History
This chapter explores how violent crimes entered into a world of composition and pardon, where offenders could escape punishment if they gained the forgiveness of their victims or their victims’ kin. The chapter reconstructs these practices and legal institutions, notably the remission of the offended party and their relationship to policies of general pardon. In particular it looks at evidence from the Regia Audienza of Lucera a regional royal court for northern Puglia and the Molise. The chapter further explore the politics and corruption related to these forms of criminal justice. It also explores the peace-making instituted by the viceregal regime between feuding nobles, the oath on the Royal Word.
This chapter explores the phenomenon of banditry in the Kingdom of Naples. By surveying the behaviours and practices associated with bandits, the chapter demonstrates the fundamental significance of the culture of enmity to their way of life. The politics of enmity in the provinces of the kingdom was inseparable from the reality of banditry, therefore this chapter continues the preceding chapter’s analysis. It uses trials from the Regia Audienza of Lucera in Puglia as well as other sources. It explores one case study of a bandit gang in particular, tracing their activities and especially their peregrinations across remote parts of the region and in the papal enclave of Benevento.
The conclusion of this book draws together the insights of the preceding chapters. This looks at the discussion of ‘enmity’ in jurisprudence and juridical practice, both as evidence towards guilt but also how the notion was embedded in the process by which the Neapolitan state attempted to rule through justice. Local disputes were reflected, refracted, and distorted through jurisprudential languages of enmity. But the legal aspects of enmity were also central to how it was experienced as a relationship. The institution of the remission shaped the aftermaths of violent crimes. Love, friendship, forgiveness, and hatred were integral parts of state and legal processes of peace-making. The overlap between law and the emotions is clearly seen in the value that the Jesuits placed on the notarial recording of forgiveness and the variety of grief, resentment, and hatreds that fractured any southern Italian community. The conclusion shows this history of offences, hatred, grief, and reconciliation is central to understanding the early modern Kingdom of Naples.
This chapter explores vindicatory violence in the Kingdom of Naples. It introduces the theme of the high levels of violence in early modern Italy. This chapter takes two paths to trace the contours of violence and enmity in the early modern Kingdom of Naples: the first is to provide a diachronic account of the political factors in the history of enmity up to the eve of 1647, emphasizing the significance of the provisioning of the Thirty Years’ War as a factor that exacerbated violence; the second is a synchronic account of the major outlines of forms of violence in the seventeenth century, with a major focus on the role of the aristocracy as a force provoking violence that influenced all levels of society and that was a major target for legislation and other forms of policy.
This introduction opens with a case study of a murder in 1655 of a feudal lord, Carlo Bartilotti. It then unpacks from this the themes of the monograph: hatred; crimes motivated or explained by hatred; the criminal justice system’s engagement with enmity; the political significance of interpersonal hatred in early modern Italy. It introduces the category of enmity in early modern Italian culture and politics, traces the relevant historiography of enmity and peace-making. It also introduces important aspects of the Kingdom of Naples as a society and polity. It then gives an account of the sources consulted for this project and traces the argument made over the chapters of the work.
This chapter explores the Jesuit peace-making activities in the Kingdom of Naples from the lens of the politics of enmity established in the previous chapters. A crucial part of this mission of ‘extirpation’ was the confrontation of the moral plague of discord and the violence that resulted from enmities. Settling enmities and making peace was one of the regular activities of Jesuit peace-making and central to their understanding of the sacrament of penance. Jesuit missionaries saw themselves converting the hate-filled to peace. Further the vivid and evocative symbols of Jesuit devotion reveal aspects of the emotional politics of enmity. That is, the symbols and discussions of enmity in Jesuit sources, the chapter argues, shed light on the wider significances of enmity in early modern Italy and the post-revolutionary Kingdom of Naples in particular. This chapter draws on the varied accounts of Jesuit peace-making missions in the Jesuit archive in Rome. As well as the written reports of missions, the chapter also uses incoming correspondence from town councils and aristocrats in the kingdom.
The theme of this chapter is the connection between enmities and issues of public life in the towns of the Kingdom of Naples. A set of factors influenced the enmity-prone condition of communities in the Kingdom of Naples. This chapter focuses on violent conflicts over the control of communities, the often negative impact of long-running litigation, and the complex constellations of authorities that clashed over public affairs. The chapter focuses more on larger communities than the smaller villages of the Kingdom of Naples but, where possible, it illustrates the similarities and differences in these communities.
This chapter uses the politics of enmity lens through which to interpret the chaotic events of 1647–48. Using the analytical lens on the dynamics of enmity and peace-making assists in understanding the course of the rebellion and, especially, the difficult period of pacification. This chapter argues that the politics of enmity, peace-making and associated issues of justice must be considered in historical interpretations of the events of 1647–48 and their pacification. Without attending to the category of enmity, and its relationship to criminal justice, we have a limited view of why and how the events of 1647–48 and their aftermath unfolded as they did. This chapter contributes to expanding this understanding.
States of enmity explores the world of interpersonal enmity and peace-making in southern Italy in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates the roles enmity, in its diverse manifestations, played in early modern politics, legal culture, and social relations. Through this pursuit of the effects of hatred and reconciliation, the book charts a history of Spanish Naples (both city and Kingdom) that features its most evocative yet misrepresented characters: violent bandits and the unruly soldiers set against them; overbearing feudal lords and restive vassals; intrepid missionaries and penitent murderers; grand Spanish viceroys and poor Neapolitan rebels. Using the lens of enmity and peace-making, the dynamics of events such as the aftermath of the revolt of Naples in 1647–48 and phenomena such as banditry and criminal justice are discussed. Using records from criminal courts, rare for southern Italy, it provides encounters with the actual people involved in Naples’ notorious ‘disorder’, constituted by homicide, banditry, feudal oppression, and the Spanish regime’s governing tactics. States of enmity shows how states of public enmity and practices of peace-making structured both local politics and the central state’s interaction with the provinces of the kingdom. The Kingdom of Naples, along with much of the rest of early modern Italy, was one of the most violent regions of Europe in the early modern period: this work contributes to understanding why this was so and what this was like to live in.
Emigration formed a cornerstone of the GFS’s imperial work. In 1883 the GFS established the Department for Members Emigrating to ensure the safe passage of girls and young women travelling between various parts of the empire. The previous chapter examined how whiteness was central to imaginings of settler colonial societies, and this chapter considers how the GFS tried to make these imaginings a reality through its emigration programmes and the building up of settler societies. The chapter begins by outlining the wider contexts in which the GFS’s emigration programmes emerged and situates their development in relation to similar emigration schemes for girls. It then traces the different motives that informed the development of the GFS’s programmes. Child rescue and emigration organisations argued for the necessity of removing girls from the perceived dangers of poverty and urban life in England to the more wholesome environment of the colonies. Girls also provided valuable labour to colonial societies and were integral in making the empire white by ensuring the construction of English households abroad. Despite the high demand for emigrants in settler colonies, the GFS and other emigration organisations faced myriad difficulties, which were rooted in broader class and racial anxieties and specifically concerns about the whiteness of emigrants and white prestige in colonial societies. These challenges also reveal the competing, rather than complementary, objectives among emigration organisers, settlers, and girl migrants and fault lines within emigration programmes and the settler colonial project.