Cultures of Charity: Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy 9780674067929

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I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History

Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy

Cultures of Charity Women, Politics, and the Reform of Poor Relief in Renaissance Italy

nichol as terpstr a

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 2013

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London, England

Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Terpstra, Nicholas. Cultures of charity : women, politics, and the reform of poor relief in Renaissance Italy / Nicholas Terpstra. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-06709-7 (alk. paper) 1. Charities—Italy—Bologna—History. 2. Poor—Italy—Bologna—History. 3. Bologna (Italy)—Social conditions. 4. Women—Italy— Bologna—History. I. Title. HV295.B6T47 2013 362.5'57094541109031—dc23 2012018083

Ai colleghi ed amici bolognesi

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

ix

Introduction 1.

Showing the Poor a Good Time: Gender, Class, and Charitable Cultures Two Cultures of Charity 21 “Good Mothers of the Family”

2.

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Worthy Poor, Worthy Rich: Women’s Poverty and Charitable Institutions

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The Turning Wheel: Charitable Institutions and Life Cycle Poverty 62 The Critical Decade 78 Nights and Days at the Opera 85

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Tightening Control: The Narrowing Politics of Charity Making It Work 104 People versus Patricians: Civil Society and Controlling Charity

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Meeting the Bottom Line: Alms, Taxes, Work, and Legacies Begging for Beggars: Keeping the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti Afloat 142 Taxation by Other Means 153 Making a Workhouse 166 Deeper in Debt and Richer all the Time: Building a Legacy

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Contents

The Wheel Keeps Turning: Moving Beyond the Opera

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Enclosing the Circle: Shelters and the Reform of Poor Women 199 Credit Where Credit Was Due: Investing in Marriage 217 Beyond Charity: Mutual Assistance and the Working Poor 233

6.

Baroque Piety and the Qualità of Mercy Bringing Discipline to Practical Charity 250 The Aesthetics of Poverty and the Qualità of Mercy

Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

245 263

287 347 367 371

Figures and Tables

Figures 1. The First Shelter of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti: the Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia (later S. Gregorio) 2. The Three Shelters of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (1674) 96 3. Income and Expense at the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti, 1570–1600 146 4. Food Expenses at the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti, 1570–1600 147 5. Traditional Alms Gathering by the OPM, 1570–1600

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6. Public Subsidies for the OPM, 1570–1600—Total

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7. Public Subsidies for the OPM, 1570–1600—by Source

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8. Income from Textile Piecework at the OPM, 1570–1600 9. Forms of Silk Piecework at the OPM, 1570–1600

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10. Income Earned by Males in the OPM, 1570–1600 11. Work-Related Earnings at OPM, 1570–1600

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12. Work-Related Earnings as Percentage of Total Income at OPM, 1570–1600 180 13. Surpluses and Deficits at the OPM, 1570–1600 ix

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Figures and Tables

14. Testaments, Requiems, and Legacy Income at the OPM, 1570–1600 188 15. Women “Imprisoned” in the Convertite Convent, 1649–1679

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16. G. B. Mitelli, “Compagnia di molti miserabili ragazzi che s’impiegano unitamente in publiche preghiere, confidando nel divino soccorso, mediante la carità de divoti concittadini” (1699) 280

Tables 1. Alms from Religious Houses to the OPM, 1564, 1584–1597 2. Girls’ Earnings at Two Bolognese Conservatories

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3. Wetnursing and Living Expenses at the Ospedale degli Esposti 1567–1593 252 4. Senate Subsidies to OPM 1600–1732

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Cultures of Charity

Introduction

The enormous weight of the sins committed at night in the public streets . . . by some beggars, the misery of many others who come to their end without any sacraments of the holy Church, to die on the streets in plain sight just as though they were animals, and the insolence of all in the Churches. Unless there is some divine miracle . . . and since every one of the provisions that we have attempted has failed, from the experiences just passed we are giving a warning that there really is no other answer beyond a shelter for these beggars as they have made in many other cities in Italy, and particularly in Bologna.1

This was the desperate appeal that Venice’s Supervisors of Hospitals and Supervisors of Public Health made jointly to the Venetian Senate in March 1594. Their counterparts in Florence argued much the same thing in petitions to Grand Duke Francesco I: We need a workhouse for our beggars, and we could establish it and run it like the Hospital of Poor Beggars (Ospedale dei Mendicanti) in Bologna. There are at least two vacant institutions in Florence as possible sites: S. Eusepio about half a mile outside Porta al Prato, and the Munisterino, about half a mile outside of Porta S. Gallo.2 1

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Some decades before, these Florentine magistrates had gotten hold of a handwritten copy of the revised statutes for Bologna’s Ospedale dei Mendicanti, and had used it to frame an appeal to Grand Duke Ferdinando I for the same kind of expanded powers over beggars, complete with an example of the kind of printed license that “registered” beggars could carry.3 Just what was Bologna doing differently? How did other Italian cities come to see it as a model for dealing with their own poor? This volume will explore how the Bolognese restructured poor relief in the Renaissance, and particularly how their plans evolved through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and into the seventeenth. Four main lines of development intersect here: gender, charity, religion, and politics. It will focus above all on how women figured in the restructuring of Bologna’s charitable economy. Women were recipients, administrators, and underpaid piecework laborers in workhouse sweatshops. Many early modern cities followed the same path as Bologna in reforming charitable relief through the sixteenth century: rationalizing resources in central funds, surveying the poor to cull out those deemed “unworthy” of extra help, centralizing distribution, erecting shelters to get the poor off the streets and into productive activities, and paying more attention to reforming character through various forms of discipline. Historians have studied individual urban plans in Lyons, Florence, Paris, Augsburg, Nuremburg, Seville, and many other cites, but only a handful have attempted to put gender at the center of the analysis. The archival documents themselves don’t encourage this approach, since they do not always highlight gender either. Yet as we look more closely, we see that apart from episodes of famine and plague, what bedeviled and preoccupied cities most of all were the intractable realities of women’s life cycle poverty. We need to take another look at early modern poor relief so that these realities come into sharper focus. Most of the recipients of charity were women. Most of the new institutions opened their doors primarily for women. Most of the forced workhouse labor that became a signal feature of the reforms was in a new industry that chiefly employed women. Many of the new instruments of public finance, lending, and saving that emerged were devised specifically to help women save up the dowries that would get them into marriage and (many hoped) out of poverty. From an early stage, Bolognese

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reformers’ efforts to protect, redeem, and marry off women became wrapped into the labor needs of a new industry, the capital needs of an emerging group of investors, and the political needs of an anxious governing class. Their anxiety and drive sparked considerable innovation, and in the process these reformers generated systems that also helped, sheltered, and disciplined men. Help to men was not inconsequential, but it followed more conventional lines. It was help to women that most often broke new ground, and so should be highlighted when studying the evolving charitable systems of early modern Europe. Local patriots in Bologna believed that their welfare service, the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM), was a sign of how spontaneously and deeply generous they were. They believed that the OPM’s main shelter—first called the Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia and later the Ospedale di S. Gregorio—was the first dedicated poorhouse or workhouse in Italy. If we paint with a sufficiently broad brush, we can grant them the point about primacy while remaining a bit skeptical about the spontaneity and generosity. In spite of its opening having been carefully planned in advance, the poorhouse fell quickly and deeply into debt and struggled continually to remain afloat. Other Italian towns had tried similar plans, but none yet on the scale of Bologna’s experiment, and as the quotations at the opening of this chapter demonstrate, authorities in Florence and Venice were envious. Venice moved in 1529 and 1545 to authorize its Provveditori alla Sanità to eliminate begging, send the poor to hostels, and distribute alms and food. Yet little actually happened, and the workhouse only opened in 1595. Genoa opened an Ufficio dei poveri in 1539 with a mandate to distribute food, alms, and dowries, to ransom those enslaved by Barbary pirates, to organize apprenticeships for poor orphans and to jail beggars. Its poorhouse also opened only much later after the plague of 1579–80. In 1541, Florence empowered the magistracy of Provveditori sopra li derelitti e mendicanti to shelter orphaned and abandoned children and open a permanent poorhouse. Yet the Medici dukes soon backtracked on a plan they came to fear might stimulate opposition in smaller towns and cities in the duchy. Florence’s poorhouse only opened after the crises of 1620 threatened social collapse.4 The flowering of new relief plans and the opening of poorhouses in cities across Europe underscore both the creativity and the extreme social

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pressures of the period. Historians traditionally looked for intellectual factors driving this creativity, and found it in the allied forces of humanism and religious reform, particularly in Protestant Europe. Social pressures included the conjunction of demographic changes, economic developments, and the political shifts toward absolutism. Intellectual factors included both humanism and religious reformation, and historians through to the mid-twentieth century sharply contrasted Protestant and Catholic approaches to reform, seeing the former as more willing to break convention and vested interests and more willing to break beggars with discipline. The determination of Lutheran and Calvinist cities and states to reform relief around a rational assessment of macroeconomic needs and resources often strengthened government bureaucracies, and it led some historians to portray Protestant poor relief as contributing to the rise of the modern state in northern Europe. Catholic charity, by contrast, was thought to focus more on the will of donors seeking salvation than on the needs of recipients seeking food and shelter. It could be too protective of the host of private and small institutional charities that privileged special interests. It was certainly too indulgent of beggars who might receive help from these institutions or from pious individuals with few questions asked and little discipline imposed. It included as a special category of “the poor” regular clergy who might live far better lives than the believers who gave them alms. To the extent that it was unwilling to break these interests, consolidate resources, and rationally distribute aid to only the truly deserving, Catholic poor relief not only failed to help the poor, but also failed to reorient medieval social structures toward the greater goal of building a modern economy and modern state. Brian Pullan’s magisterial study of Venetian charitable reform neatly skewered the Protestant Whiggishness that lay behind these interpretations. He showed just how willingly Catholic governments overturned vested interests, rationally assigned aid, disciplined the poor, and merged political and macroeconomic interests in what was effectively a state system of relief. He explained the transition from medieval toward early modern modes of poor relief as a movement from “charity” to “philanthropy,” with the former more spiritually focused and the latter more intent on meeting broader social and political goals. Other historians have followed with studies that do not simply add local details

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to the overarching case, but have brought nuance to the interpretation. John Henderson, David d’Andrea, and Marina Garbelloti have emphasized the continuing centrality of religious motivation in Italian civic charity, while showing at the same time that “religion” is not a separate cultural category distinct from social and anthropological realities. It is best understood through collective activities and institutions that shaped urban societies, the ospedale above all. Sandra Cavallo’s study of poor relief in Turin has taken close scrutiny of donors’ motivations as she sets poor relief into the politics of court society in the emerging absolutist regime of the Duchy of Savoy. As she looks at a series of donors over two and a half centuries, Cavallo shows how their generosity was shaped by personal patronage goals, gender stereotypes, and the court theater of power.5 Mary Elizabeth Perry was among the first who moved gender into the foreground with a study of how Seville attempted to deal with the poverty that grew as shifting trade patterns and the silt accumulating in its harbor moved it out of the economic mainstream. Many forms of poor relief employed forms of enclosure, particularly when it came to women. Perry emphasizes that a deep-seated gender ideology that associated women with disorder lay at the heart of this push to enclose and discipline. Women’s supposed weakness had already marginalized them in guilds and narrowed their social range to marriage, the convent, or prostitution, that is, roles that were ancillary, interior, and subordinate. Yet their weakness and dependence made them a threat. When economic and demographic decline generated a host of poor women and children, Sevillian authorities followed the logic of their gender ideology by tightening the legal, social, and physical enclosures that would preserve order in the city. They imposed stricter moral codes, prosecuting women as the source of sexual misconduct and aiming to put them into new enclosures that would protect them from temptation and protect society from their disorder. Perry described Seville as an example of “patriarchy in crisis,” with local authorities feeling besieged by threats from the central government, from a new capitalist order, from increasing population, and from an aggressive church establishment. “Their response was to strengthen their authority through a political system that was closed to women, through guild regulations that multiplied to restrict

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the economic activities of women, and through more careful enclosure of women in convent, home, or brothel.”6 More recently, Philip Gavitt has argued that poor women’s victimization came less from gender ideology than from what he describes as “lineage ideology,” or the determination of families to sacrifice the interests of most family members (and particularly daughters) in order to maximize the advantages of eldest male heirs.7 Like Perry, he sees discipline as a central driver behind the charitable innovations that were reshaping Florentine life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Unlike Perry, Gavitt sees this less in Foucaultian than in Aristotelian terms. Rising discipline in the early modern period is, he argues, less a measure of encroaching “governmentality” and the “total institution” than it is of a determination to chasten, refine, and perfect through expanding morals and a “civilizing process” in the sense meant by Norbert Elias. This discipline began at home and in the family and spiraled out from there. Florentines projected domestic metaphors into social life both by casting new institutions for the poor on the model of the family and by bending these institutions entirely to the needs of families that were trying to preserve their lineage. The new foundling homes, orphanages, conservatories, and convents became places to warehouse those children who would not be put on the marriage market for fear of driving up dowries and diluting patrimonies. These enclosed institutions cooperated further by training children in the values of the lineage ideology that had marginalized them, and by operating savings banks that took into safekeeping the funds saved by and for the family through the sacrifice of its surplus offspring—and its daughters above all. Looking across Europe and over a broader span of time, Katherine Lynch has proposed instead what we might see as a kinship or family ideology operating in Europe from the high Middle Ages to the end of the ancien régime.8 Much urban growth through this period was fed by rural migration and created deep dislocations that exacerbated poverty. Urban populations created a variety of voluntary social associations to reproduce and replace the natural kin supports that they had left behind, and these groups were active in so many social sectors that they positioned the family at the center of civil society. Guilds and confraternities brought social kinship into economic and religious life, and many

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hospitals self-consciously adopted kin forms for their internal organization. The language of kinship shaped schools and churches and became part of the political vernacular, both for republicans and for oligarchs. This kinship ideology, Lynch argues, also shaped who Europeans saw as poor and how they aimed to support those judged to be “worthy” or “deserving” of aid. The poor were those whose family supports had crumbled, and aid should aim to help the poor either rebuild those supports or re-create new ones. Kinship ideology also helps explain why women were so often the focus of relief efforts, why the life cycle shaped common perceptions of who should receive aid and how and when, and why women were seen by some as the natural caregivers to oversee it. Brian Pullan cleared away the religious prejudices and determinism of an earlier generation, and inspired historians to dig more deeply into the complex network of social, political, ideological, and religious factors that shaped charitable reform in Catholic cities through the early modern period. Perry and Gavitt in their separate ways have aimed to characterize these societies as driven by deep-seated and fundamentally oppressive ideologies whose operation helps us make sense of a range of otherwise diverse phenomena. Lynch offers an alternative view with ideology acting more as a creative than as a repressive force. All three propose interpretations that place women’s poverty at the convergence of economic and demographic realities, new religious movements, and political change. Despite differences in emphasis, they share many fundamental assumptions which also help us make sense of what happens in Bologna through the same period. This study will not propose an alternative ideological framework but rather suggest a distinct methodological approach. In all these recent works we see whole societies at work. We also see them headed in a direction. The traces of linear movement forward can simply be a result of that narrative impulse that leads historians to write from causes toward a conclusion. As we do so, we sometimes find ourselves climbing up ladders like “the rise of the state” and “the rise of the middle class” that were left behind by earlier generations. These can be valuable ladders that lift historical narratives out of purely local antiquarianism and that help show how small and seemingly inconsequential actions can have significance beyond a particular time and place. But

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they lead unerringly in a single direction. Or mislead. Sometimes states simply fail to rise. Or, more to the point, whatever path they follow isn’t best sketched by a straight line forward. Conflicting parties fight continually and seize advantage where they can, with the result that innovative plans may advance quickly only to be reversed, eliminated, or co-opted without much warning. If fear of political revolt stirs elites into creative action, the waning of those fears will kill creativity. Reality is rarely as fi xed as our narratives make it out to be. What Olwen Hufton described as an “economy of makeshifts,” that unplanned and opportunistic grabbing after charity, work, barter, and theft by which the poor survived, can easily be extended to politics. In the “politics of makeshifts” societies survived and sometimes great things happened, even if nothing ever quite worked out the way anyone intended. There are at least three or four linear movements woven into histories of the early modern period that figure in many narratives of what happened when cities like Bologna, Florence, Turin, or Seville tried to reform poor relief. One concerns developments in charity itself, and the efforts across Europe from the mid-fifteenth century to rationalize alms collection and distribution, to expand the institutional forms of corporal charity, and to extend the works of spiritual charity, particularly education. Even those Protestants who rejected the idea that charity was a way the rich could buy a stairway to heaven believed that those saved by grace through faith, and hence certain of their heavenly reward, had to express thanks to God by extending charity to God’s poor. But only God’s poor: Catholics and Protestants agreed that alms should be gathered more systematically and fairly and distributed in the same way, with care taken to ensure that those who didn’t need or deserve help didn’t get it. This required discipline. This emphasis on charity merges into the second linear theme of religion, since almost all religious reform movements put charity at the heart of individual and institutional renewal. The efforts to enliven personal piety and reform church structures created extraordinary upheavals in the Catholic and new Protestant communions. Through all the many doctrinal differences that distinguished groups in both communions, there wove the common belief that clergy and people alike needed to become more thoughtful, deliberate, and accountable to each other and

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God. Charity was one way of expressing this. Another was the push for greater education in faith and more order in life for both clergy and laity. This too required discipline. The third linear theme in accounts of welfare reform concerns politics, since all reforms to charity and religion inevitably involved rulers and governments as either allies or antagonists. This was a period when oligarchies were strengthening and when nobles and monarchs were assuming powers formerly devolved to parliaments or other bodies like magistracies or guilds that were considered to have a stake in the social whole. Governments aimed for the legitimacy that came with religious sanction, and some were willing to expropriate churches in order to get it. They aimed to suppress dissent, sometimes with the stick of aggressive criminal prosecution and theatrical punishments, and sometimes with the carrot of welfare and relief. As political power moved toward hierarchies, honor and status became more important as the markers that would secure power, and good manners became a hallmark of that status. Here too, discipline of self and others was required. The fourth linear theme that is less often isolated in histories of welfare reform is that of gender. Yet many historians agree that the range of social opportunities for women was narrowing, thanks to intellectual, legal, and religious developments. As both Perry and Gavitt have shown, when humanists and legal reformers reached into the Roman classical past for the tools to rebuild their societies, they seemed instinctively to grasp the ones that were most misogynistic rather than the ones that gave women rights and agency. That stream in Roman law and culture that considered women frail, weak, helpless, and tempting was the stream that shaped much of Renaissance and early modern thinking. It generated the conviction that men needed to be protected from women, and that women needed to be protected from themselves. This in turn reinforced walls of various kinds ranging from patriarchal marriage customs and legal prescriptions to brick-and-mortar constructions. And it certainly required greater discipline. Discipline, then, is the common theme running through many histories of early modern Europe, including all those surveyed above, and it will certainly run through this history of welfare reform as well. Yet we need to be cautious in the emphasis that we place on discipline, since it

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can impose too much linearity, direction, and fi xity on our narratives. It can drive us too easily to a conclusion when, as so frequently is the case, there is really no conclusion at all. Where you pick up and drop off the narrative will make it look quite different. An economics and politics of makeshifts is necessarily messy, incomplete, and undisciplined: harsh prescriptions fail to translate into reality; myths and dreams persist; women break through walls; actions have unintended consequences; populations resist religious education or moral order; traditions bring the weight of complicated histories; leading figures betray their class or what we would assume to be their own interests. Tracing an ideology through this mess of competing and contradictory factors can certainly highlight persistent causal drivers, but it may leave the impression that there was more continuity and process involved, even when we invoke the law of unintended consequences.9 A stubborn question we face when writing our narratives is how we can describe and analyze phenomena in ways that acknowledge how much the old remains even as the new develops—their relation is not sequential, but layered. Or better, it’s like a pendulum, since new plans inevitably suffer setbacks that give renewed credence and drive to the older forms they had been intended to replace. Some historians use the image of the palimpsest, a manuscript where some bits are rubbed out and others added at different times, or a streetscape made up of buildings constructed, renovated, and adapted at different times. Or perhaps we need to take our metaphors from conversation and think in terms of dialogues of power where ideas and advantage move back and forth, and where there are always many people talking to each other in a single time and place. Some historians have decided that it’s better not to write at all of intent and agency, both because linearity is too neat and abstract to convey social realities, and because its intent to connect A to B often makes it less able to deal with the operation of the law of unintended consequences.10 In this book, I use pendulum, palimpsest, dialogue, and also some linearity to explore how one city comes to deal with its poor more creatively and comes to be seen by others in late renaissance and early modern Italy as a model to imitate. Could they? What took shape in Bologna came out of some very particular local factors, and was constantly

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changing through the interplay of creative and reactive forces. Older and newer approaches interacted through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Change was cumulative but layered. Since one generation’s radical innovation could became a next generation’s familiar furniture, needs and challenges were constantly evolving. There are distinct stories within the broader history, and since many continued to the end of the ancien régime or even into today, any “conclusion” to a subplot or story is imposed and abstract, if not arbitrary. Local dialogues might not be imitable, but all Italian cities at the time faced common problems in serious demographic and economic crises. Most had medieval communal traditions that had left a deep legacy of magistracies, guilds, and confraternities that shaped both social realities and the political horizon. Most had ambitious actors who were scanning a different horizon and aimed for a more selective politics. Most had distinct lay and clerical traditions of Catholic spirituality that interacted with different local and peninsular realities and that responded to distinct and sometimes antagonistic inspirations when it came to pastoral models and political powers. These were common contexts, and looking at how particular conversations and a system evolved within them, we emerge with the kind of palimpsest that helps us better understand many Italian and European cities. The story here is about the shifting dynamics of charity, religion, politics, and gender in a city facing fundamental changes. It is also a story about how competing parties with different ambitions and values could cooperate to carry out distinctive social experiments, and how those experiments could rise in one generation, begin to falter in a next, and then change radically again in yet another. Each generation brought to the experiment not just what it inherited from the previous one, but also its own evolving values, priorities, and new challenges. Through much of the sixteenth century, Bologna was unsettled. Its politics were uncertain as older communal and republican traditions jostled with newer oligarchical forms at a time when the game’s referees—the popes in Rome—changed constantly. Many in Bologna and in Rome kept an eye over their shoulder at the potential return of the old signorial family of the Bentivoglio, who could not accept their defeat and expulsion by Julius II in 1506. A rapidly expanding silk industry had the potential to change radically the local economy, though no one was quite sure how.

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Centuries-long antagonism with the papacy had bred a very strongly civic religion based in confraternities, local shrines, and charitable institutions and accustomed laypeople to working collaboratively in order to keep the clergy in a circumscribed space—and at arm’s length. Republican ideologues, ambitious oligarchs, a creative class of “outsider” entrepreneurs, and a constantly changing cast of high curial officials who held the best cards played a high-stakes game in an atmosphere that was both shot with political anxiety and alive with economic opportunity and creative cultural energy. Perhaps most critically there were people here who were ready to experiment. Some of their key experiments came when they turned their attention to the challenge of poverty. They saw female poverty as the key issue. In line with communal republican values, they addressed it by adapting currently available resources in their hospitals and confraternities, seizing new opportunities in the silk industry, and gambling that their fellow citizens would accept a new, more efficient, and fairer way of paying alms to support it. Literally hundreds of Bolognese were involved in operating this system, and it’s perhaps little surprise that it reflected their experience. They prioritized the poverty of poor working women in particular, and aimed to muster the entire city around a network of care based in and on confraternal and guild models that would allow these women and their families to help themselves. Their efforts brought out some of the divisions within the republican ethos between one group that was more communitarian and another that was more oligarchic. “Discipline” loomed more as an abstract concept and goal than as a reality that any would, or even could, put into practice. While “native” Bolognese were framing this “new” system using the materials of their traditional civil society (and often limiting their benefits to native Bolognese citizens), outsiders who had been drawn in by Bologna’s economic expansion launched experimental programs of self-help and mutual assistance to get them through the periodic recessions and help their children— daughters above all—establish families. Political anxiety and competition, economic expansion, and relative prosperity all helped shape Bologna’s system. As each faded away at its own pace, both the system’s integrity and particularly its sensitivity to women and the working poor faded away as well. Through the

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last decades of the sixteenth century, the Bentivoglio threat faded and the local Senate emerged in a close alliance with the papacy at the head of local government. It had less need to placate other republican magistracies in the city and less will to bend the administration of charitable institutions to their traditional power-sharing forms. Reality bit into traditional republican ideology as the Bolognese people resisted the experiments in innovative forms of fund-raising and as the poor resisted efforts to put them to work. The silk industry looked elsewhere for laborers. In the economic challenge that resulted, the large numbers of artisans and professionals whose volunteer labor made the system run gave way to smaller numbers of paid employees supervised by executives made up of the well-born. This put the poor at arm’s length, and now the screws of discipline began slowly to tighten. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Bologna’s system of poor relief was somewhat more efficient and certainly more disciplined. Yet it was much less attuned to the particular needs of women and much less open to finding creative ways by which they could help themselves. Experiments in mutual assistance and self-help faded, and the charitable institutions began taking different paths, with some becoming feebased shelters for illegitimate or inconvenient female relatives and others become punitive enclosures. As those in charge of the system became more distant personally from the poor under their care, they developed a more romanticized view of poverty and beggars. They also refined their rationale and their methods for using the accumulated resources of the poor—the alms donated by many generations of testators and donors— for their own needs and for the oratories, paintings, and rituals that would now stand as the public marker of their piety and status. The chapters that follow pick out different sides of these developments—religion, charitable institutions, politics, and finances—and study them in their different contexts. Allowing each its context involves some back-and-forth movement chronologically that may be a little disorienting. Gender figures prominently throughout, since all the experiments were fundamentally about aid to females at different stages in their lives. Chapter 1 offers a general overview and orientation to the terms, themes, and players developed in the balance of the book. In order to get at the different approaches that Brian Pullan characterized as “traditional

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charity” and “new philanthropy,” I sketch a distinction between “practical” and “patronal” charity. Pullan’s distinction could too easily be seen as chronological or sequential, and that is problematic because we will see that the older forms of what he calls “traditional charity” return with vigor in the seventeenth century and never really die out. By distinguishing “practical” and “patronal” charity as two cultures, I aim for something more descriptive and less fi xed, linear, and value laden. The practical and patronal approaches cooperated as much as they competed, and each developed over the period; each also had long medieval antecedents. Looking at their interplay allows us to move beyond the debate about whether early modern poor relief was a radically new departure. Of course, no one at the time used or thought of terms like practical and patronal charity, though there is a rough correspondence to the theological concepts of misericordia and caritas respectively. This first chapter focuses on a particular dispute that broke out within Bologna’s Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM) in the late sixteenth century, as a means of highlighting how these two approaches interacted and sometimes conflicted. In the process, we will see how class, gender, and key patrons like Pope Gregory XIII shaped Bologna’s emerging system. It was help to women—and help by women—that brought out most clearly the tensions (and paradoxes) between the culture of patronal charity on one hand that aligned so well with an emerging baroque piety and devotional consumption, and the culture of practical charity on the other that valued austerity, morality, and increased self-reliance. Chapter 2 moves on to show how concern with female life cycle poverty led the Bolognese to create one institution after another from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth. These institutions included foundling homes, conservatories, and orphanages, and they evolved out of the work and often in the quarters of confraternities. The poorhouse of the OPM emerged in part through and because of these confraternal ospedali, and it bore their DNA in its own operation, administration, and even location. Each institution emerged at a particular point of demographic or political crisis, and sometimes at the convergence of both. Each alternated with other experiments in public policy like the forced expulsion of the poor or the centralized distribution of bread. What drew them all together in an evolving narrative thread was the sequence

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of female life cycle poverty: each new institution or policy initiative took the Bolognese a further step along that cycle from infancy to youth to adulthood and old age. The key period in this evolution came in the midsixteenth century, when serious political conflict divided Bologna. The process culminated when the OPM opened its shelter in 1563, and this chapter closes with an extended look at life in this shelter. Chapter 3 backs up to look more closely at the politics behind these new charitable institutions, and in particular how they got caught up in the fight between the communal and oligarchic parties for control over the city. The OPM in particular took its shape from a series of compromises and conflicts between these parties, and differences between its first statutes (1564) and second ones (1574) show which way both it and the city are going. Bologna’s institutions were rooted in the communal republicanism of its medieval guilds, confraternities, and magistracies, and some humanist republicans of the sixteenth century wanted to preserve their broadly representative elements. Other republicans looked toward the more managed and hierarchical politics of cities like Florence and Venice, where the great and the good were appreciated for their wisdom and rewarded with political office. The common enemy uniting Bologna’s factions from the medieval period was its titular sovereign, the papacy. After enjoying de facto independence through much of the fifteenth century, that same enemy reemerged as a powerful player when Julius II tossed out the Bentivoglio and restored more powerful and direct papal rule. This chapter reviews the tense politics dividing Bologna’s political bodies at this time, including the gender politics. The oligarchic party gathered in the Senate gradually gained the upper hand, and its concentration of power dovetailed neatly with the concentration through intermarriage of a few key families. Confraternal charitable institutions provided the resources, personnel, and model for Bologna’s evolving welfare network, but the communal republican procedures that they followed in their internal government were being transformed in ways that increased centralization and the power of the Senate. It led to a significant simplification of administration that on one hand may simply look like a move to more bureaucratic efficiency, but that on the other also looks like a purging of communal republican elements of broad involvement and accountability. Large membership bodies gathering regularly

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as the corporale had traditionally been the final authorities overseeing major decisions and auditing officers, but in many institutions a smaller core of officers known as the congregazione began assuming more executive power. Some became self-perpetuating elites that rewrote their statutes in order to reduce or eliminate their accountability to a membership while increasing their connections to the Senate. Increasing help for the poor was expensive, and Chapter 4 considers two of the most innovative and controversial elements by which the OPM aimed to raise money and pay its bills: one was a form of public taxation and the other was work performed by the poor whom it sheltered. Both emerged out of the culture of practical charity and from the conviction among republicans that the city had to unite to help its own poor while the poor had to unite to help their own city. The Senate was aiming at the same time to bring together social and industrial strategies in the city, with an eye to the needs of Bologna’s burgeoning silk industry in particular. The poor needed work and the silk industry needed workers, and both the communal and oligarchic groups in government believe that the OPM could be the nexus of a charitable-industrial strategy. Developments of the 1560s–1580s put this budding strategy to the test. Few Bolognese families or institutions wanted to pay fi xed taxes to support a workhouse, and few Bolognese paupers living at the OPM had the will or skill to work hard enough to earn what the shelter needed to fill the gap when this tax system disappeared. Yet these same donors willingly exercised patronal charity, and responded consistently and generously to crises. As a result, the OPM paradoxically faced escalating deficits in its operating budget while the accumulation of legacies and donations gave it a steadily increasing endowment. Chapter 5 moves into the second half of the sixteenth century and beyond the OPM. The OPM had represented the culmination of civic and institutional initiatives aimed at developing an interlinked network. The latter half of the century sees a flourishing of new forms of charity, at once practical and patronal, spearheaded by charismatic individuals or dedicated small groups. Many of these founders originated from outside Bologna, and they aimed to offer benefits to the working poor regardless of citizenship; clergy were also more directly involved. They directed their various plans toward facilitating self-help or mutual assistance,

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and once again they targeted female life cycle poverty in particular. Almost all of them focused on marriage as the central institution of society and saw unrestricted sexuality as a critical threat to it: they want to help young women save for it, help battered women survive in it, help pregnant women have children in it, and help widowed women return to it. They saw prostitution as the biggest threat to marriage, and some proposed enclosed shelters as a solution. Others more creatively developed new financial instruments, in particular a dowry savings fund and forms of insurance like unemployment insurance and maternity benefits. While dowry funds, savings accounts, and insurance plans could be found elsewhere, the Bolognese were rare in orienting them all to the needs of the working poor. Few if any other Italian cities imitated these plans until the nineteenth century. Chapter 6 offers a quick sketch of the changes that came in the seventeenth century when political tensions had subsided and the new industrial and financial strategies had proven unworkable. Bologna remained a city of innovation and experimentation, but these energies were shifting from industry and charity to art and architecture. It was now firmly fi xed as the second city of the papal state with a local elite based in the Senate, which collaborated closely with papal authorities. With the flowering of court society it became an incubator of the baroque style, and in the artwork that emerges we can see a romanticizing of beggars and an aestheticizing of poverty. This paradoxically coexisted with tightening discipline of the local poor themselves. As those running the charitable homes redirected more patronal charity into ornamenting churches and oratories, and even into forms of self-dealing that verged on fraud, they had fewer resources or little will to experiment with new forms of practical charity. They still reached out primarily to women in need, but now turned some of the institutions in their care into fee-charging shelters, and others into punitive enclosures that looked more like prisons. The creative features of practical charity that had made Bologna’s system so innovative in the sixteenth century largely disappeared, and by the end of the seventeenth its system of public welfare looked more like that of other Italian and European cities. The low ebb of the late seventeenth century is not a “conclusion” but simply a new conjunction of politics, religion, gender, and economy that

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reflects a society grown stiff in some of its bones. Bologna retained a vibrant civil society which would continue to generate, through the politics and economics of makeshifts, distinctive ways of helping the working poor survive. Those approaches would themselves bear the mark of what developed in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when a particular conjunction of factors generated approaches to poverty that were creative, innovative, and the envy of other cities in Italy.

chapter 1

Showing the Poor a Good Time Gender, Class, and Charitable Cultures

n a moment of frustration, the male officers running Bologna’s pioneering welfare service, called the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM), gave a firm and semipublic slap on the wrist to their female colleagues. The female officers (called “prioresses”) were spending a lot of money on finery, festivity, and feasting, for themselves, for the poorhouse staff, and for the poor themselves. The men asked them to stop so that the money could be better spent giving basic food and clothing to those in the OPM’s main hostel for the poor. Their demand came in a set of “Orders and Provisions for the Lady Prioresses of the Pious Charitable Agency for the Beggars” (Ordini e Provisione Per le Signore Priore sopra l’Opera pia de’Mendicanti). These were printed like the broadsheet bandi, or proclamations, that city officials plastered across the city whenever they wanted to warn of plague, announce new regulations on food safety or crime, or proclaim a holiday.1 We don’t know if these “Orders and Provisions” were ever posted publicly like other proclamations. No date appears on the small poster, but details about the text and the history of Bologna generally allow us to narrow down the years when the officers may have issued it. The poster highlights the different ways that early modern people thought about the poor and what they needed. We can get the firmest

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grip on some of the values and paradoxes that shaped the reform of poor relief by starting our investigation with a microhistorical look at this poster and questions around when and whether it was posted. Brief as it is, this printed set of “Orders and Provisions” broadcasts some of the underlying tensions about festivity, gender, and class in the governance of the poor that simmered across Europe in the sixteenth century. It highlights two different emphases or approaches to charity that we can see in many cities. One aimed to organize forms of practical assistance like work, education, food supplements, or temporary shelter in such a way that the poor could help themselves and ideally develop the resources that would help them find their way out of poverty. The other emphasized the duty of the rich to act as patrons whose selfless generosity in meeting the needs of the poor would mirror the generosity of saints and of Christ himself to believers. We can distinguish “practical” from “patronal” charity, but they were not deeply opposing values quite so much as two distinct approaches to, or cultures around, charity. As we will see below, they reflected the traditional Catholic values of misericordia and caritas respectively. Yet they were distinct enough that tensions could emerge between those who favored one or the other as the best means of helping institutionally those who lived in poverty. Most people lived in poverty at some point in their lives, and sometimes their whole lives long. Most of the poor were working poor. Most were also women. Their poverty had as much to do with their own stage of life—whether as young mothers struggling to feed children or as old widows struggling to keep fed themselves—as with broader economic movements and with the periodic booms and busts, famines and plagues that defined life in a large and vibrant city like Bologna. This meant that living with the poor and helping the poor became a very complicated challenge in a society that looked at every reality through the lenses of gender, class, and religion. Male artisans, professionals, clergy, and nobles wrote treatises, passed laws, and established institutions to get some grip on poverty. Yet their plans had to be built around women’s particular needs and prospects, and around women’s more limited opportunities to earn money. And when it came to direct contact with the poor, they had to draw middle- and upper-class women into their ambitious schemes. The women they drew in sometimes had different

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understandings of poverty and different priorities when helping the poor. Not everyone agreed on what charity looked like, or why, how, or to whom it ought to be given. Conflicts were inevitable, and the “Orders and Provisions” provide us with an entry into some of them.

