Free Municipality of Sassari - The Early Catholic Democracy of the Renaissance

One of the greatest myths is the idea that theocracies and autocracies helped science and were all that existed during the Renaissance. Not only is that BS, it is BS because one of the things that helped during the Renaissance and the rise of science and literature was less of the patronage coming from autocratic kings and control freak theocrats, but the rise of democracies at the time! No really, one of the things that people seem to forget is that in history, there were a whole bunch of somewhat free, democratic societies that existed during the Renaissance that do not get the credit that they deserve for helping with the advancement of humanity. I am going to be writing about the first of these medieval democracies that people have forgotten about which helped with the Renaissance and shows how useful democratic institutions have been to history known as the Free Municipality of Sassari!

S0, what was the Free Municipality of Sassari? Well, the Free Municipality of Sassari - or the Republic of Sassari which was the other name that it was referred to - was a state in the region of Sassari in Sardinia that existed for the early Renaissance. It was an independent city-state nation that was independent from 1259 to 1323. This might sound like this is not a long time for a society to last for certain people, but that is sixty-four years long. Since many consider a generation to only be twenty years, that counts as three generations of democracy. Others consider thirty years to be a generation, but that still means this society lasted for two generations! Considering that many civilizations do not even last a single generation, this is quite an accomplishment. For example, the German Empire only lasted 47 years and the Zhou dynasty only lasted 17 years - and those are considered two very noteworthy empires despite their very short existence.

The nation originally had defacto independence and was able to secede from the Republic of Pisa, making it able to make its own laws even if it was not recognized by others. Its independence was later recognized by 1275 and also had de jure independence.

The city-state had a code of laws called the Statutes of Sassari that governed the city-state and the larger municipality. There were three books for this code of law: the first described trade, the second was about civil law & property, and the third was about criminal law. The criminal laws in the statutes were considered pretty lenient and fair compared to many of the laws that could be found in more authoritarian regimes that were around at the time.

Up to sixteen thousand people were estimated to live in the nation during its peak with it being possible that it had an even larger population than that, making it the most populous city in the Sardinia region at the time. The major religion was Roman Catholicism and the city-state was able to use the Catholic concept that the pope is 'first among equals' and that their democratically elected official - known as the podesta - counted as one of those equals. This argument was successful and during the days of the Catholic papal states in Europe during medieval times, you will find a lot of other democracies - even Catholic ones - successfully using this argument to justify being independent - de facto or de jure or otherwise - while remaining a part of the church!

Citations:

- "Canons of the seven ecumenical councils: text - IntraText CT". www.intratext.com.

- Casula, Francesco (1989). The History of Sardinia. Sardinia Tourist Board.

- Casula, Francesco Cesare (2003). Dizionario Storico Sardo [Sardinian Historical Dictionary] (in Italian). Sassari: Carlo Delfino Editore. ISBN 88-7138-241-2.

- Cioppi, Alessandra (2008). Battaglie e protagonisti della Sardegna medioevale [Battles and Figures of Medieval Sardinia] (in Italian). Cagliari.

- "Definition of Generation". Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary.

- Fry, Richard (16 January 2015). "This Year, Millennials Will Overtake Baby Boomers". Pew Center.

- Joseph Whitaker. Whitaker's almanack, 1991. J Whitaker & Sons, 1990. Pp. 765.

- Paludan, Ann (1998). Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China. New York, New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05090-2

- Sturm, Reinhard (23 December 2011). "Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik 1918/19 – Weimarer Republik". bpb.de (in German).

- Twitchett, Denis. Chen gui and Other Works Attributed to Empress Wu Zetian (PDF). p. 71.