Vendetta al tramonto (Italian Edition)

Quest'ultima intanto arriva al cimitero delle Driadi, creature volanti e uniche in grado di sconfiggere le baccanti. Col chakram, Xena rompe il bicchiere che la giovane teneva in mano; Corilo corre a prendere la lira di Orfeo e inizia a suonarla, tenendo a bada le baccanti, mentre Xena trafigge Bacco con l'osso di Driade. Orfeo si riprende il suo corpo, le fanciulle ritornano in loro e Xena e Olimpia ripartono insieme. Callisto Xena e la vendetta di Callisto riesce a evadere di prigione grazie alla sua forza e alla sua astuzia; trovato Corilo, gli dice di avvertire Xena: Olimpia non sa cosa rispondere, e Xena chiede al guerriero di seguirle nel cammino.

Il giorno dopo, il trio incontra Corilo che li avverte della fuga di Callisto, e il quartetto si dirige nel villaggio che la folle guerriera sta devastando. Salvata una bambina, Xena si ritrova in svantaggio verso Callisto, che decide di non ucciderla ancora: La folle fugge, mentre Olimpia conforta Perdicca - che ha dovuto uccidere ancora - e accetta di sposarlo.

Il matrimonio viene celebrato nel tempio del villaggio, e dopo Xena si separa dall'amica insieme a Corilo. Xena riparte subito ed evita alla nemica di uccidere la giovane appena in tempo. Le due guerriere cominciano a lottare ma, quando sta per essere sconfitta, Callisto si dirige verso Perdicca e lo ferisce a morte. Dopo il funerale del suo sposo, Olimpia decide di dedicare tutta la sua vita a vendicarsi; Xena la supplica di non trasformare il suo amore in odio, ma l'amica non cede e insiste per farsi insegnare l'uso della spada.

Le due finiscono entrambe in un terreno di sabbie mobili: Xena con la sua astuzia riesce a liberarsi, ma non salva Callisto e la guarda sprofondare nella terra, nonostante questa l'avesse supplicata di aiutarla. Dopo averle raccontato quello che Corilo va dicendo sul suo conto, Xena la fa sbattere in prigione. Rimasta sola con Agesilao, la donna si rivela essere Melania, una prostituta e altra sosia della principessa guerriera, convinta dal malvagio uomo a sostituirsi alla principessa Danae per comandare il regno.

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Incontrato Corilo, lo atterra dopo che questi ha cercato di palparla; i due si nascondono quando Melania e Agesilao si avvicinano parlando del piano. Sconfitti gli uomini di Agesilao, le tre donne tornano a palazzo. Danae e Filemone, il suo sposo, vengono nascosti in una stanza segreta mentre Xena va a salvare il loro pargolo, rapito da Agesilao. Arrivata la vera Xena, questa mette in salvo il bambino e sconfigge Agesilao e i suoi uomini.

Xena e Olimpia inseguono Teodoro, tenente di Callisto, per assicurare lui e i suoi uomini alla giustizia; ma qualcosa turba la principessa guerriera: Le due raggiungono Teodoro in un villaggio deserto, e qui salvano Corilo appena in tempo. Le insegna quindi a lottare col bastone per uccidere, attaccandogli un pugnale e trasformandolo in una lancia.

Lungo il cammino, Callisto, avvertita da Marte, ferisce Argo per far perdere tempo a Xena; il piano funziona: Xena e Callisto si trovano faccia a faccia in una foresta; mentre combattono, Olimpia punta la lancia alla testa di Xena, credendola Callisto. La principessa guerriera riesce a ottenerne la fiducia, ma Callisto fugge col chakram. Xena e la perfida guerriera lottano di nuovo, e quando il tempo a disposizione della principessa guerriera sta per scadere, fa svenire Callisto con una freccia avvelenata. Alla fine, la folle guerriera resta bloccata negli Inferi, ma Xena rimane intrappolata nel suo corpo.

Mentre lei fa un giro del villaggio, Olimpia si reca al mercato, ma qui la giovane scatena volontariamente una rissa. In una taverna, trovano un ubriaco seduto al bancone: All'incontro, trovano altri otto guerrieri e tutti salpano su una galea. Giunti a un castello, i dieci guerrieri vengono accolti da Sisifo, colui che ha rubato la spada a Marte dopo essere fuggito dall'Oltretomba. Intanto, Olimpia e Corilo, che hanno perso il controllo, si intrufolano nel castello tramite un passaggio sotterraneo e si ritrovano faccia a faccia col mostro: Gli unici due guerrieri rimasti in vita, Tegason e Virgilius, attaccano Xena e Marte, ma questi sopravvivono.

Qui fanno la conoscenza di Maia, la responsabile dei fanciulli rimasti orfani, e vedono il chakram in cima ad un albero adornato con dei fiocchi. Improvvisamente le guardie del re irrompono con lo scrivano Senticle: Xena, ripreso il chakram, lo usa per legare i soldati con i fiocchi e poi interroga lo scrivano; questi riferisce a lui e Olimpia che il re ha deciso di vietare ogni festeggiamento in occasione del solstizio dopo che aveva perduto la sposa nel giorno del solstizio di molti anni prima.

Vendetta al tramonto by Charlene Sands on Apple Books

Quella notte la principessa guerriera entra nella stanza del re e gli intima di lasciar perdere l'orfanotrofio; quando Senor chiama le guardie, Xena fugge dalla finestra e finisce in una stanza impolverata decorata per il solstizio. Nella sala vede un dipinto del re con la sposa, la regina Astrea, che indossa un particolare medaglione.

Intanto Olimpia compra delle vesti al mercato, ma spende anche tutti i soldi del regalo di Xena per un asino che stava per essere spellato. Xena, con l'aiuto dell'amica e di Senticle, si intrufola nuovamente nella stanza del re travestita da Cloto, la Parca del passato; con l'inganno porta il re nella stanza visitata precedentemente e qui Olimpia, travestita da Astrea, lo convince di essere un'ombra del passato; il piano rischia di saltare quando l'asino, che teneva Olimpia sollevata per aria tramite una corda, sente un fischio e si allontana, facendo cadere la giovane.

Xena rimedia subito dando al re del vino in cui ha sciolto del sonnifero e lo esorta a cambiare vita, e che il fatto che la regina sia morta non deve indurlo ad essere crudele col suo popolo. I due vanno all'orfanotrofio, dove i bambini li accolgono con parole di disprezzo per il sovrano, ma incantandolo anche senza saperlo con i loro canti del solstizio.

Tornati insieme felici come un tempo, Xena e Olimpia si allontanano dal villaggio col nuovo amico asinello. Ma quando incontrano un uomo e una donna con un neonato diretti a occidente, ma senza cavalcatura, Olimpia dona loro il suo asino, anche se dispiaciuta. Le due si allontanano in cerca di nuove avventure, mentre dietro di loro l'uomo e la donna si allontanano con il bambino e l'asinello e una stella molto luminosa brilla sopra le loro teste. Le due vengono presto raggiunte da uno scavatore, a cui hanno piantato un pugnale nella schiena.

