Renaissance Venice: The City and Its Citizens 1400-`800

Basically, cities developed as a means of protection of its inhabitants. "In certain respects, the...town had succeeded as no previous urban culture had done. For the first time, the majority of its in habitants of a city were free men: except for special groups like the Jews, city dweller and citizen were now synonymous terms" (Mumford 315). No wonder Mumford calls the emergence of this city as "Christianopolis." There was a certain safety in numbers, so to speak in the growing urban centers of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. "In no previous urban culture was there anything like the large-scale provision for the sick, the aged, the suffering, the poor that there was in the medieval town" (Mumford 317). But, while some historical urban critics like Mumford sees Christianity as a sort of unifying urban force, the fact opf the domination of the Church was lessened as the Middle Ages (the so-called "dark" Ages) ended and the rebirth of culture began. Italian city-states, alone, were now dominated by princes and their families- the D'Estes, the doges of Venice, the Borgias of Tuscany and beyond, the Florentine Medici clan, the Viscontis of Genoa and the Sforzas of Milan.