Dissenso e Crimen laese maiestatis. Enrico VII e la ‘strana’ congiura di Milano del 1311

At the beginning of the 14th century, jurists gradually identified the inobediens with the rebellis, trying to link disobedience with the crimen laese maiestatis by means of a long propagandistic and ideological work. The concept of conspiracy was linked to pure power processes?, often unrelated to real economic and social conditions but rather linked to occasional events, to marginal and personal tensions, to the aspiration to power of some restricted political oligarchy. The conspiracy did not normally have an extensive social background, but it could become the origin of seditiones or rebelliones civium, general uprisings against the prince. These steps were the result of both legal reflections and the application and transformation of the law starting from contingent, sometimes extraordinary, facts and causes. They can find an echo and perhaps even the beginnings, as it happened in Milan in February 1311, with the attempted conspiracy against Henry VII, recently crowned in the city.