Costruire relazioni. La reticolarità della dimensione istituzionale nel Medioevo centrale

This essay examines the notion of networked relations as a historiographical perspective for understanding institutional life in the central Middle Ages. Rather than treating networks as pre-existing objects to be identified in the sources, it argues that medieval documentation allows historians to observe the processes through which relations were constructed, organized, represented, and made durable. Letters, cartularies, *Libri Vitae*, administrative records, liturgical memory, visits, general chapters, and the circulation of people and books did not merely reflect institutional structures: they actively contributed to producing them. From this point of view, the history of institutions is also the history of the practices through which relationships were stabilized and transformed over time. The essay places this approach within the Italian tradition of medieval studies, recalling the methodological reflections of Ovidio Capitani and the legacy of Cinzio Violante, while also considering the dialogue with European scholarship fostered by the Settimane della Mendola. Networked relations are therefore not proposed as a new paradigm replacing institutional history, but as a working category capable of reopening long-standing questions about authority, memory, documentation, centrality, locality, stability, and change in medieval societies.