Feuding

The book deals with the relations between anger, emotions and trial rites in sixteenth century. After a general introduction on the values of emotions, justice and anger the book presents the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice. The second part of the book presents some of the documents which availed to the lawyers for preparing Marcantonio Trissino's defence.

The present publication collates the sources, namely, court records of the Volhynian Voivodeship, that highlight communication strategies during conflicts in the Volhynian szlachta milieu of the last 3rd of the 16th through the early 17th century.
The author focuses on the emergence of the judicial narrative, describes the methodology of working with court records, and offers her own esearch strategies that can be applied when analyzing sources of this type.

The paper deals with the relationships between judicial practices and the feud, which acquires interesting relevance both in customary systems and in systems governed by the legal process. First is described the crucial transition from customary practices mainly handled by the community (prevailing in the early medieval age) to practices managed by professionals (lawyers) and the procedures successively worked out by them. Feuding is examined along with the researches conducted on single European areas and for different historical periods, especially for the early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, considering the various disciplines used. In reality, while focusing on the relationship between the spread of violence and the need for peace, the discussion on the subject of feud in Europe paid little attention to the role played by the spread of Roman canonical procedures and the mediation carried out by lawyers, both in their tracts and their judiciary practice, in order to introduce a new social order. In the early modern period,  the intense dynamics of social violence and the decisive interventions of state powers increased along with the use of new trial procedures. These transformations were relevant and even decisive, especially after the introduction of strict inquisitorial rites, which subtracted from the privileged classes the independent resolution of conflicts and the traditional management of procedural practices.

The book is published at the initiative of Tignale Municipality (Brescia) to commemorate the 4th centenary of the cruel battle which took place on the 17th August 1617 in the mountains above. A day which was soon recorded in the majestic ex-voto describing the death of the great outlaw Giovanni Beatrice (Zanzanù), which occurred between the two streams in the Monible valley, and today preserved in the Madonna di Montecastello sanctuary-

Il libro è pubblicato su iniziativa del comune di Tignale (Brescia) per ricordare il quarto centenario della cruenta battaglia svoltasi il 17 agosto 1617 nei monti soprastanti. Un giorno che, di lì a poco, venne ricordato nel maestoso ex-voto ancor oggi esistente nel santuario della Madonna di Montecastello, in cui è descritta la morte del grande fuorilegge Giovanni Beatrice (Zanzanù), avvenuta tra i due ruscelli che scendono lungo la valle delle Monible.

Was the feud indeed 'quite central to Anglo-Saxon political society', as has been maintained by Paul Hyams and other modern historians? Or should such claims be viewed with skepticism? And is the concept of 'the sacred duty and right of blood vengeance' that has been attributed to the early Germanic-speaking peoples rooted in nineteenth-century concepts of the past, ones that now deserve to be superseded?

This essay discusses these questions with special reference to the Old English word 'faehth', which normally means 'act of violence' rather than 'feud', and with additional attention to Richard Fletcher's book 'Bloodfeud', to the situations of intergroup hostility depicted in 'Beowulf', and to the social situation in medieval Iceland, which does not admit of easy comparisons with that in Anglo-Saxon England. I conclude that while talk of the 'feud' tends to be beside the point, the people of Anglo-Saxon England had strong investments in institutions of justice whereby acts of violence called for recompense within the parameters of customary law.

The book is based on an important criminal trial instructed by the courts of Vicenza and Padova in the years 1605-06 subsequently a decision of the Venetian Counsel of ten. The defendants belonged to the Vicentine aristocracy and were accused of many felonies like rapes, violences and assaults against the women and the men of their families of a small village of the Venetian mainland. But the study of the trial is also the occasion for describing the functioning of criminal justice and its changes during the last decades of sixteenth century.

The presence of highly structured factions is a key-feature of lombard political society throughout the later Middle Ages until well into the Cinquecento. This essay explores the nature of factional groups in 15th century Parma, where they operate as a means of political action at informal but also at institutional level. Far from being loose networks kept together by the temporary interests of individuals, factions appear to be built around the political traditions of urban lineages and the long-term patronage ties which connected them to the four major families of the local landed nobility. Parma’s case study provides useful insights into relevant issues: the relations between kinship and factional membership, the political cohesion of the lineage, the influence of structural factors on the political choices of the individual, the interrelations between feud and faction.

