The Republic of Rome

Amalfi was gone by the time the Commune started, but even if the Pisans hadn't delivered the death-blow in the 1130s, Amalfi was still toast. Amalfi really has nothing going for it except exceptionally difficult terrain that isolates it from the land. It was bound to lose out to Pisa or Genoa sooner rather than later.

Barcelona (it's not Aragon until 1164, technically) was at the time interested largely in Provence. They're not an independent factor; they're going to cleave to imperial policy as is needed to keep Provence, which is technically in the empire. Their role in disputing Italian control of Sardinia had not yet emerged. Pisa and Genoa don't really have any competitor in the western Med, and the only power that could potentially rival them at sea is Sicily itself.

I think the sea is sort of a dead-end for Rome. It's a much closer parallel with an inland commune like Milan, Florence, Lucca, or Siena. It could develop in a parallel direction with these cities, but only if you resolve the Papal situation in order to give the Romans a free hand, which as we've seen in this thread is rather difficult.
 

GdwnsnHo

Banned
Amalfi was gone by the time the Commune started, but even if the Pisans hadn't delivered the death-blow in the 1130s, Amalfi was still toast. Amalfi really has nothing going for it except exceptionally difficult terrain that isolates it from the land. It was bound to lose out to Pisa or Genoa sooner rather than later.

Hence why I thought having those now-defunct merchants come to give Rome a hand might be useful, just in terms of mercantile guile. As much as I'd love to see the Pope grant them the ruins of Olbia, or the Commune do the same, I'm aware that is distinctly unlikely, and prohibitively expensive. Hence why I expect them to essentially be consultants to Rome.

Barcelona (it's not Aragon until 1164, technically) was at the time interested largely in Provence. They're not an independent factor; they're going to cleave to imperial policy as is needed to keep Provence, which is technically in the empire. Their role in disputing Italian control of Sardinia had not yet emerged. Pisa and Genoa don't really have any competitor in the western Med, and the only power that could potentially rival them at sea is Sicily itself.

Damn, so Sicily would be the only partner Rome could really use for that purpose, other than a greater land power to threaten the cities by land.

I think the sea is sort of a dead-end for Rome. It's a much closer parallel with an inland commune like Milan, Florence, Lucca, or Siena. It could develop in a parallel direction with these cities, but only if you resolve the Papal situation in order to give the Romans a free hand, which as we've seen in this thread is rather difficult.

How did those cities develop? If they can perform any developments in the short term after forming the Commune, then any of those benefits helps the Romans. Arguably this is the time they have a free hand.
 
Damn, so Sicily would be the only partner Rome could really use for that purpose, other than a greater land power to threaten the cities by land.

Indeed, and the #1 foreign policy priority of Sicily was "prevent the HRE from invading us." To that end, after the Treaty of Benevento in 1156 they were 100% Papal supporters (to the point where the adherents of the anti-imperial Pope Alexander III were sometimes referred to as the "Sicilian" party). Unless the HRE collapses totally and loses all ability to control Italy, let alone threaten Sicily, their position is probably not going to change.

How did those cities develop? If they can perform any developments in the short term after forming the Commune, then any of those benefits helps the Romans. Arguably this is the time they have a free hand.

The story of most of those inland communes in the high MA is the story of them striving to gain control of their contado, or countryside. Because Italy had few large vassals like France or Germany, the local competition was usually the bishop. Generally, the commune tried to usurp the bishop's control over the city and make their own consuls the preeminent civic power. Sometimes the bishops cooperated with the consuls, particularly if they shared interests; other times power had to be wrested from them.

But to secure the city's interests, you also needed control of the contado. Local barons were difficult to control as long as they held their castles, so the communes would destroy castles, or alternately compel the barons to submit to the commune. Often this came with stipulations that a baron had to maintain a residence and spend X months per year in the city. Smaller communes would also be subjugated; they could be made into client communes, or sometimes they were destroyed entirely and the people resettled. The agricultural lands the commune acquired in this way would have their surplus sent to the city and often price controls would be implemented, so that cheap grain would boost the city's population, and thus its power. Eventually, the largest of these communes got into feuds with other large communes, and the result was basically city-state warfare which usually focused on devastating farmland, seizing control of border castles, and so on. City-state alliances emerged: for instance, Milan tended to be supported by Brescia and Crema, but Cremona, Pavia, and Lodi were their bitter enemies.

The most successful of these in the 12th century was Milan, which made itself into the terror of Lombardy. Barbarossa's nominal reason for coming to Lombardy in the first place was to curtail the excesses of Milan, which was confiscating the property of bishops, communes, and nobles all over the place.

Inland communes were often at hubs of overland trade routes, but they depended much more than the maritime communes on agriculture and manufacture. Milan's main manufacture was wool cloth, which was a very important export because it was one of the few things Europe made that the Muslim world was interested in, aside from silver. Lucca eventually becomes a center of silk-making.

Rome, if you remove the Pope, is a logical candidate for a regionally powerful inland commune. It's centrally located and has the largest population in the region. And indeed, this is precisely the way the Commune tried to act IOTL - subjugating its neighbors, trying to raze castles, and attempting to usurp civic power from their bishop. Unfortunately for them, "their bishop" was also the Pope.

Other issues:
- They lacked a middle class made strong by trade and manufacturing, because they were not on any major trade routes and because they were continually exploited by the powerful Papal government and nobility.
- They had a very strong noble class, in part because of Papal patronage, who depended on that patronage and were likely to side with the Pope against the city rather than the other way around.
- They were in a terrible geographic position. The city's population had shrunk to the point where most of the territory within the walls was rural, so their own walls were much too long and completely impractical to defend. Only the Leonine City, which was usually held by the Pope/prefect, was a defensible zone.
- They were fairly regularly brutalized by floods and malaria, because the remaining population had all settled in the flood plains after the aqueducts were cut and the river was the only water source. Malaria saved them a few times when it ravaged besieging armies, but ultimately disease and flooding were holding them back, not helping them.
 
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GdwnsnHo

Banned
So perhaps a PoD could include some more success when wrangling the barons? Perhaps leaner requirements for the nobles might make it easier to have some resist less - or an example being made of those who refused to submit could cow some of them. Perhaps both, lean terms, or complete destruction of the Barons, and putting a "Legate" or army commander that is specifically tied to the city in their place.

Regarding the communes, again, I wonder how they could have them be more cooperative, perhaps slightly less harsh price controls, or a combination of grain taxes and manual labour taxes/provision of x-many men for military service. That might make them more amenable.

The most successful of these in the 12th century was Milan, which made itself into the terror of Lombardy. Barbarossa's nominal reason for coming to Lombardy in the first place was to curtail the excesses of Milan, which was confiscating the property of bishops, communes, and nobles all over the place.

A bit further afield, so perhaps a bit more difficult. I wonder if a Roman Commune could seek an ally in Milan in this area, both supporting the confiscation of the lands of bishops.

