I am a historian of early modern Italy, and I teach European and Digital History. My research focuses on the consequences of social, political and environmental instability in north Italy, such as a population too accustomed to violence, but also an elaborate machinery of bureaucratic and community fora for its management.
I work with Historical GIS to blend spatial, environmental and historical analyses of community structures, behaviours and evolution in early modern Europe. For more information, please see the DECIMA project, a pioneering Historical GIS web-app, at www.decima-map.net. Supervisors: Nicholas Terpstra (Supervisor) Address: www.decima-map.net
Based on a close examination of more than 700 homicide trials, A Renaissance of Violence exposes ... more Based on a close examination of more than 700 homicide trials, A Renaissance of Violence exposes the deep social instability at the core of the early modern states of North Italy. Following a series of crises in the early seventeenth century, interpersonal violence in the region grew to frightening levels, despite the efforts of courts and governments to reduce social conflict. In this detailed study of violence in early modern Europe, Colin Rose shows how major crises, such as the plague of 1630, reduced the strength of social bonds among both elite and ordinary Italians. As a result, incidents of homicidal violence exploded - in small rural communities, in the crowded urban center and within tightly-knit families. Combining statistical analysis and close reading of homicide patterns, Rose demonstrates how the social contexts of violence, as much as the growth of state power, can contribute to explaining how and why interpersonal violence grew so rapidly in North Italy in the seven...
Eleven chapters by twelve historians bring together established scholars, junior faculty and grad... more Eleven chapters by twelve historians bring together established scholars, junior faculty and graduate students to explore the potential of Historical GIS for early modern Italian history, using the newly-developed DECIMA research platform and a variety of other digital history tools. See more at http://b2l.bz/KZKHc6
A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city's powerfu... more A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city's powerful criminal court, the Tribunale del Torrone, expanding its criminal jurisdiction into the farthest reaches of the Papal State. Following a year of disorder and conflict, the Torrone has called the principal feuders to a peace conference in the city, but it is derailed when a young scion of the Ronchetti faction breaks the truce and murders his rival in the Tozzi clan. The multiple processi dealing with violence between these clans illuminates the complex social hierarchies that govern feuds and apply some limits to their violence. They are also representative of a long campaign by the papal governors to reduce the judicial privileges of the hereditary elite. In the resolution, or lack thereof, of this feud we see the complicated goals of early modern justice.
A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city’s powerfu... more A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city’s powerful criminal court, the Tribunale del Torrone, expanding its criminal jurisdiction into the farthest reaches of the Papal State. Following a year of disorder and conflict, the Torrone has called the principal feuders to a peace conference in the city, but it is derailed when a young scion of the Ronchetti faction breaks the truce and murders his rival in the Tozzi clan. The multiple processi dealing with violence between these clans illuminates the complex social hierarchies that govern feuds and apply some limits to their violence. They are also representative of a long campaign by the papal governors to reduce the judicial privileges of the hereditary elite. In the resolution, or lack thereof, of this feud we see the complicated goals of early modern justice.
A project at the University of Toronto, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Rese... more A project at the University of Toronto, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), is developing a mapping tool that will allow for the spatial organization of early modern historical, cultural, and sensory materials.1 Called the Digitally Encoded Census Information and Mapping Archive (DECIMA), it uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to map, house by house, a 1561-62 Florentine tax census onto one of the best city maps produced in the sixteenth century. This undertaking will allow scholars to understand the social geography of Renaissance Florence in dynamic ways, creating a highly adaptable ecosystem for the cultural analysis of a variety of problems and issues. One key advance is that this project aims not simply to computerize a fixed field of data, but also to develop a tool for the ongoing accumulation of material by scholars in different disciplines, chiefly history, art history, literature, and music. We also aim e...
acknowledges, Baillie held to the Calvinist “two kingdom theory” closely associated with Presbyte... more acknowledges, Baillie held to the Calvinist “two kingdom theory” closely associated with Presbyterians, such Thomas Cartwright and Andrew Melville. This political theology afforded the civil magistrate a ius circa sacra as a “nursing father” of the Church, while denying that the wielder of the civil sword possessed the ius in sacra that single sphere theorists such as Coleman, Selden or Erastus, a sixteenth century follower of Zwingli and Bullinger, himself espoused. Campbell is, however, on more solid ground in his convincing demonstration that Baillie differed from his more extreme Presbyterian colleagues, such as Rutherford and Gillespie on the extent to which matters of ceremony and polity were adiaphorous and thus within the competence of the magistrate. In conclusion, Campbell’s book on Baillie is a welcome study of a character who history has allowed to become obscured by his own rich archive. In exploring the mind of Robert Baillie, Dr. Campbell provides much food for thought on topics that were at the core of the British political and religious crisis in the seventeenth century. This study does much to remind students of history and religion that mid-seventeenth century Presbyterians were not as monolithic and backward in their positions as has often been thought.
The richness and abundance of ritual, ceremony, and performance in European history continue to f... more The richness and abundance of ritual, ceremony, and performance in European history continue to fascinate historians after decades of description and analysis, and this collection introduces a new series of case studies that gives the reader much to chew on and to draw from in further work. Anna Kalinowska and Jonathan Spangler have brought together a group of papers for the most part devoted to Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and Scandinavia. The book is valuable for that alone, as it helps to broaden the historiographical lens away from Western Europe and to introduce students to these important areas. The chapters deal primarily with the early modern period, with much of the book occupied with the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Taken as a whole, the collection will serve readers interested in elite ceremonials and courtly rituals well, and succeeds in its goal of broadening the comparative discussion of these important aspects of European history. The book is divided into four parts, plus an introduction by Kalinowska and Spangler. The introduction lays out the rationale and historiographical genealogy of the collection. As the study of political ritual and ceremony moved, over the last decades of the twentieth century, from description to analysis, from curiosity to significance, it became widely acknowledged that the elaborate ritual life of premodern Europeans could and should be read from sociological and anthropological perspectives. All of the essays are therefore indebted to Edward Muir, obviously, but with strong influence from Elias, Kantorowicz, Duindam, Cannadine, and Stollberg-Rillinger. One will not, however, find much in the way of theory in this collection. The editors specify in the introduction that their concern is to promote the analysis of primary sources as the foremost task of historians and history students. All of the essays are, therefore, documentary studies at their core, and the collection excels at bringing forward recent analyses of ritual documents and events. Part one looks specifically at rituals and ceremonies of coronation and enthronement. In sixteenth-century Istanbul (Yelçe), eighteenth-century
Based on a close examination of more than 700 homicide trials, A Renaissance of Violence exposes ... more Based on a close examination of more than 700 homicide trials, A Renaissance of Violence exposes the deep social instability at the core of the early modern states of North Italy. Following a series of crises in the early seventeenth century, interpersonal violence in the region grew to frightening levels, despite the efforts of courts and governments to reduce social conflict. In this detailed study of violence in early modern Europe, Colin Rose shows how major crises, such as the plague of 1630, reduced the strength of social bonds among both elite and ordinary Italians. As a result, incidents of homicidal violence exploded - in small rural communities, in the crowded urban center and within tightly-knit families. Combining statistical analysis and close reading of homicide patterns, Rose demonstrates how the social contexts of violence, as much as the growth of state power, can contribute to explaining how and why interpersonal violence grew so rapidly in North Italy in the seven...
Eleven chapters by twelve historians bring together established scholars, junior faculty and grad... more Eleven chapters by twelve historians bring together established scholars, junior faculty and graduate students to explore the potential of Historical GIS for early modern Italian history, using the newly-developed DECIMA research platform and a variety of other digital history tools. See more at http://b2l.bz/KZKHc6
A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city's powerfu... more A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city's powerful criminal court, the Tribunale del Torrone, expanding its criminal jurisdiction into the farthest reaches of the Papal State. Following a year of disorder and conflict, the Torrone has called the principal feuders to a peace conference in the city, but it is derailed when a young scion of the Ronchetti faction breaks the truce and murders his rival in the Tozzi clan. The multiple processi dealing with violence between these clans illuminates the complex social hierarchies that govern feuds and apply some limits to their violence. They are also representative of a long campaign by the papal governors to reduce the judicial privileges of the hereditary elite. In the resolution, or lack thereof, of this feud we see the complicated goals of early modern justice.