Two Cultures of Charity or de r s a n d prov isions for t h e l a dy pr ior e sse s of t h e pious ch a r i ta bl e age nc y for t h e beg g a r s The Executive Officers of the Opera Pia de’Mendicanti, having explained to the full Executive that the generosity of the Lady Prioresses of this Opera has advanced in spending that some think to be superfluous, and that this works to the detriment of the Opera and of the poor themselves, wishes now to be able to spend this money to the greater good of the poor. Because of this, the said Executive herewith orders that the Lady Prioresses are requested in the future to abstain from any expenses which might be judged superfluous, and in particular they declare this to be the case with the following, thus: Making or giving gifts of silk flowers and meals to the gentlewomen and gentlemen [cavalieri] who collect alms on the feast day of S. Gregory. It is enough to offer only some light refreshments without fruit preserves or treats. Spending any more on silverware for the use of one of the three Churches, which are quite decently furnished at the present. Giving two yards of quality cloth to some people at the shelter of S. Gregorio who have refused to wear the common uniform of that place. Giving the officials underwear that is too delicate, and giving French collars to the abandoned boys in the city hostel. Giving pastries and sweet tortes [pastizzi e crostate] and such things at the meals that the Lady Prioresses offer at the conclusion of their terms to the people in the three homes. It is also suggested that the Lady Prioresses not buy [additional] quality cloths since the usual 20,000 feet of drygoods that are assigned for linens, underwear, and uniforms and that are made by the people whom the Opera assigns to that task are sufficient. And

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abundant quantities of linen and wool and many other useful things are generated from the alms gathering on the feast day of St. Gregory in the parishes and neighborhoods of the city, and from the earnings of the work of those people noted above.2

Bologna’s Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti was a multifaceted welfare service that organized charitable assistance to the poor in a city of roughly sixty thousand. It took formal shape in 1560 as the capstone of an emerging network of charitable institutions, activities, and loan funds that had been coalescing for decades through the efforts of civic, confraternal, and mendicant institutions. Though never officially a civic magistracy, it operated as a quasi-governmental agency under the institutional form of a confraternity. Many of its members were merchants and artisans of the kind who had typically formed the backbone of renaissance Italian confraternities. They were active in the hospitals, processions, feasts, and prayers by which these brotherhoods made a devotional life together and shaped the social life of the city. Yet some of those in the OPM’s broad membership body (the corporale) or its executive board of officers (the congregazione) held high political offices and boasted extensive patronage ties. This gave the OPM strong personal links to the civic Senate, to traditional charitable institutions, and to the main religious houses of the city.3 By the time that the OPM was established by papal decree in 1560, the Bolognese had experimented with all of the innovative poor relief plans then circulating around Europe. From the 1450s through the 1520s they had joined other Italian cities in the effort to rationalize the local patchwork collection of confraternal and monastic pilgrims’ hostels into an interlocking network of specialized hospitals and shelters, although the Bolognese did not go so far as their counterparts in Milan, Genoa, and Ferrara in creating a single Great Hospital (Ospedale Maggiore) to be the keystone of the network.4 Each Bolognese hospital began to focus on serving a particular social need and, in some cases, a particular social class: there were two infirmaries for the sick and dying, a foundling home for abandoned illegitimate infants, an orphanage for citizen boys, three conservatories for orphaned and abandoned girls that were calibrated to match the city’s social hierarchy (with one each for girls from poorer

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artisanal, middling mercantile, and slightly better families), and a syphilitics’ infirmary. From the late fifteenth century, a pawn bank (Monte di Pietà) had been offering low-interest loans to the poor, and through the next century it was developing gradually into something like a civic Bank of Bologna—it actually handled the financial administration of many of the specialized hospitals and the OPM itself. In the late 1530s and 1540s, the Bolognese tried expelling “foreigners” in times of famine, and by the 1550s they were taking detailed censuses of the poor and handing out food and relief payments at neighborhood distribution centers to those whom the census takers had assessed as truly needy. 5 We will look more closely at all of these plans in the next few chapters. Rationalization, expulsion, a census of the poor, centralized distribution: Italian and European cities tried all of these “reform” measures through the first decades of the sixteenth century, and all worked to greater or lesser degrees. Though once presented as radical innovations of the discipline-oriented sixteenth century, historians now see these civic actions as rooted firmly in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century religious and political values. What was new to the sixteenth century, and what attracted those who saw in poor relief an opportunity for broader social and religious engineering, was the poorhouse or beggar’s hostel— a secure centralized shelter where the poor were housed, fed, trained, set to work, and then eventually restored to society as productive workers. Opening a shelter like this was a way of clearing beggars off the streets, with laws and beggar catchers rounding up the miscreants and pushing them into the poorhouse, where they could start to work for a living. Yet it was a hard step to take. Genoa had devised an Office of the Poor (Ufficio dei poveri) as early as 1539 that distributed alms, food, and dowries, that liberated slaves, and that sent beggars to jail or apprenticeships. Yet it did not open its workhouse until after a plague in 1579–1580.6 Venice’s Provisioners of Health (Provveditori alla Sanità) were empowered in 1529 and again in 1545 to eliminate begging, send the poor to hostels, and distribute food and alms, although little came of the plan, and a workhouse did not open until 1595.7 Florence had established a group of Provisioners over the Derelicts and Beggars (Provveditori sopra li derelitti e mendicanti) and projected a permanent workhouse from at least 1541, but a

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series of Medici dukes backed away from a plan they feared might stimulate opposition and so give more comfort to their enemies than to the poor. It would not be until the crises of 1620 that Florence’s poorhouse finally opened under the name of the Hospital of the Beggars (Ospedale dei Mendicanti).8 Bologna’s Ospedale dei Mendicanti was among the first Italian poorhouses to open and remain open, but other cities quickly followed: Brescia in 1577, Rome in 1581, Turin in 1584, Venice in 1594, and Genoa in 1653.9 These poorhouses had large dormitories and locked doors like monasteries and convents, and often they were actually located in old or abandoned religious houses. Aimed at both sheltering the indigent and policing the indolent, they emerged in many European cities in the sixteenth century, and then continued evolving through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into asylums and prisons.10 Their very size and cost made them a hard sell in cities whose magistrates and rulers weren’t accustomed to paying for much more than a small set of bureaucrats to look after tax collecting and administration, a set of judges and prisons for justice, a military force (usually the largest expenditure of all), occasional public works, and a few musicians. Beyond cost, these workhouses could emerge only when civic rulers decided that poverty was a civic problem, and perhaps a civic opportunity. Monks and confraternities had cared for the poor for centuries, and until the sixteenth century many civic elites could see no particular reason why this should change. In many cases change, when it came, hardly looked like change at all. Many workhouses, like the one in Bologna, were built on, by, and with the very tools—confraternities, monasteries, civic alms—that had been used for centuries. For the Bolognese the sixteenth century was, quite literally, the best of times and the worst of times. Certainly it was a time of recurring famines and plagues, ongoing political tensions, and endemic poverty, and these together forced open the doors of individual hospices and shelters and got various financial schemes off the ground. Yet it was also a time of steady industrial growth, expanding wealth, intellectual ferment, and cultural experimentation, and these created a society with the means, imagination, and individuals to push ideas forward. The city had lost any pretense of political independence when Julius II entered in triumph

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in 1506, but under the papal rule that evolved over the next century and that then continued on till the French arrived in 1796, a broad oligarchy of wealthy families formed. Men of the Pepoli, de Grassi, Aldrovandi, Malvezzi, and Boncompagni families took leading roles in civil and papal government. This oligarchy began narrowing down significantly by the seventeenth century, but until then its members celebrated and announced their positions with dozens of new and lavish palaces built along the city’s main streets, and with spreading villas at the hub of huge rural estates. In these same decades, technical innovations and a deliberate industrial strategy allowed Bologna’s silk industry to seize and dominate a corner of the European market, bringing fortunes to a handful of merchant-investors and employment to many thousands of Bolognese women and men.11 Private fortunes certainly erected many urban palaces, but public and institutional buildings were also dramatically reshaping Bologna’s streetscape. For the first time the city’s Senate established a building commission, the Assunteria dell’Ornato, to oversee designs, expropriations, and construction of public and private spaces. Through this body it gave subsidies to new orders like the Jesuits and to existing religious houses like Corpus Domini, S. Domenico, and S. Michele in Bosco that were building or renovating their public churches. Domenico Tibaldi gave a classicizing terminus to the city’s major east-west street with his facade for the new Hospital of S. Francesco, and visitors arriving in Bologna from Milan, Florence, or Ferrara passed by the new facades or porticoes of other hospitals like the S. Maria del Baraccano, S. Bartolomeo di Reno, or SS. Pietro e Procolo once they entered through the city gates. With Bologna’s ecclesiastical promotion to archdiocesan status in 1582 came the first stages of extensive renovations to the cathedral and construction of a new palace and courtyard adjacent to it.12 Moving into the city’s center, the area of the Piazza Maggiore was dramatically reshaped in the 1560s and 1570s. Jacopo Vignola’s impressive new facade for the Portico of the Banks defined the piazza’s eastern edge (1563–1568), while Giambalogna’s monumental Neptune fountain defined its center (1564–1566), and the new and custom-built Archiginnasio Palace for the university (1563) and a new building for the Ospedale della Morte led out the southeast end. All that remained was to finish the

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facade of the civic basilica of S. Petronio along the southern boundary of the piazza, and in 1572 the head of the building commission opened negotiations with Andrea Palladio for the project. Even the fortresslike Palazzo Comunale on the square’s western edge received a makeover with a ceremonial gate by Domenico Tibaldi that was dominated by Alessandro Menegati’s monumental statue of Gregory XIII (1576–1580), a hardly subtle sign that the business of the Commune was the business of the papacy. Vast and extensive, the Palazzo Comunale was the nerve center of civic government, with a troop of Swiss Guards watching over the masses who flooded through its gates: magistrates, taxpayers, notaries, criminals, informers, bureaucrats, and functionaries. The city’s Senate and magistracies did their business here, members of the communal-era Council of the Elders (the Anziani) lived here through the length of their two-month terms, and the papal legate who ruled the city together with these others in cooperation and competition could ride in his coach all the way to his apartments on the third floor by means of a special internal ramp. Once there, he could look out of his windows onto the botanical garden that Ulisse Aldrovandi, professor at Bologna’s university, laid out in the palazzo’s central courtyard from 1568. Bologna’s botanical garden was among the first and largest in Europe, just as its Archiginnasio was the first purpose-built university building on the continent.13 The point here is not to score points for local patriotism by assembling a list of “firsts,” but to convey some sense of the atmosphere of excitement, expansion, and experimentation that filled Bologna at that time. It was a fertile time across Italy, as new buildings and squares were dramatically reshaping the urban and social landscapes of many cities. Rome, Florence, and Milan were seeing their streets and piazzas reshaped by architects and patrons who were reaching for magnificence. But these were cities under single dominant rulers. Bologna had more of the sometimes chaotic openness and energy of a place like Venice or Genoa. In these cities the governing class divided into competing groups and overlapping magistracies, leaving many loopholes, advocates, and protectors. Patricians carried out furious negotiations behind the facade of serenity and order that the government and its propagandists liked to project. Bologna certainly lacked Venice’s wealth, empire, and military engagements, but this also freed it from crushing military expenses—it

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even steadfastly refused the papacy’s urgings to rebuild the city walls.14 And unlike the Venetians, the Bolognese knew that their ultimate ruler, the pope, was an arm’s length—or two days’ ride on a fast horse—away. Like any powerful city subordinated to a distant ruler, the Bolognese became masters at playing one set of officials off against another, at gumming up decision-making machinery with appeals to special privileges and past traditions, and at securing for themselves a significant degree of practical freedom despite their position as the “second city” of the Papal State. Wealthy patrons competed with each other through conspicuous consumption, and patrician women took leading social roles thanks to the constant coming and going of their husbands on papal assignments.15 Through these decades, the Bolognese felt that they were Italy’s cultural leaders. The pope and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V arrived in 1530 for the last formal imperial coronation, and dozens of delegates of the Council of Trent came in 1547–1548 fleeing the plague. Having one of their own, the legal scholar and curialist Ugo Boncompagni, elected as Pope Gregory XIII in 1572 after a conclave of only twenty-four hours confirmed what they took to be their own primacy; the day of his election (May 13) became a public holiday celebrated with a horse race for years afterward. In the decades ahead their confidence would only grow as individual Bolognese thinkers and artists helped reshape Europe’s cultural landscape: Ulisse Aldrovandi became the leading naturalist of the time; Sebastiano Serlio standardized the rules for classicizing architecture; Lavinia Fontana was developing as a rare and gifted portraitist; Lodovico, Agostino, and Annibale Caracci reshaped painting. Much of the foundation for Baroque culture that flowered across Europe from the late sixteenth century was laid in Bologna.16 The OPM was another of these pioneering experiments, and it took shape in the early stages of this period of almost swaggering self-confidence and openness to experimentation and innovation. That environment was as important as the famines and plagues that triggered the individual steps by which the OPM emerged and the industrial wealth through which it gradually expanded. Groups from across the city’s social range—men and women, politicians and papal authorities, local merchants and investors, the lay religious establishment of confraternities and charities—all converged, fought, and experimented

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with better ways of handling poverty in its various forms. This was the city’s “creative class,” and the challenge of the poor, particularly girls and women, caught their imagination.17 They were as much concerned with what they took to be poverty of spirit as with any lack of food, clothing, and shelter, and many believed that the root causes of poverty were best addressed through self-help and mutual assistance. As a result they aimed to build a system of what we might call “practical charity” through which the poor could help themselves. Public authorities, private individuals, and groups like guilds and confraternities fashioned an interlocking network of temporary shelters, savings funds, and mutual assistance that was loosely coordinated by the civic government, and that aimed to pair Bologna’s welfare and workforce needs from the start.18 Among these were some of Italy’s first lay shelters dedicated to orphaned and abandoned children. And the social experiment didn’t end when the OPM opened its poorhouse in 1563. A few creative individuals developed some truly innovative programs in the latter half of the century, including Europe’s first credit union and the first systems of unemployment insurance and maternity benefits. Within a society open to experimentation, many individuals and groups aimed to relieve women’s poverty in particular, and their two preferred tools for this were work and marriage. None of the participants in this great social experiment in practical charity saw a deep conflict between charity and profit. Most thought that charitable institutions required a healthy balance sheet if they were to be of any help at all to the poor, and their administrators worked hard to secure business and investment opportunities. And in a city that had no subject territories but that was itself a subject city in the Papal State— even though larger and richer than Rome at that point—they initially turned their efforts inward. Through the first half of the sixteenth century, most of these institutions ruled that only native-born Bolognese or those long resident in the city could draw more than short-term benefits. In practice most also dropped this xenophobia and opened their services to the “foreign” poor. And by the latter half of the century, some of the greatest innovations were being driven by artisans and merchants who had initially been drawn into Bologna from other parts of Italy to find work or pursue business opportunities.

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A system so ambitious was bound to be expensive, and as we will see in a later chapter, finances at institutions like the OPM were better organized in theory than in practice. Many Bolognese, like many reformers of poor relief across Europe, initially assumed that the pool of alms within the city was enough to support all of the city’s own worthy poor. Alms simply had to be gathered and distributed more rationally to those local widows, orphans, and disabled who could not care for themselves. Others who were going through temporary periods of difficulty needed to be sheltered, but should do what they could to help maintain these shelters and should be trained to help maintain themselves in the future. Young children went out of their new institutional homes and into the city on domestic service or apprenticeship contracts and turned their earnings back over to the shelter. Textile piecework became an ever greater part of the daily routine, particularly for girls who could not easily be let out of the safety of tightly enclosed shelters. There was a practicality to these arrangements that blurred the lines between charity, mutual assistance, and self-help, and that was precisely the organizers’ intention. They aimed with their practical charity to create a setting where the poor could gain the experience, tools, and resources to help themselves. For some it might be artisanal training, for others a dowry, for others the start of a relationship of trust with an employer. The further practicality to the arrangement was that their own work would help keep their charitable shelter afloat—they truly were helping themselves. The equation was persuasive in the abstract and as an ideal, but administrators found it harder to get the calculus behind this practical charity to work in the day to day. By the mid-seventeenth century, administrators of some institutions began reducing the number of poor they would accept so that they could live within the means generated by invested legacies.19 The Bolognese were struggling to match ambition and reality. Their struggle provides the background for the tensions between the male and female OPM administrators that spilled over onto posters like the “Orders and Provisions” and possibly onto Bologna’s streets. That poster is so revealing because the dispute pointed not just to disagreements about particular practical measures, but also to different charitable cultures. These were made harder to resolve because of the way that gender and class wove into them. Distinguishing two distinct cultures

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of charity, the “patronal” and the “practical,” underscores the fact that we are not simply talking about two approaches to helping the poor, but rather about two ways of structuring civil society and of living together. We can call the older or traditional form of charity “patronal” because it emphasized the gifts given by the rich to the poor and indeed by the poor to the rich. This traditional alms-giving culture was episodic, linked to individual life passages and to the feast days of the liturgical year. As a result, it was more open to festivity, extravagance, and seasonal and spiritual rhythms. It aimed to “show the poor a good time” because it was a way of caring for the spirit as much as the body, and it often brought the poor and the wealthy into more direct personal contact with each other. The rich were patrons of the poor, yet the poor were also to some extent the patrons of the rich. The wealthy giver’s alms bought the poor recipient’s prayers, and in the inverse currency of heaven these had more enduring value. The idea that each was helping the other gave this patronal charity both an abstract reciprocity and a human quality that reflected the relations between Christ, his mother, his friends the saints, and the believers who looked to them for help. Feasts and festivals of the kind that Christ himself seemed to enjoy brought them together regularly at the same time or table in what some historians have called a “social miracle” of community and solidarity. The warmth of a feast held the chill of poverty at bay, even if only temporarily.20 But could this spiritually focused patronal almsgiving culture maintain day by day a beggars’ hostel with one thousand mouths, or a foundling home with two hundred, or an orphanage with seventy-five? These were the numbers that the newer approach of “practical” charity confronted in its quest for rationality, efficiency, self-sufficiency, and civic good in institutions like Bologna’s OPM. These numbers necessarily made charity more impersonal as well, and led reformers to experiment with new ways of raising funds, from taxes raised in the city to more work carried out within the shelter itself. It was the weight of these day-to-day realities, faced most immediately in Bologna by the ambitious OPM, that strained all charitable efforts by the late sixteenth century. The strains reached everywhere, because practical and patronal charity weren’t clearly differentiated poles or parties: they were emphases, orientations, or leanings that coexisted and created tensions within institutions and

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even in individuals. What administrator could have an entirely consistent response when facing an account book, facing a disabled widow, or facing a feast day? It was on the matter of how—or whether—to show the poor a good time that the tensions became public. What did it mean to show the poor a good time? We can readily grasp the methods of practical charity, but the forms of patronal charity may surprise and even shock us. Long before the OPM began handing out fancy cakes and French collars, inmates in Bologna’s jails looked forward to the feast day of the patron saint of prisoners, St. Leonard (November 6). Charity, family, or money were the only ways for prisoners to get food, and donors over the years had left legacies to ensure that poor inmates could have bread, wine, and even straw mats for sleeping. In the late fifteenth century the notary Darofino, who had likely written up the legal trials of some of these inmates in his registers and so earned money from them, left enough lire to provide prisoners with an annual St. Leonard’s Day feast. Whoever happened to be in Bologna’s prisons that day gorged on large quantities of veal and pork and bread and cheese, all washed down with a barrel of fine wine, and followed by a selection of fruit. Darofino even thought to include a large stack of firewood to warm the stone chambers as the prisoners celebrated this November saint’s day.21 In the mid-sixteenth century, boys in the S. Onofrio orphanage could count on extra donations of eggs in February, described specifically in the financial ledgers as a gift that would allow them “to do carnival” (per far carnevale). Given carnivalesque rituals and uproar, it’s possible that only some of these made it into the boys’ mouths. The others were missiles targeted at anyone in range. At Easter—and only Easter—neighbors and other well-wishers in the city sent these same boys many frittata-like egg tortes. These were decidedly harder to throw.22 Not that there weren’t even harder things to throw. Animals for example. At the end of every summer, on St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24), Bologna’s shops and even its city gates were closed and the people flocked to the core. Through the course of the day they watched horses, dogs, and sparrow hawks race along Strada Maggiore, the ancient Roman Via Emilia that cut through the city from east to west, and bet on who would win the prizes. The races wrapped up by midafternoon, and thousands then flocked into Piazza Maggiore for a bizarrely carnivalesque ritual

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known as the “Porchetta.” Public officials gathered in the windows and on the balconies of their respective offices in the Palazzo Comunale or the Palazzo del Podestà, high above the crowds below. The choicest spot was the narrow balcony just above the entrance in Tibaldi’s monumental gateway into the Palazzo Comunale. The papal legate and the city elders stood here, right under the statue of Gregory XIII. About an hour before sunset they had to move back as the city’s musicians and kitchen staff came on to the balcony. While the musicians sounded their trumpets and cornets, the cooks began throwing food to the people below. Doctor Ottaviano Rabasco, visiting from Malta in 1603, could hardly believe it: They begin to throw down on the heads of the people below many birds that are living but that cannot fly very well: doves, chickens, guinea fowl, and also rabbits and hares, together with other diverse bigger birds like pheasants and peacocks in great number. And after this they throw down to the people a roast pig (porcellina) of over 100 pounds, cooked in an oven and brought with ceremony and magnificence by the cooks of the Signoria on a table dressed with diverse flowers.23

Some accounts added a soup course before or after the meat, with huge cauldrons emptied directly onto the heads of the crowd, in part to break up fights among those jostling down on the piazza. Rabasco compared this carnivalesque festival to the times when Roman emperors distributed food to the masses, and even called the Bolognese commoners gathered in the square “the Plebe.” No doubt the public officials crowded into the windows and balconies appreciated the classical comparison. Pope Gregory XIII would have appreciated it too, for when the crowd on the piazza looked up expectantly for the food, they would see his monumental statue, arm raised in benediction. It would seem that the chickens, rabbits, roast pig, and soup raining down on them were coming straight from his hands.24 On a much smaller scale, confraternities generally enabled laypeople to celebrate their saints’ days by feasting together and then distributing extra food to the poor in their neighborhood. This was more than just sending the celebration out into the streets. It was not for nothing that

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saints’ days were called feast days. Generous feasting was what the saint expected and even demanded as a condition for hearing the confratelli’s prayers and acting on their petitions. Food marked the feast, for the poor as much as for others, and this food was typically part of larger celebrations that incorporated processions. Decked in their finest robes, marching behind a finely wrought banner, and carrying their saint’s image or relic in a costly reliquary or under a silk baldacchino, the procession participants weren’t simply on parade. They marched to publicly match the needs of the poor and their own generosity. Both sides exercised their roles in the reciprocal relationship of prayer and charity that defined the Christian life, for the pauper’s prayers were like alms for the souls of the spiritually impoverished rich. Sometimes rich and poor marched together. On the feast of Corpus Domini, the young boys of the S. Bartolomeo orphanage put on their dress uniform of red robes and white shoes and marched together with their be-robed confraternal sponsors. Ahead of them in the civic procession, the young students of each parish’s School of Christian Doctrine put on angels’ robes and walked together with their confraternal teachers.25 On the feast of the Holy Innocents, just days after Christmas, the abandoned and largely illegitimate children of the foundling home of the Esposti also transformed themselves with robes and wings into small angels to represent the souls of the Bethlehem infants slaughtered by an enraged King Herod when he realized that Jesus had escaped his grasp. The foundling-angels led their confraternal sponsors out the doors of their orphanage and a few blocks east to the church of S. Stefano to give honor to the relics of the Innocents that were held there. Throughout the year, a good part of the daily bread on orphanage boys’ plates came as offerings that they received for attending funerals in Bologna. The S. Onofrio home sent its boys around to a few funerals a week, robed in mourning and trained to sing dirges. The boys were so successful that other orphanages soon followed the example, and in some cases made a business of it.26 Whether for festa or funeral, these procession participants often ended up marching into a space set with tables where rich and poor, old and young, dined together. Processions graced necessity with liturgy. Male and female members of confraternities marched around their neighborhoods offering alms,

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while the girls and boys who were the wards in these confraternities’ charitable homes marched around the city collecting them. Groups within a large institution like the OPM had specific charitable-processional roles. Throughout the year, the boys living in the OPM shelter went out behind their banner on organized alms-gathering expeditions, dressed in white uniforms during the winters and black in summers. The male OPM officers also went out after every harvest, visiting convents, monasteries, and patrician palaces and collecting the large pledges of grain, wine, and oil that these institutions had made but on which they were often reluctant to deliver. Female officers of Bologna’s parochial Holy Sacrament confraternities went through their parishes at Corpus Domini collecting sheets, lengths of cloth, shirts, and used clothes that they then brought to dress the beds and bodies of the poor in the OPM.27 These processions weren’t just practical pickup and delivery. They made charity into a public liturgical exercise of civic religion. As confratelli and the needy marched along the overlapping routes connecting hospitals, homes, and shrines, the sound of their feet announced that this was a community that took seriously its obligations to serve God by feeding, clothing, and sheltering God’s poor. Nor was it just overtly religious groups like confraternities that built feast-day charity into their collective life. The Camera of Bologna, which was essentially the city’s Ministry of Finance, annually spent about 200 lire to clothe twelve paupers on Holy Thursday, and gave another 100 lire to those who happened to be in the syphilitic hospital of S. Giobbe on Christmas Day.28 Processions followed seasonal and celebrative rhythms. Some, like the ones just mentioned for the OPM, gave donors a chance to provide the residents of a large home with their daily bread and clothing. Others, like the prisoners’ feast on St. Leonard’s Day, or the eggs and frittate sent to the orphans of S. Onofrio, or particularly the wild excess of the Festa del Porchetta on St. Bartholomew’s Day went beyond bare necessities to offer treats that were deliberately and even wastefully celebrative. Nor was this festive outpouring of soup, fritatte, birds, and pigs unique to Bologna, famous then as now for its attention to food. Carnival crowds in Venice looked forward to the ritual slaughter of twelve pigs and a bull in the piazza outside the doge’s palace. In Florence the S. Matteo hospital distributed sweet cakes and pine nuts when it reenacted the Last

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Supper on Holy Thursday. That city’s largest hospital, S. Maria Nuova, celebrated Christmas by serving veal, and put fish on the menu for the day of St. Egidius (September 1) and the main feasts of the Madonna. None of this was cheap. Fish cost at least half again more and veal was over twice the price of the beef or mutton usually served, and anywhere from 230 to 300 patients and staff would be eating on these special days. Hospitals everywhere celebrated the opening of new or renovated quarters by staging feasts for their poor wards or patients. When Florence opened a new central orphanage for boys in 1542, it timed the celebrations to coincide with the feast day of the city’s patron saint, St. John the Baptist (June 24). Florentines had long made this ecclesiastical version of the summer solstice the high point of the local festive calendar, and orphanage officials sent the boys out equipped for a party. All wore the new uniforms of the home, and the older ones topped this off with a special hat. Some carried bundles of kindling for the celebratory bonfires, and others carried painted images depicting caritas. All carried boxes to gather alms and bowls to gather food and wine. After throwing their sticks in the bonfires, the boys returned to an orphanage that was fresh from two intensive months of renovations, and inaugurated it with a meal that they ate together with their overseers. Apart from feast days or special celebrations like this, Florentine hospitals through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries prided themselves in giving their wards a varied diet of fruits, salads, vegetables, meat, fresh cheeses, eggs, and milk. Their rationale for this generous treatment was based as much in Christian charity as in Galenic medicine.29 Christians didn’t have trouble finding models for this kind of overthe-top and even deliberately “wasteful” charity in the gospels and saints’ lives. Christ’s first miracle at Cana kept wedding guests drinking after the wine had run out, while some of the biggest miracles had him feeding thousands. Much of his teaching seemed to take place at dinners, picnics, and parties. His friends the saints followed suit. The gift-giving St. Nicholas of Bari had saved an impoverished nobleman’s girls from prostitution by tossing bags of coins through the window so that they would have the dowries for an honorable marriage. The most dramatic model of all was St. Mary Magdalen, who had poured very expensive ointment over Jesus, thereby feeding his spirit and anointing his body

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before his death. The disciples had made the very sharp and practical comment that the money might have been better used to feed the poor. Yet Christ himself stopped their forward-looking economic rationality in its tracks. A beautiful gift was never wasteful when given as a loving tribute to Christ himself. The poor were legion, but Christ too was in their number, and relieving a poor man meant more than simply filling his belly. Jesus’s pointed retort to his disciples recalled his earlier parable of God separating the generous sheep from the selfish goats at the Last Judgment in the gospel of Matthew. Any act of generosity to an individual poor person was an act of generosity to Christ himself, and he promised to remember at the Judgment those who had fed, clothed, visited, sheltered, and cared for him. The believer who showed the poor a good time with feasts, flowers, pies, and firewood followed Mary Magdalen in showing a deeper love for Christ, and Christ would not forget.30 And what of Bologna’s Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti? It had inherited the feast day of St. Gregory (March 12) after it opened its first poorhouse in the former monastery of S. Gregorio, but did not initially make much of it. A day in Lent when food stocks were low was hardly the most advantageous day to go around collecting food and alms. The circumstances under which it became the OPM’s signal feast day highlight the cultural politics of practical and patronal charity. S. Gregorio was built by the Cistercians early in the thirteenth century, and they located it strategically between the two main roads heading east out of Bologna. Strada S. Vitale was the highway to Ravenna while Strada Romana was Bologna’s main east-west artery, the ancient Via Aemilia that hugged the Apennines as it channeled travelers from Milan through Parma and Bologna and on eastward to the Adriatic coast. The Savena River flowed immediately to the south of the monastery’s lands while the Avesa stream formed the eastern boundary. Abandoned by the Cistercians, Augustinians, and Canons Regular in turn, its relative isolation appealed to civic authorities who from the early sixteenth century used it to shelter any group too contagious or too vulnerable to be kept within the city walls. Hundreds of plague victims had filled its courtyards when the confraternity of S. Maria della Morte moved its S. Giovanni Battista pesthouse into the monastic complex in 1507, and an unknown number of lepers took their places when the plague subsided.

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S. Gregorio had enough space to take in two hundred orphaned and abandoned girls after a siege and plague in the mid-1520s, and in the 1550s and 1560s Bologna’s sick and poor would move out to join them. 31 When it chose the all-purpose S. Gregorio complex to house its poorhouse, the OPM planned a new title for the new institution: the Hospital of the Madonna St. Mary of Mercy of the Poor Beggars (Ospittalle di Madonna Santa Maria della Misericordia de Poveri Mendicanti).32 Those writing the new hospital’s statutes drilled the point home by devoting the first two chapters to emphasizing this point: “First they have decided and ruled that the title of the Hospital that is instituted to lodge the poor beggars according to the stipulations of the papal brief shall be that Hospital of St. Mary of Mercy of the Poor Beggars.”33 The name signaled their intentions and their models. The new hospital was a site of mercy, or “misericordia.” The name recalled Venice’s prominent confraternity, the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, and the charitable activity of numerous Misericordia hospitals that had long operated in other Italian towns like Bergamo and Cortona. It also recalled Florence’s famous Misericordia confraternity that had sheltered orphans and buried the dead since 1244, and the numerous local Misericordia confraternities and hospitals that sheltered the poor and sick in towns and villages up and down the length of Tuscany.34 Beyond these concrete examples to other hospitals and confraternities, the Madonna of Misericordia was one late medieval cult that resonated deeply with many social groups. The image of the Madonna sheltering supplicants under her outstretched cloak seems to have originated in the Dialogus Miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach. Caesarius wrote of Mary protecting priests, nuns, and monks from thunderstorms and devilish temptation, and wealthy patrons often depicted family members at prayer under the cloak. The Misericordia image spread rapidly from the fourteenth century, spurred by a devotional movement of 1399 that drew on a French peasant’s vision of Mary pleading with an angry Jesus, who is preparing to unleash apocalyptic judgment on the earth. As she pleaded for mercy, she spread her cloak protectively over the people whom Jesus wanted to punish—we need to remember that in most cases the Virgin protected believers from God himself, who used plague, sickness, famine, and poverty to punish his people and bring them to repentance.

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Preachers spread the peasant’s vision, and the devotional movement that followed featured vast public processions of penitents dressed in white robes, calling out “Misericordia,” and moving from city to city until the climax in the 1400 jubilee in Rome.35 Whether it was courtiers, confraternal brothers, guildsmen, friars, nuns, or clerics, there was a spiritual equality and communitas under the Virgin’s cloak. Above all, the Misericordia image had a compelling immediacy and comprehensibility. It animated communal civic religion and inspired many of its institutional forms into the fifteenth century. A host of new hospitals, confraternities, and shrines across urban and rural Europe owed their origins and their names to the Misericordia devotion, producing countless iconic images of communities of believers huddling underneath the Virgin’s protective cloak: in Italy as the Madonna della Misericordia, through France as the Vièrge de Miséricorde, and in Germany as the Schutzmantelmadonna. Misericordia devotees were the practical arms and legs, and the disciplinary eyes and ears of charity, and they dedicated themselves to picking up the sick, giving bread to the hungry, and burying the dead. The high point of Misericordia devotion was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the Bolognese who dedicated the OPM poorhouse to her optimistically hoped that the Madonna della Misericordia would spread her cloak over their poor; the alms would flow, and all would be well. OPM officials may have assumed that the memory of St. Gregory would fade once the new name of “Misericordia” took hold, and so for the first decade they devoted little attention to either St. Gregory or his feast day, and they continued calling their poorhouse “the Misericordia” in numerous letters and reports. 36 Yet in this first decade these same officials were grappling with the enormous costs of their new institution and with the failure of their efforts to run the new shelter on new forms of financing, chiefly long-term pledges from religious houses and patrician families, voluntary taxes collected through the city, and work done by the poor themselves. These sources were not generating the funds expected. The Misericordia hospital was on the verge of collapse when Bologna’s native son, Ugo Boncompagni, was elected pope and took the name of Gregory XIII in honor of Pope Gregory I the Great (590–604).

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Whatever led Ugo Boncompagni to take the name Gregory, he certainly patterned himself deliberately on his sixth-century predecessor, and applied his name to his own creations—from a reformed calendar to the Jesuits’ new Roman academy—with a determination and ego not seen since Julius II. 37 While charity wasn’t often taken to be one of the signal marks of Gregory I’s papacy, he had been responsible for a major overhaul to poor relief in a Rome where much of public order had collapsed, and also for personally feeding many poor. At the urban and institutional level, Gregory I had distributed the agricultural produce from the church’s huge estates in the Patrimony of St. Peter among the Roman poor, and developed a system of monthly distributions to the worthy and housebound poor that was not unlike the one that Bologna itself adopted in 1550. Gregory XIII followed this example of patronal charity explicitly, and every day fed twelve poor pilgrims or strangers on the Vatican grounds in imitation of his namesake. Beyond this, he distributed bread and wine every Friday to poor widows and orphans, with particular attention to meeting the needs of families and not just individuals. The English priest, Gregory Martin, writing his two-volume work, Roma Sancta, in the middle of Gregory XIII’s papacy, emphasized these actions and the pope’s wide-ranging charity. According to Martin, Gregory XIII gave 500 crowns in alms weekly to religious, to catecumens, and to confraternities. Moreover, he often targeted alms to specific groups and needs rather than simply broadcasting them, and he regularly offered dowries to poor girls—at least two million crowns by Martin’s count. 38 Gregory XIII would prove to be a generous friend and benefactor of Bologna’s OPM. He knew of it and supported it, giving alms directly, preaching for it in S. Petronio, and forcing Bolognese religious houses to honor their pledges of aid.39 He was the ultimate patron. He also forced Roman authorities to learn from its example. Many of the developments in poor relief pushed by authorities in Rome through Gregory XIII’s pontificate imitated or adapted those developed by Bologna’s OPM. His key action of giving the archconfraternity of SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini overall responsibility for the care of Rome’s poor after the 1575 Jubilee was based directly on the example of what the OPM was doing in Bologna. It even included a procession of 850 beggars to the central shelter in a former

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monastery on Via Appia in 1581, much like the procession of eight hundred beggars into Bologna’s S. Gregorio almost twenty years earlier.40 Whether out of savvy politics or overt pressure, through these years the OPM quietly dropped the name of “Misericordia” and reverted to calling its poorhouse by the old name of “S. Gregorio.” We can even date this change. The financial difficulties of the 1560s had exposed various problems in the first set of statutes or rules that had been adopted in 1564, and as we will see below, political tensions in the city had some groups pushing for changes to the way that the OPM was run. Soon after Gregory was elected pope, OPM officials approached the nephew he had placed in charge of Bolognese affairs, Filippo Boncompagni, seeking his help in solving their financial difficulties. They began by asking him to pressure the religious houses to honor their pledges of aid. He responded by asking to see their statutes and to learn more of the OPM’s administration generally.41 We do not know whether he suggested changes, but we do know that within a few months the OPM appointed a committee to reform these statutes. The committee of eight men worked on the new statutes through 1573, and they were then adopted in 1574.42 The new statutes removed the name of “Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia” from the background history in the Preface and even from the statutes themselves. This was a significant step symbolically, given how firmly the first two chapters of the original 1564 statutes had emphasized that the new ospedale would be known as the “Misericordia.”43 That ambitious proclamation was removed from the 1574 revised statutes, and officials reverted to calling the shelter by its former name of S. Gregorio.44 From this point OPM officials also began to emphasize the Feast of St. Gregory (March 12), and the day became the symbolic core for the public exercise of charity in Bologna generally. This was quite a change, since as late as 1574 it wasn’t even one of the feast days observed in the city.45 For all the spiritual value of taking a day in the middle of Lent to think about self-denial and gifts to the poor, the practical reality was that few people had much left to give at that time of year. Food stocks were low, so a procession to gather food, such as the OPM men carried out at harvesttime, was unlikely to turn up much. Weather could still be chilly, so it was still too early for a procession to gather spare sheets, blankets,

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and clothing like the one that the women held on Corpus Domini in June. That notwithstanding, Gregory XIII’s patronal charity, capped with a 1580 plenary indulgence for those visiting S. Gregorio on March 12, provided the critical incentive for new rituals, feasts, and observances that merged the saintly and papal patrons.46 The day soon expanded on Bologna’s liturgical calendar. From at least 1603—one year before the millennial anniversary of St. Gregory I the Great’s death—St. Gregory’s Day was a public holiday in Bologna. Each year the legate issued a pronouncement that the two town criers (banditori) read aloud through the city ordering that all stores and workplaces be closed on March 12 so that everyone in the city, regardless of condition, could do proper honor to St. Gregory I the Great. Anyone violating the order had to pay a fine of twenty-five lire that would go to charitable institutions in the city—and most likely to the S. Gregorio shelter itself.47 Distinguishing two cultures of charity—the practical and the patronal—is less about identifying two opposing camps than it is about highlighting two points on a continuum that, for all their differences and tensions, coexisted in particular individuals and institutions. Another way of thinking about this is to frame it in the terms that the founders of the OPM and Pope Gregory XIII were using: “caritas” and “misericordia.” Caritas was help that was framed around a personal and patronal relationship, while misericordia was assistance to the poor and needy generally on the basis of their membership in the community and not because of any personal relationship. “It was, perhaps, the spirit of misericordia which led most directly to gifts to the needy whom one did not know.”48 Caritas was help to kin and clients, and it deliberately strengthened those vertical bonds. It arose out of obligations placed on the giver and it placed obligations on the recipient; in this way it deliberately reinforced patron-client and kin ties. Misericordia by contrast was given to members of a corporate group or collectivity like a guild, confraternity, or even a commune simply by virtue of their engagement in it. It often took the form of mutual assistance, self-help, or insurance, and so reflected and strengthened horizontal bonds. Seen this way, caritas and misericordia were forms of help that inevitably marked boundaries between insiders and outsiders, while also establishing very different relations between givers and receivers. These differences resonate

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in the very names used for the OPM’s poorhouse. Adopting the name “Ospedale della Misericordia” in 1563 spoke volumes about the state of relations between the OPM founders, the communitas of Bologna’s confraternities, guilds, and neighborhood groups that staffed the Ospedale, and the poor of the community whom they aimed collectively to help. Reverting to “Ospedale di S. Gregorio” after 1572 said just as much about the realities these founders and volunteer staff ran up against, and their continuing dependence on the patronage of rich and powerful nobles and ecclesiastics to make any help at all even possible.

