Milan

This chapter examines the emergence of Milan as one of the communes in Italy. Milan had always been the largest city of the Kingdom of Italy. Because of its large size and growing wealth, the city was the focus for a particularly active and complex urban aristocracy between 1050 and 1150. The chapter first describes the overall development of Milan and its government, first archiepiscopal, then communal, in 1050–1150 before focusing on who its consuls were and how their social composition changed. It also considers some of the families which provided consuls in order to see the sort of people Milan had to deal with in the years after 1138. The chapter shows that Milan was initially dominated by aristocrats, but after the 1130s the consuls who took center stage for the rest of the century were members of the third level of the urban elite.