CELEBRATIONS AND EPITAPHS OF A MUNICIPAL TRADITION. REFLECTIONS ON THE FOURTEENTH-CENTURY VULGARIZATION AND SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PRINTING OF TUSCAN COMMUNAL STATUTES

The article examines the meaning assumed by the printing of the municipal statutes during the sixteenth century in some of the main cities in the duchy and grand duchy, as well as other subregional states in Tuscany (the republic of Lucca and the signoria of Massa and Carrara). Aside from the impression of proclamations (bandi) and regulations relating to non-territorial institutions, the work sets out to show how the printing of ancient and recent normative texts (some of which partially abrogated as resolved by oligarchical regimes and signorie) was often motivated, not by prevailing administrative necessities, but in laud and celebration of a tradition of municipal autonomy, of which the statutes were the most emblematic expression. As such, a parallel is proposed between movable type printing and fourteenth-century vulgarization of Latin texts, since this was also first of all a 'marketing' operation aimed at achieving political consensus rather than actual application of the law.