Questi offre il suo aiuto per evitare che le pergamene, che potrebbero contenere antichi segreti mistici, cadano in mani sbagliate. L'arrivo del malvagio Smythe interrompe il loro incontro: Melinda e gli altri fuggono fino a giungere davanti alla tomba di Marte; qui, durante lo scontro che ne segue, i due pezzi di chakram si riuniscono. Janice crede di essere lei la designata, ma Marte smorza subito il suo entusiasmo: Improvvisamente, lo spirito di Xena invade il corpo di Melinda: Infatti qualcuno sembra intenzionato a mandare a monte il trattato di pace stipulato tra il tiranno di Messene, il reggente di Skiros e il re di Parnassus, attaccando le concorrenti alla competizione.

Subito questa deve salvare la vita della Venere di Messene quando rischia di essere uccisa dalla freccia scagliata da una balestra collegata all'arpa che la fanciulla suona; intanto Olimpia fa la conoscenza degli altri protettori. Xena si reca in una sauna, dove fa la conoscenza della Venere del Messini, della Venere di Parnassus e dell'antipatica Venere di Skiros; quando queste se ne vanno, Xena scopre di essere stata chiusa nella stanza.

I tre protettori si affrontano e promettono di dichiararsi guerra se dovesse avvenire un altro incidente; uno di questi comincia a sospettare della Venere di Anfipoli. Durante il suo numero, l'affronta: Xena giunge all'ultima prova, la prova dei talenti, e riesce a salvare la Venere di Skiros prima che una trave la uccida; la guerriera affronta il responsabile: Xena lo sconfigge facilmente.

Xena e Olimpia ripartono: Tornata indietro, Xena non riesce a ritrovare Olimpia; vede il suo bastone, e inizia a cercarla. La guerriera libera gli ostaggi e combatte i nemici, ma una bambina rimane indietro per vedere Xena all'opera. Quando il capo dei barbari, Sitacles, aziona una trappola mortale, Xena - colpita da un medaglione che la bambina ha indosso e che le rievoca ricordi del suo passato - mette in salvo la bambina, ma quel gesto le impedisce di proteggersi e viene scagliata da un tronco mobile contro un'arma conficcata in un albero.

Olimpia mette fuori gioco il barbaro, nonostante venga ferita alla gamba con un pugnale. Con le ultime forze rimastele, dice a Olimpia di portarla sul monte Nestos, e poi sviene. I ricordi riaffiorano alla mente della principessa guerriera. Affascinata dall'uomo, Xena lo conduce sulla sua nave e lo fa legare all'albero maestro. Intanto nel presente Olimpia, con l'aiuto di Argo, sta portando l'amica sul monte Nestos, ma non capisce quale direzione prendere, e l'amica sta solo delirando.

Nuovamente fra i ricordi del passato, sulla nave di Xena un clandestino mette fuori gioco i suoi uomini, tra cui i suoi tenenti - Vicerius e Telos - e le immobilizza la gamba con le dita; Xena la cattura e le fa spiegare da Giulio Cesare, nel dialetto gallico, quello che vuole: La clandestina non ha altra scelta, e Xena si rivela un'allieva molto capace: Successivamente, la guerriera invita Cesare nella sua cabina: Giunti su una spiaggia, la guerriera libera Cesare, ma i due si promettono di rivedersi ancora.

Quella notte, una figura incappucciata libera Xena, dopo aver sconfitto le guardie: La donna la porta su un valico di montagna fino alla casa del guaritore Nestore, la stessa casa che viene visitata nel presente da una ormai distrutta Olimpia. Xena, nel presente, supplica l'uomo di non farlo e di lasciarla morire, per poi svenire.

Nestore riallinea le ossa delle gambe di Xena, per permetterle di camminare nuovamente. Mentre sono in attesa, le guardie di Cesare - il quale ha saputo della fuga di Xena - irrompono nella casa per uccidere la guerriera. Quando una freccia sta per colpirla, Velia - la donna gallica, che ha indosso lo stesso medaglione della bambina incontrata all'inizio dell'episodio - le fa da scudo e per questo muore, donandole un ultimo sorriso. Il volto di Xena si pietrifica, e la rabbia esplode in lei.

Usando le gambe e i capelli come armi, mette fuori gioco i soldati. Nel presente, Nestore avverte Olimpia: Di nuovo nel passato, Xena cattura uno dei soldati e per la prima volta usa il tocco paralizzante per uccidere. Mentre la Xena del presente muore, quella del passato dice al soldato di avvertire Plutone: Sentendo i pensieri di Olimpia, Xena si convince: Olimpia si risveglia di soprassalto; ormai sono notti che continua a rivedere in sogno la morte di Xena.

Iolao, dopo essere venuto a sapere della sorte di Xena, la conforta; poi riparte per portare la brutta notizia a Hercules. Specchiandosi in una botte piena d'acqua, non vede il suo riflesso, ma quello della principessa guerriera, che gli spiega il suo piano: Olimpia prosegue il cammino verso Anfipoli, decisa a riportare il corpo di Xena a sua madre Irene; infatti l'amica aveva espresso il desiderio di essere sepolta accanto al fratello Linceo.

Olimpia accetta di stare per un po' con le amazzoni, per poi riprendere il viaggio. Al villaggio amazzone, Anfitea le parla di Velsinea: Anfitea chiede a Olimpia di restare come regina: Olimpia si reca poi a visitare il sarcofago di Xena, e decide di dire addio per sempre all'amica: Ma questo non basta alle altre: Olimpia viene incoronata regina delle amazzoni. Velsinea prende il comando: In maggioranza, fa sbattere Anfitea in prigione con chi le resta leale.

Di ritorno al villaggio amazzone, Velsinea prende il pugnale e fa sbattere nuovamente Autolico in prigione assieme a Olimpia. Qui escogitano un piano: Impossessatasi del corpo di Olimpia, Xena interviene per fermarla: Riabbracciata l'amica, Xena ringrazia Autolico per averla aiutata: Nella caverna dell'ambrosia, una mano raggiunge un pezzo del cibo degli dei risparmiato dal rogo.

Xena e Olimpia sono pronte a ripartire, e la giovane consegna ad Anfitea la sua maschera da regina amazzone: Estratto il frammento recuperato nella caverna, lo mangia e diviene una dea. Subito comincia a lanciare fulmini contro le amazzoni, e in particolare contro Olimpia, che odia in quanto le ha portato via il trono di regina. Xena e le amazzoni, dopo essere riuscite a mettersi in salvo all'interno di una caverna, progettano un piano per sconfiggere la malvagia amazzone. Olimpia non ne vuole sapere, dopo che la folle guerriera ha ucciso il suo sposo, Perdicca, ma alla fine deve accettare.

