Abstract
The full significance of the ethnographic description contained in the central part of the book becomes apparent in this last chapter, in which many of the elements highlighted earlier appear again in the reconstruction and explanation of local political events and happenings. Criminal sources and the event narratives conveyed in them enable us to reconstruct and explore the relational structure of the kin groups and local politics in the Fontanabuona Valley. Through these records we also look at conflict and solidarity within the kin groups, in villages, parishes, and the broader configuration of supra-local powers and authorities. The everyday and structural framework overlaps in fact with the contexts in which the judicial sources were produced, and the historical-political field acquires depth and significance as it relates to the lives of kin groups in the villages of eastern Liguria.
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- 1.
The concept of a ‘strong group’ refers to a corporate group that establishes its own borders and maintains tight control over its members. Mary Douglas explored this concept, which she derived in part from Basil Bernstein; see M. Douglas , Natural Symbols (London, 1970) (Italian trans. I simboli naturali [Turin, 1979], chap. 4) and id., “Cultural Bias,” in The Active Voice. Essays (London, 1982) (Italian trans. in Antropologia e simbolismo [Bologna, 1985], chap. 9).
- 2.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1220. For the concept of ‘social drama,’ formulated by Victor Turner at the beginning of the 1970s, see the discussion by A. Cohen, “Political Symbolism ,” Annual Review of Anthropology 8 (1979): 87–113.
- 3.
This scene resembles that described by Antonio Cesena in a splendid chronicle about Varese Ligure, in which historical reconstruction is blended together with a foundation myth; see Relatione dell’origine, et successi della terra di Varese (1558)—a copy from 1683 is preserved at the Biblioteca della Società Economica di Chiavari (ms Z VI 29).
- 4.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1224.
- 5.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1462.
- 6.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 508. The Leverone and the Arata were expressions of two simultaneously existing but distinct models of interdependence, one based on aggression and the other on manipulation; see R. Bendix, “Compliant Behavior and Individual Personality,” American Journal of Sociology 58 (1952): 292–303.
- 7.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 540.
- 8.
ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 1, “Contra incertos vallis Fontis bone, Rapalli et Rechi,” 25 May, and “Contra diversos homines vallis Fontisbonis et Rechi,” 15 June.
- 9.
This practice was normal and widespread. Even those who carried the staffs supporting the canopy over the Most Holy Sacrament and the companies that followed the processions took turns firing arquebus salvos. In 1576, the future doge of the Republic David Vaccà , acting as the procurator of the men of Borzonasca, described this practice as “a very ancient custom , not only in said place, but through the entire Jurisdiction of Your Illustrious Lordships” (ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1576, “Supplicatio nonullorum de Borzonasca”). For other examples see ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 497.
- 10.
Leveroni, Cicagna, 52; A. Ferretto, “I primordi e lo sviluppo del Cristianesimo in Liguria e in particolare a Genova,” Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 39 (1907): 171–877, esp. 600–01 on the chapel of Cicagna.
- 11.
Kin groups from other jurisdictions replicated this structure; such was the case of the notables of Rapallo, who were all friends of the Leverone, and whose leader was Franchino Pareto (according to the testimony of Tomasino Leverone).
- 12.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Propositionum, busta 1029; ibid., Legum, A II 2.
- 13.
On this last aspect see Bitossi , “Famiglie e fazioni a Genova.”
- 14.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Propositionum, busta 1029.
- 15.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1695.
- 16.
Ferretto, “I primordi e lo sviluppo del Cristianesimo,” 599–610.
- 17.
Ibid., 605.
- 18.
ANC, Notary Gio Batta Arata senior, filza 6346.
- 19.
Ibid., filza 6370, “Dox Capelle S.te Marie de Ursica.”
- 20.
Ibid., filza 6347.
- 21.
Ibid., filza 6352.
- 22.