“Good Mothers of the Family” The OPM’s Lady Prioresses led its caritas and patronal charity. They certainly did the most to organize the OPM’s expanding St. Gregory’s Day celebrations. This group of women appears in the first statutes of 1564, though without any formal title or place in the administration. The first statutes mention them almost as an afterthought in a few lines at the end of a chapter that lays out the details of the operation and its administration. They were to be general overseers of the poor girls and women in the S. Gregorio shelter outside the city. It wasn’t even clear how an individual woman could join the group. When a man gave alms, he became eligible to sit in the corporale, the general decision-making body, and to play a role in the congregazione, the executive team of administrative, financial, disciplinary or legal officers who rotated in office every six months. Half of the 1564 statutes are given over to describing in detail how individual officers were elected and what powers and duties they had, so he could hardly avoid serving in some office at some time. By contrast, these same statutes give the so-called “Company of Gentlewomen and Female Citizens” no clear guidelines for how members joined, even though they were expected to maintain a matriculation list. The women had no group of officers, let alone detailed instructions on their terms and appointments. They were nonetheless expected to appoint visitors to keep an eye on the women in the hospital, and to instruct the female wardens in their work. Apart from being general moral guardians, the women’s only specific duty was keeping track of the laundry.49

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The crises of the 1560s exposed various problems in the OPM’s original rules, and one of the key gaps addressed by those revising the statutes in the early 1570s was the set of questions swirling around the Company of Gentlewomen. The wealth of detail on the Company of Gentlewomen in the 1574 revised statutes underscores just how much confusion there had been about their work. Women, like men, would now join their group on the basis of donations, and they would get their own officers: a prioress and two companions who served six-month terms, and who called the rest of the women’s company together for monthly meetings.50 The woman’s company was now called a “congregation,” which may be a subtle sign of further shifts at work, since as we will see below in Chapter 3 these same statute revisions were moving power in the men’s company from the broad corporale to a narrower congregazione. The woman’s company had always been more selective, and while they now gained the same title, these women played no role in the larger congregation that ran the OPM. The female officers kept track of the women and children who lived in the S. Gregorio poorhouse, and whoever worked outside of it. They were expected to maintain a ledger that tracked each one’s earnings so that this could be paid out when the woman or child left. Ledgers like this were commonly called for in charitable institutions and just as commonly ignored, since there were actually quite complicated to maintain. That certainly seems to have been the case with the Mendicanti, where no such ledger remains. Work was a means of achieving the reform of the poor according to these new statutes, but only if there were overseers to find it, assign it, and assess performance. The prioress and her companions would do this work. They regularly visited poor women in S. Gregorio or in their workshops, talking to their supervisors and praising or reprimanding a girl or woman when necessary. If a woman worked well, the prioress could reward her by signing a pass that allowed her to briefly leave the home and visit friends or family in Bologna. If not, the prioress could ensure that the shelter became a prison with no escape. Overall, the 1574 statutes projected a gendered division of labor for the OPM’s two congregations that roughly matched the distinctions between practical and patronal charity. While the male officers would look after the utilitarian

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needs of the poor, the Lady Prioresses instead were to promote “the dignity of their lives (literally the ‘decoro del vivere’) in such ways as befits the Office of good Mothers of the family.”51 Judging by the undated “Ordini and Provisioni” cited at the beginning of this chapter, one way the women exercised their maternal office and gave dignity to the lives of the poor was by taking a celebrative approach to St. Gregory’s Day and by periodically giving gifts and treats to all those in the OPM. And not just the poor: anyone who had a hand in the work was welcome to join the celebrations. The society ladies and gentlemen who took a few hours on St. Gregory’s Day to collect alms for the OPM were rewarded with silk flowers and a festive lunch with sweets. The Lady Prioresses apparently sympathized with those staff who found the standard OPM uniform ugly and coarse, and they bought lengths of the wool-silk blend called mezza lana to be tailored into more attractive clothing. They splurged on quality underwear for the female staff, and dressed up the boys’ uniforms with French collars (collari alla francese). When a Lady Prioress came to the end of her six-month term, she hosted a celebrative party with pastries and fruit tarts for all the people in the OPM’s three shelters—staff, wards, and patients all together. On feast days or perhaps at the end of a term, the retiring Lady Prioress left her mark in the form of some fine silver liturgical object in one of the three churches associated with the three shelters. All of this was very much in the spirit of showing the poor a good time, and it was a festivity that drew together into one group patrician administrators, friends who fund-raised, wards who may once have known prosperity but now endured gruel at mealtime and rough cloth uniforms, staff who worked long hours, and priests who conducted religious services. Nor was it entirely unusual in Bologna: every December, the forty-odd secretaries, clerks, cooks, and musicians who made up the staff of the magistracy of the Elders received gifts of cloth as a Christmas gift, as did the eight secretaries of the Senate. This bit of generosity cost over a thousand lire each time. Guild masters serving as Masters of the College of Arts always got a celebrative reception at the beginning of their terms of office that cost more than most Bolognese artisans earned in a year.52 The OPM’s Congregation of Gentlewomen were simply being good patrons of the poor while treating their staff as though they were

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civic officials, which in a certain sense they were. These women showed the poor a very good time indeed. It was undoubtedly expensive. By the time of the undated “Orders and Provisions,” the OPM’s executive officers were clearly frustrated with these women and their largesse. The women’s generosity had steadily increased in all sorts of excessive spending on superfluous items, to the point where it damaged the institution and the poor themselves. The officers drafted and the executive congregation approved the series of measures that was going to be posted publicly in order to put an end to it. No more silk flowers or lavish meals. No more silver in the church. No special uniforms of purchased cloth. No fancy underwear or French collars. No end-of-term celebrations. The “Orders and Provisions” fairly drip with frustration and blame, as though the men had reasoned unsuccessfully with the women over a long period. Now they had to put their foot down and ask that the women spend their money with an eye on the greater benefit of the poor. There’s an almost farcical quality to it all, but there’s also a serious subtext. Given the desperate times that the poster alludes to, we might even agree that the men had a point. Except that while venting their frustrations and laying their blame, the men of the OPM omitted a critical fact. The women’s congregation was entirely subordinate to the men’s, and had no independent spending power. It could purchase nothing without the approval of the Mendicanti’s chief administrator (the master or massaro) and bookkeeper (depositario): no tortes, no silver, no fancy uniforms, and no French collars. The 1574 statutes had even stipulated that the women should not concern themselves with practicalities when they discussed the needs of the poor. They should simply pass on their suggestions to the master and other officials so that these men could follow up and make the necessary purchases.53 What—or whose—money was then being wasted? Other Bolognese charities, like the S. Maria Maddalena confraternity that ran the S. Onofrio orphanage, had firm rules on this kind of thing. Only a small amount of confraternal funds could be used on saint’s day festivities. Officers wanting a bigger party had to cover extra costs from their own pocket. The orphanage governors knew very well what this kind of competitive generosity could lead to, and threatened with expulsion those officials who failed to keep the celebrations reasonable. They

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specifically ruled against theatrical pageants (spettacoli), distributions of food, or even allowing the public and invited guests to come into the orphanage to join the boys and staff in celebrating the festival. Yet they were fighting against a deep tradition and without much success. The prohibition they wrote into their first statutes in 1560 was repeated almost verbatim in 1664.54 Confraternities and charities elsewhere in Italy also danced around this challenge of meeting the cost of what some have called “devotional consumption.”55 In Venice, where music more than feasting was the focus of spending, the wealthy confraternities known as scuole grandi competed intensely among each other for the best choirs and instrumentalists. Yet they budgeted very few ducats for the struggle. Whoever rose to top office was expected to cover this out of his own pocket, intensely aware that both his own and the scuola’s honor was at stake.56 This is most likely what the Lady Prioresses had been doing: covering their celebrative and maternal generosity out of their own pockets. At this point, the comparisons to the biblical Mary Magdalen, who had bought expensive perfume to pour over Christ, become almost comically ironic. The men of the OPM’s executive congregation were not objecting that these women wasted the institution’s money, but rather that they spent their own money on lavish gifts. Awkwardly echoing no less a model than the disciple Judas, the executive officers argued that this money could far be better used to feed the poor. The issue was not one of keeping the institution’s own books balanced. It was about the public impression and even the internal problems that the women’s generosity created. Of course, more than deep spiritual tradition or gender stereotypes lay behind this charitable excess. The OPM’s 1574 statutes had built on the stereotype common even then that women, as spiritually attuned nurturing mothers, were more closely identified with the movements of the life cycle. They knew best how to celebrate its key passages with gifts and festivity. Yet there was more. Setting a generous table or providing a better uniform was as much about advertising the donor’s wealth, status, and charity to an audience of peers as it was about lending dignity to the poor. At that level of conspicuous charitable consumption, men and women both participated equally. Securing public honor for the giver was a significant driver behind patronal charity. Beyond those Venetian

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priors who spent family fortunes paying for confraternal choirs to sing the praises of divine and earthly patrons, we find nobles and patricians in Turin targeting their donations to particular wards or classes of the sick in the city’s hospitals as valuable public markers of their status and power. Roman patrician women similarly used the power of their purses to commission construction of convents on the Quirinal Hill that would advertise their piety and charity. For their part, Bologna’s patrician women skillfully used conspicuous consumption to advance family strategies for securing local influence in the absence of a single ruling family. The ambition that built palaces on the city’s Via Imperiale and commissioned portraits from society painters like Lavinia Fontana also put silver on the OPM’s altars and cakes on its dining tables.57 Did this generous but episodic patronal charity hinder the Opera’s efforts to raise alms for daily operations? The authors of the “Orders and Provisions” apparently thought so, but reading the politics of this dispute is necessarily speculative. Given their decision to issue their views in the form of a broadsheet that could be posted publicly, we know that the men of the OPM were concerned with public appearances. Who was their poster aimed at reaching? There are potentially three distinct audiences for the “Orders and Provisions,” and it is in identifying them that we can see how gender and class intersect in this dispute on different levels. The first audience would certainly be the women themselves. Issuing the congregation’s decision as a broadsheet would be an effort to deal with what could only be the awkward social politics of the matter. While the OPM was headed by a senator, the majority of those who made up its volunteer administration were men of the professional, mercantile, and upper artisanal classes. By contrast, the three women who served as prioresses, and to whom the notice was directed, were all from the upper ranks of a patriciate that was used to making its mark on the city with lavish palaces and parties. In the second half of 1594, when the dispute may well have flared up, Leona Paleotti, Francesca Aldrovandi, and Camilla Gozzadini were the serving prioresses. They came from the highest ranks of Bolognese society, and their lips must have curled in scorn at the petty objections of a scrabble of notaries and shopkeepers.58 Confronting these grand gentlewomen directly would have been

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very difficult socially, particularly for the individuals who would have had to serve as the emissaries. Issuing the “Orders and Provisions” as a public notice took this confl ict out of the face-to-face realm and made it a collective action by the entire congregation, thereby minimizing direct confl ict. Yet the intended audience also stretched beyond these women to reach a second group: their husbands. Through the 1590s, the OPM was continuing to have great difficulty collecting on the pledges of food and money that both religious houses and patrician families had promised it. Religious houses were lobbied steadily, both directly and by means of letters sent to cardinal protectors in Rome. Patricians could be lobbied more directly, but it was still a very delicate matter. The broadsheet was part of this lobbying effort, and that may explain some of the frustrated yet respectful tone. For while a Pepoli, Aldrovandi, or Gozzadini head of household was delaying his family’s pledge of bushels of wheat or barrels of wine, his wife might be hosting a meal for hospital staff or commissioning a set of silver candlesticks for the poorhouse chapel. Her generosity might well could come out of resources that she controlled personally, but it would be hard for OPM administrators not to see patrician household economies as a zero-sum game in which there was not room for both cakes and bread, particularly when they were having such difficulty getting patrician families to make and honor their pledges of alms. While Bolognese women frequently patronized religious causes with their own resources, some contemporary conduct literature, like the 1576 Trattato dell’opere di misericordia e corporale e spirituali by the Florentine priest Don Silvano Razzi, advised that husbands should still exercise final control over all spending.59 The broadsheet functioned as a diplomatic appeal to patrician men and women alike, sent in the hope that they would reorient that domestic economy. A third audience was donors of all classes in the city itself: shopkeepers, laborers, priests, and prostitutes who might wonder why they ought to sacrifice for the OPM while its wards ate sweets and its staff wore soft underwear and fine clothing. The phrasing of the notice is telling here: “The generosity of the Prioresses of this Opera has extended into spending which is judged by many to be superfluous, such that it generates prejudices about the institution and about the poor itself.” By publicly

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advertising how exceptional the gentlewomen’s generosity was and how troubling they themselves found it, the male officers emphasized the continuing necessity of those alms large and small that kept the poor fed once the cakes ran out. This brings us to the question of dating the document. It is a question made the more difficult by the fact that no reference to it appears in the OPM’s minute books. It definitely comes after 1574. A copy is found among a set of statutes in the deposit of OPM administrative records in the Bologna State Archive. It is folded into a seven-page booklet that contains only those three chapters of the 1574 revised statutes that pertain to women—an abbreviated set of statutes for the benefit of the women who joined the Congregation of Gentlewomen and of those who went on to serve six-month terms as its prioresses. More to the point, only with these 1574 statutes do we have these three women designated as Signore Priore, the term used in the document. This particular booklet carries the papal arms of Gregory XIII on its cover and does not incorporate some of the minor changes introduced into the text in a 1603 reprint of the statutes.60 This would suggest that it was among a set printed together with the 1574 statutes or in the decade following. The “Orders and Provisions” refers to the “three churches” of the OPM. This puts it after 1591, when the institution acquired the convent of S. Orsola outside the city wills, complete with a chapel within it.61 The main account book from this period shows that the Lady Prioresses acted aggressively to fulfill their maternal duties in these years. Bologna had been struggling with famine for four years by 1591, and the women went out of their way with special collections. Under Prioress Bartolomea de Zani, they held a Christmas Eve search through the city that brought in 381.4.10 lire, to which they added a further 67.8 lire of their own. They also gave 347.4.2 lire in “diverse furnishings,” which may represent liturgical furnishings for the Church of S. Maria della Pietà, which was consecrated in another of the OPM’s three shelters that year. At a time when an artisan or a city clerk couldn’t expect to earn more than about 150 lire per year, these were significant donations.62 The same account book records Prioress Signora Antonia Malvezzi spending 1,450 lire over the course of 1592–1593, and reimbursing over 700 lire of this by the end of 1593 and the balance by January 1596. The

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scrivano making the entries first described them generically as “expenses made by the Illustrious Signora Antonia Malvezzi . . . for the use of the Opera.” He then expanded in a rare explanatory note that could be intended to either damn or defend her, but that certainly shows a desire to get a contentious record straight. Beyond her 1,450 lire in expenses, through the course of 1592–1593 Signora Malvezzi also collected a large quantity of cloth as alms, and had it made into 460 shirts (camise) of various sorts and 99 pairs of sheets. These she distributed around the three OPM shelters. She also received as alms another rougher kind of cloth (the homespun bisello ordinario), which she had made into 101 pairs of pants, 53 vests of many sorts, and other items of clothing. The scrivano noted that Signora Malvezzi documented these items minutely (“come minutamente apare”) in two lists in a notebook placed in the OPM archive.63 Neither survives. At this point, then, the combination of documentary and circumstantial evidence points to a date for the “Orders and Provisions” in the early 1590s, when Bologna was in the grip of famine. Broader cultural evidence supports this dating. The tensions sketched here between the two cultures of practical and patronal charity were becoming more acute in the prolonged crisis of the late 1580s and 1590s, as many realized that rationalized practical charity was simply not efficient enough to meet growing demands. This was a problem in every town and city across Italy, and hospital administrators were cutting all but the most necessary expenses. Through the course of the seventeenth century, seasonal vegetables, fresh salads, fruits, and cheeses were cleared from Florentine hospital tables. They were replaced with the simpler and cheaper porridges and stews that were known as “sick people’s food.”64 Yet more than cost rendered patronal charity problematic. In the context of Catholic reform, even Mary Magdalen was being commemorated differently. Pope Gregory I the Great had first created the image of the Magdalen as a lavish sensualist in the sixth century by merging three separate gospel Marys—a prostitute, a wise wealthy woman, and the sister of Martha and Lazarus—into a single individual who was converted by Christ from sensuality to belief. What painters and preachers began emphasizing after the Council of Trent was less her “wasteful” gift of expensive ointment, than her turn from the immorality of prostitution

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to the morality of a disciple. A disciple, moreover, who after conversion dressed modestly, ate moderately, and studied Christian doctrine— everything expected of the OPM’s wards.65 Mary Magdalen was becoming practical and Tridentine. In this context, caring for the spirit had less to do with festivity than with education, work, and self-restraint. Those writing the statutes for the confraternity of S. Maria Maddalena in 1560 had emphasized that the feast day of their hospital of S. Onofrio should be marked with masses and the proclamation of indulgences rather than with feasts for the wards and neighbors. The winds seemed to be shifting. In 1595, Archbishop Gabriele Paleotti authorized a set of “General Regulations” (Ordinationi generali) for charitable hospitals that extended this approach to all charitable institutions, and particularly to those administered by confraternities. Confraternities were to cease commissioning expensive canopies and vestments for their churches. They were to reduce the number of candles that had cast a glow over their nocturnal processions through the city’s streets, and spend less on the decorations and fine music that enlivened their feast day celebrations. The OPM’s undated “Orders and Provisions” neatly parallel Paleotti’s 1595 “General Regulations,” almost to the point of functioning as a local application of the general rule. Paleotti’s strictures on festive celebration were part of a larger package of rules aimed at combating corruption, fraud, and self-serving waste in the hospitals, and at ensuring that hospital revenues went to feed and clothe hospital wards rather than their overseers.66 They were painted with a broad brush that did not distinguish between festivity for the rich and festivity for the poor. Yet it was now a moot distinction since Paleotti clearly believed that festivity had little or no place in a charitable institution that ought to be devoting its funds and energies to finding food, work, and training for the poor. This was the height of practical charity. Paleotti’s was not a voice in the wilderness, nor was he sounding a new note. The team who revised the OPM’s own statutes in 1574 highlighted many aspects of practical charity as they gave greater prominence to the poor helping themselves through work and education. A small degree of practical charity, like the bed and board offered at the S. Gregorio shelter itself, would help get them back on their own feet. Working in the home—whether as cooks, cleaners, or spinners of wool—would keep

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them from morale-sapping leisure and give them the sense that they were supporting themselves, even if it was charity that closed the gap between income and expense. This practical charity looked ahead to a reordered life, while patronal charity lived in the festive moment. For Archishop Paleotti and the authors of the “Orders and Provisions,” whether writing in the 1590s, or a few years earlier or later, that moment had passed. Except of course it hadn’t. The OPM’s “Orders and Provisions,” the Maddalena confraternity’s continuing and fruitless efforts to contain festivities, and Archbishop Paleotti’s “General Regulations” were all of a piece; yet the more frequently these kinds of rules appeared, the clearer it was that in fact some Bolognese were continuing their vigorous pursuit of “devotional consumption” and patronal charity. The OPM’s dropping of the “Misericordia” name and its expansion of St. Gregory’s Day festivities showed that even the proponents of practical charity recognized their limits and would respond positively to the interventions of powerful and generous patrons whose egos needed tending. Festive patronal charity and devotional consumption were the hallmarks of baroque piety in a city that was aggressively refashioning itself in that emerging style—a style that at that very moment was being developed in the art and academy of the Caracci family, and that was also being exported to Rome by ambitious Bolognese artists, curates, and patrons. With politics and religion both shaping themselves ever more around the self-advertising and patronage of an often theatrical status culture, it was certain that these two approaches to charity would maintain their tense relation with each other for many years. Philip Gavitt reminds us that the lineage ideology of Florentine elite families demanded a high level of conspicuous consumption, and Sandra Cavallo has shown how Torinese courtiers secured their positions in court society in part through overt public displays of generosity.67 The Lady Prioresses continued their maternal distributions of mezza lana, wool stockings, and gifts to staff and wards well into the eighteenth century.68 They even seem to have come to an understanding with those who found the costs involved hard to take. By the early eighteenth century, the Lady Prioresses could take whatever was raised on St. Gregory’s Day and use it to buy whatever they thought the home, its wards, its staff, and its volunteers needed. One prioress in 1705 carefully itemized the menus and

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numbers served at about half a dozen feasts held through the year, but she just as carefully noted the fourteen dowries distributed to young women, the clothing handed out to staff and wards, the gifts given to the police for helping out on St. Gregory’s Day, and even the small present given as a consolation to each of five women who had to miss a party because they were locked up in the OPM’s detention ward.69 It was a classic compromise, and it underscores the fact that patronal and practical charity often interacted together, even in spite of tensions. They had done so from the OPM’s beginning in 1563, and continued to do so until the end of the ancien régime in 1796, too long to characterize them conveniently as sacred or secular respectively, much less as sequential stages in the history of social welfare. Some OPM officers would continue to push for economy and a holy discipline that would have paupers look to God in humility. At the very same time, some of their colleagues were determined to buy for that same pauper the sweets, flowers, and cakes that would have their peers look to them in wonder and envy. It was help to women—and often help by women—that brought out most clearly the tensions and paradoxes between the two cultures of charity: the culture of patronal charity that aligned so well with baroque piety and devotional consumption, and the culture of practical charity that valued austerity, morality, and increased self-reliance. As the Bolognese set themselves to the challenge of dealing with women’s life cycle poverty, they focused their efforts around marriage and family. This meant helping girls save their virginity for husbands and their money for dowries, keeping poor families together, and getting women out of the sex trade so that they could enter the marriage market. Assuming that marriage was the answer to women’s poverty showed how deeply paternalist and patriarchal all charitable culture was at this time. Yet making women’s particular situation the key to addressing urban poverty, and working to secure for poor women the financial resources that would allow them to survive both marriage and widowhood were equally maternalist. Opening with this microhistorical examination of the contexts of the “Orders and Provisions for the Lady Prioresses of the Pious Charitable Agency for the Beggars” has highlighted the emergence and interaction of the patronal and practical cultures of charity. It has also demonstrated

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how social tensions could arise as men and women of different social classes and religious orientations aimed to help poor girls and women in significantly different ways. To gender, class, and religion we need to add the politics of a city undergoing dramatic change. How did these social factors shape Bologna’s new institutional experiments in poor relief? Having oriented ourselves by sketching how two charitable cultures interacted in a Renaissance city, we need now to go back and examine the details. In particular we need to look more closely at how Bologna’s creative class moved gradually to establishing the OPM through the first half of the sixteenth century, and what happened in the decades that followed when Bologna’s poor moved into this innovative shelter.

chapter 2

Worthy Poor, Worthy Rich Women’s Poverty and Charitable Institutions

lessandra di giovanni da budrio, thirty-five years old and widowed, walks with her four-year-old daughter, Betta, and elevenyear-old son, Matteo, into the courtyard of the bishop’s palace. On orders of city authorities, they have made their way this Sunday morning—one week after Easter in 1563—from their home in the low-rent district of S. Felice on the west side of the city over to this place in the very center of Bologna, beside the looming mass of the cathedral and steps away from the Communal Palace. The civic order that sent them here also informed them that if they wanted to continue receiving bread from communal authorities, they would also have to abandon the room they had been living in, so Alessandra, Matteo, and even Betta carry their belongings in a few bundles. They have little choice, since the bread those same authorities give is all that has kept the trio alive since Alessandra’s husband died suddenly three years before—that plus begging and bits of work here and there. The order to move came six days ago when Alessandra went to pick up her weekly allotment of food and alms in the courtyard of the S. Francesco basilica a few blocks from her home. If she refused, this food would be cut off. She must go where the bread goes. The bishop’s palace and courtyard adjoin the cathedral and are marked for reconstruction, one of the many building projects that seem

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to be going on all over the core of the city. Yet these grand spaces seem to shrink as hundreds more poor families cram through the gate. They have to push through an even larger crowd gathering in the adjoining streets outside, though it’s quite a different group there: city magistrates in their rich formal robes of office, together with hundreds of other men in simpler white and black robes chatting and laughing as they gather behind ornate painted banners held aloft on poles. In the loggia above the courtyard, groups of priests look down on the swelling crowd below. The well-dressed men outside and a story above are decidedly more excited than the women and children dressed in rags who mill around in the courtyard, where rumors fly back and forth about where they are going. Trumpets sound and some groups of robed men begin following their bobbing banners as they move eastward through the warren of densely packed streets in this old quarter of the city. Soldiers herd the crowd—almost eight hundred by now—out of the courtyard to follow them, and the men in black and white robes fall in behind with their banners. The magistrates keep dignified composure and the whiteand black-robed men sing religious songs, but the women and children caught between them make little noise. Alessandra keeps Matteo and Betta near her as they walk eastward down streets she has seldom seen. The banners, musicians, and thousands of people detour around a warren of streets where, just a few years earlier, civil authorities hastily put up some wooden walls and barriers to close up the streets and create the ghetto that Pope Paul IV had ordered for the Jews. Nine street corners and openings were blocked up in the old dense medieval quarter where hundreds of Jews had lived from the fourteenth century. The Jews have been locked up in their ghetto all through Holy Week and Easter, and are probably wondering now what all of the trumpets and shuffling feet passing by just outside the walls might mean. What they see out their windows doesn’t look much like the celebratory parades that stream through the streets on feast days like Corpus Domini, nor like the sorry wailers in white and black robes who trudge around whipping themselves when famine or plague hit. In a few more years brick, stone, and mortar will replace the improvised wooden gates and close up the windows, sealing the Jews up even more tightly in their enclosure at the center of the city.1

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Alessandra and her children trudge on past the shadows of the high Asinelli and crazily leaning Garisenda towers, past shuttered shops and large palaces. Down the street of S. Vitale with its high porticoes crowded with people watching the strange spectacle. Past the huge new palaces of the Orsi and Fantuzzi families that take up entire city blocks and the smaller palaces that the Franchini and Grimani have built to keep up with their neighbors.2 Past the abandoned synagogue that was the center of the Jewish community before the ghetto. Under the S. Vitale gate through the twelfth-century walls that mark the boundary of the old city, and suddenly things look quite a bit humbler. Low buildings, low porticoes, and low rents characterize the poorer neighborhoods that lie between the twelfth- and the fourteenth-century walls, and some of the people watching from under these porticoes likely recognize and call out to their neighbors who are walking in the procession. The group files past a whole series of enclosures that shield selected residents from the life of the streets: the convent of S. Leonardo with over sixty nuns, the conservatory of S. Marta with about three dozen orphaned and abandoned girls, the latter the convent of S. Orsola with yet more nuns. Finally, out under the squat S. Vitale gate in the circuit of brick walls that form Bologna’s city limits. The soldiers, robed men, and banners keep moving forward, sweeping the women and children along with them out of the city and down the road that runs along the Savena River, now swollen with spring rains. It’s a slow business. Some of the poor walk with crutches while the very old and very young can only shuffle. An hour or two after leaving the bishop’s courtyard the long line of many thousand veers right off the main road, confirming a rumor that most of the poor had suspected and many had feared. They are heading to the old monastery of S. Gregorio, a place few have seen but many have heard of, because this rambling complex houses the S. Giovanni Battista pesthouse where Bologna has for many years sent its lepers and those hit with plague, to live alone and likely to die. It also houses the orphanage of S. Gregorio, where poor girls orphaned or abandoned by parents too poor to keep them have been sheltered for decades. The men with banners and robes gradually fill up the large piazza outside, keeping a passage open for the poor to carry on into the old monastery.

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As Alessandra and her children go through the doors into a crowded courtyard, officials inside pull Matteo aside and push mother and daughter toward a second door at the far end that leads into a second and even smaller courtyard. There, a second group of officials picks two rough-sewn shifts from a pile and gives them to Alessandra and Betta. These are their new clothes. They go to another table to get bread—not a week’s supply this time, but just enough for the day’s meal. Alessandra scouts out a place where she and Betta can drop their bundles and eat, wondering why she is here and for how long, and wondering who will look after Matteo. 3 What made people like Alessandra and her family poor? Accelerating cycles of plagues, famines, and wars stand out as events that drove thousands into poverty. Through the sixteenth century each decade seemed to bring its own conjunction of crop failure and pestilence that destroyed the social and economic life of cities. Some of these were purely local, while those of the 1520s, the 1550s, the 1570s, and particularly the late 1580s and 1590s cut a swath through large parts of the continent. Economic dislocations, like the stimulus of sudden wealth from the Americas, worked through the European financial system pushing up prices before it pushed up wages, and pushing millions into poverty. When famines, plagues, recessions, and inflation collided together, they set the continental economy bucking in booms and busts that tossed millions more out of work and into hunger. It’s not for nothing that the sixteenth century has been known as the Iron Century. Yet for all these episodes of boom and bust, what most poor experienced was life cycle poverty. An Alessandra di Giovanni da Budrio is pushed over the edge by the events of the early 1560s, but what’s really making her poor is her situation as a young widow with two children. The century’s upheavals simply complicated an economic system that was already hard enough. With work uncertain and paid by the piece at marginal rates, poverty was a given for most children, for many maturing families, and for all but a few of the old. The best years were those just before and just after marriage, and particularly before children arrived with their hunger for food and the breadwinners’ time. These were the realities for the working poor, who made up the bulk of the population. Dependents tipped households into poverty because they pushed

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expenses above earnings. Old age gave no relief since it pushed earnings below expenses.4 Women felt poverty first and they felt it longest. Female infants were more likely than males to be abandoned by desperate parents. Adolescent girls were more likely than boys to be sent to orphanages or to convents when household economies could not secure their future. Married women were more likely to outlive their husbands and faced widowhood without a wage earning spouse. In a social system that identified women by their relationships to males—she was above all a daughter, a niece, a sister, a wife, a mother—a woman living on her own was more likely to experience poverty. Certainly more likely than a man. Men more often abandoned their families in desperate times and widowers more often abandoned their children than widows did. So when poverty hit, men could cut themselves loose of their dependents and possibly even move away in order to improve their situation. Fewer women could or did do that. It was their dependence and their dependents that made women more vulnerable to poverty at each stage of their life cycle. Families in every social range fretted about gathering enough money for a dowry, and that more than anything pushed those who pushed their daughters out of the household in order to balance a teetering family economy. They fretted about preserving a girl’s sexual honor, because losing it could push dowry costs higher or even make marriage impossible. At that point, a woman’s dependence on her relatives could become open-ended. These factors made it harder to insert girls into the informal fostering arrangements that historians call the “circulation of children”—relatives, friends, and neighbors taking in a child when parents became ill, unemployed, or died.5 A boy earned more and required less. Earning less and costing more, a girl was simply a greater liability. Boys could be turned loose to find their own way by late adolescence, but turning a girl loose was almost unthinkable. These were the interlocking fi xed realities of a patriarchal social system in a fragile economy. Structural poverty joined with episodic famines, wars, or illnesses that kept many in a life of poverty, and women most of all. Food and clothes from neighbors, a child fostered with relatives, a landlord’s blind eye to rent, a priest’s few pennies, some small-scale theft

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and possibly some prostitution—these were the informal makeshifts by which most survived. This was not unique to early modern Europe, but can be traced far back into the classical past and can be found in many parts of the world today. There were certainly exceptions and escapes. Some girls and women managed to do quite well. They are fascinating, but they were not typical. Females experienced poverty earlier and longer, and fit less readily into informal makeshift systems of care. This was why the institutional forms of relieving poverty that early modern towns and cities experimented with almost all focused primarily on girls and women. We are used to talking about how “the poor” caught the attention of early modern reformers and led them to urge a push beyond the informal and individual makeshift approaches of patronal charity toward broader practical and institutional solutions for poverty as a civic and religious duty. Authors like Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives penned tracts; preachers like Savonarola gave sermons; artists like Albrecht Durer produced images; towns, cities, and territories across Europe from Venice to Lyons to Bruges and Wittenburg experimented with new ways to reduce the numbers and improve the lives of their own poor.6 All this attention produced mixed results. Some of the practical measures aimed to punish those deemed “unworthy”—healthy, young, and fit, and so judged to be poor thanks largely to their own laziness. Most of these were men. But rounding them up, whipping them, and expelling them from the city hardly stretched the imagination. If we look more closely, and particularly if we look at how societies aimed creatively to devise practical means of helping the “worthy” poor—sick, old, or dependent—we see that almost all the real departures from earlier practices and almost all the real social, political, and financial innovations were aimed first and foremost at girls and women. This becomes particularly clear if we move beyond alms and relief, and broaden our view to incorporate those measures of practical charity that were aimed at promoting mutual assistance and self-help among the working poor. Here too, much of the focus and many of the real innovations were directed particularly at women. This chapter will focus on innovations in institutions, and look at how Bologna’s early measures at sheltering the poor reveal this tilt toward specifically female poverty. From its fifteenth-century foundling homes,

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through its early sixteenth-century orphanages and conservatories for abandoned children, to the midcentury experimental steps by which it moved tentatively to the citywide welfare system of the OPM, Bologna’s charitable innovations responded first and most creatively to the needs of girls and women. Handling female poverty stimulated the greatest imagination and some first steps toward institutional intervention and practical charity. Most notably, each new institution the Bolognese opened through these decades moved them to another stage further along the life cycle of poverty as experienced by girls and women. Up until the formal establishment of the OPM in 1560 and the procession that opened its poorhouse three years later, much of Bologna’s efforts were aimed at replicating in institutional form some of the family and household realities that needy girls were otherwise missing out on. It steered poor girls into marriage and aimed to help poor women preserve their households. Those who were older on entering a shelter tended to incur more of the blame for their own fates. As the century progressed they would face ever tighter disciplinary conditions in those homes. Yet it is important to recognize that the developing system of practical charity wasn’t initially about discipline. It was about misericordia—the city was gathering its resources together to shelter its own and help them help themselves. It’s equally important to recognize that these were institutions created by institutions. That is, they were developments by and through the confraternities, hospitals, and civic magistracies that were the tissue of Bologna’s civil society, and they make the emerging system above all a civic system that was rooted in the city’s traditional values and resources and oriented to its citizens. Convents, hospitals, and even the newly opened Jewish ghetto provided models for how to enclose, protect, and redeem groups ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred. Because it was above all a civic system, institutional politics played an important part in the emergence of each step. By contrast, we will see in Chapter 5 that in the latter half of the century, it was individuals pursuing religious dreams and charitable drives who would push a second wave of important and creative initiatives. They would still direct their efforts to female life cycle poverty above all, but they would be less involved in local political dynamics and they would open their doors more readily to “foreigners” and outsiders.

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What then were the politics that so shaped Bologna’s expanding network of civic welfare? Each institutional step that expanded the scope of the worthy poor also came to expand the possibilities for the worthy rich—those men and women who responded to poverty not just as a charitable imperative or religious challenge but also as a political and social opportunity. Bologna was undergoing significant political upheaval as it lost the de facto independence it had enjoyed for much of the fifteenth century under the signorial family of the Bentivoglio and adjusted to life under the firmer hand of a reinvigorated Papal State, represented locally by powerful legates and vice legates. Its elite embraced these opportunities to help poor females in part because they feared that the failure to do so might lead the mass of Bologna’s poor to reject the emerging political order and to join behind those local forces that continued to agitate for the return of the Bentivoglio. Yet these same elites jostled among each other to determine who would shape and control the new institutions, and the patronage, wealth, and prestige that came with them. In all this sociopolitical jostling, the voices promoting practical charity tended to come out of traditional republican magistracies and communal groups like guilds, while those advocating patronal charity allied with the emerging oligarchical order. The cycle of poverty and the cycle of politics converged to push Alessandra, Matteo, and Betta down Strada S. Vitale, together with hundreds of poor Bolognese and thousands of robed officials and confratelli, out to their new home under the care of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti.

The Turning Wheel: Charitable Institutions and Life Cycle Poverty The turning wheel of the foundling home is the most potent symbol of the female life cycle of poverty. Small, discreetly placed doors in the exterior walls opened to reveal a tiny space with a turntable large enough only for a newborn. It took only seconds to open the door, place the baby on the turntable, and ring the bell alerting those inside to turn the wheel and bring in the new arrival into the home. Some foundling homes adapted baptismal fonts or simple boxes cut into the exterior walls to allow a parent or porter to slip the infant safely and anonymously from the street into the

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home. Yet the wheel caught on and caught the public imagination. Critics thought that it encouraged immorality, and so when Thomas Coram established his foundling home in London in 1739, he did away with it and took infants only after an interview with the mother. By the next century, foundling homes from Paris to St. Petersburg were hoping that they could stop runaway abandonments simply by closing the wheels. By that time, more and more married couples were opening the little doors at the sides of foundling homes in order to deposit their baby boy or girl on the turntable and ring a bell signaling the new arrival to those inside. The nineteenth-century wheel became a pressure valve for household poverty in industrial society. Centuries earlier it had been unmarried adolescent girls opening the door, and more often than not it was infant girls placed on the wheel and then dying in the home. The early modern wheel was a pressure valve for female poverty in a patriarchal society.7 Foundling homes emerged in the fifteenth century out of fears that unmarried girls were throwing their illegitimate children into rivers and trash heaps.8 Some of this was urban legend, but not all. The girls Italians feared for were the ones with fewest rights, options, or direct family ties. Many were domestic servants or slaves, a social group at one remove from tight household constraints on sexual behavior that was also most vulnerable to sexual assault. If a male refused to recognize and support the child he had fathered with an unmarried servant or slave, this mother had little way of caring for it independently and little alternative beyond abandoning it. The men establishing foundling homes were often merchants, artisans, and professionals who employed many female servants. Some at least were the fathers, uncles, or grandfathers of the babies being abandoned. They worked collectively through their guilds or confraternities to open the foundling homes, and in Renaissance Italy more of them were aiming to protect the very children they refused to recognize. Foundling homes were really the first specialized institutions to emerge out of the multipurpose hospitals clustered in every Italian city and town to shelter travelers, the sick, the old, widows—in short, all the poor of Christ. By sheltering abandoned infants they were, in a sense, addressing the first stage of life cycle poverty. They were also demonstrating the self-interest that lay behind many of the initiatives in practical charity.

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One of the first specialized foundling homes was Florence’s Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents) opened in 1444 under the direction of silk merchants through their guild of Por S. Maria.9 Bologna’s Ospedale degli Esposti (Hospital of the Exposed Infants) opened six years later as the work of four confraternities that merged together under the title of S. Maria degli Angeli and took over a derelict pilgrims’ hostel for precisely this purpose. Initially it took in only an eighth of the city’s foundlings, and in the 1470s this could mean as few as two or three babies per month. Yet accelerating numbers of abandonments pushed civic officials to unite six other smaller hospitals into the Esposti in the 1490s in order to create a single central foundling home with a substantial endowment and impressive quarters not unlike Florence’s Innocenti. By 1494, three hundred infants annually were entering its expanded complex of buildings on Via S. Mamolo, the major street leading south out of Piazza Maggiore, most of them pushed through a wheel placed discreetly at the rear. Only a handful were legitimate, and most Bolognese ignored the home’s official name and simply called it the “Bastardini.”10 Over the next few decades, the Ospedale degli Esposti’s fortunes tracked political changes in the city. It expanded rapidly under the sponsorship of the signorial Bentivoglio family in the 1490s, suffered serious reversals upon their demise in 1506, and was firmly in the hands of a coalition of male patricians by the mid-1520s. These political changes were thoroughly intertwined with social changes, and within Bologna, the Esposti became the vehicle for experiments in institutional social care. It was the first hospital merged with several others in the city and countryside to create a centralized and specialized service for the whole region, accepting infants both at its main complex on Via S. Mamolo and at ten hospitals scattered through the Bolognese territory. It was the first to have a wealthy confraternity forcibly merged into it in order to provide funds for the expanded work.11 While that union would fail, the Esposti was also the first charitable home to have its governing confraternity of S. Maria degli Angeli taken over by worthy rich patricians aiming to expand their patronage networks—the Bentivoglio first of all, but the emerging oligarchy of senators after the signorial family’s fall. Both would also exploit it as a symbol of their metaphorical fatherhood over Bologna’s poor.12

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The Esposti’s entrance records would disappear in the great restructuring of charitable institutions that Napoleonic social engineers carried out in the early nineteenth century.13 An anonymous 1580 source claimed that 3,400 babies were born in Bologna in that year, and 350 ended up in the Esposti. By the end of that decade, parish officials were starting to improve their census taking, and they recorded 64 infants in the Esposti in 1588, 200 “in circa” in 1589, and then 149 in 1591 (there were likely more infants and children lodged with wetnurses out in the Bolognese countryside).14 These were the years when famine really began to bite, and some of these babies may have been abandoned when their starving mothers died in childbirth, or when impoverished employers used the excuse of pregnancy to turn a servant girl out. Certainly the stray traces that we have are of mothers who were largely unmarried and of a residential population that was largely female. According to one seventeenth-century source, boys were transferred to other institutions by age four while girls remained in the home on Via S. Mamolo until they married, became nuns, or died. Bologna’s Ospedale degli Esposti was a home shaped for centuries by the dovetailing of men’s sexual appetites and political ambitions with girls’ vulnerability and poverty.15 The next critical stage in the life cycle of poverty was adolescence. Here again, girls experienced it more critically than boys, largely because of the overwhelming concern with preserving sexual honor—at least the honor of girls from better families fallen on hard times.16 The Bolognese moved more quickly than other Italian cities with efforts to set new specialized institutions in place to address adolescent female poverty specifically.17 This was a twofold challenge. Sheltering girls whose parents had died or grown destitute was the first hurdle, but the next step of practical charity was providing these girls with a future—that is, a dowry and a husband. In the two decades from 1505, three shelters reserved exclusively for adolescent girls opened in Bologna, each sheltering dozens of the girls known as abbandonate or fanciulle, to the point that by midcentury as many as three hundred adolescent girls were under this kind of institutional care. Unlike the Esposti, each new home emerged in response to a sudden convergence of demographic and political crisis. Famine and plague had either killed parents or forced them to abandon daughters who, without proper shelter, could end up turning tricks on

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the street. This was a particular problem because, unlike the Esposti again, these young girls were not the illegitimate offspring of servant girls and slaves, but the legitimate children of mercantile or artisanal families. If the Esposti was about saving lives, these newer homes were about saving honor. Because of this no one could abandon a child anonymously at any of these shelters, and instead each girl entered only after a protracted examination of her need, her family, her reputation, and—most importantly and invasively—her virginity. The early steps toward shelters for these girls were halting and uncertain, since the Bolognese had no clear model to follow. What they were moving toward was a little like a convent, except that the girls would stay for only a few years. It was also a little like a charitable hostel or hospital, except that no one but adolescent girls would enter: no pilgrims, no sick, no infants, no aged. A group of citizens rushed the first home open in the aftermath of a serious famine in 1505 when faced with “honorable” girls, suddenly without parents, wandering the streets in search of food and shelter. They moved the girls around various sites in Bologna, including even a few years in the city’s new syphilitics’ hospital of S. Giobbe (St. Job). The final stop was in the early 1520s in a house on Via S. Vitale in the eastern Porta Ravennate quarter, where they also fi xed on the name of Martha, Christ’s hardworking and practicality-oriented female friend and disciple and the patron saint of domestic servants and those in the hospitality trade. The horrific deaths of the plague-ridden decade of the 1520s left so many children abandoned and orphaned that three additional orphanages emerged on the model of S. Marta to house, educate, and occupy them. The crisis peaked in 1527, and later in that year Bologna’s civic authorities took advantage of the space available in the former S. Gregorio monastery outside the city, where they had already located the S. Giovanni Battista leper house, and made space for dozens of girls. Two hundred girls would soon end up crowding into the S. Gregorio conservatory, and that would still not be enough. A year later the pilgrim’s hostel of S. Maria del Baraccano located just inside the southeast S. Stefano city gate was also transformed as foreign travelers were turned away in order to make space for Bolognese girls. The pilgrims’ hostel at S. Francesco did the same in 1530, although only temporarily. Only after

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these homes for orphaned and abandoned girls were up and running was a parallel home for boys established, within what had once been the S. Bartolomeo di Reno travelers’ hostel. Over the short space of three years in the mid-1520s, Bolognese citizens, confraternities, and civic authorities had opened three shelters within a few blocks of each other on the east side of the city, housing over three hundred orphaned and abandoned girls. Powerful patricians, wealthy widows, and working professionals and artisans all joined together to organize and fund the homes. They were determined that these new institutions would not become permanent homes for the adolescents on the model of convents, but would function instead as secular and temporary shelters where practical charity would give girls the tools to return to Bolognese society and make a new life for themselves. When it looked in 1526 as though S. Marta would be absorbed into a convent, a hastily organized confraternity operating under the name of S. Maria della Castitate (St. Mary of Chastity) took it over and bought out the convent’s interest. Some of these same people then collaborated in opening the S. Gregorio and S. Maria del Baraccano homes over the next few years. No other Italian city had yet done anything quite like this, though many would soon open similar homes. One thing that drove Bolognese authorities to these experiments, apart from the girls’ sheer need, was simple fear. The current of fear driving a broad range of social and political changes in the first half of the sixteenth century came out of Bologna’s long-standing and always violent factionalism. The Bentivoglio family, who had dominated the city for much of the fifteenth century before being ejected in 1506 and 1512, were again maneuvering to return, and there was no doubt that they would aim to exploit divisions in the city in order to stir up support. Patricians readily recruited the city’s working poor into these divisions, and in the most extreme example had used them to completely demolish the Bentivoglio palace after the family’s first attempt to return in 1507. In a breathtaking example of factional revenge, mobs sacked one of the largest palaces in Italy before reducing it to a heap of rubble; papal authorities pointedly left the site vacant for the next two hundred years. The Medici may have been expelled three times from Florence, but they never faced this kind of extreme public violence or the utter destruction of their palace. Bologna’s intense factionalism made its

