The Italian League was a mutual recognition and defense system formed among the Peninsula’s city-states in 1455, based on the Peace of Lodi signed in 1454. The League was formed to maintain a balance of power among its members through a prolonged truce aimed at “pax Italica” and the prevention of invasion by France and the Ottoman Empire. The League, which lasted until the outbreak of the Italian Wars in 1494, was credited by contemporary historian Francesco Guicciardini as bringing about “40 years of peace”. The research to date on the League has discussed how it was effective in keeping the peace, based on a very short summative argument.
　 This article focuses on Niccolo Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine, which discusses political issues in Italy at that time and is the only contemporary work to cover the entire period during which the Italian League existed. By analyzing Machiavelli’s narrative, the author examines a different viewpoint regarding the League and provides a new perspective on its efficacy and real operations.
　The analysis of the Florentine Histories begins with Machiavelli’s description of the political actors creating the situation in Italy as persons of virtù ; that is, those who excel in military and diplomatic affairs. However, they do not necessarily have stato, in the sense of a land to dominate.
　Next, the author discusses Machiavelli’s condemnation of the system of balance of power as a reason for the Italian Wars. In his narrative, a balance of power was established by removing the persons of virtù, thus rendering the potentates of the Peninsula incapable of preventing the outbreak of the Wars.
　Finally, the author turns to Machiavelli’s paradoxically praise of the Italian League’s effectiveness in keeping the peace by maintaining that same balance of power, that would evoke the Wars. Rather than consider the legally binding nature of the League’s agreements, he prefers to discuss the survival of the goal of a balance of power for “peace in Italy”, as stipulated by the League itself. This suggests the need for further examination regarding the use of the political term “peace in Italy”, which functioned as an effective diplomatic tool throughout the period of the Italian League.

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This article is a textual analysis of the 171―article Jinkaishu 塵芥集 （1536）legal code, the most comprehensive compendium of feudal domain law from Sengoku Japan promulgated by Date Tanemura, a lord of northeast Japan.
　The author begins by arguing that the work was written solely by Tanemura as a personal record, as evidenced by 1）a lack of discourse on jurisprudence in general and 2）repetition and excessive length, thus eliminating the possibility of participation by a legal expert or proofreader.
　The author then turns to the research to date on the compilation process of Jinkaishu, in which a “three stage” process now holds sway. That is to say, assuming that the smaller the number of articles, the older the version, the extant four versions may be dated the Inokuma-Kano Versions（163 articles）, the Sato Version（169 articles）, then the Murata Version（171 articles）. Therefore, the final draft Murata Version was probably completed through two stages of revision represented by the Inokuma-Kano Version, followed by the Sato Version. However, such an explanation based on serial revisions cannot be applied to any other Sengoku domain legal code in existence, and secondly, since there is no indication in the texts from dating or Tanemune’s signatures of any revisions having taken place, the author refutes the conventional stage theory in favor of a single completion process. Moreover, the discrepancy in the number of articles among the versions was probably more the result of negligence on the part of the text copiers than three stages of revision.
　Finally, regarding the problem of the unsystematic order in which the articles have been listed, especially from Article 151 to the end, which presents an increasing number of independent items, many of which should have appeared much earlier in the compilation, the author concludes that the section from Article 151 on must have been included at a later time, not with the intent of amending or revising the previous articles, but merely in the sense of Tanemune discontinuing the work for a time before completion.

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