The 'Other Tuscany': Essays in the History of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena during the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries.

The authors of the nine articles that comprise this short book focus on three crucial cities of the second rank in late medieval Tuscany, examined in their own terms "rather than through the prism of Florentine . . . politics as they applied to its subject territories" (1). The aim is to "offer non-Italian scholars a representative sample of current European research and a summary of recent debates regarding the historical evolution of those republics that posed the most formidable obstacles to the extension of Florentine hegemony" (2). Not surprisingly, the essays vary in scope and quality, with some of them lacking the comparative or "debate" component.

The introduction by the editors begins with a concise summary of the late medieval history of Lucca, Pisa, and Siena, with Lucca receiving the lion's share of attention (four chapters and 104 of 229 printed pages). Most chapters deal with customarily examined political, economic and social issues, except for Antonio Romiti's article entitled "Archival Inventorying in Fourteenth-Century Lucca: Methodologies, Theories, and Practices" (83-109). This is a nicely executed technical study of the nature of specific individual documents and documentation, with Romiti concluding "that there was a real consciousness of method in the field of archival technique" (101). It is of little importance that his piece offers no surprises to a practiced archival historian, since his excellent explanations and summaries provide a wonderful introduction and can save much time and trouble for one embarking on work in Italian archives.

A second exception to the book's primary themes is Giorgio Tori's brief "Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of the Republic of Lucca, and the Problem of the Minute di Riformagioni Pubbliche (1370-71)" (111-22). Essentially derived from one of his own earlier publications, Tori's article reveals discrepancies - omissions, conflations and errors - between Salutati's minutes taken at meetings and his more fulsome formal accounts. Tori offers no clear explanation; in their introduction the volume editors themselves suggest that "One may wonder . . . if, given Coluccio's precarious public situation, the personal misfortunes that befell him while he was in Lucca, [and] his apparent job dissatisfaction, the great humanist [was] merely sloughing off" (6). This seems quite possible.

All but one of the remaining essays are more traditional. Michael Bratchel's article examines politics in Lucca from the end of the signory of Paolo Guinigi to the French invasion of Italy (1430-94). Not surprisingly he discerns family and personal rivalries rather than programmatic confrontation, and "the continued importance of neighborhood bonds" (25). Bratchel sees a lack of class consciousness in the manner of the famous Ciompi in Florence. Against Michele Luzzatti he argues that fifteenth-century Florence did indeed threaten Lucca, which already had evolved adroit diplomatic defenses.

Christine Meek, author of Lucca 1369-1400 (1978), undertakes a fine archival examination of "Public Policy and Private Profit: Tax Farming in Fourteenth-Century Lucca." Generally, the commune directly administered major gabelles or levies, while farming numerous lesser ones. This study contains a useful and lucid account of the system of tax fanning and, in particular, auctioning rules and procedures. Quite interesting was the beneficium incantus which allowed large profits to bidders who did not end up buying an auctioned levy. Meek then studies the tax farmers themselves, finding that while some were nobles, far more "were of humbler origin and seem to be classic 'new men,'" while "[t]he leading Lucchese merchants were conspicuous by their absence" (62). This tight study also examines relations between losing and winning bidders, and the nature of guarantors or sureties.

Turning to Pisa, Maria Luisa Ceccarelli-Lemut studies two little-known "Pisan Consular Families in the Consular Age: The Anfossi and the Ebriaci" so as to "throw light on aspects of city life . . . [such as] seafaring activities, connections with Sardinia and Byzantium, and the Crusades" (123). She successfully wrings valuable information from a variety of public and private documents.

In a tightly written article, Emilio Cristiani - rightly famed for his ground-breaking Nobilta e popolo nel Comune di Pisa (1962) - treats "The Political and Economic Relations of Pisa and the Guelf League in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries." He demonstrates the portentous economic results of the Pisan defeat at the hands of Genoa in the Battle of Meloria in 1284, which came as a consequence of connections made by Pisa Guelf exiles with their Guelf counterparts in other sections of Italy, including Guelf Florence and the Gaetani family of Boniface VIII and Rome. Much of this he wrests from a close examination of "two peace treaties imposed on Pisa in 1288 and 1299" (154).

Mario Ascheri's "Siena in the Fourteenth Century: State, Territory, and Culture" is perhaps the best and most convenient summary of the history of Siena under the merchant oligarchy of the Nine (1287-1355), one of the most crucial epochs in the history of the Sienese commune. In addition, Ascheri takes issue with some of this reviewer's more sanguine interpretations of the motivations and reasons for the success and longevity of that regime. He emphasizes "the fearsome face of the military and police power of an otherwise autonomous government" (170). For him, the famous Lorenzetti frescoes of so-called Good and Bad Government have a "message . . . more cultural than political" (166). The most valuable and original contribution of this piece, however, develops out of Ascheri's own earlier studies. His nuanced and well-presented examination of "The Government of the Sienese Territory" (170-82) deserves attentive reading, and his observations should be considered as well by scholars of other communes and territories.

Duccio Balestracci contributes an accurate and clear survey, based on secondary literature, of the history of Sienese urban planning and its political and ideological components, particularly during the era of the Nine (199-213).

Gabriella Piccinni's "Economy and Society in Southern Tuscany in the Late Middle Ages: Amiata and the Maremma" is richly detailed. She notes that in the period under examination, Tuscany differed from the rest of Italy in "culture . . . geography and . . . economic and social structures" (215). Piccinni focuses on "the unique economic and social milieu formed by the mountain of Amiata and the Maremma plain below" (216). She examines settlement patterns, stock raising, trans-humance, types and yields of crops, markets, sharecropping, local artisan crafts, and mineral production - her "discovery of 'industrial' Amiata" - and finds that the Amiata was "a true micro-region characterized by a substantial social homogeneity at its base."

This book is one of the better and more coherent collections of essays, despite a few embarrassingly obvious typographical errors. Suggestive and varied, it merits reading.

WILLIAM M. BOWSKY University of California, Davis