page_title: Podestà
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Podestà / History
context_page_description: Podestà was the name given to the holder of the highest civil office in the government of the cities of Central and Northern Italy during the Late Middle Ages. Sometimes, it meant the chief magistrate of a city state, the counterpart to similar positions in other cities that went by other names, e.g. rettori.
  In the following centuries and up to 1918 the term was used to designate the head of the municipal administration in particular in the Italian-speaking territories. The title was taken up again during the Fascist regime with the same meaning.
  The Podestà's office, its duration and the residence and the local jurisdiction were called podesteria, especially during the Middle Ages, and in later centuries, more rarely during the fascist regime.
  Currently, Podestà is the title of mayors in Italian-speaking municipalities of Graubünden in Switzerland.
context_section_description: The first documented usage of podestà was in Bologna in 1151, when it was applied to Guido di Ranieri di Sasso of Canossa, brought in from Faenza to be rettore e podestà, noted in numerous documents. Leander Albertus gives the particulars:
  "The citizens, seeing that there often arose among them quarrels and altercations, whether from favoritism or friendship, from envy or hatred that one had against another, by which their republic suffered great harm, loss and detriment; therefore, they decided, after much deliberation, to provide against these disorders. And thus they began to create a man of foreign birth their chief magistrate, giving him every power, authority and jurisdiction over the city, as well over criminal as over civil causes, and in times of war as well as in times of peace, calling him praetor as being above the others, or podestà., as having every authority and power over the city."
  Podests were first more widely appointed by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa when he began to assert the rights that his Imperial position gave him over the cities of northern Italy; at the second imperial diet at Roncaglia, November 1158, Frederick appointed in several major cities imperial podestà "as if having imperial power in that place" The elected consuls, which Frederick had claimed the right to ratify, he began to designate directly. The business of the podestà was to enforce imperial rights. From the start, this was very unpopular, and their often arbitrary behaviour was a factor in bringing about the formation of the Lombard League and the uprising against Frederick in 1167.
  Although the Emperor's experiment was short-lived, the podestà soon became important and common in northern Italy, making their appearance in most communes around the year 1200, with an essential difference. These officials were now appointed by the citizens or by the citizens' representatives, rather like the older consuls (but not collegial). The podestà exercised the supreme power in the city, both in peace and war, and in foreign and domestic matters alike; but their term of office lasted only about a year.
  In order to avoid the intense strife so common in Italian civic life, it soon became the custom to hire a stranger to fill this position. Venetians were in special demand for this purpose during the 12th and 13th centuries. This was probably due to their lesser concern (at the time) than other Italians in the affairs of the mainland. Afterwards, in a few cases, the term of office was extended to cover a period of years, or even a lifetime. They were confined in a luxury palace to keep them from being influenced by any of the local families. The architectural arrangement of the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, built starting in 1297, evokes the uneasy relation of the commune with the podestà, who in Siena's case was a disinterested nobleman at the head of the judiciary. It provided a self-contained lodging round its own interior court for the podestà, separate but housed within the Palazzo Pubblico where the councillors and their committee of nine habitually met.
  During the later part of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century most Italian cities were governed by a podestà. Concerning Rome, with a history of civic violence, Gregorovius says that "in 1205 the Pope Innocent III changed the form of the civic government; the executive power lying henceforward in the hand of a single senator or podest, who, directly or indirectly, was appointed by the pope". In Florence after 1180, the chief authority was transferred from the consuls to the podest, and Milan and other cities were also ruled by these officials. The Republic of Genoa elected its first Podestà in 1191, a Brescian citizen, to quell the internal unrest that ravaged the capital of the Republic. There were, moreover, podests in some of the cities of the adjoining Provence in southeastern France.
  An anonymous writer composed a short guide for the would-be podestà (although it would be unseemly to appear openly to run for the office), Oculus pastoralis, of about 1222; i
caption: Portrait of a Podestà by Lodewijk Toeput
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