Abstract
The conflicts that lacerated the Republic of Genoa political life during the sixteenth century reveal the profile of factional alignments. Both the criminal records and the political narrative allow us to see these local alignments in action, through conflict and solidarity, and to identify some of the basic elements of their relational structure and their forms of expression. Here, the notion of ‘event’ becomes a key for the reconstruction of a collective public stage, and for a local de-codification of the themes and language of high politics. The time line of political and judicial events highlighted in the archival record permits us to reconstruct events and conflicts, and to pinpoint local and supra-local relational structures. Together with fragmentary evidence of the lives of men and women, this narrative reveals the categories and principles that drove concrete social processes and helped to construct a peculiar social reality.
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- 1.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, busta 2965.
- 2.
This probably had to do with the banishment of Crovo, an episode tied to the noble Ravaschiero family; see G. Pessagno , “Le bande di Val di Sturla,” Gazzetta di Genova (1915–17).
- 3.
The law regarding the “conventicules,” which had been included in the Doria reforms of 1528 was later renewed in 1530 and 1541, and probably promulgated at Chiavari in 1549; see Criminalium Iurium, “De conventiculis, et coniurationibus non ineundis”; also Grendi, “Le conventicole,” 105–06.
- 4.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, busta 2965.
- 5.
This law dated from 1530 and was incorporated into the criminal statutes; see Criminalium Iurium. Note also the summarized definition of conventicula offered by Andrea Spinola: “This word conventicola is understood in a negative sense, that is, as a gathering of men under the pretext of leisure or perhaps some religious purpose, but really for the sake of seditious ends, to effect a change in the State” (Ricordi, entry for “Conventicole”).
- 6.
See Grendi, “Profilo storico degli Alberghi genovesi.” The Chiavari statutes of 1582 included prohibitions directed toward young people and “garzonetti” against attending such meetings; see ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1643, Capitoli della comunità di Chiavari, chap. 28, “Delle loggie, logieri et giuocatori.”
- 7.
Trial records in ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, busta 2964.
- 8.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 435, no. 60.
- 9.
I have reconstructed the entire episode on the basis of the trial records and correspondence with the Senate; see ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, busta 2965 and ibid., Senato-Litterarum, filza 435.
- 10.
As has been noted, the militias were completely local bodies, organized and led by natives. Andrea Spinola wrote about them in his Ricordi under the entries “Bande, ò siano militie” and “Rassegne,” explaining that “an effort is made, when musters are held, to keep the members of the unit from igniting the madness of the factions through conspicuous feathers, colors, and clothing that, by expressing their partisanship, might turn the crowds against each other” (Spinola, Ricordi).
- 11.
Factions have been an important theme within post-structuralist political anthropology since the 1960s; see for example the essays edited by R. Firth in The British Journal of Sociology, special issue Factions in Indian and Overseas Indian Societies, 8, 4 (1957); B.J. Siegel and A.R. Beals, “Pervasive Factionalism,” American Anthropologist 62 (1960): 394–417; R.W. Nicholas, “Factions: A Comparative Analysis,” in Political Systems and the Distribution of Power, ed. M. Banton (London, 1965); id., “Segmentary Factional Political Systems,” in Political Anthropology, eds. M.J. Swartz, V.W. Turner , and A. Tuden (Chicago, 1966); J. Bujra, “The Dynamics of Political Action: A New Look at Factionalism,” American Anthropologist 75 (1973): 132–52. In these and other studies factions are described as informal, spontaneous groups that are organized for specific, limited purposes in a local political arena. The case of complex societies in early modern Europe was different in many ways; see the important study by H.K. Koenigsberger, “The Organization of Revolutionary Parties in France and the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 1955 (republished in Estates and Revolutions. Essays in Early Modern European History [Ithaca and London, 1971]). See also Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities, 1200–1500, ed. L. Martines (Berkeley and London, 1972); and J. Heers, Parties and Political Life in the Medieval West (Amsterdam, 1977) (Italian trans. Partiti e vita politica nell’Occidente medievale [Milan, 1983]). In the context that I have studied, the dominant language was that of kinship, whose strong normative content dominated political competition and the formation of alignments. Factions were permeated with the enduring interests of kin groups, which often transcended local political and economic arenas. Factions were not simple constructions put into place by the nobility either; while dichotomous ideological positions were defined through manipulating language and principles associated with ‘high politics,’ adherents were always mobilized via kinship relations or from within a hierarchy of kin groups.
- 12.
See M. Spinola, L.T. Belgrano, and F. Podestà, Documenti ispano-genovesi dell’Archivio di Simancas, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 8 (Genoa, 1868), 80.
- 13.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 435, no. 83.
- 14.
Ibid., nos. 123, 128.
- 15.
At the center of the “discord” was the reverend Bacigalupo himself, who was ambushed by the fugitive bandits while he was on his way to celebrate Mass at San Colombano in the Lavagna Valley (ibid.)
- 16.
