Nascita dei Comuni e memoria di Roma: un legame da riscoprire

The historiography on Italian Communes has investigated the inspirational motives of the new city governments. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur and Chris Wickham have emphasised different logics in the way the municipal elites proceeded. However, one should not underestimate the cultural strength of a model in the Middle Ages that was still very much present: imperial Rome. In the crisis linked to the struggle for investiture, the city elites were inspired by the Roman institutional model, albeit according to different 'models' (classical, Byzantine, Carolingian and Saxon). The communal world translated this heritage with the contribution of the Roman Church. In this perspective, the use of the spolia as a legitimizing factor, as pointed out by Arnold Esch, should be re-evaluated. The Roman interpretation of institutions, laws, political and artistic languages presupposed a solid cultural education of the people of the commune, based on the tradition of the classics and, politically, on Roman law and institutions. These concepts were plastically expressed in the new artistic style - later called 'Romanesque' because of the evident desire to reinterpret classical models. The example of Oldrado da Tresseno's equestrian group (1233) on the wall of the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan, the only known example of this type of municipal political representation in the first half of the 13th century, finally allows us to assess the strength of the Roman model in legitimising municipal policy