Before the ‘Primo Popolo’: Politics and the Popular Movement at San Gimignano in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century

The decade of mid-thirteenth century is traditionally considered the moment for the definitive political consecration of the Popolo in the Italian communes. The wide success of the year 1250 as a symbol date in school texts is mainly due to the striking Florentine case (the Primo Popolo of Giovanni Villani), investigated since the late Nineteenth century. Thereto other cases (Siena, Bologna, and Perugia) should be mentioned, which have been deeply studied, and have in their turn become paradigmatic. Scholars have time ago explained that this mid-century triumph was the result of a movement started some decades before. The actual ways through which politically marginal groups could come into power remain at present rather obscure: as a matter of fact, there is a lack of documental series that could in detail describe the political activity in the Communes in the first half of the thirteenth century. This gap brings up to the need for other, mainly narrative, sources to seek the traces of the popular movement’s activity. The proclaimed chronicles’ trend to highlight abrupt and violent changes has probably contributed to create the Popolo’s image as a wholly subversive force of the previous institutional structures. The minutes of the Commune council meetings at San Gimignano – which are preserved with a sufficient continuity since the thirties of the Duecento – enable such an image to be reviewed.