Alle origini della memoria comunale

Examination of the chronicles and annals of the first age of the Italian city-states show that the vast majority were written after 1150, when the number of trial documents filed away in private archives and the new public archives increased exponentially – a good source of historical documents was therefore now available. This article examines some of the testimonies recorded in several of these legal records from the areas surrounding Cremona, Piacenza and Florence, finding certain resemblances between their form and content with those of the most ancient chronicles from the same cities. From this analysis it appears that at the origins of Communal memory, historical veracity can be ascertained through judicial records.