Final Report Summary - MCEUICS (Constructing Solidarities. Kinship Ties and Social Networks in the Urban Communities of Italy and the Low Countries, 1250-1550)
The main topic of the research project was the formation of social solidarities in late-medieval cities, taking four cities with different political and socio-economic profiles from Italy and the Low Countries as case studies. This comparative approach to the question of how solidarities emerged in late-medieval society was adopted in order to evaluate the possible factors that explain variations and similarities in the evolution of urban communities. The core objective of the project was to assess to what extent ties based on kinship, profession and neighbourhood strengthened and facilitated the process of urban community building in western Europe from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth century. To this end, the role of craft guilds, religious brotherhoods and neighbourhood associations in the provision of formal and informal social arrangements (i.e. mutual assistance and poor relief) in Florence, Lucca, Ghent and Leiden was examined. The chosen approach raised several methodological challenges concerning the comparison of the diverse and unequally distributed data from these case studies.
The three main objectives of the research project were: first, to reveal social mechanisms that underlay urban solidarities in the late-medieval Italy and the Low Countries, second, to contribute to the interdisciplinary debate on the practices of trust and the functioning of solidarity and finally, to improve our understanding of the bottom-up trust-building strategies of medieval townsmen, thereby assessing the impact of more general forms of trust embodied by the urban corporate and public institutions.
The research focused on the social functions and activities of guilds, fraternities and neighbourhoods with regard to the provision of social assistance in the four cities mentioned above. The project enabled the researcher to acquaint himself with the relevant literature and sources in the field, in particular with the published and unpublished documentation available for the Italian case studies. The conducted literature and archival research related to the social activities of the corporations and the extent to which these activities were integrated into the wider urban system of poor relief. The preliminary results of the project were reported in two working papers that were presented at different international scholarly meetings (and will be published peer-reviewed journals in due course).
The final results of the research project, based on novel systematic and comparative research, demonstrate how the interaction between individuals and institutions impacted the evolution of voluntary associations in late medieval cities. The findings are significant because they reveal how the social activities of urban corporations differed from place to place, depending on the relationship between individuals, corporations and municipal authorities, the urban socio-economic structures, and the institutional context in which corporations functioned. Consequently, there was a variation in the extent to which trust networks contributed to the design of corporate and public institutions and the political and economic resilience of urban communities. Further development of the mechanisms that capture this dynamic process of institutional evolution has relevance for the debate about the significance of voluntary institutions for Europe's unique path of development.
The research provided new historical knowledge of the common past of European urban centres, it also contributes to interdisciplinary debates about the role of bottom-up forms of association, social capital and citizenship in the formation of communities. The results of the project will be incorporated into a follow-up project, which aims to link historical and theoretical perspectives with present-day problems of social integration, solidarity arrangements and the allocation of public responsibilities.
The three main objectives of the research project were: first, to reveal social mechanisms that underlay urban solidarities in the late-medieval Italy and the Low Countries, second, to contribute to the interdisciplinary debate on the practices of trust and the functioning of solidarity and finally, to improve our understanding of the bottom-up trust-building strategies of medieval townsmen, thereby assessing the impact of more general forms of trust embodied by the urban corporate and public institutions.
The research focused on the social functions and activities of guilds, fraternities and neighbourhoods with regard to the provision of social assistance in the four cities mentioned above. The project enabled the researcher to acquaint himself with the relevant literature and sources in the field, in particular with the published and unpublished documentation available for the Italian case studies. The conducted literature and archival research related to the social activities of the corporations and the extent to which these activities were integrated into the wider urban system of poor relief. The preliminary results of the project were reported in two working papers that were presented at different international scholarly meetings (and will be published peer-reviewed journals in due course).
The final results of the research project, based on novel systematic and comparative research, demonstrate how the interaction between individuals and institutions impacted the evolution of voluntary associations in late medieval cities. The findings are significant because they reveal how the social activities of urban corporations differed from place to place, depending on the relationship between individuals, corporations and municipal authorities, the urban socio-economic structures, and the institutional context in which corporations functioned. Consequently, there was a variation in the extent to which trust networks contributed to the design of corporate and public institutions and the political and economic resilience of urban communities. Further development of the mechanisms that capture this dynamic process of institutional evolution has relevance for the debate about the significance of voluntary institutions for Europe's unique path of development.
The research provided new historical knowledge of the common past of European urban centres, it also contributes to interdisciplinary debates about the role of bottom-up forms of association, social capital and citizenship in the formation of communities. The results of the project will be incorporated into a follow-up project, which aims to link historical and theoretical perspectives with present-day problems of social integration, solidarity arrangements and the allocation of public responsibilities.