Mentre loro due si recano a liberare Callisto, Solari affronta Velsinea: Intanto Velsinea raggiunge il tempio della dea Diana, ed essendo ora una sua pari, si dichiara sua nemica e distrugge la costruzione. Attiratala sotto le pietre pericolanti, Xena recupera il chakram e le fa crollare sulla guerriera, seppellendola. Accampate per la notte, su sua richiesta Callisto spiega a Olimpia - che in quegli istanti l'aveva vista piuttosto turbata - quello che ha provato mentre Xena raccontava dell'attacco a Cirra: Il giorno dopo, Velsinea raggiunge l'accampamento del trio, ora abbandonato; si trasforma poi in un vortice e riparte all'inseguimento.

Callisto la salva e parte verso il fiume di lava, mentre Xena e Olimpia la seguono; qui vengono raggiunte dalla perfida amazzone, che allontana Xena con un cenno di dita e sta per uccidere Olimpia. La giovane finisce su un ponte di corde sotto il quale scorre il fiume di lava, mentre Callisto strappa a Velsinea la sacca che contiene l'ambrosia e la lancia in aria; Olimpia l'afferra e la lancia a sua volta, su esortazione di Xena, a Callisto, che diventa una dea. Xena e Olimpia si riuniscono, e la giovane si chiede se mentre cadeva Callisto si sia pentita di tutto quello che ha fatto.

Xena e Olimpia vengono attaccate da alcuni uomini mentre stanno dormendo; Xena si sveglia in tempo e usa pentole e padelle per mettere in fuga i briganti. Xena interroga il capo degli uomini, Largo: In other words, the vengeance could not exceed the initial of- fense; it had to be proportionate to it, a death for a death, a seri- ous injury or mutilation for a serious injury or mutilation.

Peace between the parties was the political aim of public intervention: The rationale of the vendetta is based on retaliating for the offense, hence it can be configured as a practice of social self-regulation which balances out mutual offenses and attacks. What it tried to prevent, however, were indi- rect retaliations and acts that exceeded the vendetta, because such acts could turn a clash between parties into much larger feuds fu- elled by spiraling retaliation. We need to turn the issue on its head. The law of the com- mune did not prohibit vendetta practices. On the contrary, the le- gal system incorporated vendetta as an ordinary system of conflict resolution, recognizing its positive value in limiting the violence that underlies the system of retaliation, in that it puts in place a temporary balance in the exchange of injury.

Statuto del capitano del popolo degli an- ni , ed. Cujas, , vol. Thus the communal legislation safeguarded the right to vendetta. Above all, we need to investigate the relationship between conflict and civil coexistence in Italian communal society. Educating citi- zens about vendetta and to an assessment of opportunities for re- taliation, as well as encouraging opportunities for settlement and pacification, gave the parties involved the impetus to promote so- cial balance and political integration.

Relationships based on friendship and enmity, proper- ly tempered by the balancing mechanism of vendetta, were ac- cepted as normal factors for social and political integration. Hence the obsession existing inside political discourse concerning opposite coalitions colligationes, partes, and so on aiming to Andrea Zorzi, Rome: It probably deserves greater attention, starting for instance with the opinions voiced by such commentators as Piacentino and Azzone, who sought to find in the Codex those rubrics with C.

Quando liceat sine iu- dice unicuique se vindicare that might impart legitimacy to impunity for killing an out- law and, by extension, to the practice of exacting vengeance that appeared to them to be an everyday part of urban social relations. In the last decade of the thirteenth century a ma- jor conflict took place between the Donati, a family of ancient no- ble lineage, and the Cerchi, a family from the wealthy merchant class.

This enmity turned into a feud with mutual vendettas, all of which were legitimately carried out. Through violence, plunder and political sen- tences of banishment and exile, the intervention of Pope Boniface VIII and of Charles of Valois finally allowed the Blacks to gain su- premacy over the Whites between and But when that balance was breached, the political game changed, paving the way for one faction to gain supremacy over the other and to acquire total con- trol over resources. Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, See also Fabrizio Ricciardelli.

Ricerche su politica e giustizia a Firenze dal comune allo Stato territo- riale Florence: Firenze University Press, , 2nd edition , pp. Hoepli, , 2nd edition. He was also a reader lettore at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and an in- fluential member of the order on the international level.

Una fractio est quia Guelfi dicunt male de Ghibellinis quod non cedunt, et Ghibellini de Guelfis quod expellere eos volunt. Alia fractio est quia artifices dicunt male de magnis quod devorantur ab eis, quod proditiones commictunt, quod bona inimicorum defendunt, et huiusmodi, et a con- trario magni de artificibus quod dominari volunt et nesciunt quod terram vituperant et huiusmodi. Tertia fractio est inter clericos et religiosos et laycos, quia de laycis di- cunt quod sunt proditores, quod usurarii, quod periuri, quod adulteri, quod raptores, et verum est de multis.

The question can only be interpreted on the base of what we have been discussing so far. In a nutshell, vendetta and feud are symmetrical and promote equity, while factional conflict, banish- ment and exclusion are asymmetrical and promote imbalance. This is because vendetta is a consensual conflict. The normative regulations of vendetta and the provision of opportunities for mediating in a conflict were designed so as not to disrupt the balance between the parties.

If we analyze this vocabulary care- fully, we will see that it does not express absolute and shared civic values, but rather makes partisan ideological claims. Le radici del municipalismo e del repubblicanesimo italiani Bologna: Brepols, , pp. He did not write it in a serene moment of theoretical speculation but in the midst of a political storm.

Remigio stresses the positive value of pacifying disputing lineages and factions: Or rather, to what political regime he is referring. The same applies to the famous fresco cycle that Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted between and in a room in the Palaz- zo Pubblico of Siena — a room which, by no mere coincidence, was known as the Room of Peace. Tyranny, of 75 Matthew S. Clarendon Press, , pp. Faber and Faber, , pp. Histoire, sciences sociales, 60 , pp. Edi- zioni di storia e letteratura, , pp. Firenze - Genova - Lucca - Siena — Venezia, ed.

It can be expressed in revenge and conflict, laws and sen- tences, words and images. Between the second half of the thir- teenth century and the first half of the fifteenth, central and north- ern Italian city-states frequently suffered moments of disruption of the social peace because of factional battles.

Violence became the language of political resolution, and repression its natural conse- quence. The good and peaceful state of the community was achieved through the political use of banishment a monetary fine , forced confinement a political sentence , ammonizione a warn- ing , or public executions. All those who, due to every sort of earthly corruption, had contaminated the good government and the peaceful state had their voices repressed.

These vio- lent conflicts represented a political act and, at the same time, an episode in the bloody struggle between the two opposing parties, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The end of the fighting and the subsequent attacks and massacres announced the triumph of one faction over the other. In this paper I shall examine psychological and so- cial factors that contributed to the rise in violence and repression in late medieval Italian city-states.

Po- litical struggles were deeply embedded in the collective mentality and ingrained habits of the citizenry along with the progressive di- vision of the consular commune. This mentality was the product of a specific culture based on the practice of blood feuds; the con- flicts were the expression of a particular environment that made and used them as the most efficient instrument for the resolution of political conflict fig. Essays Presented to Philip Jones, ed.

