Reflections on Women’s Behaviours in War Contexts in Communal Italy (twelfth-thirteenth centuries)

Over the last three decades, several scholars worked on the relationship between women and warfare in the Middle Ages (among them we can find M. McLaughlin, H. Nicholson, V. Eads, P. Skinner). The intersection between military history and gender history has concerned the entire variety of the roles played by women involved in war contexts (as victims, warriors, peacemakers, camp followers, etc.). Research on this topic have understandably focused on powerful women, such as queens, princesses or noblewomen, often wives of the men who fought more frequently; a particular attention has been paid to the context of the Crusades and to the representations of women warriors in chronicles or literary sources. Communal Italy generally remained outside of such debates, although there is no lack of figures and episodes to think about: just to name a few examples, the major supporting role of women underlined by Boncompagno da Signa during the imperial siege of Ancona in 1173; the female street vendor (treccola) of Siena who took a lot of prisoners during the battle of Montaperti (1260); and the conflict between Assisi and Spello that was prevented by the local women in 1296. The goal of this paper is to reunite these three episodes, analyse them according to their specific sources, and try to work out some possible interpretive guidelines and research perspectives, with particular attention on the middle-class women.