In Threatening Times. A Comparison of the urban Communities of Verona and Lucca immediately after the Frankish Conquest

Although their different geographical areas and their partially present different features, the two communities of Verona and Lucca can be compared on a historical, political and cultural basis due to their different set of sources. Starting from the last decades of the eighth century, many elements of tension for both Verona’s and Lucca’s communities emerge: for Verona a society under siege, its possible rebellion to the new order and the subsequent, harsher, military intervention, an abrupt removal of its political leaders and the appointment of new ones who did not belong to the local community. For Lucca a change of regime, a temporary removal of its spiritual leader who however was allowed to come back and to regain his position, a very critical social situation with poverty and famine under its Lombard office holder’s rule, a slave market led by Byzantine merchants and a naval Arabic menace along the Tuscan coasts that, in the meantime, had become a new border. How did the two communities react to the Frankish takeover and to the new political order after the conquest? How did they face stress? Can we find analogies and/or differences? In this article six possible aspects are highlighted and discussed as common features between these two communities: their glorious past, their central role before and under the Carolingians, similarities in terms of social structures and processes of change in the long period, similar sources in terms of quality even if unequally distributed and, finally, the fact that both cities were partially involved in military campaigns that took place during the first decades of the Carolingian rule.