Malefactores fecerunt insultum. A robbery and its aftermath at the beginning of the 14th century

Abstract

The paper analyzes a documentary roll, kept at the State Archive of Mantua, which recount the vicissitude involving Simone de Frondonis, a Milanese merchant and member of the Franciscan Third Order of the same city. Engaged in the trade of luxury goods, he was robbed near Reggio Emilia. The mercator reported the theft to the officials of the city, while at the same time he contacted the institutions of Milan. The event had a fast development: in a short time two of the brigands involved were imprisoned and hanged, and the merchant got back a small part of what had been stolen. Faced with the refusal of the institutions of Reggio Emilia to proceed with further compensation in his favor, Simone obtained from his city the possibility to exercise the right of reprisal until he had recovered the lost money. The analysis of the dossier, in which are kept Simone’s reports of the robbery, the inventories of the stolen goods and the expenses incurred in Reggio Emilia, the wills dictated in prison by the two brigands sentenced to hanging and the letters sent from Milan to put pressure on Reggio Emilia institutions, allows not only to frame the issue from a first‐hand perspective (that of the actors involved), but also to define how an event of this type could influence relations between cities in Italy in the early fourteenth century.