Ibid. The territory of the parish of Cornia was administratively subject to the podesteria of Roccatagliata, but it was an enclave within the territory of the community of Rapallo, between Cicagna and Gattorna.
- 23.
Ibid., filza 6363.
- 24.
In 1677, in the “Ristretto delle chiese rurali di Levante” by Rev. G. Caviglia , almost all the churches are described as “new” or “restored”; see L. Saginati, “Aspetti di vita religiosa e sociale nelle campagne liguri: le relazioni al Magistrato delle chiese rurali,” Atti della Società Patria di Storia Ligure 19 (1979), appendix II.
- 25.
This can be seen in the inventories of the churches of Moconesi, Orero, and Dezerega, drawn up in 1618, 1632, and 1642 (ANC, Notary Gio Batta Arata senior, filza 6363, and ibid., Notary Lorenzo Leverone, filza 1809).
- 26.
Cited by Leverone, Cicagna; the visiting official was Monsignor Francesco Bossio.
- 27.
The diocesan archive can be consulted, but it is very difficult to access.
- 28.
On this issue, Angelo Torre’s work, which is based on ethnographic Piedmontese materials from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, also highlights significant territorial and regional variations; see “Le visite pastorali. Altari, famiglie, devozioni,” in Valli monregalesi, 148–87; id., “Il consumo di devozioni: rituali e potere nelle campagne piemontesi della prima metà del Settecento,” Quaderni storici 58 (1985): 181–225.
- 29.
There are numerous anthropological studies and models relating to these problems. The collection of ethnographic data on complex societies in early modern Europe is not as rich, but see the syntheses of J. Black-Michaud, Cohesive Force: Feud in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (Oxford, 1975); J. Wormald, “Bloodfeud, Kindred and Government in Early Modern Scotland,” Past and Present 87 (1980): 54–97 (now in Disputes and Settlements. Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. J. Bossy [Cambridge, 1983]); and id., “An Early Modern Postscript: The Sandlaw Dispute, 1546,” in The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe, ed. W. Davies and P. Fouracre (Cambridge, 1986), 191–205. I was not able to consult K.M. Brown, Bloodfeud in Scotland, 1573–1625: Violence, Justice and Politics in an Early Modern Society (Edinburgh, 1986). For two studies of Italian cases that employ different approaches see F. Piselli and G. Arrighi, “Parentela, clientela e comunità,” in Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi: La Calabria (Turin, 1985), 367–493, and A. Torre , “Faide, fazioni e partiti, ovvero la ridefinizione della politica nei feudi imperiali delle Langhe,” Quaderni storici 63 (1986): 775–810.
- 30.
Arnold van Gennep defined these social practices as “rites of separation”; see A. van Gennep, Les rites de passage (Paris, 1909) (Italian trans. I riti di passaggio [Turin, 1985], 33–34). The theme of group cohesion and continuity, which was tied to the concept of classification, was revised and expanded by Van Gennep in L’état actuel du problème totémique (Paris, 1920), esp. 344 ff. On the political and juridical meanings of the ‘rites of passage’ see P. Bourdieu, “Les rites comme actes d’institution,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 43 (1982): 58–63.
- 31.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 589.
- 32.
Ibid. As in other similar cases, the court of Chiavari made records of a sequence of events whose interpretation was closely tied to the local “public rumor.”
- 33.
Ibid. Stefano’s letter was probably written in the first half of September 1604; on 27 September Genoa granted to the captain of Chiavari “in said affair, coercive power [braccio regio], and extraordinary authority.” In this case, the scenographic details, the topographical data, and the placement of persons and authorities in local developments had important political significance: the letter wove the plot around the death of Simone Leverone , rooting it in everyday social relations in the parish of Cicagna and relations with public authorities.
- 34.
Ibid., filza 602.
- 35.
Ibid., filza 610.
- 36.