Hambledon, , pp. Firenze University Press, , pp. On city-states as independent political entities made up of a city and its surrounding contado sub- ject territory , see Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 3rd edition London and New York: From Commune to Signoria Oxford: All these human expressions are bound to passions, always connected to cultural rules, personal tendencies, and beliefs of so- cieties.

From sources, it is evident that politicians shared, diffused, and accepted the practice of violence to pacify the political arena. Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, ed. Mursia, , Inferno, VI, 64—69; all ci- tations of this text are from this edition, cited by canto and line number. Lapi, , book I, chap. See also Dante, Inferno, VI, In more recent times this approach to the study of history has had renewed success.

In the modernists Peter Stearns and Carol Stearns published in The American His- torical Review an article in which the theory of emotionology — that is, the fusion of sociology to psychology as privileged points of observation for the study of history — was developed. On this theme see Peter N. Stearns and Carol Zisowitz Stearns, Anger. University of Chicago Press, In Barbara H. Rosenwein wrote an article, again published in The American Historical Review, maintaining that every culture has its forms of expressivity, and emotions depend on language, cultural practices, ex- pectations, and moral beliefs: Carol Lansing, Passion and Order.

Cornell University Press, Brunetto Latini, Il tesoretto, ed. Ricciardi, , vol.

Brunetto Latini, Tresor, ed. Einaudi, , III, 77, p. Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, ed. Rizzoli, , p. But the poor too — he con- tinues — did not find it easy to live under the law; their hardships prepared them for any and all dangers, so that they had almost nothing to lose by armed revolt. Christian tradition gave pride and avarice a pivotal position as driving forces of the worldly city. Au- gustine insisted on the unbroken relationship between the two, explaining that the devil had been made to fall by avarice, and that everyone knows that avarice consisted not only of the love of mon- ey, but even more the love of power.

This means that for late me- dieval society pride and avarice were combined, connected, and in- divisible figs. Among the seven deadly sins, pride — in Greek hubris and in Latin superbia — is considered the ultimate source from which the others arise. Le dicerie di ser Filippo Ceffi notaio fiorentino, ed. Chirio e Mina, , p. On Filippo Ceffi and feud as a social practice, see Ivi, pp. Cambridge Uni- versity Press, , pp. Donzelli, , book IV, p. Everyone in the deeply Christian communal so- ciety was well aware of Lucifer and his struggle against God.

Every- one was aware that this desire caused his fall and his transforma- tion into Satan. Everyone sensed the story of Lucifer as the quin- tessential example of pride. To induce feelings of humility, Dante imagined the penance for those guilty of the sin of pride as being forced to walk with stone slabs on their backs figs. Cu- pidity — avaritia in Latin — is a consequence of the rapacious de- sire for wealth, status, and power. Cupidity defines other examples of greedy be- havior: Furthermore, greed inspired scavenging and the hoard- ing of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority.

Such misdeeds included simony, by which one profits from the church. The abuse of power was the worst vice for all those holding public offices. The sources show that pride and avarice are both quoted as the main causes of social disorder. On the seven deadly sins — i.

Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins. Cambridge Univer- sity Press, , pp. Storia dei peccati nel Medioevo Turin: They could be elaborated in various ways according to the situation and erudition of the writer, but they were universally perceived as the main threat for proper management of the bonum commune i.

The Ghibelline notary and chronicler Giovanni da Cermenate Milan c. Giovanni Villani inveighed against the two wealthy families among the ranks of evil citizens who have corrupted and depraved the whole world with false customs and false gain. I would like to thank Sam Cohn for letting me read the article before publication. Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, , p.

Storie pistore- si, ed. Pride and wealth were again turning rivalry into open war. Between and the Florentine Dominican friar — lat- er cardinal — Giovanni Dominici viewed social disor- der as rooted in the dishonesty, greed, and ambition of individual citizens. These vices have for Dominici both psychological and so- cial dimensions: Dante, Inferno, XVI, Dino Compagni, Cronica, ed. Dante, Inferno, VI, Giovanni Dominici, Regola del governo di cura familiare, ed.

Garinei, , p. Giovanni Dominici and Bernardino da Siena Turn- hout: These un- settling perturbations included many emotions — anger, irascibili- ty, volatility, hate, discord, desire — and vices such as lust, pride, and avarice. According to Patrizi, violence is the consequence of these civic vices.

It is caused by arrogance and social stratification; both affect the temperament of the citizen and threaten the reign of reason in the human soul. The Guelph regimes discredited the Ghi- bellines as a consequence of the defeat of Benevento in as being guilty of having committed crimes against humanity, the Church, and the Christian community; the popolo demonized the magnates as a consequence of the writing of the Ordinances of Jus- tice of as ferocious and rapacious beasts able to corrupt — with their social behavior — the sacred space of city life.

Dissidet sequidem ab aliis, nemini cedit, om- nemque humanam societatem dirimit, principum aulas perturbat, seditionibus ac partibus omnia inficit. He disagrees with others; he gives in to one; he destroys all human society; he creates disorders in the halls of princes; and he corrupts all things with quarrels and divisions. Francisci Patricii senensis de regno et regis insti- tutione libri IX Paris: Aegidium Gorbinum, , p. This theory was influenced by Brunetto Latini, who wrote that like the world itself, the human personality is com- posed of four elements — that is, hot, cold, dry, and moist — and that the various com- binations of these elements produce the four classical psychological types: The charge of heresy in some cases could trigger the judicial procedure of banishment, proclaimed by the secular authority on the recom- mendation of the bishop of the city.

When this happened, the heretic, if he had not already fled, was arrested within eight days of recognition of his guilt, prevented from having a defense lawyer, and deprived of the right to produce witnesses during the trial. In the s the Florentine Republic created a magistracy composed of twelve citizens whose task was to guarantee the arrest of the heretics or the execution of their death sentence.

However, during the Middle Ages the meaning of this word became derogatory and was connected to a small religious group distinct from a larg- er one, united by a particular set of beliefs and practices, the secta. This term meant treason to God, the worst offense against Christian society. Heretics were those who, while keeping the outward appearance of Christian religion, pursued false opinions from a desire for human approval, earthly reward, or worldly pleasures.

This conta- mination, this infection from which true believers had to protect themselves, threa- tened the very foundation of the Church, papal authority, and Guelph and popular communes. The idea of contamination and infection comes from the early Middle Ages: Following the Scriptures, Gregory teaches in the same treatise that Christians are only wayfarers on this earth viator, peregrinus , on their way to their true — that is, heavenly — homeland Moralia, XXXIV, 3, 6. Moralia, VI, 16, Alienation is essentially a failure to love God and a refusal to adhere to the order which he has given; it is something very evil and to be avoided at all costs, as evi- denced in Gerhart B.

Heresy in the society of the communes was not a simple matter of religious belief, but became a part of the power struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghi- bellines. In case of imprisonment, this would have automatically led to the death sentence and the destruction of his goods. Popular forces now conflicted with the nobility, tar- geting the wealth and social behavior of the traditional urban and rural aristocracy.

The popolo was authorized to discredit the mag- nates; it used the metaphor of the wolf and the lamb, identifying wolves as aggressive, ferocious and rapacious animals that cor- rupted the sacred space of the city-state. Because of their social be- havior and inability to respect the good and peaceful state of the city, magnates could be banished from public offices.