Rome, if you remove the Pope, is a logical candidate for a regionally powerful inland commune. It's centrally located and has the largest population in the region. And indeed, this is precisely the way the Commune tried to act IOTL - subjugating its neighbors, trying to raze castles, and attempting to usurp civic power from their bishop. Unfortunately for them, "their bishop" was also the Pope.

Shame that we couldn't just have the Commune institute an Arnoldist Pope. They may eventually, but I can't see anyone accepting one being put there overnight.

Other issues:
- They lacked a middle class made strong by trade and manufacturing, because they were not on any major trade routes and because they were continually exploited by the powerful Papal government and nobility.
- They had a very strong noble class, in part because of Papal patronage, who depended on that patronage and were likely to side with the Pope against the city rather than the other way around.
- They were in a terrible geographic position. The city's population had shrunk to the point where most of the territory within the walls was rural, so their own walls were much too long and completely impractical to defend. Only the Leonine City, which was usually held by the Pope/prefect, was a defensible zone.
- They were fairly regularly brutalized by floods and malaria, because the remaining population had all settled in the flood plains after the aqueducts were cut and the river was the only water source. Malaria saved them a few times when it ravaged besieging armies, but ultimately disease and flooding were holding them back, not helping them.

- Middle Class needs time to grow, little we can do about this without some serious effort to set up/import/lure traders. Probably needs improvement in trading infrastructure, which leads me back to Olbia as an idea for a closer trading hub. This may end up being a long term problem. Going old school with land seizure may help in the short term, but if the Romans did something a bit mental (all trade in their territory has to go through Roma itself perhaps, lower tariffs in and out of Roma) then a middle class might arrive/emerge through facilitation.

- More cooperation in these members might be the best PoD of the bunch. Having their honours upheld by the Senate seems the most obvious thing to do, and was probably done. As I said earlier, perhaps reward co-operation, brutally punish resistance. If the co-operative barons were made senators, or something similar, they may well have less resistance to the Commune. If they have leaner city-living requirements until the Commune establishes itself, then that could help too.

- Cursed Geography. It does sound like they need to rapidly fill those spaces. Having trade have to go through Roma would create wealth, and immigration to exploit it. Supplanting outer communes into the walls may work as well - or using the land inside the walls as land grants/payments for soldiers recruited from client communes.

- I think that this is probably the most important thing to fix. If they used the client communes for manual labour, and used it as a first investment, then the city would become distinctly healthier.

hrmm.
 
So perhaps a PoD could include some more success when wrangling the barons? Perhaps leaner requirements for the nobles might make it easier to have some resist less - or an example being made of those who refused to submit could cow some of them.

Maybe they should keep Giordano Pierleoni around longer instead of kicking him to the curb, since he is almost literally the only noble on their side. It's hard to say how powerful or influential he was, but his father, Pier Leoni, was one of the great Romans of his age, and had an immense fortune from his Jewish moneylender ancestors.

OTL, Giordano defends the city from Pope Lucius II in 1145, who is struck by a stone and killed. (He's the only Pope I know offhand to be mortally wounded in battle.) But once he dies, Eugene III comes in, temporarily reconciles with the commune, and Giordano gets overthrown. Eugene seems to have been a more effective Pope than Lucius in general. If the stone misses Lucius but he's forced to retreat anyway, or if he's captured, or if Oddone Frangipani dies instead of Lucius (though I'm not sure he was physically present) maybe different things happen for the Commune.

Maybe Pierleoni can even prevent the Romans from going completely nuts when Arnold arrives later that year. Probably not, though.

Regarding the communes, again, I wonder how they could have them be more cooperative, perhaps slightly less harsh price controls, or a combination of grain taxes and manual labour taxes/provision of x-many men for military service. That might make them more amenable.
The requisitioning and price-controlling of grain wasn't intended to hurt other independent communes, it was an attempt to enrich and expand the commune at the expense of its own contado. Remember, just because they're not nobles doesn't mean they're nice to peasants. They're going to extract as much from the land as possible to re-allocate resources to the urban population, because population is life, and because peasants are in general powerless to stop them.

"Rural communes" uniting villages and led by prosperous peasants or even lords did exist, but they tended to fall under the power of the urban communes and in Italy often lost their independence, becoming mere organizational districts of a city's contado.

A bit further afield, so perhaps a bit more difficult. I wonder if a Roman Commune could seek an ally in Milan in this area, both supporting the confiscation of the lands of bishops.
They're not enemies of bishops in general, they just want to take power from their bishops. Milan is chiefly anti-imperial, and thus pro-papal; Rome is intrinsically anti-papal. They're not going to be friends.

Shame that we couldn't just have the Commune institute an Arnoldist Pope. They may eventually, but I can't see anyone accepting one being put there overnight.
Well, it's not impossible. In 1130-38 there was a schism because the Pierleoni family and Frangipani family supported different popes. The Pierleoni candidate, Anacletus II, was arguably the more legitimate one, but while he stayed in Rome the Frangipani candidate Innocent II went abroad and got all the rest of Christendom to recognize him as legitimate. Nevertheless, it took 8 years for the schism to end, and Innocent was only able to re-enter Rome once Anacletus died.

So it's possible for a schismatic pope to hold the city and last for a while, but as you say, recognition beyond Rome is going to be hard, and the other Pope is going to be pleading for the Germans or Sicilians to come give him his throne back.

which leads me back to Olbia as an idea for a closer trading hub. This may end up being a long term problem.
Olbia... in Sardinia? Or did you mean Ostia? Because Ostia is pretty worthless at this point. They might be better off rebuilding Antium or gaining control of Civitavecchia. If they do discover Alunite in Tolfa ahistorically, they're going to need Civitavecchia anyway.

One possibility might be to discover Alunite and, while exporting it at a high price, make it available at a low subsidized price to Romans. Take control of Tusculum and the end of the eastern sheep runs and you suddenly have decent conditions for woolen production. Rome isn't going to beat, say, Flanders for cheap woolmaking, but maybe they can be competitive with cheap dyeing from alum. Alternately, if they can somehow get involved in the silk trade, alum is useful for that too.

More cooperation in these members might be the best PoD of the bunch. Having their honours upheld by the Senate seems the most obvious thing to do, and was probably done.
Honors from the Pope are worth much, much more than honors from the senate. He's got the land, he's got the money, and he's got the ability to give plum positions in bishoprics and cardinal sees to noble sons and nephews. Play ball with the Pope and your son could be Pope one day, and if that happens your family suddenly is on a rocket ship to power and prosperity. The commune has nothing to match that.

Cursed Geography. It does sound like they need to rapidly fill those spaces.
These are walls originally built for a city of (conservatively) a quarter million to (liberally) a million. Paris didn't even reach the low end of that scale until the 14th century. Rome isn't going to manage it.

More critically, the Aurelian walls of Rome were not intended to be effective against siege warfare. They were built in an era when the only threats were migrating tribes with no siege engines or other city-taking capability. For a 12th century siege, however, they're just way too long to defend. Rome's walls are about 14 miles long; for contrast, the land walls of Constantinople are less than 4 miles. In fact, Constantinople's land and sea walls combined are still shorter than Rome's walls (something on the order of 12-13 miles). A typical "large city" in Italy at this time had maybe a 3 or 4 long wall, with Ferrara coming in near the top of the heap with a 5.6 mile wall.

