Vendetta

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.

Workshop "Altering Images - Iconoclasm in Egypt", University of Basel, 3-5 December 2020.

This paper explores the issue of iconoclasm within the private sphere of the Theban necropolis during the New Kingdom. While cases of “official” damnatio programs led by state officials on behalf of the king have drawn attention since long ago (Atonist hackings and Hatshepsut’s damnatio), private “vendettas” (like, for example, those of the vizier Rekhmire [TT 100] and of the foster brother of Amenhotep II Qenamun [TT 93]), or even more spontaneous erasures of iconographic units, often remain unexplained. This somehow relates to the “silent” aspect of this particular kind of image reception: something is withdrawn, not added, left uncommented. It seems however interesting to examine these specific reactions to image and try to map the problems concerning their interpretation with several guiding questions in mind: who is possibly engaged with the image; to what extent does the image serve as a meeting point between its owner, perhaps its creator, and a certain beholder; who actually "benefits" from the erasure; what could be the relationship of the perpetrator to the tomb owner; for what reason would the tomb owner attract such perpetrator in his tomb-chapel; what is at stake in terms of socio-professional connections, etc. In this respect Alfred Gell’s concept of image agency can be a useful tool to approach the material evidence and try to “make it speak”. Cases of transformation of depictions (like the restoration program of TT 127) can help answer such questions and value the image reception from another perspective, as well as other kind of reactions to image attested within the same iconographic environment.

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.

"FACINOROSO, SANGUINARIO, HOMICIDARIO ET VENDICATIVO. GIOVANNI BATTISTA CACCIA DETTO IL CACCETTA (1571-1609)"


Lo studio ripercorre la vita del feudatario Giovanni Battista Caccia, detto il Caccetta, giustiziato il 19 settembre 1609 sul corso di Porta Tosa a Milano per una lunga serie di delitti.
Attraverso gli atti processuali e la ricerca archivistica è stato possibile ricostruire le vicende che hanno portato un membro della nobiltà novarese al patibolo, nel contesto di una città da poco "redenta" dal marchesato dei Farnese, con i quali il Caccetta era in stretti rapporti.
Accusato di tradimento e, addirittura, di una congiura per porre il Novarese ed il Lago Maggiore sotto il controllo del re di Francia, il Caccetta si vide attribuire un uxoricidio, vari omicidi, l'accusa di falsificazione di moneta, ed altri crimini.

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.

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.

Quelque part nous avons toujours des pavés, des lanceurs potentiels ou réels, mais nous n’avons plus nulle part ni la guillotine, ni la roue, et les séjours dans les prisons françaises, avec isolation et viol en alternance (SIDA à la clé de voute de ces internements), n’ont rien de comparable à mourir au soleil sur une roue à trois mètres du sol, les jambes, les cuisses, les avant-bras, les bras, le sternum, les côtes et pour bonne mesure les clavicules brisées à coups de barre de fer. La barbarie humaine a perdu une bataille là et la civilisation en a gagné une. On est passé de la civilisation féodale à la civilisation républicaine, certains diraient de l’économie de marché qui n’aime plus le sang versé à la face du monde et la douleur publique, qui aime qu’on les cache à jamais derrière les sept voiles de Salomé et les écrans télé.

C’est à cela que je dédie ces nouvelles, ces poèmes, ces cris qui montent du plus profond de l’enfer de Dante jusqu’au plus récent cas de violence gratuite contre autrui, comme ces enfants entre douze et quinze ans qui tuent d’autres enfants du même âge ou parfois un peu à peine plus âgés.

Nel presente lavoro l’autore analizza gli studi di Antonio Pigliaru dell’ordinamento barbaricino, l’attenzione si sofferma, in particolare, sull’istituto della vendetta. Pigliaru utilizza il metodo dell’intervista per indagare il fenomeno della vendetta, arrivando alla conclusione che la vendetta in quell’ordinamento è un istituto.

In this paper, the author analyses Antonio Pigliaru’s studies about ordinamento barbaricino, with particular attention being paid to the institute of revenge. Pigliaru uses the interview method to investigate the phenomenon of vengeance, concluding that vengeance is an institute.