Ibid., no. 123. Among those questioned was also Agostino Fiesco, who was freed on 15 September after Simone Ravaschiero offered to pay a security guarantee of 1,000 scudi.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
The struggle for offices was a constant element that mobilized factions to form. In 1583 a Genoese official wrote that “the appointment of officials in this Riviera is almost always an occasion for building up and expressing undying enmities amongst the locals, and has led to (and continues to create) an infinity of disorders, and has even renewed factionalism … not only at the moment when the magistrates are appointed, but ahead of time, when meetings are held all over concerning elections, and these meetings are toxic occasions, especially in small communities, where every bone of contention is dredged up and the competition has higher stakes than in the cities. In various ways pressures are brought to bear to force the choice of this person for priore or that person for mestrale—of a particular faction—while others who are no less devious try to engineer the opposite. And this is not only a matter of this abominable plague of Adorno , Fregoso , and other factions, but also for various other evil ends. … And beyond the inordinate damage to the poor communities caused by these disorders, it happens that many powerful people involved in the commerce of grain and other foodstuffs, who often hold many positions in councils and as magistrates, do their best to see that no Grain Office is created, or if for some reason one has to be established, they make sure that it is placed under the direction of one of their kinsmen or adherents. … Others, equally as powerful, who gather or store large amounts of wine or oil use the same techniques to make sure that the inspectors are either their clients or are persons of such weak abilities that they can be tricked … and can make purchases at unheard of prices” (ASG, Archivio Segreto-Politicorum, busta 1650, “Discorso intorno alle refforma delli magistrati delle riviere”).
- 19.
Night soil was sold to vegetable-growers, who used it as fertilizer.
- 20.
This was an offense to the symbol of the prince’s power, and to the prince’s very honor . The captain sent the Senate a summary of the facts, along with a colored design of the soiled property; see ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 435.
- 21.
For example, Maria Sanguineto accused Bartolomeo Rivarola and Simone Cella of rape; see ibid., nos. 108, 111.
- 22.
Ibid., no. 120.
- 23.
Ibid., no. 121.
- 24.
Ibid., no. 154.
- 25.
ASG, Finanza Pubblica, filza 2604.
- 26.
The situation of the town of Rapallo was very similar; there also, merchants opposed the creation of a Grain Office and challenged the authority of the inspectors.
- 27.
This declaration dated from 1607 (ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1691). In 1579 the conflict opposed a portion of the merchants against the officials of the Grain Office. Among the merchants who asked for complete freedom to trade grain were the Ravenna and the Zenogio, who had been heads of the Fregoso faction in the mid-sixteenth century. At Chiavari there were two weekly markets of Lombard “provisions.” While it is impossible to quantify the amount of traffic, it is significant that in 1579 Giulio Ravenna and Alessandro and Lorenzo Zenogio asked for “the authority and charge to make any sort of purchases of these provisions” in exchange for the promise of transporting to Genoa half of the Lombard grain whose acquisition was negotiated on the town square (ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1437). In 1607, the baking of buffetto bread “is overseen and arranged by upstanding Citizens involved in this business on their own account” (ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1691). In Rapallo and Santa Margherita as well, the Adorno and Fregoso factions coagulated around the struggle over offices and taxes. At Santa Margherita, in 1599, the arena of conflict was the Casaccia di San Bernardino : the farmers of the tax on wine, grain, and the import-export trade were all of the Fregoso faction, and all were required to purchase from them, while free trade with Livorno was prohibited. But these tax farmers were accused of being “innovators,” apostates and scoundrels, and were expelled from the Casaccia with the public ritual burning of the cape with a torch made from grape vines. The Adorno controlled the priory of the Casaccia and defended the custom of free trade. The Fregoso asked for the resignation of the prior, who was accused of colluding with bandits and smugglers from the Fontanabuona and the Aveto Valley, and of being “the most subtle sodomite that there is in the world” (ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 576).
- 28.
The production estimates are from 1574; see ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 497. In the mid-seventeenth century, wine production was estimated at 15,000 mezzarole (ASCR, Actorum Communitatis Rapalli, filza 1). The Genoese estimate of oil production in the late sixteenth century was surely too high; at any rate, during the seventeenth century the production of wine increased while that of oil decreased to about 12,000 barrels at mid-century. Sharecropping contracts gave landowners possession of about two thirds of oil and wine production, but sharecroppers frequently renounced their own third in exchange for grain and seeds, or to pay debts (it was said that the sharecropper kept for himself only the cloudy oil and the wine from the second pressing). Naturally, there were also wealthy land-owning villagers, who were tied to the urban market through association or competition with the borghesi.
- 29.
