Il contesto comunicativo toscano nella prima metà del Duecento. Ipotesi a partire dai documenti di San Gimignano e di Siena

This essay investigates the political and diplomatic communication of the Italian Com munes in the first half of the 13 th century. The investigation compares a narrative text (Sanzanome’s “Gesta Florentinorum”), the accounting records of the Communes of Siena and San Gimignano, and some surviving letters in the Siena archives. In the accounts one finds notes on the payment of couriers charged with taking the same text to many places in Italy. The “Gesta Florentinorum” on the other hand records some letters con cerning the role of Florence and Siena in the control of central Tuscany. In those letters one recognises the echo of political messages also present in the few surviving letters in the archives. The hypothesis is that – thanks to staff endowed with special skills – the Communes organised political propaganda through the circulation of letters. The judges and notaries of the first half of the 13 th century (including Sanzanome himself ) thus had the same political and cultural role that Brunetto Latini would have fifty years later.