Ambigue descrizioni: feste devozionali e feste di precetto nell’inchiesta veneziana di fine Settecento

Nel 1772 il Senato veneziano intervenne con una legge per limitare il numero esorbitante delle festività religiose diffuse in ogni parte del dominio da terra e dell’Istria. Il provvedimento era principalmente volto ad agevolare lo sviluppo delle attività economica ed in particolare dell’agricoltura in tutto lo stato. A tal fine il supremo organo veneziano incaricò i propri rappresentanti di raccogliere i dati inerenti ciascuna delle loro giurisdizioni. L’inchiesta, di lì a qualche anni, condusse ad una raccolta di dati che vennero sottoposti all’attenzione dei consultori in iure, che con i loro pareri avrebbero dovuto segnalare sia la vastità e le caratteristiche del fenomeno, che i possibili provvedimenti che avrebbero dovuto essere assunti per deliberare in merito ad una vera riforma delle festività religiose. Nel 1775 il Senato decise di vietare tutte le feste infrasettimanali che non fossero state decretate festive per ecclesiastico precetto. Un provvedimento prudente, che volutamente non affrontava la materia delicata delle feste di precetto, di diretta competenza ecclesiastica. Solamente nel 1787, infine, un successivo intervento del Senato, decretò che anche quest’ultime fossero drasticamente ridotte. La grande inchiesta veneziana degli anni ’70 e ’80 del Settecento, analogamente a quanto avvenne in altri paesi europei, è rivelatrice della percezione diversa rivolta dai ceti dominanti nei confronti di una cultura e di una religiosità popolare ampiamente condivise da tutti i ceti sociali nei secoli precedenti. I dati raccolti negli anni ’70 del Settecento sono soprattutto interessanti in quanto si costituiscono come una vera e propria ricerca etnografica ricca di descrizioni inerenti il culto dei santi e la diffusione delle festività religiose in Terraferma e in Istria. Affidate ad una preliminare indagine dei parroci, queste descrizioni, lungi dall’essere uniformi e provviste della precisione richiesta dal Senato veneziano, offrono un quadro variopinto della religiosità popolare e della difficoltà, se non dell’impossibilità, di tracciare un quadro omogeneo del mondo consuetudinario che ancora pervadeva intensamente, con i suoi tratti culturali, la vita religiosa delle popolazioni suddite. Descrizioni ambigue, dunque, in quanto i dati raccolti dai parroci difficilmente potevano prestarsi a fornire una risposta adeguata ai quesiti formulati da una legge che muoveva da una prospettiva decisamente estranea al mondo consuetudinario e alle sue numerose sfaccettature

Furore. Elaborazione di un'emozione nella seconda metà del Cinquecento

The book deals with the relations between anger, emotions and trial rites in sixteenth century. After a general introduction on the values of emotions, justice and anger the book presents the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice. The second part of the book presents some of the documents which availed to the lawyers for preparing Marcantonio Trissino's defence

Voices from Istria

The book summarizes the historical research of the UE project Shared Culture between Italy and Slovenia (2007-2013). A research addressed to the petitions which were sent to the Venetian Signoria from the Istrian region in 16th and 17th centuries

Feud and Vendetta: customs and trial rites in Medieval and Modern Europe. A legal-anthropological approach

The paper deals with the relationships between judicial practices and the feud, which acquires interesting relevance both in customary systems and in systems governed by the legal process. First is described the crucial transition from customary practices mainly handled by the community (prevailing in the early medieval age) to practices managed by professionals (lawyers) and the procedures successively worked out by them. Feuding is examined along with the researches conducted on single European areas and for different historical periods, especially for the early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, considering the various disciplines used. In reality, while focusing on the relationship between the spread of violence and the need for peace, the discussion on the subject of feud in Europe paid little attention to the role played by the spread of Roman canonical procedures and the mediation carried out by lawyers, both in their tracts and their judiciary practice, in order to introduce a new social order. In the early modern period, the intense dynamics of social violence and the decisive interventions of state powers increased along with the use of new trial procedures. These transformations were relevant and even decisive, especially after the introduction of strict inquisitorial rites, which subtracted from the privileged classes the independent resolution of conflicts and the traditional management of procedural practices.The challenge to the vendetta, understood as a genuine legal and cultural system that regulated the organization of conflict and thereby constituted an instrument of social control, was a very important phenomenon in almost all the countries of Europe. One of the instruments adopted by the new state realities was the introduction of inquisitorial procedures, whose aim was not only to impose a different legitimization of violence but also to put a end to the connections between customary rites and judicial practices that had for centuries characterized the legal system of the vendetta. The new punitive justice was marked by both the imposition of severe penalties and by the absence of an active role in the resolution of conflicts of the parties involved

Un eroe locale. L'effrazione della tomba di Francesco Petrarca (1630)

This essay deals with the trial held in the years 1630-’31 following the forcing of the sarcophagus of Francesco Petrarch by the Domenican friar Tommaso Martinelli. The trial documents let us see the possible motivations that led to the removal of some of the poet’s bones. The episode is connected to the image of this local hero, which grew up over the course of the centuries within the community of Arquà following the cult that had arisen among the numerous Italian and foreign travellers who stopped at this small village in the Euganean Hills to express their admiration for and devotion to the remains of Francesco Petrarch

Il Petrarca dell'ingegnere.

This paper focuses on a sonnet by Giovanni Casoni, who worked as engineer in Venice during the first half of the nineteenth century and developed some methods about medieval venetian Archeology. From his literary production, mostly still unpublished, are here slected some verses on the recognition, in 1843, of Francesco Petrarca tomb in Arquà. The composition is interesting for some new elements that it provides around this circumstance, and as evidence of the political inclinations of Casoni

Contaminazioni. Discorsi, pratiche, rappresentazioni

The essay examines the diverse social and cultural involvements of the concept of contamination in different historical periods and in the context of societies and groups characterized by the need of developing economic and social relationships, but also by the necessity to maintain their own peculiarities. The concept of contamination entails the distinction between holy and secular, internal and external, physical and symbolic, male and female. It reveals not only the notion of risk and the fears of the society, but also the relationships with food, hygiene, cleanness and, more generally, with the human body. The theme of contamination becomes especially relevant where it regards well identified social or ethnic groups. The inclusion of external subjects is perceived as contaminant and dangerous for the cohesion of the group