Ibid. The impossibility of celebrating the Mass was the clearest indicator of the radical nature of the conflict and of the divisions in the parish community . The sacrifice of the Mass was in fact, since the Middle Ages, the symbol of reconciliation; see J. Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200–1700,” Past and Present 100 (1983): 29–62.
- 37.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 598, letter from the captain of Chiavari.
- 38.
Ibid., filza 610.
- 39.
As late as 1912 “these two gates were called ‘the Foppiano gate’ and ‘the Leveroni gate,’ respectively” (Leveronio, Cicagna, 126).
- 40.
ASCR, Criminalium, filza 14.
- 41.
ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 4. On the same night another squad made up of members of the Leverone and Porcella kin groups attacked the houses of the Fopiano in Monleone.
- 42.
The sales were tied to dowry contracts. For the Gio Batta Arata dossier, see ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1709.
- 43.
“Immediately everyone took up weapons, the Leverone and the Porcella on one side and the Garbarino, Arata, and Casazza on the other, and everyone raised their guns, some using trees for support and others walls, and took aim with their barrels pointed at each other, ready to fire” (ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 5).
- 44.
ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 5 and ff.
- 45.
ASG, Archivio Segreto-Secretorum, filza 1566.
- 46.
ANC, Notary Bartolomeo Fopiano, filza 2718.
- 47.
Ibid., filza 2725.
- 48.
The episode was reconstructed by Leveroni, Cicagna, 63–64.
- 49.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 666. The sequence of the conflicts between the Cicagna kin groups is outlined in ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 7–8 and in ibid., Extraordinariorum, reg. 14–17, 20–28.
- 50.
ASCR, Extraordinariorum, reg. 28.
- 51.
ASCR, Criminalium, reg. 8 and ibid., Extraordinariorum, reg. 28; ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1964 and Senato-Litterarum, filza 717.
- 52.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 718.
- 53.
Ibid.
- 54.
Il Perfetto Giusdicente (1646), republished in 1730. See O. Cartaregia, “Il perfetto Giusdicente: Tomaso Oderico ,” Miscellanea Storica Ligure 12, 2 (1980): 7–58.
- 55.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 717.
- 56.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1964.
- 57.
“For the preservation of the peace in the Fontanabuona valley established by Lord Domenico Pallavicino, in the name of the Most Serene Senate, between the Arata, Fopiano, Cavagnari, Casazza, Bacigalupi, and Pescia families on one side, and the Leverone, Porcella, Rissi, and Scarlasati families on the other side” (ibid.).
- 58.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1173.
- 59.
Leveroni, Cicagna.
- 60.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1964.
- 61.
On this issue see Levi, L’eredità immateriale.
- 62.
In Rapallo there are four series of criminal registers with initial entries from a close range of dates: “Criminalium” (1596), “Diversorum” (1602), “Extraordinarium” (1608), and “Visitationum” (1608). 1608 was the date when the captainate was created in Rapallo, and the last two registers document cases that required the captain’s intervention. Denunciations for micro-conflicts were typically registered in the “Criminalium,” where 115 out of the 162 denunciations for crimes in the Fontanabuona between 1596 and 1615 originated from within the valley itself.
- 63.
Many agreements were reached orally, “without writing,” but the parties also frequently turned to notaries . This is how an arbiter, Bartolomeo Fopiano, described a reconciliation between two brothers in dispute in 1640: “There having been a disagreement for several months between Agostino Mangino son of the deceased Rolandino and his brother Batta , for claims made by each side that are not clear to me, I offered my assistance, along with my brother Gotardo , to help them reach an accord as follows. Agostino should give back and return to said Batta his brother tables and other furnishings … which he did, in our presence. We then directed Batta to give and bring to Agostino certain loads of stones, and should pay him the half of the expenses, damages, and interests that Agostino would be forced to sustain with respect to the litigation that said Batta had submitted some days ago before the Criminal Court of Rapallo, and each side having done as described they were satisfied, and accepted everything” (ANC, Notary Lorenzo Leverone, filza 1786). The arbiter-mediator had to “give his word” to each side and propose remedies that found reciprocal “satisfaction.” This role was the prerogative of local notables, whose moral authority was constituted by the techniques employed, their rate of success, and the dense networks of relations that centered on them. In Genoese Corsica, a society of feuds that strongly resembled the Fontanabuona, the arbiters, or “paceri” were also called “parolanti” (J. Bousquet, Le droit de la vendetta et les paci corses [Paris, 1919]).