In 1578 and 1589, in Rapallo and Chiavari, loans in kind were prohibited, as were sales of futures and “oil contracts,” but they continued to take place (even if they stopped appearing in notarial registers). The “Proclamations concerning the oil contracts” issued at Rapallo and Chiavari in 1589 took up a decision of the Minor Consiglio: “that it will be illegal for anyone to make any contract, for a sale, or purchase by loan or in kind, or by exchange, or in any other form whatsoever, in order to acquire any amount or quantity of oil except for a true purchase of actual oil that is transferred and consigned, and the same is to apply for any other thing that is exchanged, for the real price in each case, and when this is not respected the contract will be invalid and the creditor will not be able to collect anything from the debtor” (ASCR, Inutilium, filza 6). The main preoccupation of the Genoese was always the provisioning of the city, and in this respect the main competitors of the Oil Magistracy were perhaps the rich merchants themselves—at least those who did not control the farms for the consignment of payments in kind—who exported oil to Lombardy and to Parma and Piacenza. Relations between villagers and merchants from the towns were also entirely based on credit, as can be seen from the account book of a grocer from Chiavari preserved at the Notarial Archive of Chiavari.
- 30.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, busta 1566. This example shows, among other things, how the alignments in the field coincided perfectly with those from 1552.
- 31.
I have reconstructed the territorial distribution of the kin groups on the basis of the caratate of 1612–13 and 1641 (ASG, Magistrato delle Comunità, reg. 712, 718) and evidence included in numerous peace agreements, generally undersigned by all of the kin groups’ territorial segments.
- 32.
ASG, Notary Giacomo Villamarino, filza 22. The Bacigalupo were the ones engineering the loyalty oaths in Carasco and the Sturla Valley.
- 33.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filze 1412, 1436.
- 34.
These were the words of the commissioner of the Nuovi , Nicola Garibaldo, in a letter to the Senate (ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 503). The same expression was used in ibid., filza 554.
- 35.
Ibid., filza 500.
- 36.
Ibid., filze 506, 508; ibid., Senato-Atti, filza 1437; ibid., Rota Criminale, filza 1224.
- 37.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 554; ibid., Archivio Segreto-Confinium, filza 22.
- 38.
The inventories of confiscated property are in ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filze 500, 503; the 1578 trial against the “bandits” is in ibid., Senato-Atti, filza 1429.
- 39.
“I humbly request,” wrote Nicola Garibaldo on 8 December, “that you would do me the favor of appointing me in this town of Chiavari, so that I can leave a record of accomplishment, and I hope that your Most Illustrious Lordships would permit me to govern there for a year so that you will be praised for having established better government in said place” (ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 503).
- 40.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1436; ibid., Senato-Litterarum, filza 500.
- 41.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 506. “Cala fregosi” was the cry used by members of the Fregoso faction to rouse themselves for an encounter. Literally the expression referred to the action by which the arquebus was readied for firing.
- 42.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 506.
- 43.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1436.
- 44.
Ibid., filze 1412, 1419, 1436.
- 45.
Ibid., filza 1419.
- 46.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 500.
- 47.
See Grendi, “Le conventicole nobiliari.”
- 48.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 591.
- 49.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, filza 1566, 1568.
- 50.
Ibid., busta 2965.
- 51.
The concept of symmetrical differentiation as a form of group interaction was explored by G. Bateson, “Culture Contact and Schismogenesis” in id., Steps to an Ecology of Mind (San Francisco, 1972), first published in Man 35 (1935) (Italian trans. in Verso un’ecologia della mente [Milan, 1976], 101–14). See also id., Naven: A Survey Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe from Three Points of View (Stanford, 1958), first published in Cambridge in 1936 (Italian trans. Naven [Turin, 1988]); see also other works by the same author.
- 52.
See the interpretation of the authors cited in Chap. 3, note 6.
- 53.
The government’s intent was already expressed in the constitutional laws of 1528 and in the laws concerning conventicles of 1530 and 1541, as well as in a host of proclamations and decrees.
- 54.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, filza 1560.
- 55.
Andrea Spinola, Ragionamento sopra il provedere agli abusi della giustizia criminale in Genova (1618 or 1619), cited by Savelli , Potere e giustizia, appendix. See also the entry “Autorità criminale” in Spinola’s Ricordi.
- 56.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 435. Cella and Sanguineti had quarreled with each other and had appeared before the court, each one with his own witnesses, simply to put on display the widespread support that each enjoyed.
- 57.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filze 500, 506; ibid., Senato-Atti, filza 1436.
- 58.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 512; ibid., Rota Criminale, filza 1224. Feuds prevented peaceful co-existence in parishes and made it impossible to carry out religious and ceremonial practices. In this respect, see the observations of J. Bossy, “The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Europe,” Past and Present 47 (1970): 51–70 (Italian trans. in Le origini dell’Europa moderna, ed. M. Rosa [Bari, 1977], 281–308). Bossy stresses that “the great obstacle to Tridentine uniformity was not individual backsliding or Protestant resistance but the internal articulations of a society in which kinship was a most important bond and feuding was , in however conventionalized a form, a flourishing social activity” (55).
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Raggio, O. (2018). Events and Political Narratives. In: Feuds and State Formation, 1550–1700. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94643-6_8
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