"Bonshommes”, (the “new people”) and the pre-communal “conspiracy”. XI-XII Centuries

Abstract

In the crisis of the ancient political and ecclesiastical orders, which represented a true crisis in the legitimacy of the traditional authorities (Regnum e Sacerdotium fighting for universal supremacy), a profound and dramatic crisis for the medieval conscience takes form destined to make the transmutation of the whole body of human values, and from the 11th century, religious "dissidence" groups, hostile to the institutions of the Church tending to re-propose the reasons of the purity and the evangelical paupertas of primitive Christianity, spread, and in part try to impose by militant means new models of life in Community among people [from this point of view, the times of uprising of the religious movement of patarenes/patarines in Lombardy, and generally in the Italy of the Regnum, central-northern Italy, mark a revolutionary phase, in which not only the lower social classes rise up against the holders of power: all the concives, the fellow citizens, maiores mediocres and minores, are called to take responsibility for the new order of their community as "brothers" and "sisters". “Models”, it was said based on evangelical ideals of utter poverty of life in common, of great importance for the formation of a popular "political" conscience, destined, in the course of the twelfth century, in contrast with the Church and feudal tradition, to evolve towards more precise organizational arrangements until the definitive affirmation of the Municipality (Commune) was achieved.