There's a reason that when Lucius attacked the city, the critical battle happened in the city center, not at the walls. Rome's defensive position is basically hopeless; they're going to live and die by their performance in the field and their ability to hold outlying fortifications, not by the walls of their own city.

I think that this is probably the most important thing to fix. If they used the client communes for manual labour, and used it as a first investment, then the city would become distinctly healthier.
They didn't seem to have the technological capacity to fix the aqueducts until the end of the middle ages, though there are references to repairs to the Aqua Virgo in the 8th century. Without aqueducts, they have no other choice but to live in the flood plain by the river. You can't flood-proof a flood plain, and you can't really malaria-proof it either. Particularly since none of them know what causes malaria.

Maybe they'd be slightly better off if Guiscard doesn't sack the city in 1084, that seems to have messed them up pretty good. The Roman Forum was not actually abandoned until after 1084, at which point it became a combination cattle pasture and garbage dump.
 
Sorry, I missed this post on the last page in the conversation. Oops!

LSCatilina said:
I agree : the region seems to have been a bit too remote at this point to allow an earlier discovery. Still, it would be more interesting than seeing Rome gaining the upper hand on Central Italian wool to me, even if it's inherently unlikely to happen.

I do think that alum discovery, coupled with dominance over the Alban Hills and territory to the east to gain control of the regional sheep-runs, could be a game-changer for Rome. The question, aside from the plausibility of finding alum, is whether Rome would actually be the beneficiary of that or whether control would be swiftly assumed by some combination of the Papacy, the Roman nobility, and/or the maritime communes.

I was less thinking, eventually, about a direct political control (even if it was an option I was thinking about. Apparently it's not a viable one) than seeing Rome beneficing from this relatively close production, with a more important commercial role (on which it would be essentially producer/transmitter, and probably as you said, dominated by someone else).
I think the best situation you can get is one in which Rome basically becomes Milan - an inland commune with a strong textile industry supporting an expansive middle class. With Rome's proximity to the Papacy and its fairly robust Jewish population (not trying to be stereotypical here, but it was common at the time for Curial officials to have Jewish stewards), you might even manage to evolve some of the early financial institutions that historically emerged in Lombardy.

Milan is in a better position than Rome because it sits on trans-alpine trade routes, so it gets to trade and charge tolls on goods going from Pisa/Genoa/Venice to much of continental Europe; Rome isn't a trade hub for anything except Latium. Thus they're going to be much more vulnerable to interference and monopolizing from the maritime communes. Still, that doesn't necessarily preclude their own success, it just means that they need some pretty adroit political leadership to avoid becoming like Byzantium and getting their economy hollowed out by foreign merchants.

While Roman patriotism was distinct from Arnoldism, they became more mixed as time went (or rather, a radical, popular Roman patriotism).

...

That's said it's how it get develloped and "absorbated" by Romanism that's more at the center of things.
There's evidence that a sort of pseudo-Arnoldism already existed in Rome; supposedly Patrician Giordano Pierleoni offered Lucius II the opportunity to come back to Rome so long as he surrendered his sovereign rights to the Patrician and lived as as a normal priest might on a state stipend and possibly tithes. This argument - give up your temporal powers, remain as a priest - seems Arnoldist, but Arnold didn't even arrive in Rome until after Pierleoni was out of power.

The problem is really that our sources don't do a good job of disentangling the two, and often credit Arnold as being the "leader" of the commune when he very probably was not (or at least not in any political sense). Because of that, it's really difficult to say whether Arnoldism was changed by Rome, whether Romanism was changed by Arnold, or whether neither of them really changed but were simply conflated by contemporary authors who were hostile to both Arnold and Rome and saw no reason to differentiate, particularly when there were already clear similarities between them.

The idea of communal superiority over the emperor is something we really only know from the letters the commune addressed to Conrad and Frederick, but did Arnold actually write them, or did his ideas influence them? There's no evidence to suggest he wrote the letter to Conrad in 1149, and in any case that letter isn't as Rome-supremacist (over the empire) as the others. The letter to Frederick in 1152 is the best candidate; it was written by "Wetzel," who is usually assumed to be a follower of Arnold or even a pseudonym for Arnold himself. "Wetzel" obviously knew Arnold, because he makes references to Ulrich von Lenzburg and those in Arnold's past. But it's also possible that this letter, which surely must have been known to the Senate, was a melding of their own ideas and Arnold's; we can't say with certainty that every word is an expression of Arnold's own thought.

Perhaps most importantly, the final message to Frederick after he approached Rome, which haughtily offered to crown him and even demanded payment, was I believe after they had already expelled Arnold to meet Ardrian's demand (though before his execution).

Thus, my feeling is that our evidence that Arnold challenged imperial authority at all even in Rome is very thin, and we have considerable evidence that in his prior career he had not. That doesn't mean he wasn't a die-hard Romanist at the end, but the foundations that rests on are not very firm, and it's possible that when given the chance to fulfill his own dream of religious reform with imperial support he would quickly abandon any Romanist ideas that he had absorbed up until then.

Eventually, the key ITTL may be seeing Roman upper classes develloping a political/religious...I wouldn't say "identity" but concepts of its own on which Arnoldism could be tied rather than a ever more radicalized Commune.
This is often ignored, but there's evidence to suggest that the lesser nobility of Rome actually did side with the commune, at least in part. Sure, the great families - Frangipani, Colonna, Pierleoni (except for Giordano), and Tusculani were all against the commune, but Rome was filled with petty cattani who were not at those exalted heights. Under Arnold's recommendations, apparently, the city attempted to establish a communal order of "knights" or equites, which seems to have been a reference to these "loyal petty nobility," seeing as the city could hardly support the kind of non-noble milites pro commune that made up communal cavalry forces further north.

Those lesser nobles were not the kind of people who were going to get the high offices or cardinalate positions that the great families got. They were subjected by the great nobles, and popes like Adrian spent a considerable amount of effort harassing them to force them to give up their allods and hold all their lands as fiefs from the Pope. Whether they were Arnoldists is unclear, but their economic and political interests were not dissimilar from those of the Roman mob. Giordano Pierleoni was unique in that he was the only member of a major family to cleave to the Commune, but he was certainly not unique in terms of being the only knight in its ranks, at least not in the commune's early years. But Frederick and Adrian shattered the early commune, and after that it's harder to say what the composition was.

So, I'd see only a "foreign" noble able to pull this (being called as some nobiliar/imperial equivalent of a podestat) but Romanism isn't going to appreciate much and giving the state of desintegration in Central Italy, I don't see how could have pulled this. Maybe a noble (a Italo-Norman?) pushed by Pisa or Genoa? It wouldn't last too much, IMO
There aren't a lot of good candidates. Though if through alum or other means Rome gains some economic power prior to the commune being proclaimed, perhaps that attracts foreign nobles from Pisa/Genoa or elsewhere who can then use their foreign connections to support the rebellion and try to place themselves on top of it. Then again, the Romans had a notorious hatred of "foreigners" (read: anyone but Romans) and might not stand for that. Giordano was a native son (aside from his Jewish roots) and he only lasted a year.