- 64.
See in this respect the important essay of P. Bourdieu, “Les usages sociaux de la parenté,” in Le sens pratique (Paris, 1980), 271–331, which offers a penetrating critique of structuralist theory, esp. 285: “The mere genealogical tie never predetermines completely the relationship between the individuals linked by it. The extent of practical kinship depends on the ability of the members of the official unit to overcome the tensions generated by competing interests within shared endeavors of production and consumption, and to maintain practical relations that conform to the official self-representation that every group that thinks of itself as integrated displays. This allows members to benefit from the advantages that every practical relationship offers, along with the symbolic gains that flow from socially-recognized approval of actual practices that conform to the official representation of such practices; that is, the social ideal of kinship.”
- 65.
The peace agreements describe in detail the reconciliation ceremony, and in particular some characteristic gestures: embraces with tears in one’s eyes while “touching the written document” in front of public authorities. The signing of the peace accord was followed by religious rituals and banquets.
- 66.
In 1607 the captain of Chiavari mediated a peace accord between six kin groups from the parish of Favale and then imposed on each kin group a collective security payment of 500 gold scudi. But he also observed that “one could fear that such an agreement could lead to greater disorders, since good and peaceful people who possess some property would be ready to pay the required security payment and observe the agreement, but since in each one of these kin groups there are many poor people, it is a danger that the latter seek to extract payments from the others, as they are now saying they will do, by threatening to carry out crimes and forcing them to have to pay the security” (ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1692).
- 67.
ASG, Senato-Atti, filza 1455.
- 68.
Ibid., filza 1462.
- 69.
Ibid., filza 1461. The close relatives of the bandit “begged all of their friends, and especially the Malatesta , to kill said bandits.” They thus reinforced their alliance with the Malatesta , who took advantage of the “reward for killing a rebel” and freed one of their own relatives who was a bandit.
- 70.
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Connio of Pianmegorino held lands in Cassingheno (in the jurisdiction of the Doria prince), where they sowed rye and leme (chickling vetch) each year, which “can’t be sold but they want each person in the family to be able to work.” The lands were left undivided by a paternal ancestor, “so that if it should happen that one of his descendants who lived here should encounter some kind of legal condemnation, he could withdraw to that place and work the land without having to wander abroad” (ANC, Notary Lorenzo Leverone, filza 1809).
- 71.
ASG, Magistrato delle Comunità, reg. 775; ibid., Rota Criminale, filza 1237.
- 72.
ASCR, Criminalium, filza 19 and ASG, Diversorum Collegi, filza 47.
- 73.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1237, testimony of Sansonino Giannino and of Francesco Arata regarding the feud between the De Martino and the Segaro of the village of Lorsica, which involved about a hundred men from the two kin groups.
- 74.
Black-Michaud , Cohesive Force.
- 75.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1237. This expression demonstrates a surprising resemblance to the way in which the Nuer describe feuds, in what is to me one of the most beautiful works of anthropology (in terms of its description of men, animals, and the organization of space and time): E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford, 1940) (Italian trans. I Nuer: un’anarchia ordinata [Milan, 1975], esp. 211, for the concept of “having war in one’s heart”). On the close link between individual memory and group belonging/collective memory, see M. Halbwachs, “La mémoire collective et le temps,” Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie 2 (1947).
- 76.
