Denouncing Noble Violence in Fourteenth-Century Florence

This paper addresses mid-fourteenth-century denunciations of noble violence to the Florentine Executor of the Ordinances of Justice.  The denunciations suggest how everyday people perceived the workings of the court: impassioned pleas for justice, couched in the rhetoric of the popular regime, combine with frank discussions of judicial corruption. At times, denouncers urged the court to threaten violence in order to force witnesses to testify against nobles.  The Florentine state and courts was surely one of the most sophisticated and effective in Europe.  And yet, the courts at times facilitated private justice. The goal of this paper is to explore representations of the intersection of sovereignty with noble violence and lordship.