Le società delle arti a Bologna e i loro statuti: un bilancio storiografico

Abstract

The aim of the article is to shape an historiographical reflection about merchant and craft guilds during the late Middle Ages, in a city where economic and political trial were of a remarkable influence: Bologna. In fact, craft guilds - substantial groups in the urban environment, relevant from a social, economical and political point of view - were born in order to provide mutual help among partners and economical knowledges. However, in Bologna they acquired an essential role in urban politics when, following a riot raised by mercator Giuseppe Toschi in 1228, leaders of the societates obtain a legislative role in urban magistratures. A historiographical-based analysis of bolognese guilds and their statutes - meaning legislative texts which societates applied for themselves and that used to follow political and institutional changes during XIII and XIV centuries, on which historians based their researches yet at the end of the XIX century - allows to take into consideration the evident link between normative mandates and reasons, motivations and intentions which generated them, detecting developments and dynamics between politics expectations and real phenomenology.