The Papacy and the formation of Urbino's municipal territory

As far as the historiographical output dedicated to the municipal phenomenon of central-northern Italy is concerned, studies into the situation of Urbino and the relationship between city and countryside are defective, or at best incomplete. Furthermore, an adequate analysis of the existing archival material on the subject has not been undertaken even in more recent times. Moreover, the same municipal history of the city of Urbino is not the last tile of a mosaic, that has now been reconstructed, since the State of the Church, of which Urbino is an integral part, is still based on incomplete and in depth bibliography. The paper is divided into two parts: the first reconstructs, on the basis of unpublished documentation (XIII-XIV centuries), the events related to the formation of the municipal territory of Urbino, outlining the roles of the three protagonists, the city, the Church of Rome and the nascent power of the Montefeltro, focusing in particular on the Ghibelline opposition of Urbino to the Papacy in the first thirty years of the XIV century. The second part, the documentary appendix, provides unpublished sources of the XIV century, which testify not only to the subjugation of the countryside by the city and to the political security of the citizen state, but also the recognition by the papal diplomacy of a natural link about civitas and comitatus, that the Church had repeatedly questioned in the past.