One witness’ interpretation of the feud between the Corziglia and the Schiappacasse-Gardella of Roccatagliata in 1618 is exemplary: “‘It is my judgment and belief that they are capital enemies because, according to what I heard from my father when he was alive, for a very long time the ancestors of said Corziglia and others murdered a number of Schiappacasse and Gardella in a mill .’ Interrogatus: How does the witness know that now, said Corziglia who had not even been born at that time would actively harm, with words and weapons, said Schiappacasse and Gardella , and that they would be their capital enemies? Respondit: ‘I don’t know his heart, but I think that for myself, if someone killed my people, I would not have a good heart toward him.’” Another witness declared that “in those parts, when a death takes place, they never forgive [the perpetrator]” (ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1237). The witnesses had learned from the time they were children to distinguish between and classify social relations among individuals on the basis of their belonging to a kin group and to ancient friendships or enmities. As is generally the case in oral societies, history was passed down by means of genealogies, and it was these rather than specific events that “kept alive the memory of social relations” (J. Goody and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Literacy and Traditional Societies, ed. J. Goody [Cambridge, 1968], 27–68, esp. 31–33).
- 77.
According to O. Brunner, peasants did not possess “as a general principle” the right to engage in a feud; Brunner distinguished between a “right to feud” linked to territorial claims and “blood enmity.” See O. Brunner, Land und Herrschaft (Vienna, 1939) (Italian trans. Terra e potere [Milan, 1983], 87–102).
- 78.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 598.
- 79.
This is the organizing idea of Levi, L’eredità immateriale.
- 80.
ASG, Senato-Litterarum, filza 610.
- 81.
ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1237.
- 82.
See the synthesis of G. Balandier, Anthropologie politique (Paris, 1967) (Italian trans. Antropologia politica [Milan, 1969]).
- 83.
In 1617 the “Casazza kin group” was composed of 123 male adults. If one considers the ‘ego’ to be four first cousins who were bandits (sons of brothers = the stem family of the villages of Cicagna ), the “kin ” were classified as follows: twenty-eight “very close kin under the orders of the same Colonel [military head],” twenty-three of whom resided in the parish of Cicagna , two in Genoa, one in Savona, and two in Livorno; and then ninety-five more distant kin, or people who shared the same surname, of whom twenty-five lived in the Fontanabuona, thirty-six in the rest of the captainate of Rapallo, twenty-two in the Trebbia valley (which belonged to the Doria prince), nine in San Martino d’Albaro, two in Genoa, and one in Torriglia. It should be noted that the context of this classification is the relationship with the judicial system and the institutions of the Republic—the list of the 123 Casazza kin, which also includes some indications on the age and wealth of individuals, was drawn up by the commissioners Gio Batta Adorno and Giulio Cesare Lomellino on the basis of information gathered in Cicagna , in particular from the priest Luchino Casazza. An afterword stresses that “each of the individuals listed above belongs to the Casazza kin group” (ASG, Rota Criminale, filza 1237).
- 84.
Local history is constituted by kinship relations, which are also the key to reading universal history. The system of alliances and enmities that serves as the foundation for this way of understanding the world, social relations, and historical continuity became a kind of residual structure probably only in the nineteenth century. This shift resulted from the politico-administrative transformations following the fall of the Republic, economic changes (the end of the trans-Apennine commercial system) and the great trans-oceanic emigration that emptied the valleys of eastern Liguria. These are the central themes reflected upon by the local historian Romeo Leveroni at the beginning of the twentieth century (in Cicagna). Leveroni (a priest) argued that the formation of factional alignments (Greens and Blues ) in the valley during the seventeenth century essentially mirrored the long enmity between the Leverone and the Fopiano (Cicagna, 126). In 1939 another local historian, Giuseppe Pessagno , compared the kin groups to the Genoese alberghi and to Scottish clans: “Parentela was to us what the clans were for Scotland: groups of families , interests, and clients” (I banditi della Fontanabuona, 22).
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Raggio, O. (2018). Politics within Kin Groups (1565–1665). 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_10
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