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politics an extraordinarily delicate tightrope walk, and the forces bearing on the papacy in decades marked by ongoing religious upheavals and the sack of Rome shook that rope hard. Though robbed of their home base, the Bentivoglio had no difficulty recruiting foreign allies who welcomed the opportunity to undermine papal power by supporting this challenge to the largest and wealthiest city in the Papal State. They even, paradoxically, had some friends in very high places. Leo X had aimed to bring the former signorial family back into the ruling group as a means of healing factionalism and in recognition of the long-standing alliance between the Medici and the Bentivoglio. His great-grandfather, Cosimo the Elder, had been instrumental in first installing the Bentivoglio in Bologna, and Leo had some natural sympathies for the trials faced by exiled oligarchical families.18 Yet it was Bologna’s own Senate, purged of Bentivoleschi decades before, that was most adamant about keeping them out. They were able to keep the city’s gates closed when Ermes Bentivoglio appeared with a French army in March 1527, but they knew that the key to keeping the former signorial family outside the walls lay in providing a degree of social security to those within them. This meant securing subsistence for the poor and convincing the broader mass of artisans and professionals that the civic authorities had systems in place to support their families when plague, famine, or war threatened to leave them destitute. While senators were among the most intensely opposed to the Bentivoglio, other local magistracies shared the desire to keep the former ruling family out. These included the Elders (Anziani), the Tribunes of the People (Tribuni delle Plebe), and the Masters of the Guilds (Massari delle Arte), all magistracies dating to Bologna’s fourteenth-century communal government. Naturally, some former Bentivoleschi could be found among the dozens of men who annually took their turns serving on these magistracies. As a group, they considered themselves the guardians of popular interests and frankly looked on the oligarchical Senate with suspicion, and sometimes as not much better than the Bentivoglio. The internecine fighting between these communal-era magistracies and the oligarchical Senate would have a significant impact on charity and the evolution of Bologna’s network of supports through the first half of the sixteenth century, as we will see in Chapter 3.19

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Sudden crises had opened a cluster of orphanages in the 1520s, but it took more concerted efforts to keep them going after those crises had passed. And bigger than the challenge of getting girls in was the challenge of getting them out. Dowries were the key here. A few years after the foundations of the mid- to late 1520s, as more girls were reaching marriageable age, the same loose coalition of confraternities, guilds, individuals, civic authorities, and ecclesiastics that had opened the girls’ orphanages in the first place took their experiment in alleviating female poverty to the next logical step by creating a civic dowry fund. The Monte di Pietà banked the money, and the heads of Bologna’s Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican houses oversaw payments: fifty lire for the girls of S. Gregorio, and one hundred lire for the girls of S. Marta and S. Maria del Baraccano, who tended to come from better families. Bolognese women were the main early donors to this fund, and within a few years, the Monte di Pietà expanded it significantly.20 As we will see below, patronal and practical charity interwove in Bologna’s emerging system of dowry subsidies. While many of the dowries that secured marriages for orphanage girls were described as “gifts,” only a portion represented the patronage of guilds, patricians, families, parishes, or confraternities. Many girls in fact earned their own dowries as the delayed payment for seven to ten years of forced spinning, lace making, or silk processing that they carried out inside the orphanage walls. Work, gifts, and family pledges all combined in differing amounts to make up the standard dowry that enabled a girl to start a family of her own. Was this a civic welfare system? On one level the question is anachronistic, because no new law or single magistracy coordinated the work of these homes. At the same time, the evolving network of care was based in the motivations and methods of Bologna’s civil society, which was a firmer foundation than the warring magistracies and shifting laws of its civic politics. Efforts to keep the Bentivoglio at bay certainly helped trigger the immediate responses of the 1520s. Yet the ones who had to get up day to day and find ways to keep the homes going were members of a corps of hardworking individuals who sometimes took on roles at more than one of the homes. Their intermixing of patronal and practical forms of charity keeps us from plotting too neat and linear a process. Yet there was a distinct sense in the city itself that they all comprised a single civic

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effort aimed at helping poor girls. When one of the organizers, Silvio Guidotti, died in 1536, the local chronicler Giacomo Rinieri singled out his work with Bologna’s girls’ homes as the achievement most worth noting: “He was a devout man, and one of those who governed the hospitals, that is the girls of the Baraccano, and of S. Marta, and of San Gregorio.”21 The next stage in the life cycle of female poverty was perhaps the hardest to deal with. Shelters for foundlings and for abandoned girls aimed to return girls to “real” family life as mothers. In the life cycle of poverty, this was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. A girl who married out of the relative security of the foundling home of the Esposti or the orphanage of S. Gregorio could expect no more than a day laborer or poor artisan for a husband. She could also expect to be having babies soon after marrying, and each new infant would bring her a step closer back to poverty. And while authorities extended pity to infants and children, they tended to look suspiciously on young adult women as being in some way responsible for their poverty, and perhaps needing correction and discipline more than just bread and shelter. Bolognese authorities lacked models for helping poor young families in an organized fashion, just as they had lacked models for helping adolescent girls. Compounding the problem was the fact that young parents were not helpless like babies, children, the sick, or the old. As a result, any census that aimed to get a grip on the numbers of “worthy” poor was likely to leave out people like Alessandra di Giovanni and her children, Betta and Matteo. In consequence, it was these very young families who derailed Bologna’s first experiment with one of the other tools that early modern cities were using to reduce the numbers of those seeking relief: expulsion. Magistrates often couldn’t see far beyond food alone and they obsessed about securing a sufficient supply. Across Europe, their default response was to secure the perimeter of the city by ordering the guards at the gates to prevent grain from leaving and prevent new mouths from entering. Then they fiddled with tax incentives and laws to increase the sacks of grain coming in and decrease the number of people eating it. Bologna’s rulers faced this when two summers of drenching rains in 1537 and 1538 were followed by a sudden swing in 1539 to drought. Cities had traditionally subsidized food for their poor in times of famine, and Bologna was

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no exception. It lifted all taxes and duties for merchants who imported grain from outside the territory and was able to draw more grain in from Ferrara and Siena as a result.22 Yet as grain supplies continued dwindling and prices moved ever higher, civic officials began musing about whether Bologna should shift from increasing supply to reducing demand. Should it follow the example of other cities and relieve pressure on the tight food supply by expelling from the city those poor who some people thought had no right to be there—people who had come in from surrounding towns to feed off of Bologna’s grain supply? Since famine drove many rural laborers and travelers into cities in search of alms or relief, it was typically these recent arrivals that authorities aimed first to remove. “Recent” usually meant a few months or even a couple of years. In 1539 Bologna, the two sets of authorities who had traditionally handled the food distribution that constituted the bulk of poor relief, the Elders and the Tribunes of the People, decided that “recent” meant ten years. These draconian plans were the reverse side in civic religion of the generously protective image of the Madonna della Misericordia. There were strict boundaries to the Madonna’s cloak, and for all its popularity as a sign of mutual assistance and communitas, the image exacerbated the distinctions between insiders and outsiders that operated on so many levels in communities across Europe. The first murmurings of an expulsion of “foreign” poor began before farmers had even finished seeding their crops in the spring of 1539. Chronicler Giacomo Rinieri noted that rumors of a census of the poor began spreading from the middle of April. Through the summer and fall many poor Bolognese were growing more nervous about the survey that was moving parish by parish slowly through the city. No one knew quite why the census takers were going house to house, but according to Rinieri the word in the streets and taverns was that “it is said to send them out of Bologna” (si dice per mandarli fuora de Bologna). Grain prices jumped rapidly through that parched summer: 5.5 lire per corbe in April, 6.5 by May, 8 by July, 10.5 by August.23 When it became clear that harvest time would bring no miracles, authorities set the expulsion of the “foreign” poor for November 9, 1539, less than a week before the feast day of St. Martin (November 15), a day traditionally set aside for acts of charity. The awkward symbolism highlights their desperation: while St. Martin

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had used his sword to divide his cloak and share it with a beggar who was a stranger to him, the Elders were using their metaphorical power of the sword to cut beggars and strangers out of Bologna’s civic community. The Elders targeted two parishes in the southwest S. Procolo quarter of the city. Keeping mum about their exact plans, they ordered all the poor of those two parishes to assemble in one of the squares of the quarter. On the morning set for expulsion the eight elders put on their robes of office and joined the Standard Bearer of Justice (Gonfaloniere di Giustizia), who headed the Tribunes of the People. Together they marched in procession from the Palazzo Comunale where they lived and worked through their term of office, accompanied by guards and some of the communal trumpeters and banditori who made public announcements through the city. What were they expecting? Chronicler Rinieri suggests that they were anticipating a square full of sturdy young male laggards, vagabonds, and professional beggars whom they could blow out of the city with their trumpeters, guards, and the sheer power of office. What they found instead was a huge crowd of mothers, fathers, young children, and babes in arms all weeping for mercy. The din was overwhelming. When rural men married city women, were the families “foreign”? If a rural woman’s city husband had died, was she once again “foreign”? What about her children? Confused, possibly disappointed, but possibly also relieved, the Elders and Tribunes lost heart and canceled the expulsion plan.24 The poor families went home that day, and the price of grain continued rising. It more than doubled over the next five months, and the famine continued through the following spring. Authorities reverted to raising alms, but their public appeals, edicts, collections, and public processions with the miracle-working Madonna di S. Luca failed to raise enough money. Poor Bolognese were falling down starving in the streets, and the chronicler Rinieri reported that he himself had come across many “stretched out on the ground as though dead . . . one at the side of the Palazzo [Comunale] and a woman in the Piazza, and a man in Porta Nova with his wife and two little children, and I gave them a glass of wine with a bit of bread in the wine, and the mother dabbed at their mouths with it, and it was touching to see.” A few days later and

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in the same neighborhood, the patrician Marsili family celebrated their daughter’s marriage to a young nobleman from the noble Roman Colonna family with an enormous banquet. The city’s poor rushed to the palace for one of the traditional rituals of local festive patronal charity, when members of the wedding party opened the windows and threw bread down to well-wishers in the street below. A few days later the hunger processions began again.25 The Elders clearly were at a loss, with no alternatives to pursue. Crying mothers and babies had led them to back away from the expulsions that other cities had tried successfully. Bolognese authorities didn’t abandon the idea entirely, and they once again chose the week before the feast of St. Martin in November 1544 to announce their plan. This time it was the papal legate Giovanni Morone who was ordering that all vagabondi and their families leave the city within twenty-four hours and be out of the territory within three days or risk being hustled off to prison for a few drops of the strappado—hands tied behind their backs, then hoisted, dropped, and suddenly jerked up before their feet touched the ground. This, Morone hoped, would “conserve quiet and peaceful living.”26 “Vagabonds” was the code for “foreign” and usually male poor, but Morone’s order did not specify how long a family would have had to be resident to avoid this label, and it likely ended as a dead letter. Certainly, instead of pouring out of Bologna’s gates, poor families were flooding into the city’s hospitals for refuge and care, and a month later Legate Morone was raising the alarm about poor women, men, and children all living together in the large open dormitories built for traveling pilgrims. He ordered that hospital officials take care to separate the men from the women and children, and threatened fines against those who refused to comply.27 This suggests that authorities were seeking a solution that would better meet the needs of young families. These families were already forcing the hospitals’ hands and might soon start abandoning their children to the Esposti foundling home and the city’s orphanages. With a return of famine in 1548, an anonymous plan circulated through the city in the form of a printed tract “Provision by Alms for the Poor of Every Sort of the City of Bologna.” After the usual condemnations of vagabonds, of

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false beggars “who with a thousand lies stuff the city of Bologna,” of the grasping shamefaced poor, and the gullible religious, the tract laid out an imaginative scheme that combined practical and patronal charity.28 Teams of volunteer officials called “provisioners” (provisori) would twice annually assess the city’s resources and needs. Working quarter by quarter, they would interview all heads of households to determine how much each was planning to give in alms that year, and then review all the poor in order to determine what their needs were. This would generate two lists, one of alms and one of needs, and the provisori would pair them up. The poor then received tickets that they could take to specific households in their neighborhood in order to claim a bit of bread, some wine, or vegetables. Any cash alms left over at the end of the year were banked with the Monte di Pietà as a hedge against future needs. If the provisori wished, they could give out the excess alms in dowries to selected poor girls. All begging was banned. Pairing the worthy poor and worthy rich in this way could make almsgiving more personal. It was a creative effort to put a more formal civic structure around the informal help that neighbors, family, and friends typically offered each other when sickness, unemployment, or famine hit. We do not know who was behind the plan. Its proponents likely included Giovanni Angelo de’Medici, the future Pope Pius IV, who had been a law student in Bologna during the ferocious plague and famine of the 1520s, and who returned as vice legate in 1547–1548; as we will see, Pius IV took advantage of his new powers to launch a number of Bologna’s stalled initiatives against poverty just months after becoming pope on Christmas Day 1559.29 Whoever the authors of the 1548 proposal may have been, they envisioned that the prosperous giver would offer food to a poor family from his own kitchen or employ one of the needy children as a servant in his own house—precisely the kind of personal relationship that was at the core of traditional patronal charity. They counted explicitly on more immediate assessment of individual needs and a closer check on fraud, assuming that Bologna’s artisans and merchants would be sufficiently tightfisted that any shiftless and “unworthy” poor would quit the city in frustration without being forced—an expulsion without tears or violence. What they hadn’t counted on was shopkeepers’ reluctance to act as unpaid beggar catchers or social workers. The

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plan was circulated to the College of Masters of the Guilds for comment and approval and there it sank without a trace.30 Plague returned to Bologna a few months later, forcing civic authorities to respond to the needs of the poor more efficiently and forcefully. Panic gripped the city from August 1549 as plague came nearer and triggered an unprecedented descent into the anarchy of armed factional violence and crime. The city shut off access from Ferrara where the plague had already hit, issued edicts against carrying arms, and sharply increased penalties for the theft of grain, cattle, food, and wood. A new plan emerged a year later under the combined sponsorship of the Elders, the Masters of the Guilds, the Senate, and the new eighteen-year-old cardinal legate, Innocenzo del Monte. As the son of female beggar, Innocenzo del Monte knew a thing or two about women’s poverty, and might have been expected to be sympathetic. In fact, he was widely suspected of having won both the cardinal’s hat and the Bolognese legation simply for having been the new pope’s lover, and he took little part in the active business of governing the city.31 Under the oversight of sixteen officials (four from each quarter) known as the Magnifico Ufficio, assessors registered the worthy poor of Bologna’s four quarters in four massive volumes. The assessors listed the poor alphabetically by name and surname, recording how many children they had and what their needs were. Members of the Magnifico Ufficio then interviewed each poor family, and those deemed worthy received a small round medallion that men wore on their hats and that women and children pinned to their clothes to mark them out as legitimate poor. 32 The badges entitled them to receive food vouchers that they redeemed every Monday morning in the cloister of the local mendicant church that served as the distribution center for their city quarter. The plan’s authors envisioned generosity: 1.5 pounds of bread per person per day, and thirty soldi weekly to buy the vegetables and dressings (called conpanatici) that would turn the bread into a meal. The officials distributed wine by need. Officers of the Magnifico Ufficio were to attend each Monday morning distribution so that they could raise or lower individual allotments as necessary. They might even cut off a person altogether. Begging was once again banned and punishable by torture: women and children risked fifty lashes, while men could

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have their arms dislocated in the infamous strappado. Those marked for expulsion were identified specifically as vagrants and vagabonds—a group almost always male and unattached. 33 Genoa had started a similar program ten years before with its Ufficio dell’elemosina dei poveri (Office of the Alms of the Poor), which distributed food to recipients who had been screened in advance.34 Bologna’s 1550 plan offered the best means yet of keeping needy families together and in their homes, and ensured that the aged and infirm poor would also get the food that they needed without having to beg on the streets or at the doors of monasteries and convents. Organizers had to abandon the earlier idea of pairing worthy rich and poor directly, a plan that was as much about promoting social cohesion as about discipline. Instead, they fostered that cohesion by establishing a confraternity of men and women called the Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti (Company of the Poor Beggars) whose members gave alms and processed around the city at Easter and on Christmas Day raising donations. All Bologna’s magistrates, clergy, and confraternities marched in these processions, which climaxed in a public spectacle on Piazza Maggiore where the poor came to receive their feast-day alms. The statutes bluntly noted that the spectacle fed the public-relations side of patronal charity: “We need as much involvement as we can get, and [this way] all the People can see who is giving the alms.”35 It was the magistracy of the Elders who took on leadership of this 1550 plan. Over the next year they expanded it with further provisions for widows and orphans, and at the end of the second year they ceremonially deposited the four massive volumes of their poverty census in the city archive as part of the Christmas Day procession.36 In the wake of the plague, they also decided that not all poor should remain in their homes in the city. From spring 1552 they began moving those poor who were ill and infirm over to the S. Gregorio monastery outside the city to join the orphaned and abandoned girls already living there.37 Authorities drew so frequently on S. Gregorio in part because its location allowed them to keep various groups outside the city while its architecture allowed them to keep men and women apart as Cardinal Legate Morone had wanted. Two courtyards ringed by dormitories, a refectory, and a church gave males and females their separate and self-contained

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Figure 1. The First Shelter of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti: the Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia (later S. Gregorio). Source: Archivio di Stato di Bologna, Fondo Demaniale, Abbazia di SS. Naborre e Felice, 88/916 Campione 1 “Piante de fondi rustici ed urbani,” f. 2r. Used with permission.

spaces (see Figure 1). An encircling wall secured the entire complex with open yards to the north and the south. Papal troops had pillaged the monastery church during a siege in 1511, and it sat in ruins for over thirty years before civic authorities bought the complex and reconstructed the church. The girls of S. Gregorio presumably went elsewhere for regular religious services, and rebuilding the church became a priority for those who wanted to remove any reason for the marginalized and expelled poor to leave the complex and return to the city. 38

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The Critical Decade Assessors, expulsions, food vouchers, and shelter for sick paupers all developed as parts of the 1550 plan. Its emergence that year triggered a decade-long review of all existing charitable institutions in Bologna that resulted in far greater coordination, closer political control, and somewhat more discipline. Authorities moved to further expand the food supply by expanding the series of subsidies and rewards for merchants who imported grain from elsewhere. As regular as clockwork, the city’s banditore would go out with his trumpet and his broadsheets after a disappointing seeding in February or a failed harvest in July, and announce a new round of incentives for importers of foreign grain. By the end of the decade authorities were also helping rural peasants who were unable to pay their debts.39 Female life cycle poverty remained a key driver of innovation, but it was the troubled politics of the decade that would shape Bologna’s emerging response to it. Simmering tensions between the oligarchical Senate and popolare interests came to a boil both inside and outside the governing circle as the Senate pushed more aggressively to consolidate the expanding network of charitable institutions and its own authority. Confraternal hospitals had long been central players in local charity, and the efforts to rationalize and reorient them from serving pilgrims to serving various groups of needy Bolognese had been pushed by the oligarchy from the time of first mergers in the foundling home of the Esposti in 1494. Yet the activities of individual hospitals were never coordinated. More to the point, governing statutes written in the fifteenth and even fourteenth centuries often bore no relation to the new charitable work they had taken on in the sixteenth. The hospitals moved to correct this over the course of a few years in the mid-1550s. The conservatory of S. Maria del Baraccano, the hospitals of S. Maria della Vita and S. Maria della Morte, and the confraternity aiding the respectable poor (the Opera Pia dei Poveri Vergognosi) all clarified their administrative structures in new governing statutes.40 They had transformed themselves from pilgrims’ hostels into specialized hospitals, but were still operating under rules that had more to do with giving a night’s hospitality to travelers than with providing a home to adolescents for a decade or so. The new rules for these hospitals

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didn’t simply clarify who paid the bills or how to evaluate applicants to the home, but laid out a broader vision of how children would be raised and the sick cared for, and how political authorities would coordinate this burgeoning network of charitable services and institutions. There was another reason for rewriting these rules. Bologna’s confraternal hospitals were moving beyond the passive care that had marked traditional patronal charity. This gave room to the confratelli running them to take a more active engagement in practical charity. Yet at this very time internal tensions were straining the confraternities. Some members welcomed the opportunity to take a more active civic and charitable role in the city, while others preferred to build a communal life around the traditional private and collective devotions that their brotherhoods had been following for well over a century. In the troubled politics of the 1550s, this became a skirmish in the deeper fight between popolare and oligarchic interests. The traditionalists tended to be artisans while the activists tended to be of a higher social class—merchants, professionals, and even senators. These worthy rich had, in most cases, joined only recently and opportunistically, seeing the confraternity’s properties and endowment as a convenient resource that they could redirect to their purposes. As they threw their weight around in confraternal meetings with the specific intent of reorienting this or that pilgrims’ hostel toward becoming an institution of practical charity, sharp tensions broke out into arguments, fights, and lawsuits. The disagreements became most critical at the hostels of S. Maria del Baraccano and S. Bartolomeo di Reno, which were turning into a girls’ and boys’ orphanage respectively, at S. Maria dei Guarini, which was being recast as the S. Giobbe syphilitics’ hospital, and even at S. Maria degli Angeli, sponsor of the Ospedale degli Esposti and the first of the charitable confraternities to be infiltrated and redirected by patrician members. Older members threatened to close the doors of the hospitals if the changes continued, and there were enough of them to make this the kind of live threat that would collapse the emerging network of charitable institutions that was developing in Bologna.41 The revised statutes that were pushed through at each of these institutions over the course of the sixteenth century aimed to head off these threats and ensure that confraternal activism around forms of practical

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charity carried on. Each of the confraternities divided into two groups: a company of the hospital (compagnia dell’ospedale, or compagnia larga) and a company of the oratory (compagnia dell’oratorio, or compagnia stretta). Each had its own elected administration and head, the master (massaro) for the hospital company and the prior (priore) for the oratory company. Yet they retained a common name, space, and institutional identity, and gained a new chief official, the rector (rettore), who could referee their disputes. In most cases, the rector was a patrician drawn from the Senate or at least from one of the senatorial families and serving a six- or twelve-month term. Departing from centuries-old tradition, he did not have to be a member of the confraternity itself. And should not be if he was to be the impartial referee that each institution’s revised statutes envisioned. Although these statutes spoke only in vague terms of “maintaining peace” in the confraternity, the rector’s main job was to keep the older and newer members working together, keep the institution’s doors open, and represent the overriding civic interests of Bologna. So while charitable concern for poor women and children still drove change, the stakes were greater and the politics deeper. Factional violence that simmered in the city through the late 1540s and erupted in the wake of the plague in 1549 had seriously unnerved Bologna’s Senate and legate. It pointed directly to an immediate threat that they all feared—that the Bentivoglio were again on the move, and were ready to recruit Bologna’s poor to stir up chaos in the city and open the gates to them. Ermes Bentivoglio’s attempt to return in 1527 had failed because the city remained united and the gates closed against him. Now Bologna’s authorities believed that Guido Bentivoglio, a condottiere operating around Mirandola, was intent on learning from this mistake and that he would work harder to draft the city’s poor to his cause. As in the 1520s, the specter of a Bentivoglio restoration concentrated authorities’ attention and pushed them to try new experiments in easing poverty and in making the poor themselves less of an immediate threat. As early as September 1547, Legate Giovanni Morone had sent a grim “State of the City” report to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, head of the Bolognese legation in the papal curia. The tensions between Charles V and Pope Paul III over the sudden transfer of the Council of Trent to Bologna in March that year had led authorities in the Papal State to fear

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Spanish and Imperial troop movements across northern Italy. Morone had been forced to levy extra taxes to hire mercenaries for the city, but this had backfired. He wrote that his authority was eroding as the angry (mal contento) people muttered darkly about wanting the return of their “distinctive liberties” (liberte insolite). The nobles were divided: some were for the Imperials and some for the French, but few supported the Church. Any attacker would have easy work of it. The city walls were in shambles and there was little artillery or ammunition. The light cavalry was miserable, and in any event it was off in Parma. There were only one hundred Swiss troops in the city, and Morone considered them useless (di poca virtù).42 From his quarters high above Piazza Maggiore in the heavily fortified Communal Palace, Legate Morone proposed to Cardinal Farnese an ambitious plan worthy of Machiavelli to win the Bolognese over. The pope would have to accept that that city was essentially a frontier outpost, but one well worth investing in and defending. He would need first of all to fortify it with the love of the people—that is, by cutting the extraordinary taxes that had been levied on them to pay for troops.43 But love alone doesn’t win battles, and the troops themselves should not be cut. Morone recommended investing in better cavalry and providing a sum large enough to pay for a permanent garrison of fifteen hundred to two thousand troops, many times larger than the force there currently, yet without charging the cost to the Bolognese people themselves. The situation deteriorated within a few weeks as torrential rains unleashed floods. Crops were damaged, the misery and hardship increased, and revenues collapsed. Morone pleaded for help and once again recommended cutting taxes, but with little effect.44 The factional violence that broke out two years later woke Roman officials up to the reality that Morone’s fears were justified, not least because both plague and violence had marched south from Ferrara, where the Bentivoglio were headquartered. The gathering crises of the early 1550s encouraged the Tribunes of the People and the Masters of the Guilds to appeal to Pope Julius III for more authority and for money to combat poverty and plague locally. They accused the Senate of misusing civic funds, and the Senate responded by describing them as seditious rabblerousers who were not to be trusted, just one more shot in an escalating

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battle between these political bodies that we will look at more closely in the next chapter.45 Through the fog of accusations going back and forth, Vice Legate Girolamo Sauli kept Rome informed with two or three letters weekly. He started writing daily reports as the shadow of threat darkened in late March 1555 when Pope Julius III lay dying. Sauli called the senators together as soon as he received word of Julius’s condition, and assured them that papal authorities would defend their hold on the city, no doubt suspecting that at least some of them were weighing the situation to see whether this was a good time to stir up the people, seize the city, and throw the Roman governors out. Tension gripped Bologna for the next few days. Sauli had reports that the Ferrarese and the French were assembling ten thousand troops and that Guido Bentivoglio was among them. He heard that armed bands of men were roaming around the countryside just outside the walls, and that some Bolognese nobles had brought gangs of heavily armed “foreigners” into the city. Sauli was well aware that the Bentivoglio still had supporters among the Bolognese nobility and people. He also knew that the period of the Sede Vacante, when the cardinals were meeting to elect a new pope, was fast approaching. This was often a time of sheer anarchy and violence in Rome and throughout the Papal State. Trials were suspended, prisons opened, and policing uncertain. The chaos would provide the perfect opportunity for the Bentivoleschi to move in and take over the city. Sauli summoned troops from Urbino, Romagna, and Bologna itself to defend the city’s gates and walls and secured their loyalty by paying them daily. He also called the senators together again and reminded them of the destructive factional violence that had whipped the city under the Bentivoglio. Sauli won their agreement to disarm their servants, send away the foreign gangs they had hired, and publicly pledge loyalty to the papal government. Julius died at the end of March, and by early April Sauli could report that his negotiations had succeeded and the city was still calm.46 Clearly, Bolognese authorities could not take the city’s security for granted when rule by papal governors was still so unpopular. Popes seldom lasted much more than five or seven years, and anarchy threatened each time one died, a situation further complicated when the new pope appointed his own raft of officials, leading to a complete turnover

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of ministers and staff in the papal governor’s office. The letters of Legate Morone and Vice Legate Sauli show that they saw the army of discontented poor within the city as a political threat. Rebellious nobles could all too easily call them into service as a mob that would rage through the city and easily turf out the lightly protected papal authorities. Providing better relief to these poor, and then moving as many of them as possible outside the city’s walls was as much a political necessity as a charitable obligation. Roman officials generally trusted the Senate more than the traditional magistracies with this task, in part because it was inherently more stable and powerful as a body, and in part because they could offer the kinds of political and curial patronage that ambitious senatorial patricians were always hungry for. The exception here was Julius III’s eventual successor, Paul IV, who distrusted all local authorities and was distrusted by them in turn, particularly as he aimed to curb their powers and bring cities like Bologna more firmly under the control of the Papal State. Among his earliest acts was the order that the Jews be shut up in ghettos, and civic authorities’ foot-dragging on this was in a long local tradition of delay and passive resistance. Mutual antagonism between the pope and local leaders produced something of a political stalemate in Bologna through the latter half of the 1550s. Paul IV’s suspicions led him to keep members of Bologna’s patriciate at bay up to his death in 1559, including even Bishop Giovanni Campeggi, while the Senate for its part worked to streamline and strengthen its own administration over the city. The converging of demographic, political, and ecclesiastical crises that sparked a busy decade of experiments and reforms culminated in the official establishment of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti in 1560 by a papal brief. It was a vindication of sorts for the new pope, Pius IV, Giovanni Angelo de’Medici. Only a dozen years earlier, he had been vice legate in Bologna when the 1548 plan was circulating through the city and he had clearly been thinking long and hard about the potential within Bologna and how it could best be won over to the Papal State. Like many high curial officials who were associated with reform movements of various kinds, he had lain low during Paul IV’s pontificate, and then came to power with pent-up energy and a full raft of plans for the city, the Papal State, and the Catholic Church generally. He understood that with all

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these groups, encouragement and cooperation would be more effective than suspicion and discipline. Pius IV installed his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, to get working on the biggest and most symbolic projects in the center of the city, like the Archiginnasio Palace for the university, the Portico of the Banks, and the Neptune fountain for Piazza Maggiore. The earlier plans for helping the poor that he had backed while vice legate in the 1540s now returned with some key revisions. The 1560 papal brief repeated central elements of that earlier plan while incorporating some of the experiments and lessons of the troubled 1550s. It created an administrative structure explicitly based on the newly reformed administrations of the city’s leading confraternal ospedali, showing that the new plan built on and continued Bologna’s existing charities and recent experiments. And it authorized the opening of a poorhouse that would gather all the city’s poor, not just orphans and the sick, and bring them to a central place. This would be the keystone of the OPM’s operations. It was as innovative a step as the Archiginnasio Palace was for the university, and had the same underlying goal of centralizing people and efforts that were currently scattered across the city. The Archiginnasio would gather students out of the various monastic lecture halls and studia where they had studied for centuries, and bring them to an innovative new center of higher education. The OPM’s poorhouse would similarly draw paupers and beggars out of streets, squares, and church doors where they had begged for just as long or longer, and bring them to an innovative new center of practical charity. Both buildings opened their doors in 1563, and both aimed to turn hitherto scattered and disorganized efforts into an institution that was more than the sum of its parts. The decade of the 1550s also marked the more decisive entrance of Bologna’s Senate into a field of activity that until then the Elders, Tribunes, and Masters of Guilds had overseen and that confraternities had carried out. The push to expand civic welfare had strengthened the Senate in its ongoing political struggle with these older bodies. It had the necessary judicial authority, financial resources, and administrative reach to achieve this expansion. The crises of this critical decade showed that civic welfare was becoming a political concern that engaged the highest level of the local government’s attention and resources. And

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the papal government too. By appointing his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, as the city’s legate, Pius IV demonstrated the priority he placed on working with its leaders and achieving goals they had jointly promoted years before. Politics and gender intertwined here. While new initiatives of practical charity would still be aimed primarily at women, the sequestering of the poor would become a greater priority, and relations of worthy poor to worthy rich would come to be more carefully defined.

Nights and Days at the Opera Three years passed between Pius IV’s bull establishing the OPM and the procession that brought people like Alessandra, Matteo, and Betta into the new poorhouse operating under the protection and title of S. Maria della Misericordia. Those preparing the way for the new Ospedale della Misericordia thought as much about the importance of a founding myth as about the practicalities of bread and uniforms. According to the statutes and later histories, a visiting preacher, Fra Teophilo Galloni da Trevino of the Augustinian Eremite Observants, mounted the city’s leading pulpit in the civic basilica of San Petronio during Holy Week. This vast church on Piazza Maggiore was not just dedicated to Bologna’s patron saint, but was a vehicle of its civic ambitions—this was where Clement VII had crowned Emperor Charles V, and this was what the Bolognese had aimed to complete on a scale beyond S. Maria del Fiore in Florence or even St. Peter’s in Rome. It was the city’s church, not the bishop’s seat, and the Senate appointed the preachers who spoke to the thousands standing inside. Fra Teophilo was hired with a purpose, and he did not disappoint. Over the course of those few days, he stirred up the gathered crowds with a vision of a shelter so great that it that would be able to gather all the city’s poor just as the great San Petronio gathered all its citizens. In the account later written into the OPM’s statutes and repeated faithfully into the twentieth century, Fra Teophilo’s preaching effected a miracle— it opened Bolognese hearts and purses in a spontaneous shower of alms that opened the shelter’s doors. Less than two weeks later, on the Sunday following Easter in 1563 (April 18), came the procession of more than eight hundred poor women, children, and men, the many Alessandras,

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Matteos, and Bettas, from the bishop’s palace to the new Misericordia poorhouse out beyond the city walls. If, as chronicler Marescalchi claims, all of Bologna’s confraternities were present, then the number of those processing would have numbered in the thousands, with the confratelli easily outnumbering the poveri.47 The orphaned and abandoned girls already living there did not leave, and it remained a shelter dominated by females: of the eight hundred who marched in procession out to it on that April Sunday morning, over two-thirds were women and children. The two courtyards that had kept orphaned girls and infirm poor separate for the past decade now segregated men and women. Waves of poor coming in the door soon swamped both courtyards.48 What did they do there? Women and children like Alessandra and Betta were herded into the further courtyard, “more remote and locked” (più remota e serrata), and from there were assigned sleeping spaces in the surrounding dormitories. Some had big beds into which a whole family could fit, while others may have had no more than straw mats laid on the floors or under the porticoes that ringed the courtyards. Only those lucky enough to be assigned one of the old monastic cells might enjoy a degree of privacy. Those with ragged clothes got new roughly sewn uniforms provided by the patronal charity of Bishop Giovanni Campeggi.49 Food was provided at a midday and an evening mealtime, thought it was likely little more than bread and soup, much of it collected by members of the Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti and by the dozen or so paupers who were deputed to go around the city gathering alms and food. A woman like Alessandra stayed in this inner courtyard and in the adjoining yard day and night, because one of the rationales for sending these poor out of the city was precisely to keep them from begging on the streets. Housing and feeding them in a single place was easier than finding something for them to do. Mothers could keep their daughters with them as well as any sons under age ten (later reduced to age seven); this was why Alessandra could keep Betta while being forced to surrender Matteo. At nightfall the women gathered their children into whatever bed or cell or set of mattresses was assigned to them and waited for the turning of the next day. Men and boys over age ten experienced a different daily cycle in the larger and more open neighboring courtyard. They could more often

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make arrangements to leave the Misericordia poorhouse during the day, and in fact the OPM encouraged precisely this. Matteo may have been among those who were allowed to seek out work in the city, whether as a day laborer, seasonal help, or apprentice, and who commuted to their jobs from the suburban poorhouse. They weren’t to beg on the streets, and indeed any caught doing this would be hauled back out to the poorhouse immediately. The shelter was meant as a place for working poor who lacked enough steady income for a home, and who as a result had been sleeping in the street, under Bologna’s famous porticoes, or in ditches along the canals and streams that snaked through the city. These men and boys were encouraged to pick up occasional work in the city or in the market gardens surrounding it, and then return to the Misericordia poorhouse at nightfall to sleep. The shelter was a version of the logic that Bologna’s magistrates had experimented with before: secure the perimeter, and then see to feeding those inside most efficiently. By day the women and children packed into their courtyard, while the men’s courtyard might be empty of all but a few of the old, the sick, and disabled. A few women and older children went out daily to gather alms and donations of food for the Misericordia poorhouse, wearing their uniform with the OPM’s insignia clearly visible so that they wouldn’t be arrested by the OPM beggar catchers patrolling Bologna’s streets. All of this may suggest a prison, yet the entrance gates weren’t yet firmly locked, and women, men, and families who could support themselves without begging were free to leave if they wanted. As it happened, in these early years more wanted to enter the Misericordia poorhouse than to leave it. This is a clear sign that harsh discipline was not yet a major part of the daily regime and that on the whole a poor person could have a better life inside than out. The regulations held that anyone applying to enter should be accepted or turned away within a day. Once in, a loose regime with predictable meals and sleeping quarters made the days and nights easier for the poor. Many were sick, and in fact this was the most likely cause of their fall into destitution. Sick residents could go for treatment to an on-site infirmary where a medic, Pompeo di Bianchi, and two nurses, Troilo and Giambattista (guardiani de gli infermi), gave immediate basic care. Two doctors on retainer visited the OPM shelter daily, so if residents’ illnesses persisted, Master Roberto, the doctor, might

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examine their urine and prescribe a cure, while Master Francesco, the surgeon, might decide on a treatment of bleeding.50 The new shelter was almost too successful. Caught between growing numbers and static revenue, and suspicious that too many cheats were finding their way into the Misericordia poorhouse, the OPM governors tightened the rules on entrance within four years. They reiterated that only citizens and those who had lived in Bologna for at least three years could enter the poorhouse, thereby underscoring the message of the icon of the Madonna della Misericordia that generous care was only for recognized members of the local communitas. Applicants would now have to pass two separate tests to secure and maintain admission. Three assessors (accetatori) in each quarter conducted the first quick and immediate means test, and then met together as a group to vote on the application and issue the license that the poor person brought to the OPM scribe (campionero) in order to get into the shelter. Once monthly, a panel of reviewers (riveditori) went over all the recent licenses more carefully in order to ensure that no one had entered through bribes to the assessors or while hiding goods that could be used to support them. Anyone who managed to sneak in despite being ineligible was stripped of the uniform they had been given on entrance, and sent packing with only the rags they had worn when they had first crossed through the Misericordia doorway. If they had managed to hide personal possessions, they would be charged the costs of food and clothing, even after death.51 Another way to relieve overcrowding at the Misericordia poorhouse was to ship out some of the men and boys. In 1567 the adolescent boys gained a shelter of their own located just inside the city walls at the S. Vitale gate. This made it easier for them to reach the building sites and workshops and market gardens around the city where work might be available, and it particularly handled the problem of young men being stuck inside the city walls after curfew: the OPM sometimes had to slip some money to the keeper of the S. Vitale gate to compensate him for waiting up in order to let the boys out of the city if they were too late.52 Here too, the Jewish ghetto in the center of the city provided something of a model, since local authorities had arranged its series of walls and openings to allow Jewish bankers and Christian clients to carry on doing

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business freely during the day while keeping the Jewish families segregated once the gates closed at nightfall.53 Freeing up one of the two courtyards and moving out the more mobile male population allowed the OPM to turn the Misericordia poorhouse into a more secure locked enclosure for women, girls, and older men. Officials now sometimes designated the Misericordia shelter outside the gate as the “Outside House” (casa di fuori), while they called the smaller one just inside the gate the “Inside House” (casa di dentro), with the men’s being the smaller of the two. For sake of clarity, we will call the former the Misericordia (and, after 1574, S. Gregorio) and the latter S. Maria della Pietà (St. Mary of Compassion), which is the name that it took on by 1591. A 1570 census counted 380 women and children in the Misericordia and 131 adolescent boys in the Pietà. A resident staff—six in the Mendicanti and twelve in the Pietà—oversaw them and kept both places running.54 This meant that a total of 521 people were under the care of the OPM in 1570, a sharp drop from the 800 who had marched out to the new Misericordia shelter only seven years earlier. Almost two decades later in 1587, on the very eve of a famine that would devastate Bologna and much of Europe and would cause further radical changes in poor relief everywhere, the numbers had dropped yet further to 448: 275 girls and women in the shelter outside the walls and 173 boys and men in the one inside the walls.55 These two censuses accompanied reports sent from Bologna to the legation office in Rome. Reports like this were to go out annually, but only the two for 1570 and 1587 remain. They open windows into the shelters and let us give names to some of the people working there. In 1570, three men and three women ran the Misericordia. A resident warden (guardiano), Giovanni di Rizardi, and his wife, Domenica, oversaw day-to-day operations, assisted by the head cook and baker, “Loio,” who organized the work of those who were drafted to help in a kitchen fully stocked with ovens, large kettles, pots, bowls, and a butcher’s block to prepare the meals for several hundred people at a time.56 Warden Giovanni and Domenica were to devote all their energies to the home and had to guard its resources: they couldn’t run a business on the side, or bring in other family members, or leave for even half an hour without