Through this campaign of discrediting, the new regime of the rich merchants de- veloped a political ideology of justice based on social contrast, dis- criminating against all those who had controlled the state from the beginning of its communal political life. This campaign against the magnates legitimized for the popolo this form of social abuse. La Nuova Italia, , pp.

Western Europe, 14thth Centuries, ed. Every form of repression implies the mutual acceptance, by members of a community, of the legitimization of the office which is doing the repressing. The city was always understood to be a community circumscribed within its own physical and institutional space. Like pilgrims, those who were forced outside their homeland were pushed and pulled across a world as changeable as their own condition.

Those who suffered political exclusion were the result of individual or group negation of the dominant order, the ac- cepted norms of coexistence with the laws in force. People forced into exile lived far from their own soil or their own land, beyond the confines of their homeland. The widespread practice of push- ing rivals and enemies to the edges of society was meant to force them outside their consciousness and sacred life30 fig. A city was a defined physical space, usually marked out by city walls, which in its aggregation of structures contrasted with the sur- rounding countryside devoted to farming.

It was also a legal space, a place where certain statutes applied, certain legal privileges per- tained, and certain jurisdictional rights were exercised. It was fur- 28 Charles T. Mauro Pagliai Editore, , pp. In addition, it was an idea, a place identified by a name and symbols that elicited a sensibili- ty manifested as civic virtue. The city was a mystic body, a place that made possible a politicized community of people, who shared the same values respecting its sacred laws.

Cities became places where they should — but did not — test their moral attitude or learn to subordinate self- ishness and pride to the so-called Common Good bonum com- mune. The ex- periment of the communal city-states bound forever the idea of the urban space to the idea of Pythagorean harmony, to the earthly form of the music of the spheres.

Being an enemy of this harmo- ny, promoted and developed by communal values, was understood to be a clear violation of natural as well as civic law, so that city governments were authorized to prevent and punish wrongdoers by means of criminal justice. The sacredness of the city space was counterbalanced by the constantly recurring phenomenon of the 31 All those who were considered enemies of the bonum commune could be per- secuted by the community itself. All those who committed crimes associated with the holding of public office, with intrigues and sedition against the commune and with debt legitimized the community to persecute them.

Every citizen belonged to a state which could prosecute its political enemies, with the aim of compensation, securing reparation of an economic sort fine or of a physical nature death sentence. Those who were considered enemies of the community could be likened to those sentenced for crimes. The denial of civic status sanctioned by statutory regulations was so far- reaching in such cases that if someone who was subject to a ban for political offences was murdered while in prison by one of his fellow prisoners, the crime was allowed to go unpunished.

Many sentences provide further evidence of the harsh treatment reserved for traitors to the state: Ricciardelli, The Politics of Exclusion, pp. New political landscapes were al- ways the expression of oligarchic divisions which caused civil bat- tles and violence. Marginalization of political opponents became a constant form of repression in city-states. During the thirteenth century, and for extended periods of time in the two centuries that followed, violence and repression were a part of everyday life and public psychology.

This miniature reveals the social tension caused by the denial of power between socioeconomic groups in Florence. A few years later Easter , chroniclers explain the birth of Guelfs and Ghibellines. Miniature from the Cronica of Giovanni Villani, mid-fourteenth century.

Vatican Library, Chigi Manuscript, fol. Giotto di Bondone b. This is the tenth of the twenty-eight scenes of Legend of Saint Francis. During the civil war in Arezzo, St. Francis saw demons over the city. He called upon a brother of his order, Sylvester, to drive them out. The picture area is dominated by the architecture of the city, which is divided from the rest of the world by a crack in the earth, and by the towering church building. Giotto portrays the saint deep in prayer in front of the latter. His strength seems to pass to Brother Sylvester, who raises his hand commandingly in the direction of the city of towers.

Thereupon the demons flee, and the citizens can return to their business in peace — they can already be seen at the city gates. Master seated at desk with a book. Pupils, some tonsured, seated before him. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Shelfmark: Sassetta represents Saint Francis gazing upward on the three mendicant Virtues of Chastity a white-clad winged personification holding a lily , Obedience bearing a yoke , and Poverty wearing a patched gown.

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The Ecstasy of St Francis detail. Tempera on wood, x cm — Villa I Tatti, Settignano detail. Last Judgment detail Florence, 18 January First folio of the Ordinamenta Iustitiae Ordinances of Justice. The Ordinances of Justice are an official work by means of which the political power of the mercantile and entrepreneurial middle class was consolidated and the reins of power passed into the hands of the seven major guilds.

Domenico di Michelino b. In Domenico di Michelino represents the three kingdoms as follows: Purgatory in the centre background; Hell at left; the heavenly City at right. For my part, however, I do not intend here to examine sce- narios of destruction, plunder, raids, killing, and dismembered bodies; these are not the aspects I want to emphasize. This perspective, besides being un- convincing from the anthropological standpoint, would be pro- foundly anachronistic in terms of conflicts in general, and even more so for the wars of the Italian communes, in which the two dimensions appeared more or less indivisible.

However, his observations on the dimension of ritual violence are still valid: Grasset, , es- pecially p. On the still-lively debate on the nature and function of the rituals that, since the s, Max Gluckman and Victor W. Aldine Publishing Company, ; Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure London: Il des- tino dei rituali. PUF, , pp. Discours et gestes de paix pen- dant la guerre de Cent Ans Paris: S, Anger, June Paris: RITUALS OF WAR IN ITALY 83 brought out how in the sieges of enemy cities the degree of mate- rial destruction, often emphasized in the reports of chroniclers, did not always correspond with the facts, and in this sense he has un- derlined the importance of psychological pressure, which could, to a certain extent, substitute for destructive force.

Albin Michel, , especially pp. Settia, Rapine, assedi, battaglie. La guerra nel medioevo Rome and Bari: Laterza, , pp. Electa, , pp. To be sure, from this standpoint as well, we cannot ig- nore the writings and sensibilities of the chroniclers who, in har- mony with the choices made by the winners, establish the code of insult and ensure that the event will be remembered, taking an ac- tive part in the construction of the ritual.

Episodi di Xena - Principessa guerriera (seconda stagione)

As we shall see, howev- er, this choice is above all the expression of the particular sub- stratum of conflict which, in the polycentric fabric of the world of the communes, constitutes an intrinsic element of civic patriotism 5 Richard C. Temps modernes, 96 , p. Pacini Edi- tore , pp. De la pratique sociale au rituel politique, ed. PUPS, , pp.

