Ut Marchiam Anconitanam revocet ad Ecclesie Romane dominium: la tradizione documentaria del dominio estense sulla Marca d’Ancona

Abstract

The brief lordship of the house of Este on the Ancona’s land, between 1210 and 1228, wasn’t really important in the wide historiography on the Este family; for a long time, the only one who systematically dealt with it was Ludovico Antonio Muratori. The popes of that time (Innocent III and Honorius III) invested several members of the Este family of the Ancona government in an anti-imperial function, and with the clear aim of pushing the Este family to recover that territory with a personal advantage, but in order to bring it back to obedience to the Church of Rome; the constant rebellion of tumultuously developing cities, jealous of their own communal autonomy and in their struggle for territorial control, brought a similar project to fail. However, the fact that the Este family continued until late 13th and early 14th centuries to have authentic copies of various deeds relating to these lands drafted, testifies that they didn’t abandon their weak claims on Ancona altogether.