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appointing a deputy. They inventoried all furnishings, kept account of all goods coming in and money going out, supervised staff, and assigned collectors of alms and goods. Their duties were the duties of parents, and they had to think and act like parents: be firm but kind, and savvy but solicitous. They also had to be obedient, and in later years the OPM’s executive congregation was quick to dismiss a warden couple who failed to follow the directions given them by the rector and massaro.57 Spiritual care came through a priest, Don Jullio di Santolini, and also through two women, Sisters Giovanna and Appolonia of S. Marta, who cared for the abandoned and orphaned girls who still lived in the home; the women may indeed have been tertiary nuns, but sometimes the title of “sister” was given to women working in hospitals even if they weren’t formally vowed. Numbers had dropped since 1563, but there were still quite a few living in the home seven years later: in 1570, 130 girls aged three to ten lived in the Misericordia shelter. They shared the women’s courtyard with 158 adult women of all ages, and with 24 boys aged three to seven. The adjoining courtyard housed only 53 adult and aged men. Sisters Giovanna and Appolonia also kept tabs on 15 girls who, because of illness, had been sent to either the Hospital of S. Maria della Vita or S. Maria della Morte in the city center.58 Inside the city walls at the males’ shelter of S. Maria della Pietà, warden Bartolomeo oversaw what was essentially an orphanage for 123 young and adolescent boys, assisted by his wife and a young daughter. Up until age seven, a boy could remain with his mother at the Misericorida, but at that point he was moved over to the Pietà so that he could begin working in the city. Most boys—108 of them—were between seven and twelve. As they got older, boys began drifting into their own jobs and quarters in the city, rather than returning to sleep in the crowded dormitories of the Pietà as the younger ones did; this fulfi lled the OPM’s goal of slowly integrating them back into the social and economic life of Bologna. Only fifteen older adolescent boys continued to live there with the younger boys in 1570. Warden Bartolomeo also brought in five old men to help keep order among the boys and possibly to teach them trades and oversee their alms collecting trips through the city. Three older women helped Bartolomeo’s wife with the housekeeping. Bartolomeo was also supposed to have the help of a priest, don Basillio, but at

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the time of the census he too had fallen ill and was in the hospital of S. Maria della Vita. By 1587, there were far fewer staff at either home. The OPM had just fired Nascimbene di Nascimbeni, the warden of the women’s shelter, for insubordination. This left only a priest and Elena, widow of a former warden, to oversee 88 adult women, 108 young girls, 28 young boys, and 49 old men. The Pietà shelter for males had a warden couple and a priest overseeing 40 older and 122 younger boys; 8 women kept house. This later census was more summary: far less detail, no names, and apparently little staff. The information Rome wanted was more basic: residents were counted by gender and by whether they had or had not reached the age of communion. Of the 448 found in both houses, 258 were under communion age (roughly age twelve). At this point, there were also more males than females across the two homes: 242 to 206.59 Each one of these people had their own story, and they came into the OPM’s two shelters by different routes. Children might come into the home directly, particularly if one or both parents had died. Neighbors, relatives, or the local priest would alert one of the three Assessors of the Poor for the quarter where the family lived and lay out the case for the child being accepted into either one or the other shelter. If the officials agreed, and if the review panel of riveditori confirmed it, then the child entered into her or his new institutional life with surrogate parents and dozens of stand-in siblings. Poor families, the aged, and the infirm poor went through the same process, and this was how Bologna separated its worthy from its unworthy poor. But there were always exceptions. A widowed parent might approach the OPM assessors to take a child, and depending on what they thought of her available resources, she might have to subsidize her child’s stay: in the early 1570s, Domenica, the widow of Bartolomeo Bartolini, began paying a monthly fee of just over a lire for the OPM to take her nine-year-old son, Venturo, into care. It was a token fee at best, but it upheld the OPM’s principles of selectivity.60 In these first decades, those considered “unworthy” might also end up in the same place, though under different circumstances. Discipline was still relatively mild. Bologna had banned begging when establishing the OPM, and the authorities had always threatened serious physical

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punishments for which, in fact, they seemed to have little heart. It may seem surprising, but through the first couple of decades, the more actual experience administrators had, the less punitive they became. The 1550 plan had promised three drops of the strappado to men and fifty lashes to women and children caught begging without a license; the 1564 statutes reduced this to twenty-five lashes for adults and ten for children (double for foreigners), while the 1574 statutes did away with physical punishment and promised only jail. In the early years, a team of four beggar catchers (espurgatori) headed by Jacopo Spagnollo was patrolling Bologna’s streets, piazzas, and hostelries on the lookout for vagrants and anyone who might be begging without one of the rare licenses granted to those with special needs or those who begged on behalf of hospitals or other shelters. For added incentive, the beggar catchers earned a bounty on every person they arrested and brought out to the poorhouse. Some beggars they clapped into the set of stocks planted in the square outside the main entrance to poorhouse, and others they locked up in either the municipal or the OPM jail under the care of Bigho and Mancino, the sbirri, who were paid five soldi per prisoner regardless of time served. Beggars ended up in the stocks or in prison only after a few encounters with the beggar catchers. These security guards weren’t particularly popular, and like most of the men who had a role in arresting and imprisoning people in early modern cities, they drifted in and out of the margins of society. It’s not surprising to see that they often took names suggesting that they came from out of town or that they were tough characters. Apart from Jacopo the Spaniard, we find men like Iacomo the Florentine, Cornellio the Woodsman (il Boscharo), Giovanni from Prato, or one known just as “the Moor” (il Moretto). When Spagnollo or one of his crew came across a local person begging, they directed him or her to the OPM assessors, who in turn determined whether the beggar would be sent to one of the OPM shelters. Foreign beggars were not arrested immediately, but were escorted to the city gates and sent on their way. If it was getting toward evening, they took the beggar instead to one of the city’s pilgrims’ hostels for a meal and a bed. First thing in the morning, Spagnollo returned to the hospital door to pick up the beggar and bring him or her to the city gate, providing a few soldi or even a pair of shoes so that they could make it over the border into Ferrarese or

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Florentine territory.61 The amounts were small: fifteen soldi to get two beggars to Venice, a lire for two “poveri portughensi” who could have been Jews traveling under cover, ten soldi to get a Mantuan out of town. In these early years the OPM seemed to be quicker with its coins than with its stocks and whips. It spent about 100 lire annually on these small sums through the early 1570s, dropping to almost nothing in the later 1570s and early 1580s until suddenly jumping to 300 lire and more through the later 1580s and 1590s, a sign of how many were thrown on to the roads in those years.62 Discipline did become more serious by the end of the century and the beggar catchers had more business because at this point all of Italy was in the grip of a famine that was forcing peasants into the cities while forcing authorities to look desperately for food. Thousands crowded into the city in rags, and thousands more left it in a shroud: the population collapsed from seventy-two thousand in 1588 to sixty-four thousand by 1591 and fifty-nine thousand by 1595. The number under the OPM’s care tripled within a few years, as well over twelve hundred people crowded into its shelters.63 A series of increasingly desperate public broadsheets issued right after the disastrous harvest of 1590 underscores the city’s escalating panic and its drive to get more food into the city and more mouths out. Duties on foreign grain were once again suspended and importers could go to the Palazzo Comunale to claim a premium for every sack of grain they brought in from outside Bolognese territory. From the summer of 1590 and then again and again in the series of failed harvests through the following years, the city government expanded its experiments to make food available and affordable for poor families in the city. It brought in price controls (though exempting foreign grain) and fought hoarding through laws that forced those with stockpiles of grain to put them on the market. These were called “extractions” (estrazione) and they forbade anyone from keeping more than a year’s supply of food in storage for family use. Those able to grow grain and other foodstuffs on their own estates outside the city were forbidden from buying food on the public market. Since foreign grain was exempted from price controls, bakers could charge what they liked for bread they baked with it. Yet if they tried to pass off bread made from local grain as a higher-priced import, they ran

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the risk of a 500-scudo fine, a staggering sum that authorities shared with the person who had denounced them.64 The city set up two public ovens in each quarter to help feed families in their homes. Since ovens outside of bakeries were exclusively female spaces, this underscores again that authorities were steering forms of assistance for families toward women in particular. The OPM assessors also distributed more of the tokens ( ferlini) that qualified poor could redeem for bread at the ovens. The tokens almost immediately entered the underground economy as a substitute currency. Poor families sold, exchanged, and stole them, because it was all they had, and here too the broadsheets threatened dire punishments for those caught misusing them.65 Dire punishments were also a way of getting excess mouths out of the starving city. In 1590 Bolognese authorities reiterated the longstanding ban on begging, and brought back the strappado, whips, and expulsions. By August 1591, with yet another failed harvest behind them, authorities imposed their harshest expulsion yet of foreigners and vagabonds, targeting men above all. A more powerful Senate, now able to mobilize the OPM’s team of beggar catchers, began with the usual shiftless suspects that were on any list of the undeserving poor: vagabonds, gypsies, tricksters, and montebanks (vagabondi, zingari, bagattellieri, ceratani). They might pose as pilgrims, travelers, or merchants, so even these “legitimate” travelers were restricted to a single night in the city before moving on. The list then moved to those who had tried to make a home in Bologna: any who had come to the city from the countryside within the past two years; any unemployed men over age twenty-five who had lived in Bologna less than ten years; any single person living in the city without a family who had arrived within the past ten years. Most poor in these groups were men, and all of these had to report to public authorities or face the strappado or a whipping. Landlords and innkeepers faced enormous fines if they took in any men who had been targeted for expulsion, and authorities promised to share a third of the fines with informers.66 The escalating bounties paid to the OPM’s beggar catchers show that unlike the 1530s and 1540s, this time the policy was working. The four beggar catchers expelled 532 vagabonds from Bologna’s streets and piazzas in the second half of 1588 alone. And still more kept coming: 601 arrested in the first half of 1593, and 1,054 through 1597. As quickly as

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possible they were sent on their way; the OPM gave shelter for Bolognese poor and not for traveling vagrantes.67 These expulsions were only half the strategy of keeping Bologna free of beggars through the desperate 1590s. The other half was the OPM, home of those who could not be expelled. But it was expensive. “While it had been hoped that the divine goodness and clemency would this year give us a good harvest,” begins a 1596 broadsheet, “which would relieve in part this work and make things easier for those who rest there, now as everyone sees, because of our sins God has decided to continue whipping us with famines.” The broadsheet reminded the Bolognese of how fortunate they were that the OPM was keeping beggars off the streets, girls out of trouble, and the hosts of decrepiti, impotenti, and infermi from falling down dead. As the ranks of the needy swelled, the volume of alms had to follow suit, both formally and informally. The proposal first floated in 1548 to link particular worthy poor with particular families was revived temporarily after 1598 as a group of worthy individuals and families pledged sums ranging from twenty lire to several hundred as subsidies for a poor person, often a head of household (susidio di un povero). The amounts given would support poor individuals or families for a year, and while it lacked any face-to-face encounter of patrician and pauper, it restored a direct and personal dimension to almsgiving. This was patronal charity steered through the practical channels of the OPM, and it reflected a drive found across Europe during this continental famine for authorities to encourage among the well-off expressions of “general hospitality” to the poor, possibly using household funds freed up by the curbing of their own consumption.68 This broadsheet and others that followed did not bother to veil the threat: if the rich would not give more, then the OPM would have no alternative but to open the doors and release a flood of beggars back into the city.69 The Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti was intended to be a comprehensive and flexible solution to urban poverty. Beggar catchers and neighborhood assessors funneled poor individuals and families out of the city and passed them either into the poorhouse or onto the highways out of town. It expanded steadily as Bologna’s needs did. Large enough to care for over a thousand people and flexible enough to expand and accommodate new needs, the OPM opened new shelters in the northeastern part

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)

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Figure 2. The Three Shelters of the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (1674): (1) Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia (later S. Gregorio); (2) Casa di S. Maria della Pietà; (3) Casa di S. Orsola. Source: Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna, Raccolta Gozzadini, Cart. 39, vol III, n.1. Used with permission.

of the city to sort, separate, and give subsistence to new groups of the poor (see Figure 2). Beginning in 1563 with a single poorhouse dedicated to S. Maria della Misericorida, the OPM separated its male and female wards into two separate homes by opening the new shelter of S. Maria della Pietà for older boys and young men in 1567. Women and girls and very old men remained in the original Misericordia shelter outside the city walls; this shelter began changing its name to S. Gregorio by the later 1570s, for reasons described in the last chapter. In 1591 the OPM opened a third shelter for the sick, aged, and disruptive (malcondotti) of both sexes in the old convent of S. Orsola, which was located just outside the S. Vitale gate. This allowed the OPM more completely to separate men from women at the two existing shelters. These were practically the

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last new shelters established for Bologna’s poor for almost fifty years.70 One new orphanage for boys and two new conservatories for girls would open in Bologna over the next half century, but these were expansions to existing networks rather than anything fundamentally new.71 In its early years, the OPM’s shelters were organized more as safe homes than as disciplinary enclosures. They were more a refuge (rifugio) than a reformatory (riformatorio), and the city’s biggest challenge was dealing with the large numbers of poor who were hustling to get in. The Bolognese could look around to numerous convents, hospitals, orphanages, foundling homes, and the Jewish ghetto for multiplying examples of enclosures that were intended to segregate and protect without necessarily aiming to punish. That said, males certainly had greater freedom of movement than females, who remained the main beneficiaries, or at least the main target, of the OPM’s relief work. They occupied the most space, consumed the most resources, and constituted the largest challenge. While the OPM might be little more than a dormitory for men and boys, women could seldom see beyond its courtyard and walls. A man could leave the OPM at will and might even be forced out, but a woman could walk out the door only if a male accompanied her and guaranteed her support. Whether known as the hospital of Misericordia, the Outside House, or the home of S. Gregorio, the OPM’s main shelter a kilometer outside Bologna’s city walls confirmed the ongoing concern with female life cycle poverty that had opened the city’s foundling home and numerous conservatories and that had driven a series of efforts to feed and support the poor from the 1450s through the 1550s. Many poor families were default matriarchies led by widows or abandoned wives, and from the 1560s the OPM accentuated this by separating men and older boys from the rest of their families in its shelters. The secure shelter allowed officials to achieve more efficiently the rationalized distribution of relief that they had been aiming for with their censuses, their tickets and medallions, their food depots, and their processions. They came to realize as a further effect, perhaps unintended, that it was easier to scrutinize and discipline poor women when they were gathered in a single place. By the end of the century, the women’s shelter outside the walls that was now known

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as S. Gregorio came more closely to resemble Bologna’s other shelters for girls and young women. It was enclosed and residential because this was coming to be seen as the best way to handle female life cycle poverty. Why the push toward enclosure, surveillance, and discipline? We can cite broad cultural factors like the Tridentine reforms in the Catholic Church and the disciplined self-fashioning promoted by humanist authors like Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni della Casa, and Stefano Guazzo. But we also need to focus more closely on the turbulent political context in which the OPM was born, and particularly the fight that took on new urgency after the Bentivoglio were first expelled and when the very shape of the city’s political system was in flux. Bologna would have to adjust to a new role as the second city of the Papal State, subject to a constantly rotating cast of cardinals, legates, and popes in Rome. The question that caught everyone from weavers to law professors to clergy and counts was this: how can this city best secure its survival? Was it by decentralizing power through the republican and communal forms of the city’s traditional civil society so that hundreds and even thousands of citizens would be engaged? Or was it by centralizing responsibility in a smaller, wealthier, and better-connected oligarchy that might be able to beat the papacy at its own game? Politics and culture braided together in these questions, and the Bolognese weren’t the only ones fighting over the issues. How they answered these questions made a big difference to how they approached the poor generally, and poor women in particular.

chapter 3

Tightening Control The Narrowing Politics of Charity

n 1576, count giovanni pepoli proposes an ingenious plan for making food affordable during famines: the Bolognese should take a large sum of money and buy a huge quantity of grain to put into storage. When famine arrives, as it does regularly, a fifth of the stockpile will be sold to the poor at reduced prices. The copper and silver coins that poor families pay for small amounts of grain will be handed to trustees for safe-keeping until the famine is over, at which point the trustees will use these funds to replenish the stockpile at lower prices. It’s a simple plan and generous, because Pepoli offers to donate the 10,000 lire in start-up funds in his will.1 Count Pepoli stands out among the potent magnates who dominate Bologna. He heads one of the city’s oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful families, and is a feudal lord over vast territories stretching to Ferrara and Modena and including both imperial and papal fiefs. Yet he confounds expectations. Heir to the family seat, he never marries but sires three illegitimate sons and a daughter with a single concubine, Vincenza Manzolini.2 A nobleman whose family had been signori of the city when the Bentivoglio were still ordinary members of the butchers’ guild, he consciously, if a little disingenuously, identifies with “the people,” not unlike his friends the Medici in Florence. A member of the Senate, he

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serves on and constantly promotes the interests of older magistracies like the Elders, the Masters of the Arts, and the Tribunes of the People, who are working and lobbying hard to check the Senate’s oligarchical power and restore some of the balances of republican rule.3 This is a man who takes his republicanism seriously. Among his other projects, he has contacted the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio and commissioned a plan to completely rework the old but unfinished marble facade that the church of S. Petronio presents to Piazza Maggiore. Fresh from completing the Redentore Church in Venice, Palladio completely refashions S. Petronio with a similar combination of classical columns, windows, and pediments that turn the gothic basilica into a Roman temple with a portico like the Pantheon in Rome. It helps that Pepoli is head of the S. Petronio building commission, though the Palladian plan remains a tough sell in a Bologna committed to its medieval greatness.4 To some Pepoli is a traitor to his class, to others a hero of the people. His famine-relief plan for the “Pious Heap of Mercy” (Pio cumulo di misericordia) is the kind of grand gesture that goes along with some of his less laudable traits, like a weakness for vendetta and violence. Apart from its obvious generosity, it reflects his communal and republican values. Pepoli reaches deep into local corporate culture to come up with a complicated administration that draws in a wide range of citizens who represent different social and religious interest groups like hospitals, confraternities, and religious orders. He tellingly gives Bologna’s Senate no special role.5 All of this is entirely in character for a man who’s a member of a number of confraternities and who regularly pours thousands of lire into charitable programs for the poor. Pepoli’s various acts of generosity demonstrate how patronal and practical charity can often braid together. Pilgrims lodging overnight at S. Francesco and those lying ill at the hospital of S. Maria della Vita can thank him for the generous legacies that provide them with food and firewood. More syphilitics are receiving medical care at the S. Giobbe hospital thanks to his alms. Members of a confraternity for the poor get donations of food, and even the opportunity to start families thanks to dowries that he offers to entice poor girls to marry the confratelli. Pepoli’s purse spews out large sums and small to a host of individuals and institutions. Contemporaries describe him variously as “the father of the poor” and “the greatest almsgiver in

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the city” with a reputation that extends far beyond Bologna. The only point of conflict about him seems to be in determining how much he gives: some chroniclers claim 5,000 ducats a year, others 6,000 or 7,000 scudi. Francesco Babbi, longtime secretary to Florence’s Grand Duke Francesco I, describes him as “a great almsgiver who didn’t attend to anything but pious works.”6 He was the first person that the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti had turned to when it needed money, and he’s approached at least once soon afterward to take on the position of rector.7 Pepoli’s “Big Heap” is entirely in character, and can soon be tested. A few years after writing the will, Count Giovanni Pepoli is dead, murdered in a jail cell in the dead of night by assassins sent by Pope Sixtus V to bring a summary end to a court case that was becoming ever more awkward as it dragged on. In deference to Pepoli’s status, the assassins strangle him with a red silken cord. Pepoli’s violent end had less to do with charity than with Sixtus V’s determination early in his papacy to take a firm line against rampant banditry in the Papal State and against the feudal lords who challenged his authority. Papal Legate Antonio Maria Salviati had surprised all of Italy by arresting Pepoli on August 5, 1585, on charges of sheltering enemies of the state. This launched a month of trial proceedings during which a variety of high placed allies including Bologna’s Senate, Tuscan Grand Duke Ferdinand I, the Duke of Ferrara, the Venetian ambassador, and Cardinal d’Este all lobbied hard to secure his release. Pepoli was isolated and tortured and, by some accounts, even Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti was not allowed to visit him in prison. The rising political pressure from Pepoli’s allies backed the pope into a corner, and he responded aggressively by ordering that the count be dispatched quickly and all his properties confiscated on grounds that he had been an outlaw. The circumstances suggest that, notwithstanding Florentine Secretary Babbi’s assessment, Pepoli in fact attended to far more than just pious works both inside and outside the city. Some thought he was planning to seize power in Bologna. The Venetian ambassador believed that the count hastened his own end when some letters were intercepted in which he referred to papal officials as “these tyrannical priests” and the pope himself as “this tyrannical friar.”8 In life and death, Giovanni Pepoli lived large and defied expectations. Yet beyond its almost operatic qualities, his life and career sharply

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demonstrate an Italy deeply divided as an emerging authoritarian order in state and church clashed with an older order of communal republics constituted by multiple magistracies, guilds, and corporate groups and informed by a highly local Catholicism. Powerful families like the Pepoli were vital to this shift, and most seized the opportunity to increase their influence and wealth in the privileged structures of what would come to be known as the ancien régime. That Count Giovanni Pepoli defended the older order may seem paradoxical and puzzling, but he was not alone. The contest between oligarchical and communal republicanism did not neatly follow class lines anywhere in Italy. There were other oligarchs in Bologna who shared Pepoli’s republican and populist values, although his great generosity and his willingness to hew an independent and contentious line in politics made him a particularly important player in the development of Bologna’s civic welfare system and highlight the political debates that shaped it. Pepoli’s charity brought patronal and practical approaches together by combining outright generosity with forms of mutual assistance and subsidies to individual action. His plan for a self-perpetuating fund providing cheap grain in time of famine would certainly be a personal monument, but it was designed on republican lines as a public service controlled by confraternities, religious houses, and elected officials. It balanced relief to both city and countryside, and aimed above all to give the working poor, many of them women heading families, the tools to help themselves. Established shortly after the OPM had begun its transformation into a far more bureaucratic body operating in close alliance with the Senate, Pepoli’s “Big Heap” harkens back to older communitarian models for poor relief. It’s hard not to see it as an implicit criticism both of changes at the OPM and of how some public bodies like the Senate were handling poor relief in general and famine relief in particular. It had already been sixty years since Bologna first started developing its creative tax-based system for helping the poor during times of famine. Yet its Senate continually undermined the operation of that system as key senators steered funds to their allies and their own personal projects. This powerful count and senator now aimed to find a program for feeding the poor that could operate outside the Senate and even bypass it directly.

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Giovanni Pepoli’s charitable projects, his political causes, and even his violent end highlight the contexts and tensions that shaped the evolution of Bologna’s poor-relief system through the sixteenth century. The older corporate groups like communal magistracies, confraternities, hospitals, and guilds that had steered earlier efforts at poor relief and that cooperated in the evolution of the OPM were seriously challenged almost from the beginning. Communal politics shaped the network that emerged piece by piece from the 1520s through the 1550s and into the 1560s, and a key factor at work was the fear of a Bentivoglio restoration. This fear shaped the local version of that larger struggle between republican and oligarchical politics that was raging across Italy. As the Bentivoglio threat steadily faded, it was this larger fight that would become more important to shaping Bologna’s evolving civic welfare network. The previous chapter sketched some of the elements of this internal civic struggle as they related to gender, poverty, and politics. We saw there how the Bolognese created a series of new institutions from the 1450s through the 1560s and beyond to handle specifically female life cycle poverty: this common thread linked their promotion of the foundling home of the Esposti from the 1450s on to the emergence of the first OPM workhouse in 1563. This chapter will circle back and expand on the local administrative and political culture in order to clarify what was at stake for the Bolognese beyond simply addressing women’s poverty. When it began, the OPM had the kind of administration that was common to local corporate groups and magistracies: dozens upon dozens of volunteers were drawn from a larger membership body and served for short terms in a series of specialized committees. Reforms a decade later streamlined this model by pushing the membership body aside, shedding volunteers, empowering executives, and hiring staff to do more of the work. If we take a step back, we can see that the context for this change in how the OPM was run was a series of shifts in Bologna’s political order that stretched back to the upheavals following on the expulsion of the Bentivoglio in 1506 and 1512 and that carried on to the end of the sixteenth century. Bologna’s senators had their differences with Count Pepoli’s humanist republicanism, but were even more fearful of Sixtus V’s efforts to break their solidarity and water down their power. Their

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response was to dance delicately a middle path of undermining competing political magistracies in the civic government, strengthening their grip on local charitable institutions, and collaborating strategically with papal authorities in order to consolidate their position as local power brokers. In a life marked by paradoxes, perhaps the greatest is that in the end, Pepoli’s republican interventions and even his death strengthened the senatorial oligarchy that was taking hold in the city; it even helped the senators to get hold of his “Pious Heap of Mercy.” The count’s violent end, while not directly related to the politics of charity, removed the most powerful proponent of communal republicanism and convinced patrician moderates that they needed to close ranks locally in order to negotiate the best arrangement for sharing power with the papacy. “Closing ranks” meant more than suppressing political dissent. Bologna’s oligarchs might pursue their careers across Italy, Europe, and the globe, but when pursuing a spouse they increasingly stuck far closer to home. More and more of them intermarried within their own ranks, reaching rates beyond those of other European elites. The strategy showed how much they became ever more obsessed with securing family estates and political advantages, and with concentrating power locally. If Bologna’s elite had once been distinctive in the openness, creativity, and experimentation with which they approached welfare reform, they would soon become equally distinctive in their determination to conserve what they had against outside challenges by means ranging from force and discipline, to piety, patronal charity, and fraud.

Making It Work Opening the OPM had been a critical achievement, but running it would be an even greater challenge. Its mandate and administration bore the traces of both the anonymous proposal of 1548 and the plan of 1550, and incorporated elements of both while also recognizing and correcting some their flaws. More than that, it built on and incorporated local institutions like confraternities and hospitals and reflected local civil society even as it moved Bologna forward to new ways of handling the poor.9 The ongoing Bentivoglio threat had put serious pressure on papal and civic authorities to keep poor Bolognese from turning against them and

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back to the former signorial family, and this in turn encouraged them to concentrate their control over poor relief and indeed over all aspects of local government. Yet the energy and money required to keep the OPM going helped bring the long-standing struggle between the oligarchical Senate and more representative communal magistracies of the Elders, the Tribunes, and the Masters of the Guilds to a head. We can find the roots and civic values of medieval communal politics and civil society in all the relief plans that circulated from the 1540s to the 1560s. While all arose as proposals from high officials like the papal legate or bodies like the Elders or Senate, all envisioned volunteer officials serving relatively short terms in rotation to keep the operation going day to day. These syndics, collectors, assessors, and visitors were almost always elected on the basis of city quarters, and represented their quarter in urban councils while also representing the authority of the municipal councils in their own part of the city. Like many Italian cities, Bologna also held to a tradition of reserving seats for particular political groups or social classes in its major councils. Hence the sixteen men in charge of the 1550 relief plan (i.e., the Magnifico Ufficio) included four members of the Elders, four Masters of the Guilds, four senators, and four others drawn from a purse holding the names of gentlemen, merchants, and others. Each elder, guild master, and senator represented a particular quarter. This local social and geographic dynamic shaped the OPM’s administration too. This was the model that Giovanni Pepoli had adapted for the Pio Cumulo di Misericordia. It was the local administrative vernacular, common across Bologna and indeed across much of Italy where it defined the communal republican tradition. Shared by guilds, confraternities, hospitals, and magistracies, it combined a broad corporate membership (called variously a corporale, a compagnia, a università, a confraternita and defined by either geography, profession, social grouping, or voluntary membership) with a smaller elected executive body (often called the congregazione) elected from and by the members of that broad corporale. The corporale held the strings that kept the congregazione on its toes: frequent elections, short terms of office (two, four, or six months), audits and reviews of those officeholders whose hands could get into the ledgers or the money till, and fines for those who committed fraud. Advocates of

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expanded poor relief in Bologna did not all agree on this model, and through the central decades of the sixteenth century they went back and forth on the point. Some of their initiatives instituted a republican model of a broad corporale and elected executive congregazione, while others followed a more authoritarian model with a self-perpetuating or politically appointed congregazione that acted more autonomously. These shifts shadowed the larger shifts at work in Bologna’s political bodies. Bologna’s first plan in 1548 lacked a corporale, and it was a neighborhood-based politically appointed congregazione that made all the decisions. The 1550 proposal changed that, and added a corporale in the form of the confraternity known as the Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti, whose members collected alms for the poor and took turns on the administrative congregazione. When organizers planned the OPM in 1560, they carried this over, no doubt sharply aware that an institution with dozens of staff serving hundreds of wards would require both a broad membership and a narrow executive. They also brought over the kind of executive that had recently become the local administrative vernacular when all the city’s major hospitals revised their statutes according to a single common model. The hospitals of S. Maria degli Angeli, S. Maria del Baraccano, S. Maria dei Guarini, S. Bartolomeo, and the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi had long worked with membership confraternities and officers of some description, but between 1553 and 1557 they all regularized the terms and terminology of their executive committees. Each adopted an executive of rector (rettore), prior (priore), master (massaro), and companion (compagno) who rotated regularly. All officials save for the rector came from the broad supporting confraternity, which remained the hospital’s ultimate authority. This was the function that the OPM’s Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti, with its men’s and ladies’ congregations, served. Pius IV’s brief authorizing the OPM specifically required that it follow the example of these five hospitals. There’s something circular about the pope’s requirement that these specific hospitals be the OPM’s administrative models, since in fact they had only barely adopted that model themselves.10 Yet hospitals and confraternities in many parts of Italy followed the same general corporate principle of combining a broad membership body and a rotating executive. As these Bolognese institutions aimed to reform their own

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administration, their members may have contacted friends and associates in other cities in order to learn what was working best locally. They certainly contacted each other. Their common model, reinforced within a few years by the pope’s explicit decree, suggests a widespread determination among confraternity members to preserve the corporate principle by standardizing the administrative form. It certainly highlights the dense webs of connections between individuals and charitable bodies that extended throughout the city’s key institutions. They could not help running into each other. The OPM executive and confraternity frequently held their meetings in the meeting room (Audienzia) of the Ospedale della Morte which was run by Bologna’s most powerful collegiate confraternity, the Compagnia di S. Maria della Morte. They sometimes also met over at the fortresslike Palazzo Comunale in the council room (saletta) of the Elders, once the most powerful of the city’s communal magistracies. Both meeting rooms were located just steps away from the city’s symbolic center, the Piazza Maggiore. OPM financial administration was in the hands of the Monte di Pietà, which also had offices in the Ospedale della Morte, and which controlled the finances of many of the city’s leading charitable institutions.11 These many interconnections underscore the fact that in the eyes of its founders, the OPM was now more than just another charity: it was the umbrella organization that coordinated the efforts of many independent charitable institutions. In deliberately following the form of administration that these other institutions had only recently adopted, it also confirmed the corporate republicanism that, as we will see below, was being hotly debated in the local political sphere. Bologna’s welfare system was essentially a network of linked institutions bound as much by ties of blood and friendship as by decrees and statutes. While we need to isolate the offices and forms of OPM administration in order to understand and assess them, we also need to keep in mind that Bologna’s network of hospitals and charities was deeply social and interconnected. The relatively small circle of individuals who kept the network running had known each other for years and had a host of personal friendships and rivalries to keep them going. The OPM’s first statutes of 1564 give the best snapshot of how the local corporate model functioned. Dozens of middle- and upper-class

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volunteers rotated every four months through a series of offices, and over three hundred men and an undefined number of women could be involved in any single year.12 The key officials on the ground were the assessors (Assonti ad Accettar o Recusar Poveri in 1564 and Accettatori di Poveri after 1574). Three in each quarter conducted the census of the poor and then reviewed each man, woman, or child seeking admission to benefits or the shelter. This was the most attractive position for anyone who wanted a handle on patronage, and as a result it was the most open to fraud, since individual assessors could open or close the doors for particular individuals. When tightening up admission procedures in 1568, the OPM required that the three vote together on admissions from their own quarter. It also installed the second committee of four reviewers (riveditori or revisori) who came to the shelter monthly to double-check all admissions from across the city. Three dozen collectors sought and collected on pledges, while almost 250 visitors (visitatori) found work for the wards and then kept an eye on them; these latter two groups were elected by quarters and served between one and four months at a time.13 Four men made up the executive committee of the congregazione. The rector, prior, and master supervised direction, religious life, and daily administration respectively. The fourth man, the companion, had no particular duties. All four officers were laymen, and following local conventions the executive offices were assigned by class: the prior was always a gentleman, the master a merchant, and the rector a member of the local Senate. The prior and rector had relatively light duties. The prior oversaw the OPM’s churches, supervised its priests, and saw to it that the poor regularly heard mass, did confession, and took communion. He also looked after those parts of alms collection that brought the OPM children out into the city either carrying their small alms boxes into churches, or attending funeral processions as paid mourners. The rector as overall head ensured that volunteer officials were doing their jobs, worked to keep peace among officials and staff, and called meetings of the congregation. Though his work was lighter on paper, the rector’s social status and senatorial office gave him significant influence within the OPM. It was merchants, filling the role of master, who did the real work. It’s hard to imagine how any merchant could have maintained his own

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business through the four months of office, and indeed the 1564 statutes advised choosing men who were “practical, solicitous, and not too busy with their own affairs” (persone pratiche, sollicite, & non molto occupate ne i proprii negocij). The demands were at least as intense as those that members of the magistracy of Elders faced, and they were required to cut off all family and business ties and move into apartments in the Palazzo Comunale during their two-month term of office. The OPM master continued to live in his own home, but over the course of a day he engaged with dozens of staff, volunteers, and poor wards. In regular visits to the OPM’s shelters outside and inside the city, he walked through the courtyards and hallways together with the warden checking that the poor women, men, and children had decent clothes, enough food, and things to do. Any who were sick he sent to the hospital and any who were disruptive or lazy he pulled aside and talked to, possibly threatening a disciplinary spell in the home’s prison (prigione). He then moved on to the kitchens and storerooms to check on what the cooks were preparing and how much food they had in stock. Then off to an office to check over the accounts of the warden and the kitchen staff, cross-checking their records with his own in case anyone tried to pad accounts or skim off donations. As he walked through the two shelters, he kept an eye out for damage needing repair and also for anything else that might be out of order: was the warden lodging some friend or family member in a private room, or running a business on the side, or selling food given to the poor? While he might discipline staff, he had to cajole his fellow volunteer officials: Were they going out regularly to collect pledges and alms, and food, wood, and wine? Was the prior making sure that uniformed children were out in the street shaking their collection boxes or singing in funeral processions? Was the rector reminding his fellow senators that the OPM needed additional alms now that food prices had risen and more widows were applying to get in with their children? The rector and master also engaged regularly with the OPM’s professional administrators. A team of notaries, financial officers, and a secretary provided the necessary bureaucratic support, while six conservators and four syndics regularly checked their work and that of any other officials who could get their hands in the till, and looked to property needs and investments. This group of senior officials, together with

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the executive committee of rector, prior, master, and companion comprised the administrative congregazione. The broader membership of the confraternal Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti made up of all those who had contributed to the OPM comprised the corporale. This larger group discussed and debated the executive’s action, and had the power to ratify or correct their decisions. As in the 1550 plan, the Monte della Pietà handled overall financial administration, giving the OPM a higher level of financial resources and advice to draw on. Three hundred men ran the OPM—yet the hallways and courtyards of the new poorhouse dedicated to the Madonna of Misericordia teemed with poor women and children. While women were part of OPM administration, we saw in Chapter 1 that the men didn’t initially know quite how to integrate women into the work, even though they desperately wanted them there given the large number of poor women under their care. The most immediate and relevant model locally was the women’s company in the confraternity of S. Maria del Baraccano, which collaborated with the men’s company in running that eponymous conservatory. But that model also gave lessons in how these women’s authority had been curbed in the 1550s. The Bentivoglio had patronized the confraternity and shrine of the Baraccano heavily through the fifteenth century, and even after their fall Bolognese patricians had favored this exclusive lay company with its illustrious history, fashionable quarters, and rich artistic patrimony. This continued when the Baraccano turned its large pilgrims’ hostel into a conservatory for orphaned and abandoned girls in 1528. As a result, the women who volunteered to recruit and review applicants to the Baraccano conservatory had always come from powerful families. Their names went into a bag, and each month three were drawn out to form an executive committee that reviewed applicants, visited the home, and interacted with the men’s company. This trio examined the virginity, reputation, and status of any girls who had applied in that month and then reported their findings to the entire company of women. That larger group held a secret vote on whether to send the application forward, and any girls who had secured a two-thirds majority from the women went on to a further vote by the male executive, which then put her to a vote of the entire male membership. No girl could be admitted without first

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passing the women’s review. The women’s company also appointed the resident female warden and the priest who heard the girl’s confession and gave communion.14 The Baraccano formalized these procedures in 1548. Then, in a puzzling reversal, it slashed the women’s powers significantly only five years later when it joined Bologna’s other hospitals in revising its statutes. The women lost their control over applications and employment, and even their direct line to the confraternity’s executive committee. They still reviewed all girls, but no longer voted on them, and only reported orally to a new subcommittee of the men’s company made up of sixteen men who did not rotate through office, but served for life.15 These men were the ones who now effectively controlled the running of the Baraccano conservatory. What was going on? The quick reversal that the Baraccano women experienced was consistent with the ways that women’s roles were being curbed and contained within a broader range of Bologna’s confraternities. Many of the large neighborhood confraternities of the fourteenth century had recruited roughly equal numbers of men and women, a balancing of genders that was common across Italy. The Observant devotional reform movements that started expanding among Italian mendicant orders in the fourteenth century, and that popular preachers like Bernardino da Siena spread to lay confraternities from the first half of the fifteenth century, reversed this. Observant piety emphasized sin and penitence, and required members to pray, confess, and even flagellate frequently in order to preserve their personal purity, particularly from any sexual temptation. The brotherhoods that reformed themselves according to these models became the most exclusive and gendered, and no longer welcomed women. They wrote new rules into their statutes expelling any brothers “who for any reason introduce any woman or other suspect person or [one of] bad reputation” into their quarters.16 This was a rule passed by the observant brothers of the S. Maria degli Angeli confraternity that operated the Esposti foundling home. Their harsh and blanket dismissal of women did not exclude even their own mothers, wives, or sisters who may at that very time have been helping care for the home’s infant “bastardini.” It’s no wonder that once women were marked in the statutes as a source of evil, temptation, and sin, they found the confraternity a less

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welcoming community and quit. Paradoxically, it was the large neighborhood-based charitable confraternities running hospitals that were among the harshest, and from the mid-fifteenth century three of them effectively pushed women out of their ranks.17 By the 1540s, a changed devotional climate and fears that women might become susceptible to forms of reform Catholicism that bordered on heresy led them to reverse themselves and begin forming subordinate consororities as highly controlled spaces where women could exercise their devotions and charity. The new consororities were sharply segregated from, but closely supervised by, the men’s groups. Typically the men appointed a three-member team of “Prioress and Companions” who then reported back to the male confraternal executive. The women and their female officers met less frequently together to read the office, pray, or perform other collective devotions. Yet they relieved their confraternal brothers by taking on larger roles in charitable activities directed towards other women. Bologna’s S. Maria del Baraccano was one of only three confraternities that had never expelled women entirely, and the influence of its highborn female members may explain why it was the first major brotherhood to turn its pilgrims’ hostel into a conservatory for orphaned and abandoned girls. Yet the brotherhood went through a particularly heated internal dispute between its moderate and reform wings in the 1550s. The fact that even the patrician women who made up its women’s congregation lost authority within the confraternity and conservatory shows how intense these fights were.18 Did these fights in Bologna over what role women should play in confraternities spill over into the OPM? The vagueness of its first rules for what the 1550 plan called the “Company of Gentlewomen and Female Citizens” may be due less to inattention than to the fact that those framing the statutes were treading carefully to avoid controversy. Their caution carried on into the 1564 statutes, but frustrations among women and tensions with men must have arisen quickly, since giving sharper definition to the women’s company was one of the few significant changes made when the statutes were first revised in 1574. But sharper definition did not mean more independence. The prioress and her two companions worked closely together as an executive committee that paralleled that of rector, prior, and master, and the prioress met regularly with these men

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to report on the women’s activities. Yet while members of the Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti nominated and elected all of their officers twice annually, they were unwilling to leave the election of the women’s executive committee to chance as the Baraccano confraternity had. They devised instead a system of preselecting panels of officers. Every three years, the prioress drew up a list of women in the Company of Gentlewomen and Female Citizens who were fit for office. She passed the names on to the male executive, which divided these women into groups of three, writing the three names on a single ballot and determining which of these three would be prioress. The ballots then went into a bag, to be drawn at the appropriate time. If any one of the trio could not serve when drawn, the entire slate was set aside and a second group was drawn.19 It was always the new male executive committee that drew the women’s ballots out of the bag, and the OPM minute books show that they always made the draw at least a week after they had themselves been installed in office.20 This degree of male control went far beyond what the Baraccano, or indeed any other Bolognese confraternity, practiced. It underscores how high the political stakes were for the OPM within the city. The men wanted to be sure that the gradations of rank that they guarded in the selection of their own executive would shape the women’s executive committee as well. More to the point, they wanted to fashion both executives around their own reading of familial alliances and enmities as these shaped both the men’s and the women’s companies within the OPM and as they resonated through city politics. While patrician women gained more authority in the OPM through its first decade, artisanal, mercantile, and professional men saw their roles disappearing. The changes under way in the OPM through this first decade reflected the deeper political and social shifts that were taking place in Bologna as the communal magistracies of the Elders, Tribunes, and Masters of the Guild steadily lost power to the oligarchical Senate. If one sign of this shift was the expanded role given to patrician women in the 1574 statutes, another was the power it took away from the broader membership gathered in the corporale and concentrated instead in the narrower congregazione. Some of this was undoubtedly for purely practical reasons, since recruiting three hundred volunteers every year would easily have taken more time and effort than overseeing a few hundred

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poor in a shelter. Yet politics also played a part. The 1548 plan had put all authority in the hands of a small governing executive. Through the 1550s the Senate was moving to consolidate its authority within the emerging OPM, but it faced opposition and so the first set of statutes in 1564 created a governing structure still shaped by the administrative norms and customs of local corporate administration and shaped by the communal republican methods and values of the Elders, the Tribunes, and Masters of the Guild. The reforms of 1574 reversed this and returned to a far leaner model of administration. The three hundred volunteers of the 1564 statutes were cut to fifty in the 1574 reform.21 Part of this came simply by changing most terms of office from four months to six.22 The biggest drops came by eliminating the 36 members who recruited and collected pledges of financial aid, and the 220 who found and supervised work for those in the two poorhouses. In both cases, this work transferred over to paid employees, in part for practical reasons and in part for financial reasons discussed in the next chapter. Stricter entrance procedures raised the number of those in charge of overseeing and reviewing admissions from twenty-four to thirty-two. The large corporale of members of the Company of Poor Beggars was now superseded by the far smaller and bureaucractic congregazione made up only of senior serving officials. The quorum at its meetings dropped from forty to twenty-seven. The four-man executive committee of rector, prior, master, and companion gained a larger role in determining what would be presented and voted on, and more decisions (“cose leggieri & poca importanza”) were taken on the basis of open voice votes rather than the secret ballot of black and white beans commonly used in communal councils. The prior was now, like the rector, to be drawn from the Senate. The master was to be even more decidedly a merchant—the statutes twice note that he had to know how to keep accounts as merchants did (“al modo mercantile”), and that he had to keep a parallel set of ledgers in his own office as a means of keeping all staff on their toes. In recognition of his overwhelming load, he gained two colleagues, one of them the master who had just finished his term. The executive committee gained greater authority to dismiss employees, and it also gained a lawyer to defend and protect its own interests.

