Presentazione del libro "Civil blood: Vendetta violence and the civic elites in early modern Italy"
FBK Sala riunioni ISIG
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Sala riunioni ISIG
FBK Sala riunioni ISIG
Fondazione Bruno Kessler - Polo delle Scienze Umane e sociali
Sala riunioni ISIG
In sixteenth-century Italy, vendetta—as inimical, familial, and sustained retaliatory violence—constituted not a breakdown of order but a central political practice of the civic elites that shaped the composite state. This book presentation for “Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy” (Cornell University Press 2025) examines how vendettas fundamentally influenced the legal and political evolution of Italian city-states. This targeted violence, meticulously orchestrated and executed by noble families, transcended mere conflict. It functioned as a potent, albeit unofficial, mechanism for the attainment of justice, the defense of civic honor, and the conduct of high-stakes political negotiation within and between urban centers. These persistent, often inter-generational, cycles of violence actively cultivated a distinctive political culture, characterized by a fundamental and escalating tension with the nascent centralizing authorities. Examining chronicles, diplomatic correspondence, statutory law, gride, and legal cases, the presentation reveals a paradox: the very violence that threatened public peace simultaneously served as a potent political instrument for elites to assert power and influence the consolidation of centralized sovereignty. The presentation will explore how vendetta was not a vestige of a primitive past but an active force that profoundly shaped the legal and political development of the Italian city-states.
L’autrice dialoga con Umberto Cecchinato (Università di Trento / FBK-ISIG).
AMANDA MADDEN | George Mason University / Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM)
Coordinamento scientifico:
Massimo Rospocher (FBK-ISIG)
Sandra Toffolo (FBK-ISIG)
Ciclo di seminari: “Tavola ovale di storia moderna“
ISIG è soggetto accreditato o qualificato a realizzare attività formativa a favore del personale della scuola trentina.
Evento in lingua inglese.
La presentazione avverrà in presenza in Aula Riunione ISIG – FBK fino ad esaurimento posti e in modalità online.
E’ obbligatoria la registrazione entro il giorno 3 dicembre 2025 alle ore 12.00.
Relatori
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Amanda Madden - Relatore ospiteGeorge Mason University / Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM)Amanda Madden is Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and faculty affiliate at RRCHNM. Her research focuses on early modern Italian history, with an emphasis on social history and the history of crime and violence utilizing digital methodologies, particularly historical GIS and digital spatial history. Current projects include "Modeling and Mapping Violence in Early Modern Italy, 1500-1700", and "The La Sfera Project." In the Fall Semester of 2024, she was a visiting scholar at the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, where she worked on the Delmas Foundation-funded project, "Mapping Urban Violence in Venice and the Terraferma, 1500-1700." This work has informed her current book project: a spatial history of gender and crime in early modern Italy that examines the iterative changes in crime and policing, space, and gender that reconfigured the early modern state.
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L'iniziativa è stata realizzata anche grazie al contributo della Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali del Ministero della Cultura.