Ciompi uprising

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The Ciompi uprising (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtʃom.pi]) was a brief successful uprising of the underclass ( popolo minuto ) Florence ' without rights in the summer of 1378 . The uprising started in June and lasted until the end of August. The Ciompi , the Florentine workers in the clothing industry, played an important role in it. They were carriers of the uprising.

Historical context, preconditions

The Ciompi uprising was not the first and not the last attempt after the plague epidemic 1347-1353 ( Black Death ) to improve the living conditions of the population without rights. Other revolts - which were consistently heretized by the church and the nobility as being directed against the divine will - were the Jacquerie in France (1358) and Jack Cades uprising in England (1450).

The members of the popolo minuto had no civil rights and could not organize themselves in a guild . Parts of them, such as the wool combs, but also the vegetable and tableware sellers, were so radicalized that they constantly tried to oppose the controlling power that was brought together in the Guild Arte della Lana of the established textile manufacturers. Textile production was the economic engine of Florentine's wealth.

As unskilled workers, the Ciompi were responsible for washing, combing and greasing the wool . Ciampo was a derogatory term for a dirty and poorly dressed person. They had the lowest social status and were subject to severe corporal punishment.

course

Michele di Lando statue at the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo in Florence

A typical dispute among the factions within the Grandi sparked the uprising. Members of the lower classes took their fate into their own hands in July; They brought a series of petitions before the Signoria , the city government, in which they called for a fairer tax policy and the valuable right to organize oneself in guilds. On July 22nd, they forcibly took over the government, installed Michele di Lando as the gonfaloniere and hoisted their banner on the Palazzo della Signoria .

The revolutionaries were supported by radical members of the powerless smaller guilds, the arti minori . They extended the privileges of the guilds to the Ciompi , so that for the first time in Europe all social classes were involved in government. The revolt brought the city for a short time a degree of democracy that had not been achieved before.

Within a few weeks, however, the Ciompi were disappointed with their new government when it failed to implement their utopian demands and conflicts of interest between the small guilds and the Ciompi became apparent. On August 31st, a large group of Ciompi who had gathered in the Piazza della Signoria was easily chased away by the combined forces of the large and small guilds. The revolt was over. The young guild of the Ciompi was dissolved. Many Ciompi were arrested and killed. Many more had to leave the city. The old order was then restored.

reception

Niccolò Machiavelli , in his History of Florence (1525), traced the revolt through a series of fabricated debates and speeches that reflected the positions of its protagonists, as seen from the standpoint of a proponent of the raison d'être and a free republic.

The preoccupation with the Ciompi uprising often gave reason to compare it with modern conflicts of a social and economic nature. During the Cold War there was a controversy between “bourgeois” and “ Marxist- oriented” historians as to whether the Ciompi uprising could be understood as a protoproletarian revolutionary movement.

Hidetoshi Hoshino described the Ciompi uprising as a "failed guild battle".

See also

literature

historical representation
20th century
  • Ernst Werner : Problems of urban popular movements in the 14th century, illustrated using the example of the Ciompi survey in Florence. In: Max Steinmetz (Ed.): Urban people movements in the 14th century. Berlin 1960, pp. 11-55.
  • Gene A. Brucker : The Revolt of the Ciompi. In: Florentine Studies. Edited by N. Rubinstein, 1968.
  • Ernst Piper : The Ciompi uprising. About the "tumult" that the wool workers instigated in Florence during the early Renaissance. Wagenbach, Berlin 1978 (new edition 1990: Wagenbach's pocket library 175).
  • Raoul Manselli : Ciompi, uprising of the. In: Lexikon des Mittelalters , II. 1983, Sp. 2092-2094.

Web links

Commons : Ciompi Uprising  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Silvia Federici : Caliban and the witch. Women, the body and the primordial accumulation. From the Engl. Max Henninger. Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85476-670-4 , pp. 75-76.