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The new administration was certainly far more streamlined than the one it replaced. On one level this simply represents some well-meaning idealists waking up to reality and making their procedures more bureaucratic and efficient. But was there anything more than efficiency behind the change? Every charitable institution had difficulty recruiting volunteers, but those cut from the OPM administration were largely the merchants and artisans who represented the city’s quarters and had the most direct contact with the poor, donors, and employers. Replacing the broad corporale of members with the narrow congregazione of senior officials as the OPM’s highest deliberative body was the single most important sign that traditional confraternal modes of administration were giving way to newer bureaucratic models. It was effectively a patrician coup within the OPM, carried out by a committee appointed by the congregazione alone. This was not just an administrative reform. It marked a political and cultural shift. We can get a better sense of this broader significance if we briefly compare how contemporary Florentines managed their charities, confraternities, and hospitals. Florence, like Bologna, practiced a form of coordinated decentralization in its emerging network of social and charitable institutions. What seem on the surface to be a number of entirely independent confraternities and hospitals turn out on closer analysis to be linked together by a series of personal and official connections. Both cities’ networks of confraternities had evolved in close relation to local political and charitable culture.23 If Bologna’s confraternities had been the chief agents developing its rich civic religion and charitable network, it was in large part because their local and lay character allowed citizens to distinguish between a Catholic faith they embraced and a Catholic curia they preferred to keep at arm’s length. Maintaining the institutional strength and special privileges of this network of confraternities was a priority. When devotional movements in the fifteenth century threatened to break up some of the leading brotherhoods, the Bolognese instead devised a model of dividing these confraternities into semiautonomous subgroups held together in what we could call a collegiate system. Separate groups of members conducted separate activities under their own statutes and officers, and

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then gathered under the umbrella of a single corporate brotherhood with a central executive committee made up of the heads of all the distinct subgroups. This “collegiate” model of separate groups within the body of a single confraternity fit easily into the culture of communal republicanism: they remained broadly representative and deeply civic, often giving executive seats to particular social and occupational groups. Some confraternal charities tended to move over time toward administrations that were more centralized and bureaucratic. Yet even in them, large memberships, representative executives, and an active and public cultic life were critical elements in maintaining the broad popular support base that generated officers, donors, and advocates for the charitable hospital or confraternity. A long membership list and control of major shrines and public processions gave these institutions a degree of legitimacy as civic religious institutions. Florence evolved differently, along a distinct cultural and political trajectory. In the form of coordinated decentralization of civic welfare emerging by the mid-sixteenth century in ducal Florence, more of the strings went back to Medici hands, with the dukes pulling and slackening them inconsistently in pursuit of dynastic political goals as much as any charitable or religious purpose.24 Florence’s many charitable confraternities were shaped by the historical and administrative trauma that came from having been frequently suppressed and co-opted through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries. Every major political turning was marked by a closing of the confraternities because of fears that they were hotbeds of conspiracy. It made no difference who was in power: the republicans closed the confraternities in 1419, the Medici in 1444, 1455, 1458, 1471, and 1484, the neo-republicans in 1498, and every year from 1502 to 1505, the Medici again each year from 1512 to 1517, in 1522 and 1527, and, on restoration after the last republic, for each year from 1530 to 1533. One of Cosimo I’s first acts on coming to Florence in February 1537 in an effort to seize authority after the assassination of his cousin Alessandro I was a closing of the confraternities.25 Devastated time and again in this way, many wealthy Florentine confraternities like S. Maria del Bigallo and S. Maria della Misericordia had lost their broad memberships over the course of the fifteenth century and turned into small congregations of directors who concentrated on

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caring for properties, setting policy, and hiring staff to carry it out. This congregational model of governance was a step further along the continuum toward the kind of bureaucracies that Max Weber saw as the hallmark of the emerging early modern state. Without following Weber too far down that straight, narrow, and predetermined road, this goes a long way to explaining why the Medici found the model of “congregational” confraternities so excellently adapted to their purposes. Yet the grand dukes shied away from the logic of moving further along that administrative continuum until they could be sure of their own power and sure that the powerful magistrates they appointed would buttress and not undermine it. Duke Cosimo I envisioned a central welfare bureaucracy in 1541 and gained the eager support of many patricians who were eager to serve him, the state, and themselves in realizing it. They even proposed a poorhouse-style shelter for Florence’s crippled, blind, orphaned, and unemployed, to be called the “Ospedale de Mendicanti.”26 Yet the duke soon thought better of the idea, giving care for boys to one confraternity (S. Maria del Bigallo) and care for girls to another (S. Maria delle Vergine), and abandoning altogether the promise of a broader poor relief system and workhouse under a single state magistracy. The two executive groups retained the name of confraternities but had none of the broad memberships, short-term elected executives, or public religious life that lent popular legitimacy to parallel institutions in Bologna. The Florentine officers were appointed by the duke, and cultic life and public ritual were not a significant part of their collective life. They were fundamentally appointed congregations rather than public confraternities, and what legitimacy they had came from ducal appointment rather than popular appeal. Florence’s congregational model was undeniably more efficient and rational than Bologna’s collegiate administration. It was more recognizably “modern” in its moves to have a few specialized institutions, to divide labor between a small core of appointed (and often permanent) magistrates and a hired staff, to distance senior administrators from their wards, and to have all authority go back into the hands of the grand duke. This was a model that fit far more easily into more absolutist than into republican forms of government, which is why the move toward this

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congregational model by the OPM and some other Bolognese charitable confraternities by the early seventeenth century marks a broader cultural and political shift. The evolution was a natural one in the sense that the collegiate system and communal republicanism generally were always open to individual patronage networks, and well-born citizens knew how to work both of them in order to preserve their authority. Early modern republicanism was vulnerable to the techniques by which oligarchs preached open participation and practiced closed control. They carefully divided up political, judicial, and economic power and fashioned formal and informal agreements to preserve their rights, privileges, and spheres of control. After the statute reforms of the 1550s, prominent senators could become rectors of one institution after another, and this helped achieve some of the coordination that Florentine dukes orchestrated more deliberately. In Bologna any such orchestration would be conducted by papal authorities. As a result the Bolognese oligarchy never entirely abandoned the decentralized and collegiate model that preserved distinct institutions and that brought dozens of confraternity members into administration in regular rotation. Yet they promoted changes within that model that similarly narrowed authority, and the shift of power within the OPM from the corporale to the congregazione exemplifies their strategy most clearly. The corporale had been a body that ensured broad accountability, since it counted hundreds of members including not only worthy merchants and artisans but potentially even widows, prostitutes, journeymen, and street vendors; in short, any native Bolognese who donated to the OPM was automatically a member. Even a fraction of them voting with their black and white beans had been easily able to overwhelm the will of the congregazione and executive committee. On good communal republican principles, the corporale initially had the power to review and discipline all officials including the executive of rector, prior, master, and companion. The reforms of 1574 didn’t just shift authority from the broad corporale to the narrow congregazione, but narrowed oversight and accountability altogether. Now the corporale’s members could vote only on what the executive committee put to them, and the only official they could review and potentially dismiss was the master. Reducing their numbers and their ability to put items on the agenda, making

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more votes public, and adding a second senator to the four-person executive committee all made the OPM’s administration look much less like the confraternal and communal bodies it had been inspired by and patterned on—and much more like Bologna’s Senate.

People versus Patricians: Civil Society and Controlling Charity At this point, it might be helpful to look back at how Bolognese politics came to be so fundamentally divided. The lines in Bologna were drawn, much as they were in contemporary Florence, between what John Najemy described as “corporatism” and “consensus.” Najemy has described how the battles between these competing approaches shaped Florentine politics from a point soon after the 1293 Ordinances of Justice replaced magnate power with the republican institutions of a popular commune. Republican corporatism spread power among groups of stakeholders who exercised power directly during short terms of office, which inevitably brought a degree of instability. One way of promoting stability within republicanism was to concentrate executive power in the hands of a smaller number of the great and the good who would gather in a council or congregation where they could debate and then arrive by consensus at decisions that their delegated professional bureaucrats would carry out. The choice between corporatism and consensus was frequently cast as a choice between representation and stability. When forced to choose, as during the 1378 Ciompi movement, through the recurring reactions against the Medici in the 1440s, 1450s, 1460s, and 1470s, in the periods under Savonarola or the last republic of 1527–1530, and at the coming of the Medici duchy, key swing groups among the merchants, bankers, and patricians opted time and again for the apparent stability of oligarchy over the openly fractious power sharing of republicanism. The most they could hang on to was a transvalued ideology that some later historians have described as “civic humanism,” a creed that preached republican values while practicing the oligarchical manipulation of offices. Many of its proponents, both past and present, characterized those brief outbursts when Florentines aimed to restore a more genuine republicanism as “conspiracies,” “revolts,” and “rebellions.”27

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This political fight in Bologna evolved around a different set of events, institutions, and players, and it left far fewer records. Yet the movement back and forth between corporatist and congregational models of administration at the OPM in the 1550s–1570s was a battle in the same long-running war between constantly shifting alliances across the social spectrum. Magnates, popolo merchants and artisans, and laborers and working poor—individually and in groups—coalesced and divided around their inner factions and opportunistic alliances, driven by deep fears and constant ambitions while reacting to whatever issues were arising at the moment. As in Florence, Bologna’s social and political divisions stretched back into the thirteenth centuries and beyond; when Florentines set about drafting their Ordinances of Justice in 1293, they drew heavily on earlier legislation by which the Bolognese had similarly curbed magnate power and created a corporate guild regime.28 Yet the players most relevant to the sixteenth-century game had all emerged in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Though formally part of the Papal State from the late thirteenth century, the Bolognese had taken advantage of the Avignon papacy’s weakening hold on its territories in Italy, and reestablished local communal rule in 1376. They devised three communal magistracies to share the work of running the city along the familiar lines of medieval power sharing, combining equal parts broad representation and deep suspicion. The broad representation was both professional and geographic. Twenty-four guilds each appointed one member to a Council of Guild Masters (Massari degli Arti) that regulated economic life. The city’s four quarters each appointed two men to oversee defense as Standard Bearers of the People (Confalonieri di Popoli). And the quarters again elected two men to serve on a Council of Elders (Anziani) that was the highest civic body responsible for legislation and day-to-day government functions. Policing and justice were in the hands of a local Standard Bearer of Justice (Confaloniere di Giustizia) and a foreign Podestà. These kinds of broad representation characterized communal government across Italy, and the element of deep suspicion that tempered it was just as common. Each representative had a very short term of office: elders served only two months, while guild masters and standard bearers served four. Beyond this, the entire group of elders was sequestered

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within the Palazzo del Comune for their term of office, so as to isolate them from their usual networks and outside influences. This was a “corporatist” system and it suited professionals, merchants, and artisans very well. It made it difficult for elected officials to promote their personal interests very far, and however intense the work was, it lasted a relatively short time and so did not interfere too much with the shops or businesses that they ran. Bologna’s wealthy patricians were less pleased. They pushed successfully in 1394 for an additional magistracy that would reflect their interests and experience and give government a stability and continuity that the constantly rotating communal magistracies lacked. The Sixteen Reformers of the State of Liberty (Sedici Riformatori dello Stato di Libertà) were formally elected by the elders and the guild masters, but the body was oligarchic from the first. A man appointed to one of its positions held his spot for life, although only half the men served at any one time: in a concession to the fears that this group would too easily seize power entirely, the sixteen members were divided into two groups of eight who rotated every six months. By tacit agreement, seats passed down within families from generation to generation, creating a fi xed and increasingly powerful oligarchy. Though often at loggerheads, the Riformatori coalesced as the body representing “consensus.” Like many such oligarchical bodies, the Riformatori took a very selfserving view of the “liberty” they had pledged to uphold. Through the first half of the fifteenth century its members used their executive power over the city’s finances to assign themselves significant powers as tax collectors and protected bond holders, giving them a practical stranglehold on the city’s budget to the great frustration of a series of popes. They were also agents of the bloody factionalism that ripped Bologna apart through the same decades. Yet they cooperated sufficiently to lead Bologna into signorial rule with Annibale I Bentivoglio in 1443, and then to confirm both the signory and the Bentivoglio by approving as his successor Sante, a young Tuscan whom Cosimo de’Medici put forward after assassins took Annibale I in 1445. Sante was supposedly Annibale’s cousin, though his origins are obscure at best, and what was far more important was that he was Cosimo de’Medici’s apprentice. Was Cosimo aiming to cast Bologna in the Florentine image, with the Bentivoglio as Medicean

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primi inter pares in what remained ostensibly a republican commune? If this was the strategy, then Sante was the necessary placeholder for Annibale’s infant son, Giovanni II, who took over with the Riformatori’s blessing after Sante died in 1463. Through this period the Riformatori remained the chief interlocutors with the papacy. They negotiated the agreement with Nicholas V in 1447 that established the basic framework for Bologna’s distinctive form of power sharing between local and papal authorities, and that confirmed republican magistracies while recognizing no formal role for signori of any kind. As befit the Florentine example, the Bentivoglio were initially signori de facto though not de jure. In 1466, Paul II cemented the family’s influence by raising the number of Riformatori to twenty-one, with two groups of ten serving six months each and Giovanni II Bentivoglio having the singular privilege of holding his seat through the whole year. The pope’s gift proved to be a poisoned chalice that encouraged Bentivoglio overreach and eventually brought the finely balanced oligarchy tumbling down.29 The parallels to Florence are uncanny, though the Bentivoglio were never quite so clever or so lucky as their Medicean mentors. They were relative parvenus who had initially been seriously outclassed by wealthy and powerful families like the Pepoli and Malvezzi, who were content to work behind the scenes. Giovanni II Bentivoglio’s increasingly imperious grasping after powers, titles, money, and properties, and his escalating aggravations of the oligarchs—forcing some into marriages with his bastard children—fed growing opposition and reinvigorated local factions. His bloody suppression of the Malvezzi family in 1488 and then of old friends like the Marescotti in 1501 alienated even his allies. When Julius II decided to call the family’s bluff in November 1506, they fled at night without either supporters or a fight.30 Julius II purged the Riformatori of Bentivoleschi and toyed with deeper constitutional changes, but under Leo X the oligarchical body recovered its footing and many of its powers. In an effort to draw all the leading families into collaboration with them, the popes radically increased the size of the body to forty members, and had all of them serve throughout the year. The new body acted under a shifting set of names, being known variously as the Reggimento, then also the Quaranta, and finally the Senato. For purposes of convenience this last name, which

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Bolognese ambassadors were already using in their correspondence in the 1520s, is the one that is being used in this study to describe this body of oligarchs throughout the course of the sixteenth century. 31 Calling this new body a Senate was not a reference to the long-standing Senate in Venice or the Senate established in 1532 when Florence moved from a republican to ducal constitution. It was a deliberate harkening back to the glories of the Roman Republic.32 It reflected the self-conscious antiquarianism that was shaping humanist republicanism across Italy in these decades. Bologna’s Senate increasingly appropriated the acronym SPQB (for “The Senate and People of Bologna”) and had it carved on to doorways, plaques, and public fountains and buildings across the city.33 There was some irony in taking on the historic political symbols of the very city that had just subjugated them, but these senators saw themselves as the defenders of a Bolognese republic working in collaboration with but also as a check on the sovereign power of the pope and his legate. That long-standing curial appointee became far more powerful after the collapse of the Bentivoglio signoria, and in the eyes of the senatorial oligarchs, local authority had to be concentrated in a single body if the legate was to be curbed effectively. They would function like the ancient Rome’s Senate as a body that could counterbalance the powers of the “emperor,” and in pursuit of this goal they worked assiduously to curb all local competition from the older communal magistracies. Having forty permanent members gave Bologna’s Senate a distinct advantage over a magistracy like the Elders, whose nine different members moved in and out of the Palazzo Comunale every two months. The names of other communal governing bodies also changed over time, and their powers shifted after the fall of the Bentivoglio. Their new names point to the increasingly tense dynamics within the political class. From the 1520s, the Masters of the Guilds and the Standard Bearers of the People were often grouped together as the “Masters of the Colleges” (Maestri dei collegi), a term that harkened back to the corporatist and collegial order of the old Commune.34 The twenty-five Masters of the Guild served three-month terms and retained some professional authority over weights, measures, and markets, which allowed them and the guilds generally to continue having a significant role in the local economy.35 The sixteen Standard Bearers of the People faced a more difficult situation.

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Chosen to four-month terms on the basis of the city quarters, their judicial power had been reduced significantly when papal authorities took more direct control over the courts in the post-Bentivoglio shake-up. They were left with some minor civil and criminal jurisdiction, and a vaguer brief to look after the health and security of the city, including provisions against the plague and oversight of a fund to support the poor. A new name was called for, and like the Senate they reached back to the Roman Republic for their new title: the “Tribunes of the People” (Tribuni delle Plebe).36 The new title was a deliberate and aggressive stance in an increasingly charged political and rhetorical environment. Any Bolognese who had read his Livy—and there were many—would know that one of the key fights in late Rome’s republican politics was precisely that between the Tribunes of the People and the Senate. It wasn’t simply a fight for power, but a fight for distinct visions of what proper constitutional order ought to be. The Senate was the symbol and vehicle for oligarchical power and the Tribunes sought to moderate it with what they called the voice of the people. The fight that had split the antique Roman Republic transferred over to many Italian Renaissance cities and in each it created the same complex and sometimes paradoxical dynamics between broad and oligarchical republicanism that Najemy characterized as the fight between corporatism and consensus. It is surprising how closely these local dramas played out almost as though following the lines of a script first laid out in ancient Rome, generating in each the kind of tension described by J. G. A. Pocock as a “Machiavellian Moment.”37 Across Italy the loudest voices in the debates, and the boldest actors in the unfolding political dramas, were often younger patricians who defied class lines and drew inspiration and direct lessons from their reading of classical humanist history and political philosophy. Some of the clearest examples came in Florence, Genoa, and later Venice. Long-simmering debates in Florence over the best form of government had burst into heated fights after the Medici were thrown out in 1494, and city leaders argued and experimented with different types of republicanism over the next two decades. A good part of Savonarola’s followers had been drawn more to his medieval corporate republicanism than his religious conservatism. Similarly, Piero Soderini’s regime marked an effort to implement

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a more Venetian republican regime, and those behind the Medici revival of 1512–1513 looked to the heavily managed oligarchical republicanism that Cosimo and Lorenzo had shaped in the previous century. Francesco Guicciardini argued for a Senate as “a council to bring the extremes together,” the best setting for the great and the good (specifically the savi or “wise”) to come forward and discuss affairs of state in their search for consensus. In the late 1510s and 1520s, a group of young patricians gathered regularly in the garden of the Rucellai family palace and, in discussions with Machiavelli, embraced the values of Roman republicanism that he was at that time framing in his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy. Some later conspired to kill Giulio de’Medici and institute this republic, but they were betrayed, and were broken apart through executions, confiscations, and exile.38 In these same years, some younger Genoese patricians were fighting for expanded representation of the popolari against the local nobility, and were recruiting confraternities into the cause. They, too, lost the cause in the constitutional reforms of 1528 that created a more oligarchical republic, which moved Genoa more closely into the orbit of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. 39 The divisions in Venice broke out decades later toward the end of the sixteenth century, as a party of younger patricians known as “Giovani” fought to restore the powers of the broad range of local magistracies and assemblies against oligarchs who they feared were collaborating too closely with Rome, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. While their influence and activities would eventually bring down an interdict on Venice, they expressed the same drive against the oligarchical republicanism that was marginalizing communal magistracies and robbing large sections of the populace of its voice.40 Whether in Florence, Genoa, Venice, or Bologna, these young patricians fought for a broader and more representative republicanism that took inspiration from both ancient Roman and medieval Italian models. They also worked for expanded forms of poor relief that incorporated and sometimes expropriated older communal hospitals and confraternities into more comprehensive systems of public welfare.41 Many, like the Florentine Cosimo Rucellai and Venetian Leonardo Donà, shared the same mix of values that animated Bologna’s Giovanni Pepoli: deeply spiritual and decidedly secular, republican as a point of religious as

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much as political ideology, committed to charity ahead of the church, and often contemptuous of both the papacy and curia, and of local oligarchs who kowtowed to them. Machiavelli’s Discourses were published posthumously in 1531 and describe more directly and pungently than Livy the fights between the Senate and the Tribunes of the People in ancient Rome.42 He aimed for a broader popular republicanism that would curb rather than preserve the powers of wealthy and privileged elites, as was the case in Venice. We can only speculate on whether Machiavelli was aware of the parallel fight then taking shape in Bologna, or whether humanists in Bologna like the noted legal scholar Ludovico Gozzadini (1479–1536), who wrote the Tribunes’ statutes in 1532, had seen a manuscript copy of the Discourses or even one of the early printed versions.43 What’s uncanny is the way that Machiavelli’s retelling of the ancient Roman conflict predicts the drama that would unfold over the next few decades in Bologna. Bologna’s Tribunes identified social policy as their particular area of concern, and in theory they controlled enough money to fund generous provisions. They dominated the group of trustees appointed to manage the extensive properties of an abbey that Julius II had secularized and turned over to the civic government. They also petitioned successfully for a new surtax on grain, called the bolognino del morbo, to subsidize the city’s S. Giovanni Battista pesthouse in 1523. Flush with money and empowered with a populist mandate, the Tribunes could have emerged as key power brokers in Bologna. Yet as we will see in the next chapter, collection of both the abbey rents and the surtax fell to the Camera of Bologna, which was controlled by the Senate. Promoting the Tribunes was hardly in the Senate’s own interest. Rather than turning the income over to the Tribunes as they had promised, the senators freely disbursed the monies according to their own priorities. They sent some funds to the pesthouse, but also gave gifts to friends and subsidized the dowries of their allies. In contrast to what we saw in Chapter 1, this was patronal charity that aimed to show the wealthy a good time. Tensions between the Tribunes and the Senate emerged in the 1520s and worsened steadily through the following decades as the Tribunes became more and more adversarial. Appealing to both “caritas” and “amore di patria” in their correspondence with both the Senate and Roman authorities, they saw

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themselves not simply as promoters of the people’s welfare but as defenders of the people’s interests against the powerful oligarchs gathered in the Senate. Simmering tensions boiled over at a few points when the Tribunes in their letters to Rome accused the Senate of mismanagement and fraud. The Senate reacted sharply and went on the attack. It accused individual tribunes and sometimes the entire body with sedition, going so far as to charge that the Tribunes had opened the city gates to the Bentivoglio in the short-lived restoration of 1511–1512. The funds promised the Tribunes were at the root of the dispute, since the Senate negotiated away some of them and refused to release others. The Tribunes also charged the Senate with colluding with the legate to raise additional taxes from Bolognese consumers when it really ought to have been protecting Bologna from papal fiscal interventions. Through the 1520s and ’30s the Tribunes repeatedly called for cuts to civic taxes and a larger role for themselves in the selection and review of the city’s magistrates and officials. They tried in 1552 and again in 1559 to bypass the city’s Senate-appointed ambassadors to Rome, and have their own ambassador to deal directly with the pope. Yet they were repeatedly stymied in their appeals and petitions. For one thing, individual senators could also be elected to serve as tribunes and there was frequently a handful within the magistracy who stood ready to leak and disrupt the Tribunes’ strategies. By the same token there was also a smaller number of tribunes like Count Giovanni Pepoli, who continued to identify with the common people and the popolo cause even after they had ascended to the Senate.44 And there were highborn popolares like Innocenzo Ringhieri, Bagarotto Bianchi, and Franceso Bottrigari who promoted the Tribunes’ position against “senatorial tyranny.” It was perhaps too easy for the Senate to portray these popolares as unruly radicals better controlled than courted because some of the republicans also advocated religious and ecclesiastical reform. Vincenzo Bovio, son of a noble but nonsenatorial family of legists and curialists, and himself a canon of S. Petronio, wrote to Pope Paul III in the mid1540s warning against the concentration of powers in the Senate and advocating broader power sharing. He proposed appointing a body of 120 representatives of leading families who would rotate on limited terms

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through the Senate and other magistracies. There should be no sinecures, and none of the 120 should hope to pass their seats on to their sons when they died, as was clearly becoming the practice in the Senate. Rather, the pope should appoint replacements who were “virtuous and faithful to the Holy Church.” All well and good, except that Bovio also thought that the Church itself needed serious reform. He was arrested on suspicion of heresy in February 1548 and sent to the prison of the Inquisition in Rome. Bovio’s two brothers, a cousin, and a series of other Bolognese patricians who had once served with the Tribunes or the Elders soon joined him there. Tensions intensified when Vincenzo’s cousin, Annibale Bovio, committed suicide in the prison in January 1549. The group escaped by the skin of its teeth when the sede vacante following Paul III’s death threw open the prison doors ten months later.45 It was Julius III who followed as pope, and he came to office having just served for two years as papal legate in the city (1548–1550). Well primed in local politics, he clearly believed that the papacy had better side with the stable conservatism of the senatorial oligarchs rather than with the unsettling reform of the republicans. The Senate continued to exploit its better connections with the legate in Bologna and the legation office in Rome. Its ambassadors tarred every one of the Tribunes’ initiatives as an example of sedition against the papal government. They played skillfully on the ever present anxieties in the curia, which was nervous about upheavals in the Papal State’s biggest and wealthiest city. The popes and cardinals had also read their Livy—and their Machiavelli. As Roman authorities were developing the absolutist government of the Papal State, the Tribunes’ portrayal of themselves as the representatives of the “People,” seeking to govern alongside the Senate and legate as equal partners, made the curia distinctly uneasy. The senatorial smear campaign against the Tribunes heated up through the early 1550s, winning from the deeply suspicious Julius III the pledge to disband the Tribunes once and for all. Julius died before he could act on this promise, but the imminent threat resonated beyond diplomatic correspondence and soon sounded dramatically on the streets of Bologna. One of the most prominent processions in the local civic religious calendar marked the feast of Corpus Domini, when all of Bologna’s clergy, magistrates, guilds, and confraternities marched through the city. In the

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1555 procession held barely two months after Julius III died, the prominent Count Vincenzo Gozzadini loudly disrupted proceedings by heckling the Tribunes of the People and Masters of the Guilds. Gozzadini was a distant relation of the distinguished legist Ludovico Gozzadini, who had written the Tribunes’ statutes, and despite his noble title his politics ensured that he would never make it into high office. As the tribunes and guild masters marched solemnly past in their robes of office, Gozzadini yelled out to them, “don’t let the big-wigs kill your people— help them, defend them, and give them your protection!” He mocked the senators as “ravenous eaters” (mangiaroni) of the people, and claimed that their rule over Bologna was tyranny.46 Gozzadini’s public challenge to the Tribunes and Masters to stand up to the Senate voiced the deep frustrations of local republicans. Yet if any real change were to be accomplished it would have to come through the Council of the Elders, the third and most powerful of the old communal magistracies. Unfortunately, it also saw its powers steadily diminishing through these decades. The Elders had remained in place through the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries with the fewest changes to organization. They occupied choice offices and living quarters in the Palazzo Comunale and claimed a major part of the annual communal budget.47 They had taken the lead in provisions for the poor in the 1540s and 1550s. Yet with short terms of office, few powers, and a less socially prominent membership, they were limited to rationalizing the traditional passive forms of almsgiving and relief and had less success with more activist, ambitious, and disciplinarian approaches. The Elders had taken the lead in promoting a 1534 plan to relieve famine-induced inflation by setting maximum fees that vendors of fruit, bread, grains, and meats could charge for carrying goods. While their efforts were endorsed by the papal legate, the guilds, and the Senate, and backed up by fines of five lire for every offense (shared by the accuser and the civic treasury), the plan was fundamentally quixotic and seems to have gone nowhere.48 Similarly, when they backed down from their effort to expel “foreign” indigents in 1539, they showed the limits of their will and authority. It was from this time that the legate and Senate started taking a more active role in controlling and providing for the poor. The Elders continued organizing systematic almsgiving in the famines of the early 1550s and early 1560s,

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but they—like the Tribunes and the Masters of the Guilds—failed to win a fi xed allotment of seats in the OPM.49 Their real work seemed to decline soon after the Bolognese Ugo Buoncompagni became Pope Gregory XIII in 1572. The contrast is quite literally graphic. From that point, notes of the Elders’ decisions drop from the elaborate formal illuminated chronicle of their actions known as the Insignia, to be replaced with paintings of members’ coats of arms and of major events that happened in Bologna in their term. Their discussions had increasingly to do with disputes of precedence vis-à-vis other bodies in Bologna. Through the wretched famines of the late 1580s and 1590s, we find little in their records on arranging food for paupers but much relating to the trumpeters who attended their public processions.50 Meanwhile, the Senate, through its Assunteria della Abbondanza, steadily expanded its powers over the import, sale, and price of grain, and used some of its discretionary funds to buy grain. This became the pattern moving forward through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While its real power evaporated or moved over to the Senate, the Council of the Elders remained a locally significant marker of prestige in the local court society, a lower rung on the cursus honorum that either prepared men for a seat on the Senate or compensated them for never reaching it.51 And their chances of reaching it were growing ever more remote. Pope Leo X had gambled that, at forty seats, the Senate would be large enough to encompass the whole governing oligarchy and allow for a Medici-style managed republicanism. Vincenzo Bovio’s proposal for a Venetian-style college of 120 men who would cycle through the Senate and other magistracies was one of a few plans circulated by those on the outer rings of power who were fearful that their families would never secure a seat in what was becoming an exclusive and powerful inner council. It was a quixotic proposal, but one that showed that too many powerful families, both new and old, were being left out of the political system. Anyone familiar with Bologna’s history would know that this was a recipe for factionalism, making these years from the 1540s through the 1570s particularly dangerous ones. After the 1550s the catalyst for factionalism posed by the Bentivoglio faded steadily away, and the election of Ugo

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Boncompagni to the papacy in 1572 paved the way for a new political consolidation. No other cardinal can have had Gregory XIII’s inside knowledge of the situation in Bologna, and he clearly favored curbing the powers of the Tribunes and Elders and ensuring that they would never recover a serious role in government. Yet he found the existing senatorial elite just as troublesome, and aimed to undercut the power of that oligarchy while also making the Senate itself more effective by appointing some new families to the body in the 1570s and ’80s. His move aggravated the older powerful families, and with their fears of being marginalized, the threat of factionalism bubbled up to the surface again. Sixtus V aimed to restore equilibrium by adding ten more seats to the Senate in 1590, and by giving most of them to the older lineages. Yet his move angered the oligarchs even more. They feared that increasing the number of senators would just water down their powers—something that Sixtus no doubt was betting on. The Senate fought this expansion intensely, and some continued referring to themselves as “the Forty” (the Quaranta) for years after the number had actually risen to fifty. Senators cohered around the common cause of minimizing direct papal involvement in the city. They responded to every direct papal tax by negotiating to pay a lump sum that would be covered by a funded debt that would in turn be redeemed gradually through local consumption taxes. While direct Roman taxation would have undermined local autonomy, debt secured the same financial ends while actually increasing the power of those local individuals, boards, and bodies charged with its administration.52 From 1550 to 1596, the public debt quadrupled while tax revenues tripled.53 Similarly, the Senate was determined to curb the activities of the Tribunes and Elders because it feared that Rome would quickly capitalize on any local divisions in order to increase its own direct power. In the 1447 Concordat, Nicholas V had conceded significant local powers and privileges to Bologna if the city would acknowledge the papacy’s overarching sovereignty. Every time a new pope was elected, the Senate sent ambassadors to Rome for confirmation of this 1447 Concordat. Depending on who had the upper hand at the moment, it was either confirmed as is or slightly modified. This was what Angela

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De Bendictis precisely described and memorably termed a “Republic by Contract.”54 The relationship carried on through the ancien régime, when Bologna was the only subject city of the Papal State to have an embassy and resident ambassador in Rome.55 The Senate certainly fought determinedly with papal authorities— arguably more than of any of Bologna’s other governing bodies. Yet for all of this, it was also the Senate that worked most closely with the papacy and was most dependent on it. When a Senate seat fell vacant, the Senate sent three nominations to the pope, who picked the replacement. From 1513 through 1605, thirteen popes made 248 appointments from seventytwo families. Mauro Carboni’s statistical analysis shows that the maximum degree of mobility came between 1506 and 1590, when we can find sixty-eight different lineages among the forty Senate seats. Thanks to the purge of the entire Bentivoglio party, forty-one of these families were being admitted for the first time. The mobility ratio—that is, the likelihood of seat turnover—was a moderately high 41.2 percent. Over the next sixty-six years, the number of seats increased by a quarter to fifty, but the senatorial mobility ratio more than halved, dropping to just 19.4 percent. This meant that from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century a senatorial family’s chances of retaining its seat increased from about 60 percent to over 80 percent. It also meant that the number of active families decreased. From 1590 to 1655 the number of active senatorial families dropped from sixty-eight to sixty-two, and the admission of new families declined even more sharply from forty-one to twelve.56 Vincenzo Bovio, Vincenzo Gozzadini, and Giovanni Pepoli were not the only ones who challenged the tightening noose that was choking republican corporate society. Critics from the professional, mercantile, and lower nobility pointed out repeatedly (though often anonymously), that Bologna suffered under a senatorial “tyranny.” They fumed that a small and self-perpetuating group was gradually usurping every part of local government, and funneling funds, positions, and favors to their own members or supporters: appointments to ambassadorships, captaincies, and podestarial appointments; tax collections; charitable funds; market regulations; dowries paid from public accounts. Many of these critics were based at the university. Camillo Baldi (1551–1637), son of a professor of philosophy and medicine, who himself taught medicine,

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philosophy, logic, and physiology at the university, wrote a heavily ironical study of the government and social classes in Bologna. Though never published, his “Bologna Tyrannized by the Perpetuity of the Fifty” circulated widely in manuscript form. Baldi’s early seventeenth-century account highlights the convenient reciprocity between papacy and Senate that had effectively destroyed not only the other communal magistracies but all civic accountability and fiscal prudence. Another anonymous critic, likely a university professor, complained bitterly that independent voices at the university were being punished with lower salaries while the regime’s toadies enjoyed increasing stipends.57 A few decades earlier, and more obliquely, the historian Carlo Signonio (1524–1584) focused on how the city’s conflicts with papal authorities were part of a longstanding challenge to local republicanism. Sigonio taught at the University of Bologna from 1563 to 1584 when tensions were highest, and turned from his classical studies to write a number of histories both of Bologna and of Italy generally in which he emphasized the concept of republican libertas. He pointedly highlighted the medieval conflict between cities determined to preserve their liberties, and a papacy determined to curb them.58 According to these authors, as the Senate and papacy negotiated their relationship, Bologna was moving toward the kind of narrow and ossified elite found in Venice and Genoa, with much the same consequences. Senate membership was only half the picture. Intensifying intermarriage within the senatorial elite meant that there were fewer “new families” around. From 1506 to 1655, over 80 percent of senatorial marriages were “within the walls”—i.e., between local families. As Carboni notes, “The matrimonial market remained municipal and rarely crossed the medieval city walls.” Five families emerged at the top as the most interconnected: the Malvezzi, Pepoli, Orsi, Bentivoglio, and Fantuzzi.59 The rate of class endogamy in Bologna was 66 percent. By comparison, it was only 55 percent in Florence and 50 percent in seventeenth-century England. The few who married outside of Bologna did not lean appreciably toward the newer power centers of Rome or the Papal State, but reinforced long-standing links in the Po Valley, Florence, and Naples. These intramural marriage dynamics, combined with advantageous dowry arrangements and the frequent absence of Bolognese patrician

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men on administrative and diplomatic missions within and beyond the Papal State, created opportunities for patrician women of leading families to exercise far greater agency than their counterparts in other cities like Florence.60 It is no surprise, then, that the papacy was immensely interested in local family dynamics, including marriages and all manner of feuds, tensions, and alliances. The legate or vice legate was supposed to keep a close watch on these family relations, and they comprised a major running theme in the letters sent back and forth between these local officials and the cardinal who headed the Bolognese legation in Rome. In a slightly comic juxtaposition of Mars and Venus, legates gossiped incessantly with Roman authorities about Bolognese marriage politics. Only border disputes and troop movements seemed to take up as much of their attention.61 However comic, it is a commentary on where power lay in this wealthy and fractious city so far from Rome. As the second city of the Papal State, Bologna developed as a court society whose prince was absent, nonhereditary, and represented by a continually rotating series of legates and vice legates. Bolognese families out to impress each other and the power brokers visiting from Rome built extraordinary city palaces and rural villas where the patrician men and women patronized artists and musicians, where they arranged their marriages in ever-tightening circles, and where they effectively ran the city.62 These were the intertwined social and political contexts for the progressive overhaul of poor relief in sixteenth-century Bologna. Communal magistracies and an oligarchical Senate maneuvered on a host of issues, and took their fight into confraternities and charitable institutions. Through the first half of the sixteenth century, papal legates and Bolognese senators found common cause in the effort to prevent a Bentivoglio restoration, and to concentrate local authority in a single governing body, at the expense of those same communal magistracies. The dovetailing politics of intermarriage and senatorial appointment ensured an ever-tightening oligarchy and growing consensus. By the end of the sixteenth century the Bolognese ruling class had consolidated its ranks and had acquired the distinct features of a stable regime like that found in Venice, complete with a powerful Senate, even in the absence of any formal serrata.

