La memoria dei 'milites'

Historiographical research into the Italian comuni has aimed to find a common denominator behind the proliferation of the town annals and chronicles from the early 12th century onwards. The trigger has been ascribed here and there to the new categories of intellectual writers (secular and technical scribes), or the new sensibilities (the emergence of civic-mindedness, and city’s expanding commercial and military roles in the international scene) at play. Each of these perspectives has provided in-depth, convincing interpretations, which are addressed here. However, the portrayal of the 'milites cittadini' provided by Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur has furnished a decisive contribution, giving us an overview of the entire output of the local chroniclers up until the mid-13th century. The dwindling of the city chronicles that occurred as the hegemony of the ‘milites’ began to fade is surely no accident, nor is the contemporaneous shift from ‘city-wide’ to ‘universal’ chronicles. Not only do these accounts begin to chronicle events occurring in far-flung places, but they also expand the past to way beyond the beginnings of the most original offspring of the ‘militia’: the communi.