Alberic's state depended on his absolute power over the Papacy; he put in whoever he wanted as Pope, and on his deathbed forced the Romans to promise to make his son Pope, who then became simultaneously Prince of Rome and Pope John XII. The 12th century system of papal selection makes that difficult to achieve.

The closest anyone came to that level of control in the 12th century was probably the Pierleoni. Pier Leoni was the champion of the pope against the emperor, evidently both powerful and rich, and his faction managed to get his own son Pietro selected as Pope Anacletus II. OTL the Frangipani selected their own schismatic Pope, Innocent II, who eventually won when Anacletus died, but if Innocent dies first or never gets off the ground, you suddenly have one family dominant in both the noble and ecclesiastical spheres. If Anacletus has a longer and more successful tenure, you might see Giordano Pierleoni using his brother's rule over the church to make himself into an Alberic-like figure instead of the champion of the commune.

Of course, if that happens, you probably butterfly away the Commune in the first place.

The Curia was always like this, at least since Ostrogothic control of Papacy. With the growing monetarisation of society and growing position of the pontiff (after Ottonian and Gregorian Reforms) it's just showing more.
No doubt, but I was talking about the international legitimacy of Arnoldism. It seems like the corruption is far better known and reaches much more into the far corners of Europe in the 12th century than ever before. As the Curia developed into an international court of law to which clerics and nobles from many other countries came to receive justice and privileges, its venality became more of an international concern. In the 10th century I'm sure many people knew of the deep corruption of Rome, but the Tusculani popes weren't capable of picking the pockets of all Christendom in the way 12th century ones increasingly could.
 
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GdwnsnHo

Banned
Maybe they should keep Giordano Pierleoni around longer instead of kicking him to the curb, since he is almost literally the only noble on their side. It's hard to say how powerful or influential he was, but his father, Pier Leoni, was one of the great Romans of his age, and had an immense fortune from his Jewish moneylender ancestors.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that he would retain influence due to his fathers fortune. It would be interesting to see him rise to a position as Consul, or Proconsul. (Depending on the Communes fancy).

OTL, Giordano defends the city from Pope Lucius II in 1145, who is struck by a stone and killed. (He's the only Pope I know offhand to be mortally wounded in battle.) But once he dies, Eugene III comes in, temporarily reconciles with the commune, and Giordano gets overthrown. Eugene seems to have been a more effective Pope than Lucius in general. If the stone misses Lucius but he's forced to retreat anyway, or if he's captured, or if Oddone Frangipani dies instead of Lucius (though I'm not sure he was physically present) maybe different things happen for the Commune.

Could the commune not just take the Pope prisoner? That would probably be the best result for the commune and Giordano, at least for controlling the Papacy. However, if Lucius is still an ineffective Pope, it may well be best for him to alienate others from the Papacy towards the Commune and the Emperor.

Maybe Pierleoni can even prevent the Romans from going completely nuts when Arnold arrives later that year. Probably not, though.

Completely nuts? I must have missed something, did they lose their metaphorical marbles when he arrived? :confused:

The requisitioning and price-controlling of grain wasn't intended to hurt other independent communes, it was an attempt to enrich and expand the commune at the expense of its own contado. Remember, just because they're not nobles doesn't mean they're nice to peasants. They're going to extract as much from the land as possible to re-allocate resources to the urban population, because population is life, and because peasants are in general powerless to stop them.

Oh, I understand that it wasn't meant to hurt the peasantry, but the alienation/lack of support may be lessened if the price-controls weren't as strong. Probably a bit of a dead end though.

"Rural communes" uniting villages and led by prosperous peasants or even lords did exist, but they tended to fall under the power of the urban communes and in Italy often lost their independence, becoming mere organizational districts of a city's contado.

This is good. I imagine that the urban communes tried to win over the prosperous peasant leaders/lords. I can't help but think that if they COULD fix the aqueducts near to Rome, we could see a large number of these rural communities move closer to Rome.

They're not enemies of bishops in general, they just want to take power from their bishops. Milan is chiefly anti-imperial, and thus pro-papal; Rome is intrinsically anti-papal. They're not going to be friends.
I get that they aren't in general, but it was more to see if they'd be at the very least unwilling to condemn the Romans.

I wonder, we keep mentioning Arnoldism, could that be in any way used to tie Milan and Rome closer together?

Well, it's not impossible. In 1130-38 there was a schism because the Pierleoni family and Frangipani family supported different popes. The Pierleoni candidate, Anacletus II, was arguably the more legitimate one, but while he stayed in Rome the Frangipani candidate Innocent II went abroad and got all the rest of Christendom to recognize him as legitimate. Nevertheless, it took 8 years for the schism to end, and Innocent was only able to re-enter Rome once Anacletus died.


So it's possible for a schismatic pope to hold the city and last for a while, but as you say, recognition beyond Rome is going to be hard, and the other Pope is going to be pleading for the Germans or Sicilians to come give him his throne back.

Could it happen if Pope Lucius was made prisoner? Sign over loads of powers to the Commune, and endorse an Arnoldist bishop to be his successor. (I can't remember how "Flexible" the appointment of a Pope was at this point.) At the very least they could have their own Arnoldist Pope, stripped of most of the powers of the office, whilst having Lucius in prison (the advantage being is that he can't ask for help particularly easily if he is in prison).


Olbia... in Sardinia? Or did you mean Ostia? Because Ostia is pretty worthless at this point. They might be better off rebuilding Antium or gaining control of Civitavecchia. If they do discover Alunite in Tolfa ahistorically, they're going to need Civitavecchia anyway.

Carp, meet exhausted brain, exhausted brain, meet Carp :p I only came back to it as Ostia is closer to Rome (I think), and therefore makes it easier to make a Roman middle class, rather than a Civitavecchian or Antium-based middle class. Perhaps I put too much stock in the middle class wanting to be close to their trade ports. *shrug*

One possibility might be to discover Alunite and, while exporting it at a high price, make it available at a low subsidized price to Romans. Take control of Tusculum and the end of the eastern sheep runs and you suddenly have decent conditions for woolen production. Rome isn't going to beat, say, Flanders for cheap woolmaking, but maybe they can be competitive with cheap dyeing from alum. Alternately, if they can somehow get involved in the silk trade, alum is useful for that too.

They may have a peculiarly unique selling point though. In the modern UK, you can stick QE2's signature on anything and its price jumps. It may not be as valuable until the commune has more political legitimacy, but they could always try and sell their garments with various Roman symbols, or even try to start a fashion trend in the Roman Empire for "Roman Robes, made in Rome, worn by Romans" - bit of a long shot, but a fun idea at least.

Honors from the Pope are worth much, much more than honors from the senate. He's got the land, he's got the money, and he's got the ability to give plum positions in bishoprics and cardinal sees to noble sons and nephews. Play ball with the Pope and your son could be Pope one day, and if that happens your family suddenly is on a rocket ship to power and prosperity. The commune has nothing to match that.