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The OPM and its poorhouse emerged as a product of Bologna’s civil society. Its administration reflected the fights within that society between traditional republican and newer oligarchical forms. As Bologna’s political class fought through the middle decades of the sixteenth century over whether communal or oligarchical forms would shape the city’s political order, the OPM itself experienced a precisely parallel struggle over whether the corporale or the congregazione would exercise final authority internally. Of its two precursors, the 1548 plan empowered an executive congregazione while the 1550 plan invented a broad corporale. The first formal statutes of 1564 continued with the latter model when it drew hundreds of volunteers from the confraternal Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti, giving them administrative tasks for a few months and overall authority over appointments and the review of officials. This was exactly how guilds and confraternities ran their internal affairs. The revised statutes of 1574 shifted power to a far narrower congregational administration by cutting the number of volunteers radically, curbing their voice within the OPM’s administration, and increasing the powers of the four-man executive board headed by a rector. The rector had always represented the coordinating authority of the Senate, and now that the prior was also to be chosen from its ranks, the Senate had firmer control. These 1574 changes to the OPM’s administration represented not only a broader shift from corporate to congregational administration but a turn to the type of executive governance that the Senate championed and represented within Bologna’s fractured politics. The OPM’s new congregational administration came closer to how the Senate ran its internal affairs. Pope Gregory XIII helped establish the Senate’s priority in civic politics over the older communal magistracies of the Elders, the Masters of the Guild, and the Tribunes of the People in the city’s political order. He just as clearly established its priority in civic welfare, since it was the influence of the pope and his nephew, Filippo Boncompagno, that reshaped the OPM and its shelter through the 1570s and beyond. The senatorial oligarchy’s move to infiltrate, control, and redirect social institutions both old and new was part of its general drive to consolidate power in the emerging “Republic by Contract.” The Senate worked collectively to outflank other magistracies like the Elders and the Tribunes, and senators individually fought vociferously to keep

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Senate seats within a small circle of families that they then drew ever tighter through intermarriage. The strategy removed all competitors and consolidated local power; senators realized that only by collaborating together could they keep Rome at arm’s length. For all their ongoing struggles, on this point they maintained a firm consensus. In their view the traditional republicanism of the communal period with its infinite delegation of power and its ceaseless rotation of office threatened to divide Bolognese society and allow outside Roman authorities to enter as the objective referees and efficient bureaucrats operating above the local fray. We can understand this drive to control the political system, but why did they care about a poorhouse or a cluster of hospitals? There were at least two reasons. Bologna’s hospitals held large patrimonies and significant real estate, and in the years ahead, patricians would draw on these endowments to advance their own financial interests. Beyond patrician self-dealing, the hospitals and their wealth made a difference in the lives of many Bolognese. Some institutions could mobilize significant workforces that seemed particularly well suited to the needs of new and expanding industry. Each represented a life rope for some needy social group. Under the careful coordination of senatorial rectors who rotated around the various institutions, these individual life ropes could be woven into a safety net. While hardly tight or efficient, it served to keep certain poor—working, worthy, and women—off the streets and occupied as productive and cooperative citizens. And this was why the subtle shift in the name of the OPM poorhouse from “S. Maria della Misericordia” to “S. Gregorio” marked a dual turning point, from practical to patronal charity, and from corporate to congregational governance. The efforts to deal with female life cycle poverty in the first half of the sixteenth century had emphasized bringing the Commune together to provide a place where the Commune’s own poor could be fed, clothed, sheltered, and helped back on their feet. This was what the practical charity of misericordia represented most fundamentally: shelter to those entitled to gather under the outspread cloak of the Virgin Mary by virtue of the fact that they were worthy members in good standing of Bologna’s civil society. Many images of the Madonna della Misericordia emphasized this by showing rich and poor, male and

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female, laity and clergy all gathered together. This was undoubtedly what Count Giovanni Pepoli had in mind when he named his plan for famine relief a Pious Heap of Misericordia, and put it in the care of a large group of trustees drawn from a range of local institutions. In the vision of misericordia, rich people like Pepoli used their wealth to help the poor of the community maintain themselves. It was all very expensive. It required the wealthy to be willing to put a good deal of their money in the communal pot without necessarily extracting much personal patronal benefit as a result, something that Pepoli himself was apparently willing to do. It also meant that the OPM was also in the care of a large corporate community of volunteers and trustees representing neighborhoods and institutional groups in the city. The great majority of volunteer positions set out in the OPM’s 1564 statutes were directed to raising money for the OPM. They did it either directly by collecting money from Bolognese families and institutions, or indirectly by helping the poor find work either in or outside the poorhouse. It didn’t work. While 1574 statute reforms may have allowed a more oligarchical group within Bologna and in the OPM to push its advantage, the fact remains that they would never have had that opportunity if it hadn’t been for the financial crisis crippling the OPM. That crisis came about, at least in part, when the forms of communal fund-raising built on magistracies like the Tribunes, on volunteers in the OPM, and on the vision of misericordia failed. Money would eventually be found, but it would come under tighter administration and with the different expectations of patronal charity. These would place new demands on the poor generally and on poor women above all.

chapter 4

Meeting the Bottom Line Alms, Taxes, Work, and Legacies

wo men set out on a Sunday morning in 1566 for a walk through the quarter of Porta Piera. They carry with them a list many pages long bearing the names of people who live and work in this north east quarter of Bologna. Each knows personally some of the merchants on the list from their own commercial contacts, some of the artisans from work they have done for his family, and some of the shopkeepers from the meat, fish, or bread supplied to their tables. Each man knows a few of the many priests and friars whose names appear on the list. And both men know of the quarter’s grandi, families like the Fantuzzi, the Orsi, and the Poggi whose newly built palaces are the pride of Bologna and testaments either to family fortunes built up over the centuries or to skillful political networking of the past few decades.1 Beside each name on the list there are other entries—two lire, a flask of oil, one sheep, three shirts, a bundle of kindling. Each represents a donation to the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM) pledged by the head of a household, a shopkeeper, or a parish priest. Sometimes the handwriting is difficult to read. The list was compiled by three other men who had walked through Porta Piera’s neighborhoods only a few weeks before. The one carrying the notebook and pen had sometimes lapsed into the merchant’s script that he used every day for his business

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records and trade ledgers—a rapid shorthand full of abbreviations that could be hard to make out. But the two men walking this Sunday morning can usually puzzle out the meaning. They pick a street, and over the next couple of hours the two men will retrace the steps their colleagues made not long before, knocking on the same doors, talking to the same priests and family heads, collecting on the money where possible, and arranging for the pickup or delivery of the goods pledged.2 What ought to be straightforward work seldom is. Some men or women pay the two OPM collectors without question, but others claim that what’s recorded is more than they had intended. Or that they had made a generous pledge in the hope of a good business deal that has now gone sour. Or that the promised sheep was to come from sharecropper tenants who are now dragging their heels. Or that the goods promised will certainly come, but only next month or the month after that. Sometimes arguments break out. Exasperated, the OPM collectors point in their ledger to the pledge and remind the donor that this represents a promise to God. Only a fool breaks that kind of promise. What’s written there can’t be a mistake, because it’s exactly what the householder had pledged last year and the year before that. A promise is a promise. It makes little difference whether the conversation takes place in a rich merchant’s sitting room or the single room that constitutes a poor artisan’s home and workspace. There’s really no predicting who will honor their pledge without question, and who will argue or stall. After a few hours, our two collectors have a few lire in coins, and some names that they will pass on to the OPM warden. He will arrange for a couple of boys to come by the houses later in the week with a bag or a cart to pick up some foodstuffs and cloth. They hope that the boys don’t encounter the same resistance. And they hope that they themselves don’t either, for they will be back at it next week and the week after that. And then when they are finally through the list, it will be set aside until next year, when a new pair of pledge takers and pledge collectors will take it up for their trips through the quarter, aiming to get each household head to match this year’s pledge, and possibly even increase it. These two men are doing something seldom tried before, not just in Bologna, but anywhere else in Italy. Some of the greatest innovations in Italian welfare reform came in its economics. There weren’t simply two

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cultures of charity, the patronal and the practical. There were also two economies of charity. Charitable hospitals had traditionally relied on the alms and legacies that characterized patronal charity. Alms rose and fell and legacies slowly accumulated. Some hospitals hired professional collectors, usually priests or friars working on commission, to seek out alms in the city and countryside on the hospital’s behalf. So long as the hospital cared only for pilgrims who stayed a few nights before moving on, this was more than enough. Sudden increases could put better food on the table and sudden drops could curb the hospitality, but the ones affected for better or worse would soon be back on the road. A residential shelter took on long-term obligations with every foundling, adolescent, or poor family coming in the door—eight months, eight years, possibly eighteen years. It could not simply turn its wards out on the street if alms dropped, particularly not when they were girls or women. As a result, almost every residential shelter soon collapsed into crisis and scrambled desperately for the means to maintain the ones inside. Administrators looked for resources both inside and outside. Since costs increased as the shelter turned itself into a home, it made sense that those living there should contribute to its maintenance, just as they would if they were living in the household of a friend, relative, or neighbor. This meant finding paid work for the orphans, girls, or paupers, with earnings directed to the home’s budget. And since the shelter served the entire community by relieving individuals from the necessity of helping the poor, it made sense that people and households across the community would contribute to its costs. In some parts of Europe, and particularly in the north, public officials tallied up the costs for shelters and relief, divided them across the town’s or parish’s citizens, and then went around collecting much like the Porta Piera gentlemen were doing. In Turin, citizens and officials took pledges from monasteries and convents, brought collection boxes up and down the streets, and visited farms to gather vegetables, grains, and wine.3 These were the economic realities of practical charity, where the wealth of donors, the work of the poor, and the will of citizens combined to underwrite an institution that aimed to reintegrate those same poor back into society. The OPM straddled these worlds of patronal and practical charity. It aimed to be a more rationalized clearinghouse for patronal charity—that

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is, for the alms that people had once given out on the street or at the door. It mobilized an army of pledge takers and alms collectors for just this purpose. This wasn’t a trained army of priests and friars with experience, skill, and the critical weapons of charisma and sacramental power that ordination gave them. The OPM alms-gathering army was a decidedly secular group of amateur part-time volunteers who served for a few months at a time like members of Bologna’s communal magistracies. The OPM’s pledge takers and the pledge collectors were laymen drawn from its confraternity, the Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti; they were members of the OPM corporale, drafted into active service for terms of a few months. They had little experience and had no sacramental powers to use as tools of persuasion. Their time was limited and their methods were blunter: flattery and appeals to charity and honor might gradually slide into argument and insult. The OPM also aimed to be a site of practical charity where the poor could start to reconstruct their own future sure of a roof overhead, enough food for the day, and a bed at night. If older, they could start working and perhaps establish a relationship with an employer. If younger, they could learn a trade or get a position as a servant. If infirm or destitute, they could help around the poorhouse and so earn their own keep there. For this work, the OPM recruited a second army of work finders: men and women who went out to artisans’ shops and private homes looking for jobs that the poor of the OPM could do. Like the first army of alms gatherers, this army was made up of short-term volunteers. It also moved in waves through the city: one corps finding the work, another corps checking to see how the workers were faring, and a third going to collect the wages and bring them back to the OPM itself. And like the first army, this one was made up entirely of lay volunteers. In this case the merchants, artisans, and gentlewomen in its ranks were moving in their own worlds and could draw on their own experience and contacts. These two extraordinary volunteer armies fought poverty on the streets of Bologna. They were fundamental parts of the experiment that was the OPM, and the rapidly escalating costs of that experiment made their fight all the more critical. They entered the city with high expectations for a quick victory and were surprised by the resistance they encountered. Moving house to house collecting alms proved more time consuming and

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bore fewer results than anyone had anticipated. One key new strategy— an effort to turn traditional alms gathering into a kind of voluntary tax— backfired badly and had to be abandoned. A hoped-for alliance with Bologna’s wealthy religious houses bore few results as those houses that had pledged their resources in the fight began pulling back almost immediately. The efforts to find work likewise had only mixed success. A few young boys and girls could be placed into shops and homes, but the key new strategy of bringing work out to the OPM’s poorhouses was less successful. Bologna’s burgeoning silk industry was an eager employer that all charitable institutions were turning to, yet some were better able to take advantage of it than others. The structure of some homes did not fit the industry, and as it happened, the structure of the industry did not fit some homes. The fit with the OPM was a bad one. Both the army of alms collectors and the army of work finders demobilized within ten years, exhausted by what seemed a fruitless fight against fi xed realities. Fund-raising strategies would shift, and the OPM would even come to rely on a few professionals hired and supervised by its congregazione rather than on hundreds of volunteers drawn from the ranks of the corporale. Being between two economies means that you can draw on both, and the OPM continued to rely as much or more on traditional patronal charity as on the newer forms of practical charity. Although the drive for practical charity was the strongest force at its birth, patronal charity would be the main factor in saving it year to year and in allowing it gradually to build the endowment that would offer some stability in the future. From 1574, the OPM had to adjust its expectations and methods, and through the decades that followed it had to negotiate a paradoxical position: while its short-term financial position continued to erode, its long-term prospects gradually improved.

Begging for Beggars: Keeping the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti Afloat The OPM had a ravenous appetite for alms from the very beginning. While later pious histories portrayed the opening of its poorhouse as the spontaneous and miraculous response of the Bolognese to Fra Teophilo’s preaching in Holy Week 1563, this step had actually required

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extraordinary advance preparation. Fra Teophilo’s eloquence had indeed shaken an impressive 5,800 lire out of Bolognese purses. This supplemented 4,000 lire that Bishop Giovanni Campeggi had already put on the table. But it still was not enough, and the OPM officials were clearly caught completely off guard. Barely weeks after opening, they were writing Bolognese patricians in a desperate search for alms. They caught up with Count Giovanni Pepoli as he was traveling to Rome and won a promise of 300 gold scudi.4 Local patricians like Campeggi and Pepoli were far more vital to the early years of the OPM than traveling preachers like Fra Teophilo. Apart from their own fortunes, they could lobby their peers at social events, twist the arms of guildsmen and professionals in the street, and negotiate subsidies in the Senate. Patricians like these and a small core of others had been influential in launching relief plans in the recent past, and would remain heavily involved in subsidizing and administering the OPM. Wealthy patrons, political subsidies, and fiery preaching had kept Bolognese charities afloat for centuries. Yet the OPM’s far greater scale and more ambitious mandate strained all these traditional sources to the limit. The chaos of the early years comes through in the confused entries of the early financial registers. The unprecedented scale of the operation, the intermediary role of the Monte di Pietà, the shock of high costs, and the desperate search for new sources of funds overwhelmed everyone. Even the bookkeepers were caught desperately trying to find some way of tracking the food and money that moved in and out of the home. Through the early years they simply kept running accounts. The first bookkeeper (depositario), Hercole de Domenico Torresani, gathered the financial donations and periodically brought them to the offices of the Monte di Pietà, where a single teller, Innocenzio Desiderio, seems to have been in charge of the OPM account. Registering the deposits and authorizing withdrawals was done only once the amounts had reached a few hundred or thousand lire, so not surprisingly there would be a few witnesses and a notary present to record the transaction. Yet despite these cautions, when it came to recording the OPM’s deposits in the Monte di Pietà’s own ledgers, Innocenzo Desiderio simply added them to the ongoing register and didn’t clearly separate out the OPM’s accounts from

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any others. It was much the same situation at the OPM itself, where the bookkeeper and masters simply kept a running total. This was not what Pope Pius IV had had in mind when ordering the OPM to follow the example of Bologna’s leading charitable institutions in its administration. While their records are clear, systematic, and professional, the OPM accounts give the impression of an institution flying by the seat of its pants.5 If they’d taken the pope’s advice, it all would have been simple enough. The warden would record daily purchases and donations in day books (libri giornali) and then the master would transfer them to thick and heavy ledgers (libri mastri) where he organized them by categories. On separate pages he would group all the payments to butchers, salaries for staff, income from tenants, receipts from tax collectors, and so forth. Having organized and recorded all these distinctly, he would then bring them together in a single balance sheet of income and expense at the end of his term. This was eventually the practice, but it took some time getting there. Through the first three years, the OPM’s libro mastro isn’t much different from the libri giornali, and simply mixes all the accounts together. Only from 1566, do the thick and heavy mastri volumes start to include the final tallies of income and expense that the auditors prepared as they reviewed each master at the end of his term: every four months to 1574, and twice a year after that. The numbers don’t always add up. And while they are broken down into separate categories, these categories are not consistent. Bookkeepers shifted from ledger to ledger and year to year, and each recorded income and expense in slightly different ways and under different categories. Food purchases go from one consolidated category in 1566 to seven separate ones in 1593, though on the whole expenses are handled more simply than income. Income in particular ends up being registered under a host of constantly shifting categories, due in part to the fact that the job of bookkeeper rotated much like all the other offices. As a result, sudden swings in different sources of income from one year to the next may have less to do with ups and downs of Bolognese generosity than with one or another bookkeeper’s preferences. In administration as in everything else, the OPM was feeling its way forward for at least three decades. The men who wrote the revised

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statutes in 1574 repeatedly insisted that the master be an experienced administrator who knew how to keep accounts in the mercantile form, and when we see the earliest ledgers we can understand why. We get hints of the chaos that must have gripped the office and the serious fights that must have divided meetings of the corporale over the previous decade, and why these reformers proposed leaving a smaller congregazione in charge of administration. And even at that, it isn’t until 1593 that the accounts become more regular and predictable. This was when the bookkeeper and master finally and consistently adopted double-entry bookkeeping and reconciled income and expenses in a single annual figure. From this point they also made a greater effort to separate single large legacies out from a year’s “normal” income. Greater clarity in accounting doesn’t mean more transparency in operations, and the ongoing failure of the numbers to add up may mean that the OPM suffered the kind of fraud and corruption that bedeviled many other ospedale administrations.6 Whatever the reasons, the confusions of the first four decades mean that we need to take the figures in the massive leatherbound libri mastri cautiously. In order to minimize this confusion in the pages that follow, the OPM’s three shelters will be referred to according to the saint’s names that they bore by the end of century: S. Gregorio (the original poorhouse that opened under the title of S. Maria della Misericordia and was also sometimes known as the Outside House or Casa di Fuori), S. Maria della Pietà (the home for boys and men opened in 1567 and sometimes known as the Inside House or Casa di Dentro), and S. Orsola (the infirmary just outside the city wall that opened in 1591). Costs started high and continued growing. The snaking lines of Figure 3 show how income and expense moved up and down from a median of about 20,000 lire for the first decade and a half.7 They then rose sharply in the gathering crisis of the late 1580s, hitting almost 60,000 lire in 1591–1592 and stabilizing at just over 50,000 in 1597.8 We saw earlier that the shelter opened in 1563 with 800 and that a formal report of 1587 counted 448 poor in the two shelters. From 900 to 1,400 people were cramming into the same spaces in the early 1590s, and even more came to the door for handouts of bread.9 Keeping people fed was the biggest challenge. Costs for bread, foodstuffs, and wine ranged between 60 and 75 percent of expenses through

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70,000 Income

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71 573 575 577 579 581 583 585 587 589 591 593 595 597 599 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

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Figure 3. Income and Expense at the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti, 1570–1600

the first three decades, and climbed to over 80 percent in the crises of the 1590s (see Figure 410). The bulk of this represents the cost of flour that was baked into bread at the poorhouses themselves, followed by assorted foodstuffs like vegetables, legumes, oil, and wine. As their letters testify, OPM officials were responsible for feeding many more than just the poor living inside their shelters. Unknown sums went to feed those traveling through Bologna and the house-poor who had passed inspection and were entitled to receive regular disbursements without having to move into the poorhouse. The poor were known as much by their bare feet and rags as by their hunger. Apart from bread, one of the first things that poor women, children, and men entering the poorhouse received was clothing and shoes. This usually represented the OPM’s highest expense after food, hovering around 10 percent of expenses in the first couple of decades. When drops in alms forced then to choose, authorities quite naturally focused on food over clothing. Clothing purchases collapsed through the strained years from 1588 as every available penny went into skyrocketing food costs. In the worst year (1592) the OPM paid 50,026 lire for food, and only 134 lire for clothing. This may be one of the reasons why

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60,000 Food Expenses

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40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0

70 572 574 576 578 580 582 584 586 588 590 592 594 596 598 600 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

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Figure 4. Food Expenses at the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti, 1570–1600

Prioress Antonia Malvezzi made such extraordinary efforts over the next few years to gather cloths of different kinds that could be sewed into uniforms for the poor and into clothing for the staff.11 The sheer cost of maintaining and furnishing the buildings also varied considerably from year to year, but only seldom did they add up to much. When conditions worsened and more poor crammed into in the shelters, as in 1574–1576 and 1590–1594, authorities had to buy extra beds, tables, and chairs, and make what repairs they could afford. In the worst of the 1590s dearth, they also had to devote larger sums to furnishing the newly opened S. Orsola infirmary. Beyond walls and furnishings, the other fi xtures in a home were the staff. Hospitals and shelters typically aimed quite deliberately to replicate the family, and the warden couple (guardiano and guardiana) who lived in the home were to present themselves and act as the surrogate father and mother who were most immediately responsible for conditions in each of the three separate shelters. They organized the cooking, the laundry, and the cleaning, much of it done by the women and older girls living in the home. Each home also had a doorkeeper (portiniera or portiniero) to keep an eye over exits and entrances, and a general handyman

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for minor repairs. As we saw earlier, there were at least half a dozen helpers assisting S. Gregorio’s warden, while S. Maria della Pietà’s had as many as a dozen. Although fewer in number, the young boys of S. Maria della Pietà were on their own and needed more supervision. Since the wardens and other staff all lived in the home, their cash wages could be quite low. At a time when the average laborer’s salary ranged from 100 to 150 lire per year, the OPM consistently paid just under 1,000 lire for all its salaried employees through the 1570s and to the mid-1580s. Salary costs then dropped by a third over the next decade, even though the number of staff increased when the S. Orsola home opened. This may indicate that more of the work in the three shelters was being transferred from paid outsiders to wards of the homes who worked there as a way of covering their own costs for room, board, and clothing. Hundreds of people lived in the S. Gregorio shelter at a time. No other charitable home in Bologna reached out to this number of people or required this much money at all times to keep going. Were traditional forms of fund-raising, like alms collection, up to the challenge that the OPM posed? The home was bigger in every way than anything Bologna had seen before, and the poor women, children, and men living there might take up residence for weeks, months, or even years—far longer than the days or weeks that a pilgrim or an infirm patient spent in a conventional hospital. Traditional almsgiving was by nature sporadic, and as such it was a shaky way of financing a public institution that needed to put food on the table every day. It took the stimuli of fervent preachers or starving children to get people to give more, and here S. Gregorio was almost a victim of its own success. Putting the beggars out of sight beyond the city walls may have made sense politically, but it put them out of mind for many alms givers. Like hospitals in Turin, Rome, Florence, and Venice, the OPM countered this in part by posting alms boxes at the doors of most churches in the city, although these failed to generate much income through the first decades. Professional alms gatherers—usually priests or friars—could pick up the slack with techniques that suggested a thin line between selling services and collecting alms. Some of these fundraising clerics in the Bologna area offered to release vows, bless fields, houses, and animals, and set protective talismans on doors or animals in

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return for some alms. Whatever could be blessed could also be cursed, and a canny collector knew how to extract alms through promises and threats. These collectors traveled around with bells, images, and crosses, publicizing a home’s indulgences or privileges, preaching, praying, and making a show of their Latin as proof of their spiritual powers with sacraments and sacramentals. Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti tried hard to crack down on them, particularly those who skimmed off a percentage of the alms in payment. These were the ones who had the greatest incentive to wield promises and threats when they moved through neighborhoods or out into the countryside.12 Paleotti didn’t need to worry about the OPM, at least not in the early years when it waved aside professional collectors in favor of a range of other alms-gathering tactics. One technique that it found far more effective was getting the beggars themselves back in sight. It purchased twelve alms boxes, dressed a troupe of poor boys in the distinctive OPM uniform, and sent them out with special licenses through the city. Every few days, a couple dozen of these boys moved around streets and churches of Bologna on their mission. While each box might hold no more than a few coins at the end of the day, the totals typically reached over 1,000 lire per year. This was double or more what the upper-class adults gathered in their St. Gregory’s Day collection, and it was usually many times more than what the officials could empty out of the boxes placed in individual churches. Remembering the thousands of lire that Fra Teophilo da Treviso’s preaching had shaken out of the Bolognese in 1563, the OPM officials began recruiting preachers to the cause. They appealed first of all to Fra Teophilo himself, asking him to return in 1564 and preach open the purses of the Bolognese once again. When he demurred, they went around him and approached his superior in the Augustinian order, asking that the friar be ordered to preach in Bologna after Easter in 1566. Fra Teophilio did finally return for the OPM’s tenth anniversary with a Lenten series in S. Petronio, yet the results weren’t as stellar.13 Two decades later OPM Prior Marc Antonio Fiubba approached the general of the Jesuits, Claudio Aquaviva, with an appeal that reads like a wellresearched donation request or grant application. Fiubba was a senator deeply involved in charitable institutions, particularly the orphanage of

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S. Bartolomeo di Reno located next to his new palazzo on Via Imperiale, and he knew how quickly a sudden influx of poor could eat up a home’s income. When writing to General Aquaviva, he praised the excellent preaching of the Jesuits, singling out a few by name for particular praise. He reviewed the OPM’s origins as an answer to the problem of street beggars, who caused disturbances at churches to the great scandal of religion, and emphasized that it was an expensive solution costing 5,000 scudi annually. He then came around to the ask: the OPM needed some Jesuit preachers to help raise funds, and Fiubba provided a list of five candidates from which General Aquaviva could choose. Aquaviva wrote back a few weeks later with the bad news that he had already met Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti’s request for an Easter-time Jesuit preacher, and so wouldn’t be able to meet Fiubba’s request as well. Fiubba need not have worried overmuch. Although preachers were widely considered to be fund-raisers par excellence, alms gathering at large public sermons seldom generated more than a few hundred lire per year. One of the rare exceptions came when Pope Gregory XIII himself preached at S. Petronio for the OPM in October 1583 and raised over 1,100 lire.14 Traditional alms gathering in churches, by poor boys, on holy days and at sermons was both familiar and expected. It kept the OPM in the public eye, but as Figure 5 shows, the clink of small coins was always unpredictable and failed to generate very much money.15 A further tactic lay in focusing on collecting goods rather than just money. Food was the key currency in an economy of barter and exchange, and one advantage for the OPM was that unlike coins, food could quickly spoil. So beyond their alms boxes, OPM women, girls, and boys circulated around private homes and city markets with large sacks collecting food, some of it no doubt on the verge of rotting and about to be discarded. The warden organized their circuits with an eye to market days and seasons: over to the butchers on Sundays and Wednesdays, “and on fish days, fish among the fishermongers” (e li giorni di pesse, pesse per le pescarie). Reliable adults were sent out into the countryside for fruit, vegetables, wine, and other necessities, while boys traveled around to private houses in the city where they collected bread and a few other foodstuffs. The most reliable adults were OPM officials themselves. They organized an annual harvest time trek by the

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3,500 Churches

3,000

S. Gregory Day Collectors (boys)

Lire

2,500

Preaching

2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0

71 573 575 577 579 581 583 585 587 589 591 593 595 597 599 601 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

15

Years

Figure 5. Traditional Alms Gathering by the OPM, 1570–1600

men of the confraternal Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti through the city’s quarters and out into the countryside, beginning with priests and monasteries but extending to the homes of neighbors and friends. They looked in particular for pledges of nonperishables like wheat, beans, and legumes ( frumenti, fave, legumi), which could then be picked up by OPM wards or staff. All of this food came back into S. Gregorio or S. Maria della Pietà by the end of the day, where the warden recorded it, stored what could still last a few days or longer, and distributed the rest to the kitchens or individual paupers.16 The needs of the dying for the prayers of the living lay behind another significant source of income that was part of traditional patronal alms gathering. Bolognese on their deathbeds wanted to be sure that there would be mourners to accompany the bier, diggers to prepare the grave, and priests to offer requiem masses. Orphanages like S. Bartolomeo di Reno and S. Onofrio had been developing a business out of this from the 1550s. They trained their adolescent boys to sing the psalms, march with appropriately solemn demeanor, and join the priests in the orphanage chapel for requiem masses and anniversary observances. These orphanages also invested in the ceremonial robes, funeral biers, lengths of black

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cloth, and banners that enabled them to offer a full range of funeral services with the children acting like early modern undertakers. From the 1570s, the well-trained boys of S. Bartolomeo and S. Onofrio regularly earned at least 15 percent of their institutions’ income from these death rituals, and in dire years this could spike up to 27 percent.17 Most of the OPM’s resident population was too transient, untrained, illiterate, and possibly too rowdy to offer services as refined and practiced as these. Yet some boys could be pressed into service as mourners, and it’s possible that some of the men might also dig graves. The early statutes ordered the prior to organize boys for this, and ordered the priest never to be missing from a funeral procession that might generate alms—and to be sure that he had some boys with him. Well into the eighteenth century the contract forms that employers signed when taking on a boy included the stipulation that they had to release the boys for service when there were processions or burials that the OPM might attend.18 This might not seem like work, but it regularly brought the OPM 600 to 800 lire annually. From 1581 to 1591 it sometimes generated two or three times that much. It was such a reliable source of alms that by the end of the century increased competition from the better-trained orphanage boys cut seriously into this income. A new orphanage dedicated to S. Giacomo opened in the 1590, and its confraternal sponsors and orphan boys immediately began working hard to corner the market in requiem services. Over the next few decades, the proportion of S. Giacomo’s income derived from these services rose from 12 to 50 to 60 percent, reaching over 5,000 lire by 1652. What the trained and uniformed S. Giacomo boys generated with their singing was a very far cry from what the distinctly more ragged band of OPM boys and men could earn.19 Alms boxes in churches, alms collecting in streets, and alms gathered for religious services provided to the dying and dead all represented traditional forms of giving that were built on a direct spiritual relationship between the giver and the receiver—at least in theory. We should not romanticize the theological inversion that made the worthy rich dependent on the prayers of the worthy poor if they wished to enter heaven. As we will see, the worthy rich developed their own romanticization of the relationship that ended up reducing the alms that the poor could earn from it. What’s important to note here is the bottom-line reality: whether

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real or romantic, the relationship never generated more than a fraction of what an institution like the OPM needed in order to stay open. Traditional alms gathering on the streets, in the churches, and at the doorways of private homes could never be abandoned, but it would never cover the bills either.

Taxation by Other Means The OPM officials realized from the beginning that they would have to move beyond alms gathering in order to fund their shelter. Welfare reformers across Europe did. The result in England, in many of the newly Protestant states of Germany, and in some Italian cities, like Turin, was that governments turned to poor rates and forced levies that functioned much like taxes. Government magistrates, communal chest clerks, or justices of the peace determined what their local poor needed, and then assessed how much individual rate payers and institutions should pay in order to raise the funds. English parishes had made sporadic moves toward these need-based taxes from the fifteenth century, and their system of assessments and disbursements would become steadily more efficient and uniform through legislation under Edward VI (1547–1553) and Elizabeth I (1559–1603), particularly as conditions worsened in the 1570s and 1590s, culminating in the Poor Laws of 1598 and 1601. The same was true of municipal systems in continental cities like Nuremburg, Wittenburg, and Amsterdam.20 These Protestant parochial systems were imperfect, improvised, and controversial, and it was the increasing financial pressure behind many of them that triggered recourse to forms of discipline like whipping poor dependents out of the parish and off the rolls. When similar approaches were tried in Catholic cities like Lyon and Rouen, some theologians protested that tax levies undercut the voluntary nature of almsgiving and severed the personal spiritual relationship between rich and poor. This eliminated the spiritual benefit of charity and so jeopardized almsgiving altogether. Their objection was powerful enough in some locales that authorities aimed to find ways of tweaking the tax to preserve the relationship.21 The Bolognese wrestled with this problem for years, aiming first for a broad-based and thinly veiled taxation before a backlash forced them to succumb to the inevitable and fall

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back on voluntary assessments of the wealthy and political lobbying of institutions. Steady income was the key to any plan, and this was where the OPM’s first army of volunteer pledge takers and alms gatherers came in. The 1548 proposal had envisioned a census of resources that might be available for a more rational and centralized redistribution. How much did convents and monasteries hand out each year? What parish, guild, or confraternal endowments funded bread or wine or dowries? Who were the major almsgivers and how much did they give? The 1550 plan said relatively little about revenue, for reasons discussed below. When the OPM’s first shelter opened in 1563, the first of its two poverty-fighting armies swung into action. More than three dozen volunteers fanned out into the city to seek out and collect what the papal brief and the first statutes described as “alms taxes” (tasse elemosinarie). Three men from each quarter visited private homes, monasteries, shrines, and churches in order to secure pledges for the new work. They made a simple appeal: now that the Mendicanti was serving those paupers who had knocked on kitchen doors, crowded church porches, and lined up at monastic refectories, more Bolognese ought to pass their “savings” on to the OPM in the form of regular alms. Moreover, they ought to pledge an amount that could be a voluntary tax that OPM officers would collect each year. It was really the quid pro quo to the general ban on begging that the Senate had brought in when the OPM was established. Authorities could maintain the ban on begging, and preserve the peace this brought to everyone in the city, only if individuals and institutions channeled their almsgiving to the OPM, rather than to beggars on the street or at the door. This was a common argument made by the advocates of new relief plans across sixteenth-century Europe, and it had been the logic behind the pairing of rich and poor families in Bologna’s own 1548 plan. The three pledge takers listed who promised what, and then passed the information on to the OPM notary, who recorded and archived it. One year’s lists became the next year’s starting point, as pledge takers went door to door aiming to renew and expand the alms taxes. Persuasion and cajoling were hard enough, so the work of actually collecting the alms taxes passed on to a second set of volunteers—the two collectors described at the opening of this chapter who took up the pledge lists and went around

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gathering the funds and goods promised. Pledge takers served for a year while pledge collectors served for only four months, which was little surprise given the fact that their work was undeniably harder. And the collectors were less an army of volunteers than one of drafted conscripts—their names were drawn out of bags and they could be punished if they refused to serve. One compensation was that they could draft others in turn: each pair of collectors could call up one or two locals from the neighborhood and even recruit the parish priest as they moved week by week through the streets of their quarter. A householder might be able to shut the door on two OPM officials whom he’d never seen, but it would be harder to do the same if they had two of his neighbors and the parish priest with them in the doorway.22 This underscored the fact that the OPM was a communal effort of citizens collecting for citizens. By the same token, collecting from the biggest donors—religious houses, shrines, and patrician families—was taken out of the hands of the first army’s foot soldiers and turned over to the leading officers, that is, the rector, the prior, and the master, and sometimes also the patrician conservators. The principle was the same: who would a potential donor not be able to refuse? Among these major donors, the biggest targets for the alms taxes were the religious houses, where beggars had gone seeking food or money for centuries. The ban on begging had freed the houses of the trouble of serving the poor this way. Yet since almsgiving was fundamental to their own spiritual identity and religious vocation, it was not a freedom the monks and friars necessarily sought, and some proved difficult to convince.23 The one who lobbied hardest with them in Bologna was the papal vice legate, Pier Donato Cesi, who negotiated with all the local regular clergy for fi xed annual levies of food that they would pass on to the OPM. Cesi had arrived in the city eight months after the first poorhouse had opened, when it was already mired in financial problems, and the OPM officials claimed in a 1567 letter to Rome that the whole operation would have collapsed had Cesi not gone from one religious house to another raising gifts and pledges.24 His success would prove short-lived. Seventeen of Bologna’s big and small religious houses together with the bishop’s household agreed to Cesi’s fi xed levies in 1564, pledging enough grain between them to feed well over a thousand people for a

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month.25 Their agreements did not hold long past the time when Cesi returned to Rome in January 1565. By 1567, the Servites, Carmelites, and Lateran Canons had defaulted on food shipments, and the Dominicans were apparently wavering. A year later the Dominicans were still holding firm but two more monasteries had stopped sending food.26 These were smaller donors, amounting to about 20 percent of the total pledged by Bologna’s regular clergy, but the OPM could handle no loss at all, and was even more concerned that their “very bad example” (malissimo esempio) would lead others to default too. OPM officials wrote frequently and furiously to authorities in Rome who might be able to twist arms in Bologna: to cardinals, to the heads of religious orders, to Bologna’s ambassadors, to all the former legates, and even to Cesi himself, seeking help to enforce pledges or find new forms of support. “In these calamitous and penurious times, the mouths at the Opera keep increasing and the alms are lacking,” they wrote Cesi in 1568, going on to add that the religious houses were the worst delinquents of all.27 By 1572 six religious houses had stopped shipments and the OPM congregazione was writing almost every week, although without much success. In a crescendo of letters the officials harkened back constantly to the obligations that Paul IV had laid on religious houses in the 1560 brief, and to the solemn promises that the houses themselves had made to observe their pledges. By this point officials were repeatedly threatening in letters to religious and political authorities alike that if no help was forthcoming they would be forced to close S. Gregorio and turn the beggars back onto the streets of the city. “We are forced to abandon the undertaking and leave these poor to go wandering through the city, which is a stab to the heart, above all considering how little it means to the religious, who ought to be the mirror for others.”28 This was more than just alarmist rhetoric. The situation in 1572 was extremely dire, but the OPM corporale and congregazione were particularly puzzled by the indifference of the monks and friars: “a stab to the heart.” The election of Pope Gregory XIII in May that year gave them new heart. They wrote immediately to Cardinal Filippo Boncompagni, the nephew whom the pope had appointed in charge of Bolognese affairs, asking that he take a strong line with the religious houses. Cardinal Filippo responded promptly and positively, reflecting the pope’s own

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awareness of and support for the OPM.29 Gregory XIII would manage to force the homes to honor their pledges by threatening censure and penalties. Beyond this kind of direct papal pressure, desperate conditions like those of the decade from 1588 sometimes stirred the monks and friars to increase their alms to the OPM (see Table 1).30 The OPM’s own ledgers sometimes conflict with its letters and later histories on this point. While the OPM frequently claimed that the religious houses abandoned their pledges shortly after Gregory’s death and that by 1596 not a single one was sending any food or money, its ledgers suggest that some monasteries and friaries in fact continued giving for at least a few years. The answer lies with Table 1’s last column, which shows how much the religious houses gave in the second half of 1597. Or rather how little. Once the immediate crisis was over, one after another reduced or defaulted on their pledges. For the OPM it was still a losing battle. Clement VIII ordered the houses in 1601 to restore the food and

Table 1. Alms from Religious Houses to the OPM, 1564, 1584–1597 1584–1590 Total Alms Received

1590–1597 Total Alms Received

1589 1590 1590 1589 1589 1589 1589 1589 1588 1589

348.00.00 2240.00.00 1356.5.6 1047.00.00 1356.00.00 342.00.00

557.03.02 3490.05.09 2443.05.11 1835.00.00 1920.00.00 471.00.00

968.16.30

1590 1590 1591 1584 1590

827.00.00 1979.00.00 660.00.00 246.00.00

1646.16.03 1005.00.00 1544.10.00 840.00.00 2618.07.10 3628.16.11 5743.04.02 337.16.00 163.02.00 1520.00.00

Religious House

1564 Pledge

Pledge Suspended

S. Barbaziano S. Domenico S. Francesco S. Gregorio S. Iacomo Misericordia S. Maria dei Servi S. Martino Crosate/Crociferi S. Giovanni in Monte Certosa S. Procolo S. Michele in Bosco S. Salvatore S. Gioseffo S. Piero Celestino S. Stefano

6 corbe 40 corbe 24 corbe 18 corbe 24 corbe 6 corbe 12 corbe 18 corbe 12 corbe 24 corbe 12 corbe 36 corbe 72 corbe 72 corbe 24 lire 24 lire 20 corbe

Alms 1597B 0 59.19.00 8.00.00

49.10.00

1076.00.00

54.10.00 37.00.00 232.7.3 33.00.00 11.9.2 4.00.00

Note: From ASB, Istituto di Cura e Riposo Giovanni XXIII, Opera dei Mendicanti, Cartone 1, #9 (1759 History); Cartone 2 #8 (1620 History); ms. 307, “Libro Mastro D” (1584–1589), ff. 7r–21v; ms. 310, “Libro Mastro E” (1590–1597), ff. 4r–13v; 474r–v.