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The first evidence of these rituals appears in Tuscan chronicles starting in the first decades of the thirteenth century, in keeping with the rise of the polarization of the two parties of the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florentine sources of the late s. Multigrafica, , p. Zanichelli, , p. Set- tia, Rapine, assedi, battaglie, p. Accompanying all this was the mockery by boys, whose aggressiveness soon passed from verbal insults to phys- ical violence. But the boys — as the chronicle makes clear — were sent away and the threat thus defused. C, XXIX , pp. Ponte alle Grazie, , pp. These six towns- men who, at the end of the long siege of , went barefoot in their shirts with ropes around their necks to meet the victorious king of England in order to hand over to him the keys of the city — as Jean-Marie Moeglin has demonstrated — were not protagonists of the heroic act of collective sacrifice represented in the monu- ment by Rodin, but performers of a codified gesture of humilia- tion and penitence comparable to that of the amende honorable testified from as early as the eleventh century: Certainly, like the burghers of Calais, they were pardoned, but the price to pay in any case was the loss of the honor and dignity of their office, a sort of symbol- ic death that struck a blow to the heart of their system of identity values, delegitimizing also the authority of the Commune.

Nonetheless, compared to the humiliation of the rope around the neck, this ritual, like the others created within the sphere of the conflicts between Italian cities, presented rather different elements; in this context, it was the victorious enemy who imposed on the losers an ignominious practice, the implementation of which did not in any way interrupt the cycle of revenge. On the contrary, the sequence of reciprocal insults was fed by perennial remembrance of the dishonor undergone.

Jean-Marie Moeglin, Les bourgeois de Calais. Essai sur un mythe historique Paris: Al- bin Michel, , especially pp. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: CISAM, , pp. Just three years after the bloody battle of Meloria, in , an ex- pedition from Genoa led to a new success at Porto Pisano, and on that occasion the victorious Genoese minted coins deriding their rival. Not even Genoa the Proud, the city that in , a few months earlier than Florence, had minted its genovi- no, was exempt from the ritual of ridicule: Zanichelli, , pp.

In this fight, which ended two years later with the defeat of the Pisans at Cascina,28 the two traditional enemies exchanged a long string of acrid ritual insults. Lorenzo de Monacis, Chronicon de rebus Venetis ab U. Seicento anni per la costruzione di uno Stato, Turin: UTET, , pp. Valtancoli Montazio ed altri, 2 vol.

Seuil, , pp. Vecchiarelli, , pp. Alberto Bruschi, , especially pp. The affront consisted first of all of the very act of minting a coin, a specific attribute of sovereignty that reflected im- perial dignity as well as being a means par excellence for transmit- ting a memory. As the years passed, the derision of adversaries was reinforced by im- ages of heraldic animals, and the act of domination as well was col- ored with the hues of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. In conformity with the emergence of the two parties in the life of Florence, and later of Tuscany, and the spread of imperial, pa- pal and later especially Angevin propaganda, both the Guelph and the Ghibelline cities utilized the syntax of heraldic bestiary and an increasingly sophisticated constellation of rituals of public deni- gration of their adversaries.

Eagles, lions, and foxes connoted the language of insult, like many other characteristic aspects of local identity. Within the span of a century the Tuscan communes that identified themselves as Guelphs or Ghibellines took possession of their symbolic apparatus and inserted it into a language of ridicule that was ever richer and more refined. Rusconi, , p. Cambiagi, , VI, pp. It was undoubtedly in the overall framework of the intense ri- valries among the principal communes of Tuscany that the rituals of siege, first and foremost that of minting coins for spite, were ear- ly formalized and assiduously practiced, taking on over the years increasingly theatrical and ironic forms.

The races, run before the gates of the besieged city or on the battlefield, constituted a sort of symbolic reversal of the traditional equestrian games that, starting in the thirteenth century, were organized to celebrate important events, both religious and civic, in the history of the communes. Giostre, tornei e giochi nel Medioevo Rome and Bari: Lucca, defeated in by the Pisan army, was ridiculed not only by the minting of coins and the chivalrous ceremony of the dubbing of numerous knights, but also by the running of a race and a mock battle called mazzascudo. Starting in the second half of the thirteenth century, defama- tory races aimed against the people under siege became a frequent practice in the military campaigns of the Tuscan armies and mul- tiplied especially in the course of the fourteenth century, spread- ing also outside Tuscany.

Above and beyond the context of the fights among the communes of Tuscany, Villani recalls the three races that were run in by the lord of Mantua and Modena, Rainaldo Bonacolsi, known as Passerino, and his allies near Bologna. Roncioni, Delle istorie pisane, X, If the taste and sensibility of the chroniclers surely had an influence on the wide resonance of these gestures of scorn in the context of the Tuscan communes, other motives also have to be taken into consideration.

In order to understand their proliferation, we must keep in mind the particularly intense conflictive nature of this re- gion, where a large number of important towns tried to construct a solid territorial base and affirm the supremacy of their city. Be- sides, as Giovanni Cherubini has efficaciously demonstrated,47 these conflictual traits went beyond merely economic and politi- cal interests, involving also elements of prestige.

More in general, for an orientation, also bibliographical, on the dimension of conflict in the society of the com- munes, see at least: Idem, Cavaliers et citoyens; Crouzet-Pavan, Enfers et paradis, es- pecially pp. Pacini Editore, , pp. Before concluding I would like to dwell for a minute on the shared value which, above and beyond the different possible interpreta- tions and recondite meanings of the symbolic language of these cer- emonial practices, characterizes these representations in general, that is to say the open desire to give the battle a memorable di- mension, capable of extrapolating the event from the ordinary con- text of war and making it exceptional.

In effect, in the dynamic of the incessant fights among the cities of Tuscany, these gestures of clear humiliation served to put the finishing touches not only on major battles like Montaperti, Meloria or Campaldino, but also much more limited military skirmishes such as the siege of the lit- tle town of Asciano by the Lucchese. If the rit- ual thus manages to circumscribe the violence within forms of spectacle which are less dangerous than the use of destructive force, expressing its deeper and more complex meaning, it nonetheless can portend future acts of ritual revenge that will be carried out symmetrically by whoever is the winner the next time.

Gallimard, , p. Thus it was impossible to forget the offense that had been re- ceived. Humiliation is done first and foremost to be seen, then im- mediately understood, and finally remembered as an event worthy of remembrance. The battlefield becomes a theater where the pres- ence of an audience is indispensable. And in fact, the dimension of spectacle, an aspect that could not have escaped contemporary observers, pervades more or less markedly all these rituals of de- rision.

Par- allel to this, in the evolution of the clashes between communes, the need became increasingly impelling to transmit a political message capable of publicizing the image of the commune and its strength. In this sense, these rites of siege, with their strong symbolic con- tent complementing the actual fighting, appeared as crucial ele- ments for the resolution of the military conflict, as manifestations of the sovereignty of the popular regimes, capable of annihilating the enemy by the mere use of a ritual game.

Fayard, , pp. In German-speaking lands alone, over one-thousand Jewish communities were eradicated. This paper will not consider all forms of mass violence but in- stead will concentrate on persecution and punishment of popular rebels from the late Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, principally in Italy.

It will argue that examples of mass massacre and special and cruel forms of punishment meted out to rebels were rare, before ca. With the development of early Renaissance territorial states in the late fourteenth century and more so with early modern states north of the Alps in the sixteenth century, cruelty of state repression with new rituals of brutality spread from the punishment of a handful of leaders to the mass execution of fifty or more, and to the wholesale destruction of subject population by the mid-fifteenth century and into the early modern period — the massacre of innocents in sacks of cities in northern France and the Low Countries.

