POLITICAL CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE.

The treatment of political offenders in Florence during the centuries under investigation usually took the form of exile, destruction or confiscation of property, fines, torture, capital punishment by hanging or beheading, exposure and mutilation. Political factions, incited to violence, perpetrated crimes peculiar to mob action and acted an an extra-legal instrument of punishment. Imprisonment, although primarily used as a means of detention, was used occasionally as a punishment per se. Finally, it is a well-established fact that general amnesty and individual pardons for political offenders were practices common to Renaissance Florence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]