from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The chief magistrate in any of the republics of medieval Italy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One of certain magistrates in Italy
- noun In many Italian cities, a subordinate municipal judge.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One of the chief magistrates of the Italian republics in the Middle Ages.
- noun A mayor, alderman, or other magistrate, in some towns of Italy.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One of the chief
magistratesof the Italian republicsin the Middle Ages.
- noun A
mayor, alderman, or other magistrate, in some towns of Italy.
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
D'Ucello might well discover that poison had killed Daoud; the podesta was a very clever and knowledgeable man.
Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse living by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically excluded all idle persons from government, and determined that the priors, or leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its arts and productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the French formed their noun 'bonte.'
"podesta" is more and more limited to a judicial function.
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An important attribute of the podesta was that he had to be a foreigner so that he could be neutral to the internal "discords and conspiracies" (Waley 1991, 37).
The podesta was usually hired for a year and played the role of military leader, judge, and administrator.
To overcome factional strife, most Italian communes adopted the institution of podesta, a foreigner endowed with judicial and administrative powers.
June 19th, 2006 at 1: 37 pm troll says: listening to podesta on radio.
I put the Magazine in my coat-pocket, and left him and the podesta.
The pesatero or landlord of the inn had been despatched by my brave chapel-churies, with his fine family of children — the officers quartered in the podesta had of course bolted; but one man remained, and my fellows were on the point of cutting him into ten thousand pieces with their borachios, when I arrived in the room time enough to prevent the catastrophe.