This is the first full-length study of Scottish royal government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ever to have been written. It uses untapped legal evidence to set out a new narrative of governmental development. Between 1124 and 1290, the way in which kings of Scots ruled their kingdom transformed. By 1290 accountable officials, a system of royal courts, and complex common law procedures had all been introduced, none of which could have been envisaged in 1124.

The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 argues that governmental development was a dynamic phenomenon, taking place over the long term. For the first half of the twelfth century, kings ruled primarily through personal relationships and patronage, only ruling through administrative and judicial officers in the south of their kingdom. In the second half of the twelfth century, these officers spread north but it was only in the late twelfth century that kings routinely ruled through institutions. Throughout this period of profound change, kings relied on aristocratic power as an increasingly formal part of royal government. In putting forward this narrative, Alice Taylor refines or overturns previous understandings in Scottish historiography of subjects as diverse as the development of the Scottish common law, feuding and compensation, Anglo-Norman 'feudalism', the importance of the reign of David I, recordkeeping, and the kingdom's military organisation. In addition, she argues that Scottish royal government was not a miniature version of English government; there were profound differences between the two polities arising from the different role and function aristocratic power played in each kingdom.

The volume also has wider significance. The formalisation of aristocratic power within and alongside the institutions of royal government in Scotland forces us to question whether the rise of royal power necessarily means the consequent decline of aristocratic power in medieval polities. The book thus not only explains an important period in the history of Scotland, it places the experience of Scotland at the heart of the process of European state formation as a whole.

À partir de l’étude de deux documents conservés aux Archives du Vatican, cet article reconstitue le déroulement d’une enquête judiciaire lancée en 1338 par le pape Benoît XII au sujet de malversations financières imputées à l'évêque de Sienne Donosdeo de’ Malavolti. Les deux documents sont des fascicules de recollectiones, c'est-à-dire des rapports (rédigés par des membres du personnel de la Curie, probablement des clercs de la Chambre apostolique) qui analysent et synthétisent le contenu des actes rapportés à l’issue d’une inquisitio effectuée à Sienne. Ces recollectiones sont ici resituées dans la typologie des sources produites par les affaires d’excessus prelatorum à partir du pontificat d’Innocent III. Leur examen éclaire les méthodes bureaucratiques de traitement des dossiers judiciaires à la Curie, mais aussi les modalités de mise en œuvre de la procédure inquisitoire par les agents de la papauté au début du XIVe siècle, ainsi que la place de l’enquête dans le gouvernement centralisé de l’Église à cette époque. L’affaire offre un bon exemple des nouvelles stratégies rendues possibles, pour les acteurs des sociétés locales, par le développement des justices inquisitoires souveraines. Il s’avère en effet que l’enquête pontificale fut suscitée par des dénonciations émanant de la famille siennoise des Piccolomini, qu’une guerre privée opposait alors à celle des Malavolti depuis plusieurs années.

Segmentary lineage theory, as developed by Evans-Pritchard in his famous account of the Nuer (1940), was soon criricized and refused as a ‘folk model’, which was not in accordance with what was really happening on the ground.  In this chapter, I seek to distinguish between segmentary lineage theory and segmentary lineage systems as a model. I argue that whereas the former has rightly been criticized, the latter is still valid as a heuristic device. It can help observers (and is indeed also used by some locals) to understand options and variations of behaviour related to kinship structures in dynamic social situations. My ethnography from northern Somalia  shows that while in everyday life, unilineal descent is only one factor among many, in situations of escalating conflict, complex and highly flexible social formations can be transformed into rather rigid patrilineal formations

