The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence.

This monograph is the most detailed account in English of the jurisdiction and operation of the three major criminal courts in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Florence. The core of the book (chs. 3-7) describes these courts (the Podesta, the Captain of the Popolo, the Executor): the officials and their subordinates who performed both policing and judicial functions; and their jurisdictions and responsibilities. Two concluding chapters describe the executive magistracies that possessed certain judicial powers; and a sampling of court cases for the years 1425-28, from which the author draws conclusions about "philosophies of prosecution and profiles of criminality."

This study on the evolution of Florentine criminal justice forcefully challenges current scholarly opinion on the topic. Recent books by Martines, Zorzi and Brackett, among others, have emphasized the progressive dismantling of the communal system of justice, based on foreign rectors and university-trained judges, and its replacement by magistracies composed of citizens without legal training, who dispensed justice more rapidly but also more arbitrarily. This process began during the so-called "oligarchic" period (1380s-early 1430s) and then accelerated under the Medici. Stern concedes that this restructuring of the judicial system did eventually occur, but later under the auspices of the Medici, who are the villains in her scenario. Prior to 1434, she argues, the traditional system not only survived but thrived, expanding its jurisdictional authority and perfecting its methods and techniques. Basing her analysis primarily upon the statutes of 1322-25 and 1415, she charts this linear development toward a more efficient and more "public" system of justice. An important dimension in this process was the expanded utilization of the "secular inquisition procedure," whereby the investigation of crimes and punishment of criminals was carried out by professionals operating within a well-defined legal code.

Stern argues that the reform of the criminal justice system was no isolated phenomenon, but rather was linked to the emergence of the "territorial state." Its characteristic features were "public-mindedness, accountability, bureaucratization, systematization, centralization and care for legality" (xiii). The three rectors coordinated their activities with each other and with the executive magistracies to ensure that justice was administered efficiently and equitably. Built into the system were checks and balances, such as syndication (the regular review of the rectors' performance) and legislative limits on interference by executive agencies in the judicial process. These magistracies did occasionally exercise their legal right to terminate investigations and quash sentences, but only sparingly and not abusively. Before the late 1420s Stern found no evidence of individuals or factions manipulating the judicial system for private or partisan advantage.

The author deserves credit for her careful and lucid description of the institutional framework of Florentine communal justice. But there are serious problems with her broader interpretation, with its echoes of More's Utopia and Leonardo Bruni's Laudatio, and more recently of Burckhardt's "state as a work of art" and Weber's modern bureaucratic state. By relying so heavily upon statutes and legislation, instead of case studies "where law clashes with life" (Vicens Vives), she constructs an idealized picture of the Florentine judicial system and of the regime's commitment to legality and equity. Before and after 1434, Florence's ruling elites used that system to preserve their stato, to control potential threats to order and stability, and to obtain privileged treatment for themselves and their clients. Can one really describe a system as "efficient" which comprises three courts with similar jurisdictions, and whose personnel is replaced every six months by a new cadre? And what degree of autonomy and independence can be ascribed to a judiciary whose functions and judgments were so frequently and arbitrarily interrupted and overturned by executive agencies?

Gene A. Brucker UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY