Tracing Factions and Power Struggles in Late Medieval Trogir

The paper traces the political agency of factions in late medieval Trogir, by focusing on the most important cases of open conflicts during the 14th and 15th century. Factional power struggles represented a typical feature of Italian communes, and the Trogir case study implies an excellent example of how the political culture in Dalmatian towns resembled greatly that in the Italian communes. Factional blocs were based on political, familial or business ties and headed by powerful nobles or noble lineages. To secure their positions, noble families in Trogir often formed alliances with other noble families and groups within the commoner majority or with extra-communal power holders. However, these alliances could easily be unstable and easily broken, and that only increased intrigue and uncertainty in the political life. The goal of the paper is to contribute to our understanding of the political culture in the late medieval Dalmatian towns within a comparative framework.