Abstract

When Pietro Azario wrote his Liber gestorum in the 1360s, Galeazzo II and Bernabò Visconti had lost control of numerous cities. From the very title of his work, the chronicler informs us that the main spatial setting of the narrative is Lombardy, a territory of significant size and home to a multitude of political players. It is precisely the vastness of the area that long led Azario’s Lombardy to be viewed by historians as a strictly geographical region, because it lacked an institutional unity. The essay aims to demonstrate how the Lombardy outlined by Azario, although lacking unity from an institutional point of view and in the most traditional sense of the term, acquires a clear coherence and identity when analysed from the perspective of the relations (of both alliance and conflict) that the Viscontis maintained with the other lords of the territory (Este, Scaligeri, Gonzaga, etc.) and with the different cities, including those that were not part of their dominion.