Sadly, I know. At the moment at least. (Though possibly permenantly). From the sound of things, the Commune did look like it wanted to supplant the Popes role as confirming the Emperor. Then again, any titles offered by the Commune would become more valuable as it gained more power and clout.

These are walls originally built for a city of (conservatively) a quarter million to (liberally) a million. Paris didn't even reach the low end of that scale until the 14th century. Rome isn't going to manage it.

More critically, the Aurelian walls of Rome were not intended to be effective against siege warfare. They were built in an era when the only threats were migrating tribes with no siege engines or other city-taking capability. For a 12th century siege, however, they're just way too long to defend. Rome's walls are about 14 miles long; for contrast, the land walls of Constantinople are less than 4 miles. In fact, Constantinople's land and sea walls combined are still shorter than Rome's walls (something on the order of 12-13 miles). A typical "large city" in Italy at this time had maybe a 3 or 4 long wall, with Ferrara coming in near the top of the heap with a 5.6 mile wall.

There's a reason that when Lucius attacked the city, the critical battle happened in the city center, not at the walls. Rome's defensive position is basically hopeless; they're going to live and die by their performance in the field and their ability to hold outlying fortifications, not by the walls of their own city.

In a word. Damn.

With more words, it then appears that only with significant economic success could Rome be made defensible on its own. Yes, short to medium term, field armies are the saviours of the day. References could be made to a medieval Sparta. However, they could circumvent the issues with the Aurelian Walls with a "Honeycomb Wall" (to coin a term), where they have multiple smaller walls, protecting the various important quarters, designed to allow the defenders to fall back along the walls, to a main fortification. - probably a prohibitivly expensive idea, but it would be interesting to see.

Either that or just acknowledge that in a siege, Roma needs an Urban Motte and Bailey approach, with one major fortification, and using the entire Aurelian walls as the Bailey (if they hadn't already). The Leonine City or the western bank could serve quite well for this. (I think, I may be misreading a map).

Or take it a step further, using sewers/catacombs/passages under the city, there could be multiple smaller Urban Motte and Bailey setups as the city grows. Seven Hills of Rome, meet the Seven Fortresses.

They didn't seem to have the technological capacity to fix the aqueducts until the end of the middle ages, though there are references to repairs to the Aqua Virgo in the 8th century. Without aqueducts, they have no other choice but to live in the flood plain by the river. You can't flood-proof a flood plain, and you can't really malaria-proof it either. Particularly since none of them know what causes malaria.

Maybe they'd be slightly better off if Guiscard doesn't sack the city in 1084, that seems to have messed them up pretty good. The Roman Forum was not actually abandoned until after 1084, at which point it became a combination cattle pasture and garbage dump.

See, this is where I find it hard to see why they couldn't fix it IOTL. If the Roman Commune is going to insist on its Roman heritage, there is one VERY easy place to get someone who can help fix the aqueducts. The Roman Empire. They still know how to build and repair these things. Sure it won't be cheap (it actually might be if they get lucky but anyway) either using the gold from the wool trade (uh, no, earmark that for an army), or from the loot of capturing other towns (much better idea) this expert can be paid for, and the repairs begun. (The price of the repairs I do not know).

Avoiding the sacking of the city could be an interesting PoD. Problem is that you've got to throw up butterfly nets for about 50 years, to ensure the rest falls into place. If you avoid the sack in 1084, Rome is still a VERY important city. Having a Republic of Rome emerge after that could be interesting, but it would need a different impetus to move to a more banking and mercantile state.

Hilariously, if you want to just go a bit out of left field, if Robert Guiscard is defeated and made to submit to the Byzantines, this puts Rome on the edge of the HRE and ERE once again. Neither party wants the other to have control over the Papacy - so either after an opportune revolt, or through political agreement, Rome is made a Commune, the Papacy has most of its temporal powers in the Commune taken away (and granted to the Commune), and everyone wins but the Pope.

Weaker Pope, making the HRE stronger, and the Schism potentially easier to heal - though this new Commune could be a messy thing. Assume that there are negative side effects and Guiscard/Roger Borsa/Sicily rebels and causing the Empire to suffer roughly OTL's troubles, and Sicily to suffer a similar anarchy. The Commune takes advantage of the chaos in southern Italy, and takes significant territories, and hopefully co-opting the Normans to do it. The main issue is ensuring the Normans become an urban population, so there isn't a long term problem.
 
I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that he would retain influence due to his fathers fortune. It would be interesting to see him rise to a position as Consul, or Proconsul. (Depending on the Communes fancy).

"Patrician" was the highest position the Commune had. It may have been basically a podesta, or perhaps it was purely a military commander-in-chief sort of position (the Senate refers to him in a letter as their "standard-bearer.") Unlike patricians in ancient Roman times, who were a class of people, patricius in the 12th century was almost always used as a title for a singular leader of a city or principality. They deliberately didn't use "consul" because that was traditionally a title of the high nobility; at the time they rebelled, "consul" was a title held by Ptolemy II, Count of Tusculum, who was most definitely not on their side. Arnold may have suggested that they revive the old dual-consul system, but as far as I know there's no evidence to suggest that was actually implemented.

"Senator" was used the same way, as the title of a single leader, before the revival of the senate by the commune. Alberic, for instance, titled himself "Prince and Senator of all the Romans" even though no senate actually existed at that time.

Giordano basically vanishes from the historical record once he's kicked out. He's basically a blank slate, you can sort of do what you want with him with some credibility.

Could the commune not just take the Pope prisoner? That would probably be the best result for the commune and Giordano, at least for controlling the Papacy. However, if Lucius is still an ineffective Pope, it may well be best for him to alienate others from the Papacy towards the Commune and the Emperor.
They could. I suppose the best-case scenario is that Giordano forces Lucius to accept his demands - that the Pope renounce all temporal authority over the city and lives like a common priest. But this has complicated reprecussions - what happens to the Papal Curia? The Pope hears cases from all over Europe, is the court still functioning? What happens to the rest of the cardinals? What happens to all of the feudatories and friends of Lucius?

Despite their victory, at that moment the Commune doesn't even control all of Rome because of the Frangipani fortresses within its walls. I'm not sure if control over Lucius will be enough to force the Frangipani to withdraw from their positions. If not, there's going to be a campaign for control of the city itself before the Romans can do anything about their neighbors. That's why I mentioned it might be easier if Oddone Frangipani gets killed instead of Lucius; that throws the commune's most dangerous foe into disarray.

Completely nuts? I must have missed something, did they lose their metaphorical marbles when he arrived? :confused:
Well, this is a discussion I've sort of been having with LSCatilina - it's arguable that the Commune was further "radicalized" by Arnold's teachings, though we can't be sure how much of their thought was influenced by him and how much already existed. But certainly the commune did become rather foolish, doing things like writing arrogant and delusional letters to Barbarossa about how it was only Roman consent that made him emperor, and so on. What they needed more than anything was to be led by a competent and realistic diplomat. I don't know if Giordano was that man, but he certainly couldn't have been worse than the people who took over later.

