History of Este's Duchy

Mobilising the "young" Kingdom of Italy for the Great War meant mobilising its medicine and health care structures as well. The provinces of Regione Emilia-Romagna were not only right behind the Italian-Austrian Front but also hosted the oldest universities of the world together with their well established medicine and science research departments. These provinces were used as laboratories for further developments of medicine, surgery, psychiatry, hygiene, thus serving both warfare and civilian health care: although in many cases civilian health had to be sacrificed to military health, research and investments forged local structures and stimulated local authorities, leading to a modernisation and general improvement of medical research and public health care for Emilia-Romagna and partially for Italy.
The book (co-written by editors Fabio Montella, Francesco Paolella and Felicita Ratti together with co-authors Michele Bellelli, Mirtide Gavelli, Fiorenza Tarozzi) presents several local case studies analysed in a national and transnational perspective, also including comparative studies and entangled histories.

The concentration of small and medium-sized dynastic states in the central Po valley, yet in the second half of the seventeenth century, offers numerous opportunities for meetings between the representatives of their respective sovereign families, while the appointments of these princes with the members of the other Italian ruling families are rarer. The meetings between the princes of the Peninsula always play a familiar political role, so that the existence of disputes over their respective titles and «treatments» may require preventive action of ministers and advisers. The extensive use of the «incognito», ie private character, by the princes, both sovereign and non-rulers, who are traveling outside their home states allow them to avoid these embarrassments, sometimes even giving up the magnificent reception by foreign courts. Advocates of meetings are particularly princesses married abroad, for which their appointments with the beloved brothers are valuable opportunities to keep alive the ties with the homeland and with the memories of a spent childhood.

The study of the military corps in the Duchy of Este in the early modern age leads to a clear distinction between the territorial militia and the hired troops, both progressively endowed with their own Orders, Chapters and Privileges and with own officers for the administration of justice. In both cases the jurisdictional competence is cumulated together with other pre-existing competences which are completely foreign to this specific area. The Commissioner of Battles is competent of the territorial militia and the Collateral of the soldiers enlisted in the hired corps, but in the heart of the provisions and in many practical cases they are subject to a lot of exceptions and fragmentations of competences, with the effect to make the justice towards the military corps an intricate and uneven system.

Il 1859 fu un anno di svolta per gli israeliti che fino a quel momento erano stati sudditi della casa d'Este. Gli sconvolgimenti politici avevano investito l'ebraismo della penisola, coinvolto nelle rivoluzioni terminate con l'unificazione e la nascita del regno d'Italia, ma furono anche essenziali per la storia degli ebrei estensi e aveva fine il loro secolare legame con la casata principesca.

Modena, 15 settembre 2011. Accademia di Scienze Lettere ed Arti. Convegno di studi Cultura, economia e società a Modena e in Italia dal Settecento al Novecento: il contributo degli ebrei. Presentazione della relazione: Moisè Beniamino Foà, bibliofilo, libraio e banchiere.