Abstract

Governmental practice in late medieval and early modern cities has often been described by historians as “consensus politics”, i.e. as a system based on a broad consensus created by real or alleged possibilities of political participation offered to citizens. This essay proposes a different view by inquiring into the administration of criminal justice and the maintenance of public order in Renaissance Florence. Based on sources from the Archivio di Stato of Florence, it contends that, rather than on consent, rule in the pre-modern city was based on an extensive use of emergency powers which were conferred to the judiciary in order to suppress political dissent. For this purpose important measures for the protection of the rule of law which already existed in medieval common and statutory law were waived.

Emergency powers had been used in the Italian communes since their origins in times of political unrest, but they were generally revoked once public order had been restored. When, from the 1380s onwards, an unprecedented centralization of political power took place in the Republic of Florence and the exercise of government became the prerogative of oligarchic elites, a permanent state of emergency was implemented to control the citizenry. Arguing that emergency powers, as we know them today, originated in the late Middle Ages and that they played an essential role in the constitution of the modern state, this article also suggests important links to the current discussion on the state of emergency since the terror attacks of September 2001.