Vassalli et subditi: una proposta d’indagine a partire dal caso lombardo (XV–XVI secolo)

Abstract

Taking the Lombard case as a starting point, this essay reflects on the progressive transformation of the vassalage’s political rule during the 15th century. Not only in the Visconti’s dominion, indeed, but also in the German area, even if in very different times and ways, the princes and the landlords seemed to have the intention of making the bond with their vassals tighter, involving them in a net of personal bonds. It became progressively more and more difficult for a vassal to be only a vassal, and not also a domesticus or subditus.
Within the regional state-building process, a relationship – which was still personal, but which had almost nothing to do with the individual will since it was naturally linked with his living on the land – would gradually incorporate the different fidelities that already constituted bonding element of political society.