Firenze e Pistoia: Governo del territorio e fazioni cittadine

During the process of its territorial dominion’s building, Florence faced the peculiarities of each subject town by implementing different strategic choices. In the case of the city of Pistoia the Florentine authorities were able to modulate specific interventions over time in order to manage and govern the territory. After a first period (1329-1376) in which a sort of political and military ‘protection’ was offered to the community of Pistoia —soon turned into a gradual erosion of political sovereignty— the formal institutionalization of city bipartisanship followed and helped to freeze the conflict between the factions, giving to Florence an easier control over city's political life. After the advent of the Medici regime the political dynamics of the parts of Pistoia were managed by the powerful Florentine family almost exclusively, so that after 1458 the bipartisan regime could in fact be abolished, coming finally in the Laurentian age to a real 'monopoly' of patronage. This third phase of the relationships between Florence and Pistoia, which ended at the dawn of the collapse of the Medici regime in 1494, left in Pistoia such a power void that the factional struggle broke out again even more bloody at the end of the century