Oh, I understand that it wasn't meant to hurt the peasantry, but the alienation/lack of support may be lessened if the price-controls weren't as strong. Probably a bit of a dead end though.
Maybe, but I just don't think it's much of an issue. I can't recall any urban communes being serious threatened or destabilized by their grain policies or rural discontent.

This is good. I imagine that the urban communes tried to win over the prosperous peasant leaders/lords. I can't help but think that if they COULD fix the aqueducts near to Rome, we could see a large number of these rural communities move closer to Rome.
One possibility is that such structures are created to organize the countryside under the petty nobility, who seem to have been at least partially on the commune's side (as opposed to the high nobility). It's sort of a longshot, but if the commune can appropriate church and high-noble land and organize it into grants to the lesser nobility, it might shore up their loyalty with that class and give them some semblance of an army that's not just made up of the urban poor. I haven't really thought that through though.

I wonder, we keep mentioning Arnoldism, could that be in any way used to tie Milan and Rome closer together?
I sort of doubt it. Though there are other similar movements that emerge later in the century closer to home - Orvieto, for instance, becomes a significant Cathar center, and I think there's a number who emerge in Viterbo as well. Cathars are different than Arnoldists, but the concepts share some of the same appeal, idealizing a poor, saintly, pure priesthood. LSCatilina seems to know more about the Cathars than me. Maybe if Arnoldism of some sort takes root there before the Cathars, you could get a sympathetic movement among the major cities of Latium.

I think Milan is just too distant. They have their own problems to worry about. They're not even involved in Tuscany, let alone Latium.

Could it happen if Pope Lucius was made prisoner? Sign over loads of powers to the Commune, and endorse an Arnoldist bishop to be his successor. (I can't remember how "Flexible" the appointment of a Pope was at this point.) At the very least they could have their own Arnoldist Pope, stripped of most of the powers of the office, whilst having Lucius in prison (the advantage being is that he can't ask for help particularly easily if he is in prison).
At this point, you need the college of cardinals to elect a successor, and having Lucius captive doesn't give you the college. Selecting a pope with no college while the existing pope is still alive has no legitimacy whatsoever; I doubt even the Romans themselves would take it seriously.

There is some dubious precedent to annul a pope's election and appoint a new one while he still lives (see Antipope Gregory VIII) but you still need the college of cardinals, or at least some of them, to make a go of it. I'm not sure how many of the pro-Pierleoni cardinals that elected Anacletus II in 1130 are still alive in 1145, and I also don't know whether any of them would even for a second consider backing an Arnoldist candidate.

Notably, Cardinal Octavian - who would go on to proclaim himself pope and become the pro-imperial antipope Victor IV in 1159 - was part of the college in 1145. He's a Roman nobleman of a once-great but now seriously fallen family. But he proclaimed himself Pope knowing that he had the backing of the empire, and with their military support; I don't know if he would be as willing in 1145, or if any of the other cardinals would back him. Also, seeing as he's a nobleman who owns land of his own despite being a cardinal, he's basically the embodiment of what the Arnoldists hate.

I only came back to it as Ostia is closer to Rome (I think), and therefore makes it easier to make a Roman middle class, rather than a Civitavecchian or Antium-based middle class. Perhaps I put too much stock in the middle class wanting to be close to their trade ports. *shrug*
You're not wrong, it's just a really awful place to have a port. Look at where the coastline is now, the rate of silting up is incredibly high. It took massive engineering projects at the height of Rome's greatness to make a good replacement port for silted-in Ostia (specifically, Portus). It's silty, it's in a malarial marsh, there's no shelter from either storms or hostile attack... it's just bad. That's one of the reasons why if Rome has any future as a commune, it's as an agricultural-and-manufacturing inland commune, not as a maritime commune like Pisa or Genoa. It's the only way to make the best of their awful geography.

It may not be as valuable until the commune has more political legitimacy, but they could always try and sell their garments with various Roman symbols, or even try to start a fashion trend in the Roman Empire for "Roman Robes, made in Rome, worn by Romans" - bit of a long shot, but a fun idea at least.
Well, all I can say is that I'm not aware of branding being a major thing at this point in time. Prince (and quality) seem to generally be the deciding factors.

It would be helpful for a Roman wool industry if they could somehow disrupt Pisan control over Sardinia, since that's where the Pisans got a lot of good-quality wool. Rome is never going to accomplish that themselves, but since the Pisans only have claim over the island through a Papal grant, if you can get the Papacy to turn against them you might be able to do something with that.

From the sound of things, the Commune did look like it wanted to supplant the Popes role as confirming the Emperor.
Yeah, but the commune had no credibility, and the soon-to-be-emperor in question (Frederick "Barbarossa" von Hohenstaufen) threw a fit at the idea of even having the hold the pope's horse while he dismounted to get his imperial crown. He had to call a timeout and call his Bolognese lawyers and make a full inquiry into whether this was really a thing that previous emperors had done, because it deeply offended his ideas of imperial supremacy. He certainly wasn't about to acknowledge the superiority of a bunch of Italian townsfolk. I get the feeling he would rather have burned Rome to the ground than agree to "receive" the crown from their senate. Indeed, when the Romans got uppity during his coronation, his response was to slaughter them in droves.

Then again, any titles offered by the Commune would become more valuable as it gained more power and clout.
It's not going to match the international power and clout of the man who is literally the Vicar of Christ on Earth. The big noble families aren't going to join them unless Rome either achieves hegemonic power in Latium or Rome acquires its own subject pope who has at least some international recognition.

With more words, it then appears that only with significant economic success could Rome be made defensible on its own. Yes, short to medium term, field armies are the saviours of the day. References could be made to a medieval Sparta. However, they could circumvent the issues with the Aurelian Walls with a "Honeycomb Wall" (to coin a term), where they have multiple smaller walls, protecting the various important quarters, designed to allow the defenders to fall back along the walls, to a main fortification. - probably a prohibitivly expensive idea, but it would be interesting to see.
You should check out this pdf. It's a paper about the plans of an architect named Sangallo for the fortification of Rome in the 16th century. Obviously this is a much later era - the age of cannons - but there's some detail in there about the feasibility of making a shorter wall and the difficulties posed by the city's geography.

Using data from that, I once tried to see if I could make a good wall circuit on a lark. Using Sangallo's plan as a template, I got the wall circuit to about 8.36 miles, which is a lot better than the original 14 or so but still really long by 12th century standards. Getting any smaller than that without cutting out major inhabited regions, losing the forum or other major features, or losing important high ground is really hard.

Either that or just acknowledge that in a siege, Roma needs an Urban Motte and Bailey approach, with one major fortification, and using the entire Aurelian walls as the Bailey (if they hadn't already). The Leonine City or the western bank could serve quite well for this. (I think, I may be misreading a map).
What they did was basically fill the city with fortresses, so the city was essentially a hardened urban environment. Old ruins like the Colosseum, the Tabularium, and even the Arch of Titus were turned into fortresses. Towers sprang up everywhere.

