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Medieval Italian communes are known for their violence, feuds, and vendettas, yet beneath this tumult was a society preoccupied with peace. Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy is the first book to examine how civic peacemaking in the age of Dante was forged in the crucible of penitential religious practice. Breaking new ground in the study of peacemaking in the Middle Ages, Peace and Penance in Late Medieval Italy adds an entirely new dimension to our understanding of Italian culture in this turbulent age by showing how peace was conceived, memorialized, and occasionally achieved.

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"Ambitious, interdisciplinary, and beautifully researched. Jansen makes a compelling case for the centrality of penance and peace in late medieval Italian culture."--Carol Lansing, author of Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes

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Katherine Ludwig Jansen is professor of history at the Catholic University of America. Her books include the award-winning The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton).

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