Signoria

In The Divine Comedy, Dante frequently depicted Italy as a land ruled by despots and condemned the rise of lordship, associating it with humanity’s most destructive impulses such as pride, which drove some individuals to assert dominance over their fellow citizens.

[4][5] Others defended the emergence of these rulers, believing that only a strong leader could end the internal strife that had long plagued their cities and restore stability.

[6] Contemporary observers and modern historians see the rise of the signoria as a reaction to the failure of the comuni to maintain law-and-order and suppress party strife and civil discord.

In the anarchic conditions that often prevailed in medieval Italian city-states, people looked to strong men to restore order and disarm the feuding elites.

By the beginning of the 14th century, a number of cities in northern Italy were ruled by signori: Milan by the Visconti family, Ferrara by the Este, Verona by the Della Scala, Padua by the Carrara.