Truce as damage limitation in violent conflicts: language and practices of "treuga" in Medieval Italy (XII-XV centuries)

Programma di finanziamento: PRIN 2022

Ente finanziatore: MUR

Responsabile scientifico: Roberto Lambertini

Ruolo UniMC: coordinatore

Durata: 12 mesi

The main objective of the project is to investigate truce, understood as suspension of violence, whose actors are aware of its limitation in time. In the Latin of medieval sources, such a suspension is very frequently called “treuga”, although other expressions designate it too. Truce is not war, but not peace either. It is a temporary settlement allowing to stop violence for a while, eventhough the causes of conflict are not overcome yet. Truce has an open-ended character: it may be the favourable moment to find the paths to peace, or a pause that precedes the resumption of hostilities. At the same time however, it fulfills at function of its own limiting - at least for a while - the human and environmental damages caused by warfare. Historians of the Middle Ages are familiar with the phenomenon of the “treuga Dei”. This project wants to begin its research in the time following the heyday of truce of God and aims to give a first answer to the question: «How did the languages, actors and practices of the truce change after the season of God's “treugae”?». To achieve this objective, the project will perform the following tasks: 1) analysizing doctrinal and normative texts concerning truce and investigating in particular the relationship between truce and crusade. In medieval sources, the term “treuga” is used both in reference to the suspension of armed confrontation between 'regular' armies and to the interruption of conflicts between urban factions. In addition to 1), the project plans, therefore, to work on two “case-studies” which together cover both wider meanings of “treuga”; 2) investigating language, actors, and the wider social and economic context of the truces which punctuated the Sicilian VespersWar; 3) examining truces between conflicting urban factions, especially in connection to the preaching activity of Franciscan Observants in the Quattrocento (focusing one area corresponding to nowadays Marche and Umbria) Each research unit will focus on one task while pursuing the common goal. The units will collaborate in each stage of the project, meeting on a monthly basis, sharing results. Dissemination activities will include: a) journal articles, a volume and a collection of relevant sources in translation published open access; b) interaction with secondary schools; c) sustainable knowledge site open to contributions of other researchers. The project counters the widespread prejudice of the Middle Ages as a period of unrestrained violence. On the contrary, at the beginning of the Europe making process, the last centuries of the Middle Ages did develop practices, such as truces, moderating violence and reducing its damages. This project can therefore claim to be of immediate relevance to our times, where capacity of defining spaces and times free from violence, in which negotiations can have better chances of positive results, seems to be drastically weakened.