The Leonine City is the citadel of Rome. It has the newest walls (built by Saracen slaves in the 9th century), it has a defensible perimeter (about 2.5 miles on its own), and it includes the Castel S. Angelo, which is the strongest fortress in the city and the keystone of Roman defense. Anyone who controls the city militarily is going to have their headquarters there.

See, this is where I find it hard to see why they couldn't fix it IOTL. If the Roman Commune is going to insist on its Roman heritage, there is one VERY easy place to get someone who can help fix the aqueducts. The Roman Empire. They still know how to build and repair these things. Sure it won't be cheap (it actually might be if they get lucky but anyway) either using the gold from the wool trade (uh, no, earmark that for an army), or from the loot of capturing other towns (much better idea) this expert can be paid for, and the repairs begun. (The price of the repairs I do not know).
It is sort of a mystery to me why it wasn't attempted until nearly the Renaissance, particularly since the Aqua Virgo is said to have been repaired in the 8th century. But the Aqua Virgo is underground for most of its length, and very carefully engineered - it may be that they "repaired" the above-ground part but the udnerground part remained too damaged or silted-up to do much with it. I really don't know if the Komnenid Byzantines had the technology to fix that or not.

I certainly don't think it's an impossible project, but it seems to have needed some kind of expertise, funding, and/or political will that Rome IOTL didn't manage until the end of the Middle Ages.

Avoiding the sacking of the city could be an interesting PoD. Problem is that you've got to throw up butterfly nets for about 50 years, to ensure the rest falls into place. If you avoid the sack in 1084, Rome is still a VERY important city. Having a Republic of Rome emerge after that could be interesting, but it would need a different impetus to move to a more banking and mercantile state.
The sack happened only after Guiscard "won;" basically, Henry backed off and the Pope was in Guiscard's hands, but the citizens then rose up, got crushed, and got sacked for three days for their troubles. If the Romans just weren't so damn angry, there probably wouldn't have been a sack (maybe still some looting though) without much else in terms of repercussions at the time.

You are correct that a more prosperous Rome itself might change some things, but since the factors that caused the communal revolt (including the loss of Rome's regional preeminence) were probably going still going to happen regardless, the butterflies for this might be fairly minimal.

Hilariously, if you want to just go a bit out of left field, if Robert Guiscard is defeated and made to submit to the Byzantines, this puts Rome on the edge of the HRE and ERE once again. Neither party wants the other to have control over the Papacy - so either after an opportune revolt, or through political agreement, Rome is made a Commune, the Papacy has most of its temporal powers in the Commune taken away (and granted to the Commune), and everyone wins but the Pope.
If you want to thrash the Normans and re-introduce the ERE you don't have to go back to Guiscard. Go to the Papal-Byzantine invasion of Sicily in 1155 and have King William, who was apparently sick to the point that everyone thought he was going to die, actually die instead of miraculously recovering and kicking the Byzantines back to Greece. Even better for you, it happens a decade after the Commune's founding, so you don't have to worry about butterflies killing the Commune in the first place.

If you do that, congratulations, you've just triggered a war between Manuel Komnenos and Frederick Barbarossa. The papal schism probably still happens four years later, and presumably then all hell breaks loose. Things get really complicated when the ERE is suddenly a power in Italy again.
 
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With Rome's proximity to the Papacy and its fairly robust Jewish population (not trying to be stereotypical here, but it was common at the time for Curial officials to have Jewish stewards)
Well, it's hardly stereotypical : actually, bishops (and including Rome's) usually harboured Jewish communities within episcopal urban demesnes, would it be to call dibbs on trade benefits after the fall of Carolingia (up to the XVth century, in pontifical lands in Provence).

The problem is really that our sources don't do a good job of disentangling the two, and often credit Arnold as being the "leader" of the commune when he very probably was not (or at least not in any political sense).
Not in the political sense, I agree, but what I have at hand (that may be wrong) support sort of symbolical, ideological and generally influential figure. Not that the Commune was Arnoldist (it was "Romanist" before all things) but roman Arnoldism seems to have an important ideological and "legitimizing" role.

The idea of communal superiority over the emperor is something we really only know from the letters the commune addressed to Conrad and Frederick, but did Arnold actually write them, or did his ideas influence them?
I'd favour a mutual influence at this point : Arnoldism found a fertile land with Romanism, and a general mix was bound to happen, each other building bridges.

But it's also possible that this letter, which surely must have been known to the Senate, was a melding of their own ideas and Arnold's; we can't say with certainty that every word is an expression of Arnold's own thought.
At this point, tough, I don't think Arnoldism would be only limited to Arnold : he had time to influence Romans and Romanist political tought, enough for that Arnoldists being an autonomous political/ideological force.

Wetzel does more than mentioning Arnold, but covers several of his teaching (blended with Romanism), as the illegitimity for the Church to have temporal power, and to propose a municipal/classical rule for Rome.

Perhaps most importantly, the final message to Frederick after he approached Rome, which haughtily offered to crown him and even demanded payment, was I believe after they had already expelled Arnold to meet Ardrian's demand (though before his execution).
Indeed, but it doesn't mean Arnoldism was dead in Rome : as you said the point was more to meet pontifical's conditions than the roman Arnoldism to be extinguished.

Thus, my feeling is that our evidence that Arnold challenged imperial authority at all even in Rome is very thin, and we have considerable evidence that in his prior career he had not. That doesn't mean he wasn't a die-hard Romanist at the end, but the foundations that rests on are not very firm
Thing is, the alternative interpretations are as well, if not more, fragile; when compared to a radicalized Arnoldism. Not that essentially analytic bases are unsufficient, of course (my point is more that we have more or less equal possibilities there).

he would quickly abandon any Romanist ideas that he had absorbed up until then.
I'm less certain : his excommunication would have make him more tied to Romanism would it be only for having a chance to apply his ideas. Without political base, his return into HRE would have meant a partial withdrawal of his ideas and some concilation with the Church that I'm not sure would be fitting what we know of him.

This is often ignored, but there's evidence to suggest that the lesser nobility of Rome actually did side with the commune, at least in part.
I'm not sure I was much clear : my point was that the upper classes (I don't really consider urban knights as such, would it be because they were more likely to be clientelized than having a sort of political dominance. Don't get me wrong : they represented an urban political force, but they're not the point of my proposal there) may have lacked a coherent social "ideology" in late XIIth Rome, preventing them to turn the Commune more at their advantage or, maybe, stop its radicalisation.

From what I read, they were quite passive, relatively to the events at hand, and changing that could bring more changes to the Commune, with sattelizing at least part of the medii.

