Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (The Lawrence Stone Lectures): 7

Amid the disintegration of the Kingdom of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new form of collective government - the commune - arose in the cities of northern and central Italy. Sleepwalking into a New World takes a bold new look at how these autonomous city-states came about and fundamentally alters our understanding of one of the most important political and cultural innovations of the medieval world. Sleepwalking into a New World reveals how the development of the autonomous city-state took place, which would in the end make possible the robust civic culture of the Renaissance.