Gli statuti del Comune di Siena fino allo "Statuto del Buongoverno" (secoli XIII-XIV)

This essay describes the production of communal statutes in Siena throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It emphasizes the existence of a continuous process of adjustment of those statutes and the relevance of jurists in these periodic updates, notwithstanding the fact that the potestas statuendi still resided in the city General Council. It also outlines how in the last decades of thirteenth century the trend emerges of entrusting the production production of ad hoc provisions on specific issues to "savi" commissions. The new statute which was elaborated since 1324 and came into force in 1344 was probably an attempt to find a solution to problems originated in the previous decades by an uncontrolled growth of city norms. What made this elaboration very different from previous attempts was the role of jurists who deeply modified the structure and the text of statutes, in several cases more than one century old.