Owning the Body: Migration and Work in Communal Italy (XIII-XIV Century)

The theme of possession and ownership has deep roots in the Middle Ages due to several factors. Two are primarily: the spread of large-scale landed property and the relationship of personal dependence that developed between the local lord and his subjects. This vision, embraced by Karl Marx and the historians who followed his teachings, however, is incomplete as it reduces a broad phenomenon to a dichotomy that is effective, but very narrow. Rather than limiting the focus solely to the peasant and noble world, it seems more interesting to broaden the research to property and ownership within the urban context. The Italian communal context is instrumental to this research. In Italian cities, in fact, a unique union between property and labor was created, dictated by both the urban and economic development of the various communities. Economic factors pushed large numbers of peasants to move to urban centers, both to escape the power of the lords and to find new job opportunities, but conditions in the cities were not always better. The labor market, in fact, was particularly closed, managed by members of the Guilds, who discouraged these new individuals from establishing their own businesses, so they could continue to exploit them as employees, sometimes even claiming their ownership. This work, therefore, seeks to explore the relationships between migration and ownership that developed in Italian communal society between the 13th and 14th centuries.