Competing Models for Approaching Violence and Conflict and their Points of Contact

Abstract

In the first chapter, the three models of approaching crime and violence that coexisted in late medieval Siena (the culture of revenge model, the public order model, and the penitential model) are described, and differences and similarities between them are analysed. The commonality of the language used by different social actors to talk about violence, criminal justice, and social harmony is identified as something that promoted exchanges between models. However, the chapter also highlights that, although models overlapped and the lay government tended to borrow concepts and ideas from penitential elaborations in order to promote ideas of peace and public order, the ultimate goals and visions that different social actors had were and remained different.