This book explores how medieval Florentines, grappling with the rising inequality and political instability of rapid urbanization and economic growth, addressed the challenge of questioning the goals of public power and public institutions such as criminal courts.

Through archival records, it reveals how the ideological claims and practices of criminal justice worked their way into rural communities, and what difference they made for men and women navigating daily life. While the popolo – the coalition of merchants, professionals, and artisans that challenged an older military elite’s hold on power – ultimately succumbed to oligarchy and dynastic rule, the documents produced by its hallmark criminal tribunal can be used to reconstruct how rural people instrumentalized criminal justice to defend themselves and to hurt their enemies.

This volume will appeal to medievalists, literature scholars, human geographers, and social scientists interested in political culture, rural studies, and premodern practices of government.