<論説>中世末期フィレンツェの兄弟会

Abstract

平信徒による自発的信心団体として、一二、一三世紀にヨーロッパ各都市に誕生した兄弟会は、中世末期に叢生の時代を迎える。従来この団体は、歴史家の関心をひくことは稀であったが、近年社会史的視点からの兄弟会研究が次々と発表され、特にフィレンツェに関して大きな成果を生み出してきた。先行研究では、中世末期の兄弟会発展の背景を、救貧面、政治面の二方向から検討してきたが、これらの議論は個々に独立し、相互に関連づけるという作業は未だなされていない。本稿では、一四世紀末から一五世紀のメディチ家支配期までの間を検討時期として設定し、社会構造の変化という都市固有の問題の中で、これらの論点を中心に兄弟会の発展を位置づけた。

Confraternities, which reached their peak numbers in the late medieval period, were lay groups of the medieval and early modern periods through which lay people expressed their individual and collective beliefs. Until the 1980s, historians were in general not interested in these groups. From the 1870s, these groups had been studied only by local and church historians or had been studied under the influence of Burckhardt. However, in recent years, social historians have brought new models to bear in their studies, and many important books have been published that recognized the social significance of the confraternities, especially those of Florence. But these books have examined the confraternities only in two areas, their charitable and political activities. These points of analysis have remained separated, and historians have not set them into a collective work. In this article, using various previous studies, I demonstrate how the confraternities reflected changes in the political and social constitution concurrent with urban growth by focusing on Florence of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.