The paper deals with the relationships between judicial practices and the feud, which acquires interesting relevance both in customary systems and in systems governed by the legal process. First is described the crucial transition from customary practices mainly handled by the community (prevailing in the early medieval age) to practices managed by professionals (lawyers) and the procedures successively worked out by them. Feuding is examined along with the researches conducted on single European areas and for different historical periods, especially for the early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, considering the various disciplines used. In reality, while focusing on the relationship between the spread of violence and the need for peace, the discussion on the subject of feud in Europe paid little attention to the role played by the spread of Roman canonical procedures and the mediation carried out by lawyers, both in their tracts and their judiciary practice, in order to introduce a new social order. In the early modern period,  the intense dynamics of social violence and the decisive interventions of state powers increased along with the use of new trial procedures. These transformations were relevant and even decisive, especially after the introduction of strict inquisitorial rites, which subtracted from the privileged classes the independent resolution of conflicts and the traditional management of procedural practices.

This article examines an exchange of skaldic verses between a number of Icelandic chieftains, landholders and semi-professional poets, reported to have taken place in a period of political crisis in western Iceland in 1229. The surviving sequence, preserved in Sturla Þórðarson’s Íslendinga saga, constitutes an unparalleled example of extended verse-capping in medieval Icelandic narrative writing. The historical context of these verses and their narrative treatment in Íslendinga saga are considered in detail, and some new readings of the verse material and the political relationships they disclose are proposed. The verses are shown to illuminate the continuing value of skaldic performance as an instrument of social and political leverage in thirteenth-century Iceland, and the stimulatory function of competitive posturing in skaldic discourse. The analysis presented here suggests the need to revise some recent propositions concerning the supposed clerical and scholastic co-option of skaldic poetics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Further stanzas composed in the period 1229–32 perpetuate the agonistic pattern developed in the initial sequence, and the narrative framing of these later compositions is shown to embody conspicuous ambivalence to the adversarial ethics underlying the continuing exchange.

The Fonthill Letter, a long personal letter written during the reign of King Edward the Elder (r. 899-924), is one of the most remarkable legal documents to have come down to us from the Anglo-Saxon period. In this article I offer a thorough review of the language and contents of the letter, showing how it can best be construed in all its parts. The investigation sheds much light on Anglo-Saxon mechanisms of conflict resolution and on the mentality of rival factions in early English society. It likewise casts light on the uses of the vernacular language and the practices of literacy at this time.

The relationship between criminal justice and social conflicts, considered as expression of commoners’ and peasant’s feud and vengeance, is a barely investigated theme in the studies of Trentino-Tyrolean area during the Early Modern period. The present research aims to contribute to fi ll this gap with an analysis of some uncommon XVIth
century trial sources produced by legal institutions of the Primiero valley, a jurisdiction part of the Tyrolean County. The purpose to underline the local resort to feud system has been achieved thanks to the examination of the relationship between legal system, procedures of the administration of justice and trial rites and to the investigation on judicial lexicon describing conflicts, too.

What was the real story behind Buondelmonte de’ Buondelmonti’s condemnation, attributed to Cacciaguida in Paradiso, xvi, 136–147? The major Florentine chronicles of Dante’s era (Compagni) and thenceforth (Villani, Stefani) paint a picture of an innocent Buondelmonte, barbarously assassinated thanks to the homicidal rage of his peers – the magnates. However, the harsh treatment of Buondelmonte in the Commedia is the result of the character Cacciaguida (and therefore Dante) adhering to the noble/magnate ethos found in many contemporary sources (for example the chronicle by the pseudo-Brunetto Latini). Indeed, only at a later date would the Popolo’s ethos, expressed in the works of Compagni, Villani and Stefani, become the ‘definitive’ version.

