, has overlooked the collegial cooperation among the medieval Italian polities and this volume examines the League’s structure, activity, place in political thought, and links with regional identities. Using documentary evidence, histories, letters, inscriptions, and contemporary troubadour poems as well as rhetorical and juridical treatises, the book argues that the League was not just a momentary anti-imperial military alliance, but a body that also provided collective approaches to regional problems, ranging from the peaceful resolution of disputes to the management of regional lines of communication, usurping, in some cases, imperial prerogatives. Yet the League never rejected imperial overlordship per se, and this book explains how it survived after the end of the conflict against Frederick I, one of its most lasting legacies being the settlement that it reached with the empire, the Peace of Constance, which became the Magna Carta of the northern Italian polities.