The documents concerning the feud between the Patriarch of Aquileia and the Counts of Gorizia (1267–1277) are evidence of how written laws show that the ritual forms and gestures of the customary system of confl ict resolution were not only maintained but were regularly inserted into the ritual formulas of written law. Above all they document how the customary system of confl ict resolution, in its ideal image and through rituals, refl ected social values based on the mediation of the community, reciprocity and the propensity to achieve a lasting peace. This is a general structural aspect of confl ict, while the local or articular
aspect is shown concretely through the struggle for resources, in the interweaving of single circumstances, where those who succeed in forming the greatest number of loyalties, differing and often contrasting alliances, are the ones who prevail. In our case this was clearly better accomplished by the Counts of Gorizia than by the Patriarchs of  Aquileia.
Key words: feud, vendetta, homage, truce, peace, Patriarchs of Aquileia, Counts of Gorizia, Momiano, Pietrapelosa, Istria

WHEN THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN over thirty years ago, we defined vengeance as a universal reaction to a perceived, unjustified suffering inflicted on the individual or group. We affirmed that such reaction invariably arose from an elementary sense of injustice, a primitive feeling that one has been arbitrarily sub¬jected to a tyrannical power against which one is powerless to act. Vengeance is therefore a punitive act of coercion motiv¬ated by the elementary sense of injustice (chapter 1). In our view this definition still holds.But read on....

The subject of vendetta, in other words, blood vengeance stands out as a bloody inheritance which has held on for centuries and been passed down from generation to generation among clans and tribes in closed communities, especially in backward regions. When the reasons of the emergence of vendetta are examined, it is understood that while sometimes it is based on a very simple reason, it may sometimes be caused by highly serious reasons. Such an important fact has took place in the geography of Anatolia from past to present and by continuing to take place, it still goes on to create an agenda as an important problem in the society. This given fact has been researched and dealt with by many disciplines mainly sociology, psychology, history, and law. In this study, this fact is analysed on the chosen Republic period novels, ‘YaşamakYasak (Living is Forbidden)’ by Hasan Kıyafet; ‘YaylanınDerdi (The Trouble of the Highland)’ by Ahmet CemilAkıncı and ‘SularDurulursa (When Settlement Down takes place)’ by Ahmet GünbayYıldız in the light of comparison and novel analysis method.
KeyWords: Vendetta, Literature, Novel, Analysis.

The unification of most of Italy between 1859 and 1861 was greeted with enormous enthusiasm in Great Britain. Within a decade, however, a number of incidents had conspired to undermine Victorian optimism over the outcome of the Risorgimento. One example was the Zamponi affair of 1870, during which a Sardinian-born member of the British consular service became the target of a local vendetta. This article contributes to our understanding of how Sardinia and its people were perceived by the British, and how the island’s condition reflected upon the new Italian government a decade after unification. For the British, the occurrence of a vendetta against one of their public servants revealed fully the violent nature of Sardinian society, while the failure of the Italian government to intervene was interpreted as evidence of the limits of mainland authority over the island; this subject was especially pertinent, considering that Sardinia had been governed by Italy’s Piedmontese unifiers not merely since national unification, but from 1720. Moreover, the reaction of the British officials who despatched a gunboat to the island ostensibly to protect British interests betrays their readiness to dismiss Sardinia – if not the whole of Italy – as a barbaric and unruly land in which Britain could intervene, if necessary, by force. In this respect, the event enhances our understanding of the role of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean during a period in which British foreign policy is generally held to have abandoned Palmerstonian belligerence in favour of ‘splendid isolation’ in European affairs. Although a cross-party consensus on the benefits of non-intervention largely prevailed in British politics in 1870, the deployment of a British ship in Italian waters suggests that a tendency to resort to gunboat diplomacy lingered on in the Royal Navy and British officialdom. Furthermore, Britain’s role in the Zamponi affair allows its undoubted friendship with the fledgling Italian state to be set in context alongside its relations with other Mediterranean countries, echoing its heavy-handed treatment of Greece during the Don Pacifico affair of 1850, yet contrasting against the greater reserve shown in British diplomatic relations with Spain after the revolution of 1868. The episode also provides an opportunity to contribute to the interesting but much neglected history of the British consular service.

Lo scopo di questo contributo è quello di definire le costanti che sovrintendono alla vendetta al fine di ottenere una conoscenza più approfondita delle sue manifestazioni sul piano sociale e dall’altro creare un terreno fertile per un suo superamento sul piano personale.

L’esposizione cercherà di far emergere gli elementi che fungono da trasfondo per ogni azione vendicativa. A tal proposito prenderemo in considerazione i concetti di danno e offesa, i concetti di causa dell’offesa e colpa e i concetti di pena e sanzione, quest’ultimi intesi come continuità della vendetta mascherata da giustizia.

Si cercherà inoltre di esporre brevemente un’ipotesi che spieghi il funzionamento della vendetta intesa come “la credenza per la quale far soffrire l’altro compensa quello squilibrio cosmico che si è prodotto per l’ingiustizia che l’altro ha commesso”.

Non si pretenderà di offrire certezze perché questo è un lusso concesso a chi non è implicato nel fenomeno.