Widely used in all ages in diverse political structures, the penalty of banishment takes on great importance starting from the late middle ages, both as an arm of political struggle (so-called political banishment) and as an instrument of social control used in defence of community order and values, and also to facilitate the resolution of conflicts between families in competition for honour and the management of economic resources. It was, therefore, a penalty that interacted with judiciary trial rites and that reflected the heteronomous medieval constitutional system, characterized almost everywhere by a dense network of jurisdictions, each of which was endowed with its own autonomy, even if moral, religious and political values were largely shared. Many statutes of the subject cities not only provided that bandits could be killed with impunity by anyone, but also that they could win their freedom by killing each other. This was a norm aimed to assure respect for the periods of truce needed by local judicial institutions and conflicting families to lessen internal tensions and start peace negotiations. Faced by a serious situation explicitly attributed to the emergence of a type of banditry considered aggressive and dangerous the Council of Ten took firmly into its own hands the complicated matter of banditry, which, though with significant interference, had for roughly two centuries been the competence of the local jurisdictions. The penalty of banishment inflicted by authority of the Council of Ten comprised all the territories of the state, going beyond traditional boundaries, and was made more effective by the concession of bounties, and above all by the granting of so-called voci liberar bandito. The arrest or killing of a bandit was awarded with the acquisition of a voce that could be used by the person directly interested, or could be passed on to others, who could in turn ask for the liberation of another bandit. In this way an authentic market of voci was created, and most importantly the figure of the bounty killer came into being. The new legislation adopted against banditry at the end of the century created a short circuit between the vendetta system and traditional practices of mediation aimed at reaching truces and pacification. Its effectiveness could be achieved by intervening in the dynamics of local conflicts and by making use of awards and benefits to encourage informers and the involvement of communities and bounty killers.  The judiciary activity of the Council of Ten and the use of its inquisitional rites was an essential support for the repression that hinged principally on the banishment laws.

This book is a study of medieval queenship – an examination of the nature and role of feminine authority and power and the monarchy in the late Middle Ages.  Based on thorough and rigorous original archival research, it examines the life and career Maria de Luna, queen-consort of the Crown of Aragon (1396–1406); a woman who also served as lieutenant-general (second-in-command) for her husband, King Martí I (1396–1410).  It is not, however, a biography, nor does it focus narrowly on themes which tend to be considered “political.” It approaches the phenomenon of queenship from an array of perspectives, and by uncovering networks of religious, cultural, familial patronage demonstrates that “political” activities cannot be sectioned off from the wider activities of the royal and queenly court. A revised Spanish translation was published in 2012, María de Luna. Poder, piedad y patronazgo de una reina medieval. Zaragoza: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, 2012.

First of all, the banishment penalty reflected the political and constitutional European polycentrism and its interrelations with a society for a long time animated by conflicts between factions and family groups. To reach a lasting peace between the opponents was indeed an essential moment of the vendetta system, as much as ensuring tranquillity and the safekeeping of the community’s values. The system was endowed with a pronounced juridical dimension and it interacted, on the constitutional level, with the role played by the courts and, in particular, trial and customary rites. These were aimed to manage conflicts between opposite groups by pulling away the one who broke social stability through banishment, if necessary.
During the Sixteenth century, a series of important social, demographic and economic problems sensibly reshaped the conception of social control and order, and the long-established management of penal justice as well. The banishment penalty, no longer embedded in its traditional constitutional dimension and harshened both in its repressive and rewarding aspects, became an efficient instrument to impose a different political legitimacy. Faced with these transformations, bandits quickly took the physiognomy of actual outlaws, painted as political opponents and, as such, to be dealt with any repressive instrument available.

The paper deals with the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice.

Diese Arbeit entstand im Rahmen der Forschergruppe „Gewaltgemeinschaften“, welche solche sozialen Gruppen oder Netzwerke in den Blick nimmt, für die aufgrund des bisherigen Forschungsstandes mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit vermutet werden kann, dass die Anwendung von Gewalt ein zentraler Bestandteil des Gruppenzusammenhaltes gewesen ist. Im spätmittelalterlichen England sind solche Gruppen in Form von Gefolgschaften des Adels zu greifen, die wiederholt gewaltsam Konflikte mit Standesgenossen austrugen. Solch eigenverantwortliche Gewaltanwendung seitens des Adels erscheint der historischen Forschung in Einklang mit den überlieferten Quellen häufig als Ausdruck von Anarchie und Störung des gesellschaftlichen Friedens. In der Forschung wurden viele dieser Konflikte mit Verweisen auf Ehrverletzungen, politische Rivalitäten oder schlicht Gier erklärt, die in kriegerischer Weise ausgetragen worden seien. Diese Erklärungsansätze greifen jedoch häufig zu kurz.
Anhand der Untersuchung ausgewählter Konflikte zwischen adeligen und niederadligen Personen in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts wurde nach Form und Funktion von Gewalthandeln wie auch der Gewaltlogik der involvierten Gruppen gefragt. Überwiegend wurden dafür überlieferte Gerichtsakten ausgewertet und kontextualisiert. Hauptuntersuchungsgegenstand war die Auseinandersetzung zwischen den hochadeligen Familien Percy und Neville in den Jahren 1450 bis 1454 in Nordengland.