Of course, if that happens, you probably butterfly away the Commune in the first place.
I was more thinking about a capetan/podestat noble-equivalent figure than an outright Prince of Rome. With a stronger upper class (and maybe an even more important radicalisation of the Commune, happening earlier), it could pass as a transition between Commune and the return of the Pope with some really formal equivalent of municipal authority.
Chances that it happens are quite low, that said, and the changes would eventually not be that important.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that he would retain influence due to his fathers fortune. It would be interesting to see him rise to a position as Consul, or Proconsul. (Depending on the Communes fancy).
I'm not exactly sure about these titles in Central Italy, but didn't they carried more economical representativity (for Consuls) or outright domination (Proconsul, that I saw used by important nobles to mark their suzerainty over ancient towns)?

It wouldn't prevent a classical-obsseded Commune to use these titles (after all Consul was used in Southern France to name the municipal authority) but I'm not sure it would be contextually wise.

Could the commune not just take the Pope prisoner?
They technically could, but it would be a legitimacy failure both for the Pope (I wonder how quickly a new one would get elected outside Rome) and the Commune (yeh, we have a deposed pope...What do we do with him now?). The only real winner would be the HREmperor there.

where they have multiple smaller walls, protecting the various important quarters, designed to allow the defenders to fall back along the walls, to a main fortification. - probably a prohibitivly expensive idea, but it would be interesting to see.
That would ask for a militarisation of not only Commune, but as well Roman society. Not that a partial militarisation is impossible with a commune, at the contrary (with several exemples of administrative/political divisions based on "military" divisions, such as quarters responsible of a part of a wall), but what would worry me more would be the likely lack of cohesion of such an organisation, critically once you made the defense quarter by quarter rather than wholly urban.

It could be efficient on local tactics, but not on the general battle (maybe less so). As in, resulting of a more battled over Rome, eventually more ruined and devastated one.

Either that or just acknowledge that in a siege, Roma needs an Urban Motte and Bailey approach
Thing is, even not considering motte castles were "out of fashion" by then, while it's usesful enough for castles and private fortification, doing so with a town (especially a town with too great walls to be that defendable in this manner) would probably backfire, critically when we're talking about a city that, while it was significantly reduced historically, is still relatively important.

You're not going to defend the city, but only part of it at best, 1527-style.

A castle is essentially a private matter by the XIIth. Would it be pontifical, noble of communal, it would be the mark of a familial or individual dominance over Rome. That's not really going to pass easily.

Or take it a step further, using sewers/catacombs/passages under the city, there could be multiple smaller Urban Motte and Bailey setups as the city grows. Seven Hills of Rome, meet the Seven Fortresses.
A bit like above...It could work (not in the ancient sewers, tough, they were unusable), but only making things worse eventually : impossible total militarisation of society, likely uncoherence of command, more fights eventually damaging the city.

Usually, subterran passages were FAR more used to either flee, get protected and even more usually to connect caves and houses (as Arras' boves)

See, this is where I find it hard to see why they couldn't fix it IOTL.
Less trough lack of knowledge (or at least technical knowledge, the lack of practical experience and immaterial technology was a real issue, while it was still technically described in avaible sources) than lack of ressources or even motivation doing so : maintaining an aqueduct was relatively easy, but building or repairing one asked for not only important ressources but an important taskforce and a form of civil peace.

It took Byzantines more than one century to do so after damages inflicted by Avars (water supply being the first target for ancient sieges).

Not that the watter supply for Rome was that important : the population significantly lowered by the XIIth century, and such project would have been essentially a prestige-matter, which may have waited in face of more pressing needs, as costly but maybe more usefuls.

If you avoid the sack in 1084, Rome is still a VERY important city.
Actually, the population of Rome by the XIth reached an historical low point : at best 30/40 000. Even Carolingian Rome may had more inhabitants.
 
Essentially, mixture of WI and AHC - what would be required to create a Expansionist Catholic Republic in the City of Rome, and the Duchy of Latium, and have it emerge in the 1400's/Late 1300's.

How could this Republic emerge, survive, and what could be the result?

Obvious attempt in 14th century - Cola di Rienzo.

What would be needed for Cola di Rienzo to succeed?
 
(Arnold stuff)

Your opinions on Arnold and his relationship with the commune make sense to me. My main point, as it is relevant to alternate history scenarios, is that the evidence we have doesn't preclude having a pro-imperialist (or at least not actively anti-imperialist) Arnold, and indeed one could potentially imagine a post-Roman Arnold being useful to Barbarossa in a similar sort of way to how Arnold at Zurich was useful to Ulrich. Whether that's likely or not is one thing, but certainly it's plausible.

I'd favour a mutual influence at this point : Arnoldism found a fertile land with Romanism, and a general mix was bound to happen, each other building bridges.
I can certainly agree with this. The only questions are who influences whom and how much, and are these influences reversible (e.g. can you un-Romanize Arnold, to the extent he was Romanized). To me, Giordano's supposed ultimatum to Lucius suggests that Arnold's influence on the core ideas of "Romanism" was not as great as we might think, and I suspect that the sins of the Commune may have been attributed to Arnold by hostile chroniclers, particularly considering that such chroniclers often had an interest in portraying heresy, and heresiarchs, to be as heinous as possible.

I'm not sure I was much clear : my point was that the upper classes [...] may have lacked a coherent social "ideology" in late XIIth Rome, preventing them to turn the Commune more at their advantage or, maybe, stop its radicalisation.
Certainly we don't hear much of them. Their affiliation with the commune, if it was real, seems most likely to have been based on a mutual antipathy towards the Papal administration and the great families linked with it rather than anything else. I'm not sure what kind of ideology might develop to make them into a real contributing force within the commune.

Finding a good point for an earlier radicalization is not that easy; I'll think about it more. A similar incident to the Pope's rejection of the demand to raze Tivoli is certainly possible to engineer earlier, but you need a Rome that's self-conscious enough to go to war with Tivoli (or some other power) in the first place. Before the 12th century, that independent Roman spirit gets harder to find, buried as it is underneath the conflicts and intrigues of noble families and popes/antipopes.

I'm not exactly sure about these titles in Central Italy, but didn't they carried more economical representativity (for Consuls) or outright domination (Proconsul, that I saw used by important nobles to mark their suzerainty over ancient towns)?
They were all pretty fluid. "Consul" could be a title of a consiliarius, one man on a ruling council of multiple people, or it could be a princely title (like that of Ptolemy II of Tusculum). Depending on the city, it could refer to a sort of economic representative, like the "consuls of the merchants" in Pisa, or it could mean a strictly political representative, like the consoli de militia ("consuls of the knights") in Viterbo, who seem to have been noblemen who formed a counterpart to the consoli de popolo.

Likewise, "senator" could mean an actual member of a senate (though "consul," "conciliarius/councilor," or even "rector" was more common in this usage) or it could be a podesta-like title held by someone like Alberic (though "senator" as a podesta-like title might just be restricted to Rome). "Patrician" seems to have always been a title for a single ruler, not a class of people, and was used both in Rome and by the Byzantines in southern Italy (as patrikios).

"Proconsul," as far as I know, was not used. The Byzantines sometimes used its Greek equivalent, anthypatos, as a title for loyal south Italian princes in earlier centuries, but I'm not aware of any incidence of its use in Italian communes of the 12th century. Maybe it was used by Italian nobles, but if so, I haven't read it.
 
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