This text presents an analysis of several uses of the term ‘crisis’ in the academic works of scholars and historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as S. de Sismondi, J. Burckhardt, M. Weber, H. Pirenne, B. Croce, H. Baron, among others. These authors dealt with the history of medieval communal cities and adopted extensively the term ‘crisis’ to explain the historical process of dissolution of Renaissance republicanism. It has been found that in such works, ‘crisis’ operates as a rhetorical device, with a connotative function, to express the subjective judgment of the author in relation to the situations that he, from his political-academic convictions, recognizes as negative or positive conjunctures.