Sociogenetische und Psycho- genetische Untersuchungen, 2 vols. Verlag Haus zum Falken, With the brutal repression of the Jacquerie in northern France in June , chronicles such as Jean le Bel and Jean Froissart reveled in their re-telling of the butchering of towns- men and peasants by chivalrous knights as their victims took flight through fields and woods: These men-at-arms then charged and killed them like swine, one on top of the other. Immediately after the quelling of the Jacques and the merchants of Paris under Etienne Marcel, the dauphin Charles issued record numbers of letters of pardon, many of these, to knights who had taken the law into their own hands and had killed peasants in their villages.

Because of their excess- es, these noblemen now faced penalties imposed on them by the crown. Turning to Italy, other late medieval exceptions are striking. The execution of Fra Dolcino and possibly the mass destruction of his followers in the mountains above Biella Novara in make grisly reading: Manchester University Press, , p. The first is the Flo- rentine Tumulto dei Ciompi, whose radical wing and third revo- lutionary guild, the popolo di Dio, was defeated in early Septem- ber , followed a year and a half later by the rest of the work- ers-artisans government, that of the Arti Minori, in January Harvard University Press, , p.

Una pagina di storia del proletariato operaio [] Florence: Sansoni, , p. Ac- cording to Cronaca senese di Donato di Neri, p. No Florentine chronicle or judicial record confirms this claim. Guasti, , p. Firenze, giugno-agosto Siena: Il Ponte Ed- itore, , p. But while some were sentenced for life, others were exiled for only a year.

For both, unfortunately, our on- sance Europe London and New York: Arnold and Oxford University Press, , p. The Johns Hopkins University Press, , p. Princeton University Press, , p. Firenze University Press, , p. For some rea- son, Zorzi cites the eighteenth-century Muratori edition of the Rerum Italicarum Scrip- tores instead of the more critical twentieth-century one edited by Lisini and Iacomet- ti; see below. No governmental or ju- dicial records survive for it. Their second, better- known revolt, almost a year later in July , was rare among the revolts of late medieval Europe in that it arose not only over rights but specially over wages: The following day the Bruco armed and marched to the Palace of the Senator, threatening to burn it down if the three were not released.

With their allies, the Bruco stormed the palace, killed several officers, freed their three comrades, hurled insults against the ruling parties Monti of the Dodici and the Nove, and attacked the Palace of the Salimbeni. In this struggle, the Monte of the Dodici along with others with lances and crossbows invaded the neigh- borhood of the Bruco — Ovile — torched eight houses, chased women with their children in their arms screaming, and stole or broke to pieces the looms of workers.

But the battle did not end here. A grain shortage had afflicted Siena in the previous year; see Ivi, p. The former ruling party of the Dodici, not the Bruco, were the big losers: And on 12 August it adjudged its condemnations: The chronicler con- tinued with a long list of lesser fines descending from 50 to 25 lire, of whom not a single person was identified from Ovile, or of the Bruco; nor was any wool worker mentioned.

Instead, city-state govern- ments of the fourteenth century usually limited executions to a few leaders and without horrific forms of torture and punishment to accompany theaters of executions followed by the humiliation of bodily parts. Inevitably, the latter were sentenced to be hanged. And no quartering of bodies before or af- ter execution with ritualistic placement and humiliation of bod- ily parts in selected symbolic places followed. In addition, this volume contains twenty-two cases from the Offices of the Gabelle, in which several hundred more were sentenced to small fines or absolved.

Typographia Societatis Palatinae, , col. In a popular uprising in Ferrara seized the Marchese Azzo and through their rough justice dragged him tied to the tail of horse through the city to the place of execution Chronicon es- tense cum additamentis usque ad annum , ed. Two men were apprehended, one from Scor- giano near the problematic and shifting border between Florence and Siena and the other from Staggia, which had been within the Florentine contado since Ciuto alone was sentenced to hang and with no accompanying spe- cial rituals of brutality.

Yet when the Milanese state finally suppressed the popular government led by Bussolari after four years of rebel rule and reintegrated the city into Milanese control, we learn of no executions, mass exiles, or massacres of the inno- cent. Not even its leader was tortured or executed.

Instead he was sentenced to be kept at another Augustinian convent, this one at Vercelli, where he presumably died of natural causes in From the chronicle, however, it is not clear whether this man was a popular rebel or in the employ of the Florentines. Cambridge University Press, , p. Note di storia fiorentina Florence: To cite but a few examples: Tied in chains, he was hanged with eight of his associates.

Long- man, , pp. Edmonston and Douglas, , pp. Printed by George W. Jones, , p. The chronicler remarked that the spectacle of his execution had the effect of quieting the crowds. For conspiracy and the murder of the Duke of Gloucester in , the rebel Hall who appears from his testimony before Parliament as someone who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time was charged by Parliament with falsehood and treason and in the same day drawn a distance of two English leagues by horses that left his body ripped open.

Longman, , II, p. Boydell Press, , p. English Historical Society Publications, , p. Albani, a Johanne Amundesham, monacho, ut videtur, conscripti A. Longman, , I, p. These rebels were not of the city but from villages and towns such as Gaenna in the Val di Chi- ana and Anghiari both previously in the contado of Arezzo , San Miniato, Montecatini, and the outlying mountainous zones of the Casentino and the Alpi fiorentine. Suddenly, Florentine judges created new and crueler rit- uals of humiliation, torture, and execution for rebels, both com- moners and those from the old feudal elites.

Boydell Press, , pp. Longman, , 3 vols. Of these, sixty-three were condemned to death — thirty-three by beheading, twenty-eight by hanging and two by cremation. These records describe no special ceremonies or rit- uals that tortured or humiliated the condemned as they were marched to the scaffolds: The much shorter Capitano del Popolo records for this semester condemned more to death: See also Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Ox- ford University Press, , pp.

If the seasonal rates and the other half of the Florentine quarters were comparable, this would mean condemnations of execution, or over three-and-a-half times as many as The actual rates of executions were with- out doubt higher still. First, as Umberto Dorini argued in the ear- ly twentieth century, the rates of those condemned who were ac- tually executed climbed steadily upwards from the earliest records of the mids to the s, and Andrea Zorzi has argued that this upward trend continued to climb into the early modern peri- od.

Yet, only a fragment of these records survive from the late fourteenth and ear- ly fifteenth centuries, and where they do, the summary character of these records often obscures the particular nature of the crimes 40 ASF, Esecutore degli ordinamenti, no. The records extend from early February Flo- rentine style to April.

Domenico Corsi Editore, , p. Finally, the population of Florence and its contado in the s was about half that of its pre-plague population.

In- stead of decline, per capita executions from to the late four- teenth century in Florence would have then increased seven- to eight-fold. To be sure, the tribunals record several revolts, in which numbers of rebels were condemned to death; however, these three months were not exceptional in the history of popular revolt in the territory or city of Florence. Peasants and Rebel- lion, Cambridge: In the three-month period for the quarters of Santo Spirito and Santa Croce alone, eighty-two rebels in eleven separate cases were sen- tenced to these forms of torture.