This book is a study of medieval queenship – an examination of the nature and role of feminine authority and power and the monarchy in the late Middle Ages.  Based on thorough and rigorous original archival research, it examines the life and career Maria de Luna, queen-consort of the Crown of Aragon (1396–1406); a woman who also served as lieutenant-general (second-in-command) for her husband, King Martí I (1396–1410).  It is not, however, a biography, nor does it focus narrowly on themes which tend to be considered “political.” It approaches the phenomenon of queenship from an array of perspectives, and by uncovering networks of religious, cultural, familial patronage demonstrates that “political” activities cannot be sectioned off from the wider activities of the royal and queenly court. A revised Spanish translation was published in 2012, María de Luna. Poder, piedad y patronazgo de una reina medieval. Zaragoza: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, 2012.

The essay is a general view on the political and anthropological problem of social control in the Republic of Venice in early modern age. Law and justice administration are examined in their transformations. A moral and ancient tradition centered on feud and honor pervaded the culture of violence and the criminal trial, but at the end of XVIth century a new punitive justice directly controlled by the Venetian Counsel of ten weakened the feud and the traditional judiciary trial. Banditry and aristocratic crimes were the most visible effects of the new Venetian political action. The transformations proceeded by a strong demand of security and stillnesses which originated in many social and economic contexts and which couldn't be insured anymore by the justice and the legal system of the numerous towns of the Venetian mainland.

Around 1069 four elite German men—Henry IV of Germany, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Eckbert of Brunswick and Welf IV of Bavaria—tried to dissolve their marriages to their respective wives: Bertha of Savoy, Adelaide of Savoy, Immilla of Turin and Ethelinde of Northeim. This article argues that these men reinforced each other’s decision to do so. It further argues that a key, but previously overlooked, aspect of these cases is that three of these women (Bertha, Adelaide and Immilla) were closely related to one another. The first section focuses narrowly on Henry IV’s attempt to repudiate his wife Bertha and the rich documentation this produced. Then Henry’s actions are compared and contrasted with the contemporaneous attempts of Rudolf, Eckbert and Welf to end their own marriages. When viewed together, the attempted repudiations of Bertha, Adelaide and Immilla point to the declining significance of these kinswomen’s natal dynasty, led by Adelaide of Turin, and to the shifting political interests of Henry IV and other German nobles. Yet, partly due to the actions of Adelaide of Turin, it was hard for these men to ‘break up’ with their wives. In contrast to Ethelinde’s kin, who failed to prevent Welf from ending their marriage, Adelaide had sufficient political power to ensure that her daughters’ marriages were not dissolved.

I argue that tenants in Hænsa-Þóris saga are one of the main winners in the conflict between Thórir and Ketill,as they obtain what they need at little personal cost through intelligent collective action. Delivered at the IV Jornadas Interdisciplinarias “Territorios, Memoria e Identidades”, Buenos Aires, November 2015.

The study reconstructs the story of a famous 16th-century legal dispute in the Holy Roman Empire, based on sources that are not always clear: Hans Kohlhase, a citizen of Berlin, declared a private battle against an entire country, the Saxon Electorate, for his inadequately redressed legal grievances. Behind the story of this legal dispute is the intriguing question of where, in constitutional history, the boundary lay between the medieval legal order, which recognised the self-power as a legitimate means, and the modern age, which sought to implement a state monopoly on the use of force.