A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city’s powerfu... more A feud among petty factions in the mountains south of Bologna allows us to see the city’s powerful criminal court, the Tribunale del Torrone, expanding its criminal jurisdiction into the farthest reaches of the Papal State. Following a year of disorder and conflict, the Torrone has called the principal feuders to a peace conference in the city, but it is derailed when a young scion of the Ronchetti faction breaks the truce and murders his rival in the Tozzi clan. The multiple processi dealing with violence between these clans illuminates the complex social hierarchies that govern feuds and apply some limits to their violence. They are also representative of a long campaign by the papal governors to reduce the judicial privileges of the hereditary elite. In the resolution, or lack thereof, of this feud we see the complicated goals of early modern justice.
A project at the University of Toronto, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Rese... more A project at the University of Toronto, with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), is developing a mapping tool that will allow for the spatial organization of early modern historical, cultural, and sensory materials.1 Called the Digitally Encoded Census Information and Mapping Archive (DECIMA), it uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to map, house by house, a 1561-62 Florentine tax census onto one of the best city maps produced in the sixteenth century. This undertaking will allow scholars to understand the social geography of Renaissance Florence in dynamic ways, creating a highly adaptable ecosystem for the cultural analysis of a variety of problems and issues. One key advance is that this project aims not simply to computerize a fixed field of data, but also to develop a tool for the ongoing accumulation of material by scholars in different disciplines, chiefly history, art history, literature, and music. We also aim e...
acknowledges, Baillie held to the Calvinist “two kingdom theory” closely associated with Presbyte... more acknowledges, Baillie held to the Calvinist “two kingdom theory” closely associated with Presbyterians, such Thomas Cartwright and Andrew Melville. This political theology afforded the civil magistrate a ius circa sacra as a “nursing father” of the Church, while denying that the wielder of the civil sword possessed the ius in sacra that single sphere theorists such as Coleman, Selden or Erastus, a sixteenth century follower of Zwingli and Bullinger, himself espoused. Campbell is, however, on more solid ground in his convincing demonstration that Baillie differed from his more extreme Presbyterian colleagues, such as Rutherford and Gillespie on the extent to which matters of ceremony and polity were adiaphorous and thus within the competence of the magistrate. In conclusion, Campbell’s book on Baillie is a welcome study of a character who history has allowed to become obscured by his own rich archive. In exploring the mind of Robert Baillie, Dr. Campbell provides much food for thought on topics that were at the core of the British political and religious crisis in the seventeenth century. This study does much to remind students of history and religion that mid-seventeenth century Presbyterians were not as monolithic and backward in their positions as has often been thought.
The richness and abundance of ritual, ceremony, and performance in European history continue to f... more The richness and abundance of ritual, ceremony, and performance in European history continue to fascinate historians after decades of description and analysis, and this collection introduces a new series of case studies that gives the reader much to chew on and to draw from in further work. Anna Kalinowska and Jonathan Spangler have brought together a group of papers for the most part devoted to Central and Eastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and Scandinavia. The book is valuable for that alone, as it helps to broaden the historiographical lens away from Western Europe and to introduce students to these important areas. The chapters deal primarily with the early modern period, with much of the book occupied with the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Taken as a whole, the collection will serve readers interested in elite ceremonials and courtly rituals well, and succeeds in its goal of broadening the comparative discussion of these important aspects of European history. The book is divided into four parts, plus an introduction by Kalinowska and Spangler. The introduction lays out the rationale and historiographical genealogy of the collection. As the study of political ritual and ceremony moved, over the last decades of the twentieth century, from description to analysis, from curiosity to significance, it became widely acknowledged that the elaborate ritual life of premodern Europeans could and should be read from sociological and anthropological perspectives. All of the essays are therefore indebted to Edward Muir, obviously, but with strong influence from Elias, Kantorowicz, Duindam, Cannadine, and Stollberg-Rillinger. One will not, however, find much in the way of theory in this collection. The editors specify in the introduction that their concern is to promote the analysis of primary sources as the foremost task of historians and history students. All of the essays are, therefore, documentary studies at their core, and the collection excels at bringing forward recent analyses of ritual documents and events. Part one looks specifically at rituals and ceremonies of coronation and enthronement. In sixteenth-century Istanbul (Yelçe), eighteenth-century
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