Only in two cases were they ex- tended to those condemned for other crimes, in both cases homi- cide. The penalties in- cluded amputations of tongues, ears, noses, hands, feet, the brand- ing with the insignia of the Florentine state on foreheads, all with processions of public floggings and donned with clothing and sym- bols to engender public humiliation. He was also fined lire. At the place of justice and as- sembled before crowds, his penis was to be sliced in four, each slice then burnt with a red-hot iron. The practice of wrap- ping rebels in pincers or iron claws on tortured processions to the gallows continued, but now the vicariate courts of the early fifteenth century added new features: In four rebels armed with swords and other weapons attacked officers of the Florentine Guelph party at Montecatini.

For their execution a round ditch two braccia deep about five feet was to be dug at the place of justice in Montecatini. As at San Miniato in , the rebels were to be lowered head first into the ditches and then buried alive. Four rebels from the ex-contado of Pisa, who had held secret meetings and conspired to overthrow Florentine rule in Pisa, were con- demned to be dragged to the place of justice in Pisa, where they were to be buried alive in ditches specially dug for their execution.

Also, see Ivi, no. Certainly the Florentine records show no such trend from the earliest surviving judicial records of the mids to the rise of the Medici in , after which the records of the vicariate tribunals in the Florentine ter- ritory no longer survive. Perhaps the trend is analogous to that of post-Enlightenment European states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: In other places, Zorzi cites the records of the Libro dei giustiziati of the Florentine confraternity of Santa Maria della Croce al Tempio although to secondary materials and not to the original in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence.

He neither analyzes these records, nor seems to re- alize, as Samuel Y. Cornell University Press, , p. Instead, Zorzi assumes that this is the full set of executions. Not only do these lists of execu- tions not include all that took place in the city of Florence, to what extent did this city brotherhood travel to the far-flung vicariates of the Florentine district, places such as Anghiari, San Miniato, or Pisa, where, as we have seen, a disproportionate number of executions took place? Longman, , pp. At the same time, however, these states developed new forms of torture, cruelty, punishment, and repressive measures such as concentration camps to control the indigenous peoples of their outlaying and distant colonies.

Such new rituals of punishment and cruelty as seen in Flo- rence and its new territorial state were, however, only a prelude of worse to come with the development of larger territorial states and empires of the early modern period, particularly north of the Alps. As early as the mid-fifteenth century, the new monarchs sacked cities that rose up against them.

Brescia in , Prato and Pavia in , and Genoa in Again, an- ticipations of this trend come earlier from republican Florence and its control over new territories, and again the early s appear as the critical moment. In the peasants of Raggiolo in the Montagna, newly-incorporated into the Florentine state, conduct- ed secret meetings with their former feudal lords of Pietramala, be- seeching them to revolt against the harsh new taxes and control of the republican city-state.

Their repression, however, did not end with rounding up and trying a handful of rebel leaders. In- stead, the Florentines treated the villagers, women and children in- cluded, as a foreign enemy and worse: As a good example to the surrounding villages, the Florentines were more evil than they needed to be to show that they would do the same to others. The victorious branch massacred six hundred or more of their peasantry, not counting those who had drowned, and captured two thousand.

Yet this was not sufficient retribution for the Marchese of Ferrara. Their control and disciplining of larger populations and territories assumed new and more brutal forms of repression, violence, and punishment than medieval states, at least of the later Middle Ages, could muster, tolerate, or perhaps even imagine. Nonetheless, historians ought to get the record straight. Lapi, , in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 27, part 2, pp. The cultural climate which preceded and accompanied the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French revolution already seemed to indicate a change of emphasis, par- ticularly in the writings of English-speaking historians such as William Doyle and Simone Schama.

Recently however, from 11 September on- wards, the change has become even more readily perceivable. If for a long time violence had been considered an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of political and social transformation, an ingrained element, so to speak, and therefore in some ways deemed as natural just as labor pains accompany labor, as Marx had so fa- mously put it so violence, having now freed itself of its ancillary role with respect to politics,1 has become a subject of study in its own right, as is proven by the publication of a number of studies,2 1 Hannah Arendt, On Violence London: Watson, Assaulting the Past.

To view this shift of perspective purely as a consequence of a change in the political and cultural climate, that is to say as a re- sult of the current supremacy of a revisionist and politically con- servative historiographic assessment which reverses the sign from positive to negative of the consolidated opinion on revolutions, would be missing the point. It is not just a question of whether these incidents should no longer be seen as steps in the glorious progressive march undertaken by western civilization but rather as senseless tragedies or at least tragic mistakes, the results of mis- understandings, ideological fanaticism and factional infighting.

All this has led to a far-reaching review of the historical opinion on the twentieth century, the peak of western civilization but also the pin- nacle of mass state violence. Cambridge University Press, ; Julius R. Wodarski, Handbook of Violence New York: There is therefore some merit to be found today, in light of the recent centrality of violence in the historiographic discourse, in re- considering the ways in which the historiography of the early mod- ern age has addressed the issue of popular violence over the last three decades.

This is what will be attempted in the pages that fol- low, which aim to turn the spotlight onto one of the most obvious limitations that can be encountered in the many historiographic ap- proaches, the tendency to project violence onto a rather ambigu- ous subject, the crowd in arms;9 it is a fairly opaque subject at best, which brings back once again the age-old question of the manip- ulation or control exerted over popular action and the subsequent feverish attempts to decipher the independent, and truly popular, codes that can be set apart from those pertaining to the more gen- eral culture.

The violence is thus inscribed in the register of 7 Gabrielle M. Forgetting how any discourse on vi- olence should instead take its cue from institutional and conven- tional practices, from the violent yet routine imposition of the so- cial norm. One of the most characteristic ways in which historiography of the early modern age has treated violence is the frequent recourse to the category of the rite of violence.

There seems to be little point in recalling the meaning it used to have and the intellectual context out of which it took shape: At the beginning of the s, and particularly after Edward P.

IMG_20160718_202252_large.jpg - Picture of La Pirata 2 la Vendetta, Cagliari

Yet already during the s and more decidedly during the s these patterns were being gradually replaced by a more thought- ful interpretation which had greater respect for independent forms of expression and, in a nutshell, for so-called lower-class culture. The third element which contributed to the formation of the rite-of-violence concept is naturally the concept of rite itself, which permeated the historiographic culture, as is well known, through the anthropological works of Max Gluckmann on the Zulus dur- ing the middle of the twentieth century,13 and particularly through the developments and formulations of his famed pupil Victor Turn- er, who developed the concept of social drama,14 which took as its starting point his in-depth observation of the Ndembu tribe ritu- als in Zambia.

Yet in the interpretation that historians have pro- vided of the anthropology of ritual, in their way of approaching the issue, there is a significant shift of emphasis: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual Ithaca: Structure and Anti-structure Chicago: