The Flowering of the Vita Civile

Abstract

Whatever obscurities may surround other aspects of the medieval Italian economy, there can be no doubt that the second half of the thirteenth century and the first years of the fourteenth saw the heyday of the Italian cities. The new circuits of walls laid out at this time, of which the Florentine third circle is the most famous, were generally not outgrown until a hundred years ago. The process of economic and demographic growth, which had begun so mysteriously in the tenth century, reached its climax in these years, with the whole of Italy supporting a population which has been credibly guessed at between seven and nine millions, or perhaps about twice that of the British Isles at the same period. True, the area within the frontiers of modern France probably contained twice as many again; it was the number and size of the cities which really marked Italy off from the rest of Europe. About 1300 the four super-cities of Venice, Milan, Florence and Genoa were probably approaching the 100,000 mark; Paris alone in northern Europe came anywhere near this figure. In the second rank there were some twenty-two Italian cities with a population of between 50,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, while across the Alps only London, Cologne, Bruges and Ghent belonged to this class; cities like Bologna and Verona were comparable with contemporary London. (See Map 5.)