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.
When a tall, powerfully, and proportionally built man with a heavy moustache and whiskers arrived at a young widow’s door in search of lodgings, what would have naturally followed in the literature of the time was the widow's hapless pursuit of lodger as a replacement for her deceased husband. However, the reality revealed in the coroners’ inquests tells quite a different tale. Fuelled by popular culture, historians have long speculated on the opportunities for sexual relationships between the female householder and her lodger. This chapter explores a range of widow-lodger and wife-lodger relationships to understand how these relationships played out in reality rather than fiction. First, turning to female-headed households – namely, those run by widows and estranged wives – Chapter 5 examines the circumstances in which these relationships were formed with lodgers and the strained power dynamics that shaped them. Secondly, heading into the male-headed home – where the male lodger was generally a welcome (if somewhat also inconvenient) presence – Chapter 3 explores the potentially destabilising presence of the male lodger in the marital home and its violent consequences. Whether widow or wife, however, Chapter 5 makes evident that relationships between women and their lodgers, at least those coming before Victorian coroners, were more tragedy than comedy.
On a Sunday in October 1882, labourer John Bury returned to his lodgings for breakfast following an early morning walk, before settling before the fire to smoke his pipe in the company of another lodger. Crossing the threshold into England’s Victorian working-class homes, Chapter 4 examines how the lodger wove into the domestic scene, revealing that many lodgers – male lodgers, in particular – were incorporated into the household’s daily rhythms and rituals. Many ate around the family table, sat by the fireside smoking a pipe and discussing the day’s news, or shared a drink both at home and in the Public House. Therefore, Chapter 4 argues that sociability though somewhat enforced by the close quarters of the domestic dwelling lodging, was crucial to maintaining cordial relations. Yet, while it might be assumed that such mingling between family and lodgers continued as they headed to bed, Chapter 4 reveals that – alongside the boundaries created between the outside world and the home through the securing of the front door – a clear nocturnal line was drawn between the householders and their lodgers. Nonetheless, the drive for separations – as well as leading to some rather usual sleeping arrangements in smaller homes – generally brought neither householders nor lodgers a private or peaceful night’s sleep.
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.
On the 5th of April 1891, an army of census enumerators headed out across Victorian England. Gathering the household schedules, they uncovered over one million people living as lodgers or boarders in private residences, i.e. domestic dwellings. Nevertheless, despite their presence in the home, the domestic dwelling lodger has remained lurking in the background of the working-class homes they generally inhabited. This introduction explores the challenges historians face in piecing together the history of the domestic dwelling lodger and the households that accommodated them before setting out a new approach to tracing their stories through the Victorian coroner’s courts. The courts that frequently entered the working-class home during their meticulous investigations may have themselves not left many surviving records, but the newspaper press sitting in its wings bequeaths an abundance of inquest reports to the historian to likewise cross the threshold.
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.
Living with Lodgers takes the reader behind the closed doors of Victorian England’s domestic dwelling lodgings. For the Victorian working class, lodging in someone else’s home was commonplace. Indeed, at no other time has the lodger occupied such a central place in the home. Yet, despite this, lodgers and the households that accommodated them have remained significantly under-researched. This is the first book-length study to tell their story. Drawing on almost 900 coroners’ inquests reported in the Victorian press, alongside census enumerators’ books and other court records, this captivating book delves into the day-to-day business of lodging in someone else’s home. Challenging many current perceptions and myths surrounding living with lodgers in Victorian England, this book reveals a much more complicated picture behind the who and why of domestic dwelling lodgings, examines the close networks and monetary arrangements that shaped the lodging exchange, and explores the daily interactions between lodgers and householders. Moreover, in exploring both the lines drawn and crossed in the householder-lodger relationship, this book reshapes our understanding of household dynamics in the Victorian working-class home. Living with Lodgers not only brings the domestic dwelling lodger out of the shadows but casts a new light upon Victorian England’s working-class homes, making the book a vital resource for academics and students across a range of disciplines seeking to cross the threshold to these spaces.