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45,000 Total

40,000 35,000

Lire

30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0

71 573 575 577 579 581 583 585 587 589 591 593 595 597 599 601 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

15

Years

Figure 6. Public Subsidies for the OPM, 1570–1600—Total

funds they had promised, and while his pressure again generated some alms from eleven of the seventeen homes, most of them gave for only a year. In short, Bologna’s religious houses slipped into arrears as soon as powerful patrons and popes were off the scene. They responded generously with patronal charity in times of crisis, but never developed an investment in the charitable mission of the OPM as an alternative form of helping the city’s poor.31 If it was difficult to collect alms taxes from religious houses, were local government bodies like the Elders and the Senate any better at supporting the OPM? They proved just as ready to ignore or even reduce their pledges (see Figure 6).32 Guilds and government, which organizers had hoped would be the financial backbone of the OPM, tended like individuals to respond best in times of crisis. Figure 7 shows that guilds gave relatively little and that public subsidies were erratic at best.33 They seemed to have little institutional memory and hence little inclination to continue giving after some committed individual advocate had left office. Despite being a quasi-governmental agency that advanced the public good, the OPM had difficulty becoming a regular line item in the local budget like the St. Bartholomew Day horse race, the twelve paupers who received

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30,000 Guild subsidies

25,000

Parish subsidies Regular pledges Extraordinary public subsidies

20,000

Lire

Extraordinary gifts

15,000 10,000 5,000 0

71 573 575 577 579 581 583 585 587 589 591 593 595 597 599 601 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

15

Years

Figure 7. Public Subsidies for the OPM, 1570–1600—by Source

clothes annually on Holy Thursday, or the syphilitics’ hospital of S. Giobbe, which got a gift of alms each Christmas. Bologna’s Camera very happily reserved fi xed amounts for these and other bits of spiritual and festive patronage, and paid them consistently through lean years and fat, but the OPM’s subsidy rose and fell from year to year. Here too, memories were short: Bologna’s Senate quietly reduced its subsidies from 750 lire in 1563 to 400 the next year and 240 two years following.34 In another “stab to the heart,” even the papal legation itself stopped meeting its modest pledge once the energetic Vice Legate Cesi returned to Rome in January 1565. By this point the legation was giving a little under nine lire monthly, or about what it paid its secretary, Nicolo Laparelli. Cardinal Legate Carlo Borromeo, credited by some with steering the original plan through the papal curia in 1560, shrugged off both the monthly alms that Cesi had promised and the repeated urgent pleas of OPM officials. Yet he blithely submitted to Legation Treasurer Giuseppe Gandolfi an expense claim of 10,919.7 lire for entertainments and festivities welcoming the new Medici princess, Giovanna of Austria, when she passed through Bologna in May 1566. The cost for this little party exceeded the OPM’s total expenses in its first year. 35

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These were years when the papal legation’s budget was reaching almost a quarter of a million lire annually, and when popes and legates were devoting generous sums to building and tending political alliances with members of the senatorial oligarchy. Treasurer Gandolfi regularly sent sums of 1,000 gold scudi (approximately 4,500 lire) to papal allies like Niccolo Seccadinari or Conte Cesare Lambertini as Christmas gifts. Similar amounts went out as dotal gifts to girls of patrician families like the Marescalchi or Panzachia, or as salary for the pope’s relative Boncompagno Buoncompagni. The legation paid the travel expenses of clerics and the costs of feeding and lodging visitors like the Prince of Bavaria (carefully recorded as 1244.15.2 lire). This was patronal charity for the worthy rich, and legates likely saw it as no more than the cost of doing business. On the other hand, the steady erosion of the Bentivoglio threat and of the factional violence that found recruits in the city’s underclass meant that there was less attention to or money for the worthy poor. Judging by its own account books, the legation gave no direct payments to the OPM from 1564 to 1569 or for 1572–1575.36 The third group that OPM collectors targeted was private families. From the beginning they encouraged merchants, artisans, and professionals to consider the periodic alms taxes as a more convenient alternative to giving tithes at church or food and coins to beggars at the door. The OPM’s surveys, discipline, and beggar catchers relieved donors of having to determine whether a beggar was genuinely poor or a fraud. Yet once again, those given the freedom to set their own taxes tended to focus more on their deductions than on their obligations. The army of OPM pledge takers and alms-tax collectors began applying more pressure, perhaps frustrated by the myriad “stabs to the heart.” The 1564 statutes certainly encouraged them in this, suggesting that they take the local priest along on their house calls in order to “encourage the taxed almsgiver to pay the [OPM] Treasurer.”37 Whatever threats or arguments the alms-tax collectors used, as early as 1568 rumors spread through the streets and palaces of Bologna that the OPM had decided that it would consider gifts by ordinary individuals to be like a self-imposed perpetual tax, and that its collectors would chase down anyone who failed to renew his or her gift annually. Pledges

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plummeted. A raft of civic officials including the legate, the bishop, representatives of the Elders, Tribunes, and Masters of the Guilds, and all the OPM’s executive officers rushed to issue a joint public statement. They denied that giving or promising alms would constitute any kind of permanent obligation on private individuals. They blanketed the city with a broadsheet and inserted a separate chapter reinforcing this denial into the new 1574 statutes.38 It was a strategic addition to the statutes. Yet a small item that was removed from those same statutes was perhaps even more significant. The three dozen men in charge of the alms tax—twelve pledge seekers and twenty-four pledge collectors—disappeared from the ranks of officials, and even the term “alms tax” was dropped. The army of alms-tax collectors was demobilized, and the climbdown from a civic tax to fund the OPM was complete. The OPM retained an official to record alms pledged and given, but from this point fund-raising would be far more discreet. Examples of a new, more diplomatic approach to wealthy donors can be found in the OPM’s letter books. At the top of the social scale, many prominent families had pledged donations—and also reneged. Even the Pepoli had a mixed record. Count Giovanni Pepoli was consistently generous, giving 300 gold scudi—1,275 lire—when the OPM first encountered difficulties in 1563, and other gifts after that. His brother Conte Cornelio had pledged an annual gift of 50 corbe of grain, which would feed 150 people for a month. From the later 1570s, the senior OPM officials of the congregazione regularly wrote letters to various Pepoli from August to October each year to remind them of their obligations and challenge them with the better examples of their cousins or brothers. They were sometimes reduced to asking that one or another Pepoli donor honor the unmet pledges of a year or two previously. In September 1591, they wrote to Rome reminding Cardinal Guido Pepoli, son of Conte Cornelio and nephew of the recently executed Count Giovanni, that times were desperate. They asked the cardinal to send not only the year’s promised twenty-five corbe, but also the unmet pledges of the previous two years, or a total of seventy-five corbe. Within a week of getting their appeal Cardinal Guido wrote back, addressing them “as a brother . . . to brothers”:

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Not believing that the season could carry on so sadly, I’m persuading myself that the harvest will be abundant enough, in which case I will contribute generously to this work. But seeing that the years go very poorly, it blackens my mood terribly (mi rinerisce infinitamente) not to be able to give the full amount that would be necessary, and you will need to receive this little amount that I’ve sent to my agent Cristoforo Lanari, that is, 25 corbe of grain, praying to God for me and others alike that there would be a more abundant harvest (maggiore abbondanza), so that this work is able to continue and help in keeping with the needs. 39

Two years earlier, Guido Pepoli had sold his office as treasurer general of the Papal State for 50,000 scudi (or 212,500 lire) when Pope Sixtus V gave him the cardinal’s hat. Undeterred by his unwillingness to pay 0.5 percent of that sum in the depths of a serious famine, the OPM responded with a florid letter of thanks for the cardinal’s goodwill. It included a gentle reminder that with nine hundred mouths to feed and more seeking alms at the door, it hoped that he could soon restore his earlier generosity. The famine had admittedly pushed the cost of those overdue seventyfive corbe of grain to about 1,200 lire, but Cardinal Guido was hardly short on funds. Yet the OPM officials couldn’t become too aggravatingly pushy, since it was Guido’s brother Filippo who had taken over the senatorial seat after papal agents murdered Count Giovanni Pepoli, making this line of the family the key Pepoli power brokers in the city. Such were the politics of patronal charity, and discreet harvesttime reminders to the landed elite became OPM’s preferred means of working subtly to nudge its wealthy donors. The climbdown from alms taxes and the dismissal of the army of volunteers who collected them did restore the practice of pledging to a degree. Yet it also undermined the very usefulness of pledging as a source of broad-based stable funding that could function like an informal but dependable tax system. But would fi xed and predictable tax revenues never come to the OPM? Protestant authorities in northern Europe certainly built poor relief systems on taxation, but many Catholics did as well. Temporary taxes for relief of the poor had been tried in Venice during the famine and plague of 1528, and a number of French cities

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including Nantes, Avignon, Poitiers, Limoges, and Paris had experimented with both temporary and longer-term taxation for the poor.40 The Bolognese were certainly no strangers to taxation, and particularly to the pairing of specific taxes with specific institutions. From 1433, the “Gabella Grossa” tax levied on all goods entering, transiting, and leaving the city had underwritten the university. Its sophisticated operations were controlled by a board elected by the professors and independent from the Senate, and it was gathering as much as 20 percent of total local tax revenues by the end of the sixteenth century.41 The desperate conditions of the 1520s brought a few similar taxes for charities. A levy on white bread supported the S. Maria del Baraccano conservatory. More to the point, the Tribunes of the People had managed in 1523 to steer through the Senate a new tax, the bolognino del morbo, that put one soldo on every corba of grain that bakers bought, with proceeds directed to the S. Giovanni Battista pest house. Two years later, the Tribunes got the tax extended to makers of savory pies (pasticeri) and sweets (dolciai). Passing the tax reinforced the Tribunes’ image as an important magistracy defending the poor and sick, yet collection of the levies was never securely in their hands. The fact that it became such a point of contention with the Senate may be one reason why no similar consumption tax was proposed when the OPM opened.42 And there was more. An even bigger point of contention between the Senate and the Tribunes of the People had to do with the income of an abbey that Julius II had transferred to the Tribunes in order to underwrite their work with plague victims. It was not a tax as such, but a source of income that represented public funds. The original S. Giovanni Battista pesthouse had occupied a spot just inside the northern city walls where Julius II wished to construct a fortress. He expropriated the property and in compensation transferred to the Tribunes the revenues of the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice. Founded by the Benedictines, but occupied by a community of around fifty Franciscan nuns dedicated to St. Clare, the abbey had the potential of being an extraordinarily lucrative prize. It owned over one hundred properties running up and down Via S. Felice, the Reno Canal, and the neighborhoods in the northwest Porta Piera quarter where the silk industry was concentrated, and more than a dozen farms out in the Bolognese countryside.43 A team of five

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trustees, made up largely of tribunes, was to administer the abbey and use its excess revenues to run the pest house and feed the poor. It was inevitable that a prize as rich as the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice would attract competitors, and a series of high clerics, including Francesco Soderini, cardinal of Volterra, challenged the pope’s gift and launched suits claiming that they had commendatory rights that even Julius II could not summarily brush away. The lawsuits threatened to delay the transfer for years. In order to secure possession, the Senate took matters into its own hands. In 1517, without consulting the abbey trustees, it negotiated a compromise with Cardinal Soderini that would see him get 350 ducats annually for life if he would drop his suit. The trustees and Tribunes were enraged, but when Tribune Giovanni Bonasoni challenged the compromise publicly, the Senate charged him—predictably—with sedition. The agreement with Soderini held firm and the city did eventually gain control over the abbey. Yet as with the bolognino del morbo, the trustees and Tribunes had enormous difficulty prying the funds out of the Senate.44 The Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice and the funds collected through the bolognino del morbo became instead a treasure chest for the Senate itself, which disbursed patronal charity on its own without consulting the abbey trustees. Significant amounts went to gifts like dowries for senatorial staff and clients, and by the end of the seventeenth century the diversion of abbey funds to senatorial pockets became a public scandal. In the early years at least some funds also made it to the poor and to the civic institutions that cared for them. Between 1525 and 1551, the Senate made occasional but large lump-sum payments to the foundling Ospedale of the Esposti, the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi, and the orphanage of S. Bartolomeo di Reno. It used the revenues of the abbey to purchase the Monastery of S. Gregorio where the S. Giovanni Battista pesthouse had been transferred after Julius II’s expropriation. As a result, S. Gregorio joined the abbey’s extensive property holdings, and it was the abbey’s trustees who formally conceded the site to the OPM for its main poorhouse in 1563.45 And the largest payments made out of abbey funds were to “poveri mendicanti,” even before the OPM itself got going: 3,000 lire in December 1539 and 2,000 lire in March 1551.46 These were precisely the years when Bologna had been wrestling with serious famines, and

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the revenues of SS. Naborre e Felice allowed civic authorities to put food in the mouths of its citizens. The abbey’s revenues were widely considered to be public funds. This may be the reason why the 1550 plan for “i poveri mendicanti” fails to mention either taxes or indeed anything else about fund-raising. Its promoters—drawn from all the chief magistracies—may have assumed that the revenues of the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice would underwrite the proposed service and become the financial guarantee undergirding its practical charity.47 In the end those revenues did not materialize, further aggravating the tensions that split the Tribunes from the Senate through the troubled decade of the 1550s, and leading in turn to the ambitious alms taxes that failed in the 1560s and 1570s. The Senate’s confiscation and misuse of SS. Naborre e Felice revenues may have been another of the reasons why Count Giovanni Pepoli ensured that his “Big Heap” of grain, the Pio Cumulo di Misericordia, would be administered by a confraternity and a board of trustees, and not by the Senate.48 The aversion to taxation, erratic institutional and familial pledging, and a patronal culture in which donors preferred occasional grand gestures of generosity over steady predictable subsidies, left the OPM dependent on emergency appeals and extraordinary gifts to make up annual shortfalls. The revenues of SS. Naborre e Felice were very likely the source for the occasional subsidies that the Senate gave to the OPM and other institutions, above all during the famines of the late 1580s and early 1590s.49 The Cameral accounts show that the Senate frequently voted regular subsidies of varying amounts to the Ospedale degli Esposti, the orphanage of S. Onofrio, the Shamefaced Poor (Poveri Vergognosi), and others.50 In the sustained crises of those years, local officials began to understand that these institutions needed longer-term funding, and they began promising subsidies paid out over three years. They called this a “triennio,” and it marked a step toward more secure funding of welfare institutions. By the 1590s, regular parish subsidies and more frequent extraordinary public subsidies—a kind of “sur-pledge” from the Senate—also began appearing in the OPM’s libri mastri. This kind of substantial and regular aid from church and state characterized relief programs in Protestant Europe. Most notably in Bologna, the aid from church sources came not from religious houses or the papal legation, but

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from local parishes. The new revenues were certainly not a tax. Yet the substantial level of payments and the regularity with which they were delivered shows that authorities were starting to recognize that the OPM’s extensive services to the public good gave it a legitimate call on the public purse.51

Making a Workhouse In the absence of taxes, what the OPM clearly needed was a source of income that was more stable and lucrative than traditional almsgiving and pledges. Mixing income sources and sharing costs with the recipients of charity was the key to practical charity, and so many thought that textile piecework was the most promising income source of all. The hundreds of women, men, and children crowded into the S. Gregorio courtyards constituted a labor force that could work for the benefit of the home. Whatever they were paid could go directly to service the S. Gregorio shelter outside the city walls and S. Maria della Pietà inside, helping to cover the costs of the food that residents ate, the watereddown wine they drank, the clothes they wore, and the wood that heated their dormitories in the winter. Turning the poorhouse into a workhouse would be the way forward. Influential writers like the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, the English humanist Thomas More, and the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus had for decades advocated putting the poor to work. They were the ideologues for practical charity. Work was the best way to ensure that those poor who had little or no money could still contribute something to their own maintenance. Vives even wanted to press the blind into service, arguing that while they couldn’t do much, they could at least weave lace by feel. Ironically, in later years it would be the strains of this kind of lacework that would actually damage the eyesight of young girls in Bolognese orphanages and conservatories—though this did not stop them from emphasizing the craft and developing their own signature patterns.52 The humanists’ underlying motivation was as much moral as economic. They thought that patronal charity bred dependence, laziness, and fraud. It debased and demoralized the receiver. Practical charity’s

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approach of segregating the poor and giving them work could cure the laziness that many believed lay behind an adult’s fall into poverty. If you began this regime early enough with pauper children, the training and experience would prevent them from following their lazy parents’ bad example. There was nothing particularly new here—the apostle Paul had cautioned deacons of the early church not to feed those who would not work, and most charitable hospitals had drafted their able-bodied patients into one sort of work or another by citing Paul’s justification. Medieval hospitals and mendicant orders worked with the same values, and concerns about the poor getting lazy would echo on into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The OPM itself warned frequently against allowing the poor to live too leisurely a life (“vivere otiosamente”).53 The first administrators of Bologna’s OPM believed in work and saw their shelter’s potential labor force as a critical argument in its favor. Yet unlike many later workhouses, they did not reinforce work with the kind of harsh discipline that would make it forced labor. This was not part of the 1548 and 1550 plans, and nor was it prominent in the first 1564 statutes, suggesting that the early reformers were thinking more about rational distribution of alms than about reformatory discipline of the poor. The OPM also initially thought as much about sending the poor out to work as about bringing work in for them to do, and the 1564 statutes envisioned four merchants and artisans per quarter, rotating monthly, who would place OPM wards in particular shops. This corps of volunteer work finders was the second of the OPM’s two armies that were busy fighting Bologna’s war on poverty in the 1560s and early 1570s. These visitatori placed young boys as laborers and apprentices and young girls and women as domestic servants. They matched skills with needs, negotiated contracts, kept track with weekly visits, reported regularly to the corporale, and recorded everything in notebooks held in the archive. Recruiting over two hundred artisan and merchant visitatori annually to volunteer for this work of finding work proved too much. OPM officials soon fell back on informal arrangements, like taking girls into their own homes as servants. The 1574 statute reforms demobilized the army of work finders and appointed a staff person to take over the search for work for boys. Only a small corps of visitors remained to keep an eye out for problems between employers and employees. Employers seemed

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less keen to take pauper boys into their homes, so the OPM settled for arrangements by which these boys lived in S. Maria della Pietà and then earned their meals or a small wage that the employer paid directly to the institution. The Congregation of Gentlewomen kept closer tabs on assignments for girls and women who went out into private homes as servants. A girl had to have two licenses, one signed by the gentlewoman and another signed by her prospective employer, before she could leave S. Gregorio for a job. The statutes required that all these contracts together with ledgers recording all employers, wages, and terms down to the very quarter and street be kept and stored in the archives. It is not clear whether these were ever kept because none have survived.54 These visitors looked for employers who might take poor adults or children into their shops, but what about the hundreds who still lived at the S. Gregorio shelter outside the city walls? The libri mastri show that a few of them—almost entirely women—were earning money for the home by taking in spinning and washing from the very beginning.55 While it never brought in much income, it eased the cost of feeding, sheltering, and clothing a few adolescent boys and girls. In fact, the first statutes say almost nothing about bringing work into the home and turning it into a factory of sorts, even though the OPM’s early organizers clearly envisioned the sheltered poor playing a role in Bologna’s labor market. But what work to do? Vives had proposed to the Bruges city fathers that their poor could spin thread, weave baskets, and pump a smith’s bellows. Yet the European city that truly pioneered the workhouse was Lyon, where one of the first and most influential systems of poor relief in southern Europe, the Aumône-Générale (General Almoner), took shape from 1530 to 1534. Where Vives proposed possibilities, Lyon modeled actions. Printed copies of its regulations circulated in both Latin and many vernaculars across Europe, turning up in Genoa among other cities, where local magistrates made an effort to adapt its methods to local realities. They could read how the Aumône-Générale managed the rationalized collection and distribution of alms, how it separated worthy and unworthy poor, and how it used schools and apprenticeships to train a younger generation out of poverty. For magistrates in a city like Bologna, it also showed how the work in an enclosure could go beyond just keeping the poor busy or keeping their shelter running.56

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In Lyon, workhouse labor had actually helped establish a new industry. Lyon was full of Italian textile merchants, and a year after the Aumône’s official founding, an Italian who had been active in helping to start it proposed establishing a silk industry in the city in order to provide work and training for the poor. Étienne Turquet was an immigrant merchant from Piedmont who had earlier helped found a municipal school in Lyon, and in February 1536 he was elected rector of the Aumône-Générale. He soon began discussing with the city council the possibility of establishing a silk industry in Lyon as a means of securing work for the poor. Civic officials responded enthusiastically by offering him 500 ecus and helping to secure royal privileges. Turquet used the money to rent buildings and hire some Italian silk winders and spinners to teach this to the local orphaned and poor girls. Once trained, the girls went to work with Italian silk weavers whom Turquet was persuading to move up to Lyon, and the Aumône also worked explicitly to apprentice its boys with various artisans in silk manufacturing.57 Silk developed into a key industry for Lyon, which itself became one of the major centers of French silk production. Elsewhere in Europe, workhouse labor took on a harder and more punitive edge without offering quite as many of the broader economic benefits that the Aumône-Générale offered in Lyon. In future years, the Amsterdam workhouse would be known as the “rasp house” (rasphuis) because its inmates had to rasp hard brazilwood with special saws in order to generate a reddish sawdust that was used for dying cloth. The raspers were experiencing the thin edge of the disciplinary wedge, where work was becoming a punishment and the workhouse was becoming a prison-like “reformatory.” Or worse. Amsterdam’s workhouse also became legendary for having a leaky subterranean room called the “drowning chamber” where those too lazy to work were imprisoned. If the inmate didn’t immediately jump to operate the manual pump, the chamber slowly flooded and drowned him. Amsterdam’s pumps were apocryphal, but its rasps were real. They found their locally appropriate imitators in workhouses across Europe. Lyon may have provided a positive model of economic growth that many cities wished to imitate, and some cities like Augsburg were able to position their charitable institutions as significant drivers of the local

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economy through their purchases, their labor resources, and their ongoing investment of ever-growing endowments.58 Yet more of them ended up slipping into local versions of the kind of mindless forced labor and prison-like conditions found in Amsterdam’s rasphuis. This led an earlier generation of historians to see the charitable workhouse as a forerunner of both the factory and the prison.59 Their conclusion proved, on further research, to be exaggerated: workhouses seldom reached the level of work discipline that organizers aimed for. Saddled with workforces that were too poorly trained, ill-disciplined, and mobile, they turned out shoddy and unmarketable goods. The captive labor force generated the captive buyer—poorly trained poorhouse cloth workers created uniforms for soldiers, sails for warships, and headaches for governments.60 Yet this looks too far ahead. None of these disappointments were on the horizon when the OPM administrators thought about what their poor residents could do for the two hostels or for the city itself. Like Lyon, they looked to silk as an industry that was hungry for workers, particularly those who could be paid low wages for sporadic work. When planning for the S. Gregorio hostel, Bologna’s civic authorities early on thought that silk work might be a key activity and even a key justification for opening the home. So they gave the industry a role in planning it. Their disappointing experiences at S. Gregorio subsequently shaped the more successful work regimes later adopted elsewhere in the city. In order to understand how paid work within the enclosure became part of the planning for S. Gregorio, we need to go back to the politically tumultuous 1550s. We’ve already seen that this was the decade both when the OPM was first taking shape and when the Senate was consolidating its hold on city government. While busy moving to usurp older corporate bodies like the Elders and Tribunes of the People, which could compete for authority locally, the Senate was also working to refine its own organs of administration along the congregational model. It assigned its members to eight internal congregations called assunterie to handle particular elements of Bologna’s economy, justice system, social life, and physical infrastructure.61 Senators rotated annually through the various assunterie, although the lack of membership lists for the first decades means we have difficulty tracking their movements. In the sixteenth century, members were appointed directly by the Senate in a process

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of nomination, scrutiny, and extraction, but in the seventeenth century a new congregational body, the Assunteria di Magistrati, took on this work of staffing the various assunterie. Assunterie became the practical vehicles through which the Senate took control over Bologna’s daily life. Beyond their formal mandates over justice, finance, defense, or the mint, each also looked after a cluster of guilds and sometimes a few charitable institutions as well. At first sight, the most logical overseer for the OPM might seem to be either the Assunteria dell’Abbondanza, charged with securing Bologna’s food supply, or the Assunteria della Camera, which collected taxes, paid civic salaries, and oversaw the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice and the bolognino del morbo. Yet the senators placed it instead under the Assunteria del Pavaglione, the committee that organized the annual trade fair where merchants from across Italy came every summer to buy and sell the cocoons that provided the raw material for Bologna’s rapidly expanding silk industry.62 The Pavaglione assunteria licensed merchants, monitored weights and prices, and adjudicated disputes between buyers and sellers. It also oversaw the major textile guilds: Silk, Wool, Drapers, and Bombasari (which supervised, among other groups, dealers of raw silk and eventually cotton). Few actions could have demonstrated as clearly how much the Senate had the needs of these labor-intensive industries on its mind as it thought about the opportunities that the OPM represented. Bologna was in the early stages of an industrial boom in silk production that would transform the city’s economy and even parts of its built environment. What it needed above all was an army of semiskilled workers who could be called into action for short periods of intensive activity. Bolognese merchants had invented a water-powered mill that cleared one of the typical bottlenecks of production—twisting silk fi laments together in order to provide a stronger thread for weaving. The wooden mills towered as much as three stories high, with large spoked wheels bearing dozens of spools stacked one above the other. Boys clambered up and down the wheels loading the spools with skeins of silk filaments that had been reeled off of cocoons and wound together, four or five at a time, into thread. Doubling and twisting the threads of these skeins made for an even stronger thread, and once that thread exited the Bolognese mills,

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weavers across the city wove it into veils that were shipped to Venice and then sold across Europe. In cities like Florence and Lyon, girls performed the time-consuming work of doubling and twisting silk threads by hand. Bologna’s unique silk mill did it in a fraction of the time. The mills turned Bologna into a silk powerhouse. With a range of weights and weaves, Bolognese veils adorned hats, draped shoulders, and shielded modesty for European women well into the eighteenth century. Bolognese merchants secured this virtual two-hundred-year monopoly on veils in part because of the cost advantages that their unique mill brought them. The mills in turn made such a racket that they had to be enclosed in custom-built industrial structures that could handle the constant and punishing vibrations while also keeping out prying eyes. The mill houses lined the banks of specially dug canals and water courses that snaked through the city. The Reno Canal, which cut through the northwest quadrant of Bologna, supported the largest concentration of hydraulic mills in any European city. Bolognese authorities were so committed to the industry that in times of low water, the silk mills had priority access to the Reno’s flow, ahead of papermakers and metalworkers and second only to the mills that ground the city’s flour. Like many cities at the time, Bologna knew the value of its monopoly and used secrecy, threats, and lures to keep its technology and its skilled workers within the city.63 By 1587 it was claimed that silk shops employed 24,900 people, or over a third of the city’s population. That may be an exaggeration, although we should not be too quick to assume that it is. Wherever silk was worked, it employed many thousands of hands. Yet most had work for only a few months at a time in what was essentially a summer job. Silk work was far more seasonal than other textile industries, like wool or linen.64 The eggs of the silk worms hatched only in the spring, when they were laid out on trays stacked on shelves spaced far enough apart to allow for feeding and air circulation. The season was critical since the voracious worms ate only new and fresh mulberry leaves. And they ate them by the ton. After six weeks of an ever-increasing din created as hundreds of thousands of worms ate through tons of leaves, the rooms fell suddenly silent as the worms turned to spinning their cocoons. Those raising them now

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stripped the bark from bunches of twigs and branches and positioned these like miniature forests on the trays of worms. The worms made their way up these twigs and then began the lazy-eight twisting of their heads that would, over the course of three days, produce a white ovoid cocoon. Workers removed these very gently from the twigs, careful not to break a single filament. Given that the cocoons were only about four centimeters long and about two and a half centimeters in diameter, it can be hard to believe that the worm inside had spun a single fi lament that could be up to a kilometer long. Millions of worms produced as many cocoons, and specially trained supervisors sorted them out to determine what would be done with each. The supervisors saved some cocoons for eggs, had others unreeled for thread, and set discolored, damaged, or doubled ones aside to be used for stuffing or for spun silk. They then treated the good cocoons with dry heat or a warm bath to kill the larvae before they had a chance to break out and so destroy the filament.65 Workers took the cocoons saved for reeling and stirred small batches of them around in bowls or troughs of warm water mixed with alkali that would soften the gum and loosen the filaments. They then took up four or five filaments, twisted these loosely together, and steadily unwound them together onto a slowly turning open rectangular reel to produce a skein of silk. It was these skeins that young boys then loaded manually on to the dozens of spools on the towering wooden water mills, where they were twisted together in order to produce a strong thread that was ready for weaving. All of this work was highly repetitive, low skilled, and very low paid. The most intensive parts were seasonal, determined by the maturity of the eggs and the availability of young and fresh mulberry leaves. The first cocoons could be eased off the twigs and branches in early June, and by the end of that month this stage of work would be entirely wrapped up and the cocoons packed into special wooden chests to protect them for the trip to market. Together with its unique mill, Bologna’s silk industry was famous for its annual market in silk cocoons. Hundreds of buyers and sellers came to the city from Sicily, Calabria, and across central and northern Italy in June and July. Merchants set their chests of cocoons out on the ground, on tables, or possibly under colorful awnings or tentlike pavilions—hence the fair’s name of Pavaglione—in the Piazza of the

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Schools (Piazza delle Scuole) just behind the San Petronio basilica in the center of the city. With the silk fair’s pavilions facing Bologna’s new university building of the Archiginnasio, this square behind San Petronio was the vibrant and visual center of the city’s prosperity.66 The Pavaglione market began in Bologna in 1449 as the local sign of a profound economic shift spreading slowly across central and northern Italy. Silk merchants had been active in Bologna from the late fourteenth century, but in the early years they bought skeins of silk thread that had already been raised, reeled, and twisted in Calabria, Sicily, or Cyprus, or around the Black Sea.67 Dyers and weavers then used this semiprocessed thread to produce their bolts of finished cloth. As sixteenth-century Italian governments became more concerned with increasing local employment and decreasing the amount of money that left their territories to outside producers, they pushed to expand local sericulture. This meant planting hundreds of mulberry trees, sponsoring trade fairs like the Pavaglione, cooperating with guilds to draft protectionist legislation, and using threats and lures to protect local advantages like Bologna’s mill. It also meant finding laborers locally who could hatch the eggs, feed the worms, and harvest, reel, twist, and spin their gossamer filaments. There was no trouble finding weavers, who enjoyed some of the highest wage rates of any artisans. The real difficulty lay in finding thousands of workers who were prepared to drop everything to work intensively for a couple of months each year at very low rates of pay As a result, the great majority of those who worked in silk were women and children—or both. A 1650 census of the industry in Florence counted 14,000 of the city’s population of 70,000 as being involved in silk production. Of that number, 12,000 were female, and 6,000 were children. The population of Bologna in 1587 was roughly the same size, and if contemporaries’ claim that 24,900 laborers worked in its silk industry had any merit, then the number of females involved could be over 21,000 and the number who were girls and young adolescents could have exceeded 10,000.68 This was the case from the time that north Italian sericulture expanded in the sixteenth century right into the twentieth century. Silk was a gendered industry. It had a vast number of underpaid seasonal female workers, a small number of very well paid full-time male weavers,

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and a comparative handful of extremely wealthy merchants and patrician investors. Silk guilds carefully crafted rules that secured the merchants’ monopoly over all stages of production. Since the industry’s biggest investors sat in local magistracies, assemblies, and senates, they could make sure that the force of law backed up their special privileges and accommodated their needs. Merchants sent the raising of worms and processing of cocoons and thread out to wherever space and labor were cheap and readily available. Women in rural areas certainly fed worms and unreeled cocoons, but it was more convenient to locate mills and weavers within cities. As a result women in urban institutions like convents, foundling homes, orphanages, shelters, and workhouses also worked in the industry. While lambs’ fleeces might be spun into wool thread on the small scale of households that had a single spinning wheel, silk required more room, more machinery, and more hands to be produced profitably, and this in turn favored larger-scale production, preferably on a factory scale.69 This was the logic that lay behind Etienne Turquet’s work to promote the local silk industry when he was rector of the Aumône-Générale of Lyon in the 1530s. It was the logic that led silk merchants and guilds to sponsor many shelters for foundlings, orphans, paupers, battered women, and converted prostitutes, that is, residential shelters that were tightly enclosed. Their charity was good for business, and in fact many of these shelters depended on silk piecework for their survival. So it comes as no surprise to see Bolognese authorities herding poor women and children into the S. Gregorio workhouse, putting the workhouse itself into the hands of the Senate assunteria that oversaw the silk fair, and installing at least two members of the Silk Guild in the upper administration of the OPM when it opened.70 S. Gregorio had ample space in its two large enclosed courtyards, in the walled gardens immediately to the north and south of the building, and in adjoining farm properties extending north to Strada Romana, south to Strada S. Vitale, and east toward the city walls. Lying at the junction of Savena River and the Avesa stream, the well-watered fields could easily be turned over to producing food for inmates or food for worms alike. In short, S. Gregorio was the perfect factory: spacious, accessible, and conveniently outfitted with eight hundred unemployed workers at the start of the silk season in 1563.

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Putting the OPM under the oversight of the Assunteria del Pavaglione indicates that even if Bologna’s senators were not planning a forced labor reformatory, they nonetheless thought of the shelter from the beginning as a labor resource that would be useful for the city’s silk industry in particular. It was the missing link between the city’s cocoon market and its unique silk mill, and since neither of those could flourish without a solid labor supply, it was a vital part of a broader industrial strategy. Nor was it particularly unique. This attention to merging industrial and charitable strategies had put Florence’s Innocenti foundling home in the care of that city’s Silk Guild, and put its young wards to work as silk reelers and spinners over a century before. While we lack the early records for Bologna’s Esposti, the children there certainly did the same kind of work by the mid-sixteenth century. Its account books from the late 1560s into the early 1590s record regular income from reeling and expenses for making clothes.71 When adapting the strategy pioneered by the Innocenti and Esposti, the OPM also adopted some of its methods and personnel. One of the earliest supervisors of the girls and women at S. Gregorio, with a particular responsibility for cloth and thread production, was a woman called Appolonia of the Bastardini (Appolonia di Bastardini), which was the usual shorthand slang term that Bolognese used when referring to the Esposti. Appolonia moved over to S. Gregorio in 1569 and appears frequently in the ledgers as the one transferring payments for thread and cloth work from merchants to the depositario, suggesting that she oversaw training and production in the textile workshops.72 And she was not alone. The silk connection would take time to grow so administrators did not limit their sights to that industry alone. Bologna was also a major player in the linen industry and also had a small woolen industry. As a result, the women and girls of the OPM also spun flax into linen thread and fleece into wool thread on a small scale. The OPM financial registers track piecework income from all three of these textile industries. Figure 8 compares the income earned from wool, linen spinning, and all silk work.73 After a decade of mixed results, silk moved into the first place for income earned, surrendering this to linen for only a brief period in the late 1580s. After this, silk shot up while wool and linen both declined to less than half its earnings. Even though

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Figure 8. Income from Textile Piecework at the OPM, 1570–1600

the piecework rates for silk were lower, the residents at S. Gregorio processed more silk than any other textile, likely because Bologna’s mills were fueling such great demand for reeled thread. Figure 9 breaks the silk work down into the three main activities that the women and girls at S. Gregorio carried out: reeling the silk cocoons, throwing silk filaments manually, and weaving veils.74 In all cases, it’s clear that either the work itself, or at least the accounting of it, is quite erratic. Yet it’s also clear that the reeling of the cocoons to produce the skeins of thread was the most common form of work, or at least the work that earned the OPM the highest income. This was the work that the city’s water-powered silk mills needed most. It could be that the minor amount of throwing that took place, likely on small hand mills of the kind found in Florence, produced thread that the OPM’s own weavers then turned into veils on small hand looms. Given the ambitions and potential for women’s work at the OPM, the amounts earned are surprisingly modest. Textile work was never well paid to begin with, but the hundreds of girls and women living in S. Gregorio were earning no more—and often considerably less—than the six dozen girls in the S. Maria del Baraccano orphanage and the four dozen

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800 Reeling silk

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Figure 9. Forms of Silk Piecework at the OPM, 1570–1600

girls in the S. Croce orphanage. We will look at some of the reasons for this later. If women’s work was a disappointment, what about men’s? From shortly after the time that they moved into the S. Maria della Pietà shelter just inside the S. Vitale city gate, the men and boys of the OPM had been earning money in one of two ways. One was by making goods within the home that the OPM could sell for a profit. We do not have any record of precisely what they made, but Figure 10 shows that the amounts they earned this way were very modest until the later 1590s.75 More importantly, men and boys worked as day laborers, as agricultural workers, or in artisans’ workshops around the city, and this frequently earned them two or three times more. These men never actually saw their wages, which were paid directly to the OPM. As it expanded through the 1570s, the work in Bologna’s workhouse had two goals: “reforming” the paupers whose reeling, twisting, sweeping, and digging would accustom them to the rhythms of work, and earning income for the home. We can’t measure the first, though the frequent movements of women and men in and out of the two homes suggests that some at least managed to exit into a paid job. It’s certainly possible

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Figure 10. Income Earned by Males in the OPM, 1570–1600

to measure how much income they earned for the OPM, which frankly wasn’t much. Figure 11 tracks the amounts that the OPM earned from the textile piecework of its girls and women, and from the manufacturing and wages of its men and boys.76 Figure 12 turns these gross sums into percentages of the OPM’s total income.77 What both graphs chart is failure—that is, the total failure of paid work to become a significant source of income for the OPM. Earnings remained under 1,500 lire for the first twenty-five years, and it wasn’t until the later 1590s that they regularly reached above 3,000. Yet this was a time when the OPM’s homes were crowded with adolescent girls and boys and with male and female adults—that is, with hundreds of Bolognese of working age who had some experience. The percentage figures are more telling and would certainly have been more disappointing for OPM administrators. Through the first three decades, paid work could fall to below 2 percent of income and inched above 10 percent of total income only twice. Through the whole period, earnings from this work averaged only 6.55 percent of the OPM’s income. This was in sharp contrast to other charitable institutions in Bologna. The work of girls at the S. Maria del Baraccano and S. Croce

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4,000 Work Total

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3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0

70 572 574 576 578 580 582 1 1 1 1 1 1

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Figure 11. Work-Related Earnings at OPM, 1570–1600

14 Work % of Total

12

Percentage

10 8 6 4 2 0 70 572 574 576 578 580 582 1 1 1 1 1 1

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86 588 590 592 594 596 598 600 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

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Figure 12. Work-Related Earnings as Percentage of Total Income at OPM, 1570–1600

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conservatories contributed a significant amount to the overall income of their home—almost three times what those working at S. Gregorio contributed. Table 2 shows that girls’ earnings at S. Maria del Baraccano ranged from 5.35 to 22.48 percent of the home’s total income, and averaged 15.41 percent through the last three decades of the sixteenth century, even though seasonal work patterns frequently left them with little to do. The sample for S. Croce is smaller and later: five years in the early 1620s. Yet it shows an even higher range of 11.33 percent to 24.38

Table 2. Girls’ Earnings at Two Bolognese Conservatories Year

Girls’ Earnings

S. Maria del Baraccano, 1575–1599 1575 1,139 1576 952 1577–1578 2,261 1579 1,544 1580 1,440 1581 1,324 1582 1,552 1583 1,506 1584 654 1585 696 1592 683 1593 1,949 1594 2,584 1595 2,452 1596 2,627 1597 2,265 1598 2,883 1599 2,291 Average S. Croce, 1620–1625 1620 1,126 1621 916 1622 632 1623 667 1624 673 1625 612 Average

Total Income

Work as % of Total

6,597 9,705 13,543 11,154 7,885 8,398 8,398 9,184 7,961 12,963 11,327 12,220 12,807 10,905 13,172 11,572 13,453 15,733

17.26 9.8 16.69 13.84 18.26 15.76 15.76 16.39 8.21 5.35 6.02 15.94 20.17 22.48 19.94 19.57 21.43 14.56 15.41

4,617 3,962 4,610 3,534 4,263 5,399

24.38 23.11 13.7 18.87 15.78 11.33 17.86

Note: From S. Maria del Baraccano, ASB PIE, ms. 264, “Mastro 1572–1587” (ff. 83, 107,169, 209, 213, 239, 255, 260, 282); S. Maria del Baraccano ASB PIE, ms. 265, “Mastro 1587–1600” (ff. 105, 123, 129, 160, 190, 193, 218, 223, 257, 273, 278, 300, 343); S. Croce ASB PIE, ms. 149, “Mastro 1620–1625” (ff. 1, 16, 25, 34, 45, 55, 66).

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percent and an average of 17.86 percent. In Florence, the girls in the conservatory of the Pietà, the city’s largest and poorest charitable shelter for orphaned and abandoned children, were earning 40 percent of their home’s income by the late 1560s, rising to 64 percent by the early 1570s.78 Were conservatory girls better workers? Not necessarily; they simply worked under tighter discipline and could expect more personal benefit from their labor. There was a powerful contemporary stereotype that women working in the textile industry were particularly lazy and immoral. This likely had less to do with their work discipline than with the fact that many of these women had to deal with regular industrial downturns that left them idled without work, and that some at least handled their unemployment by turning to prostitution.79 Some also turned to the OPM, with the result that its population of available workers rose at precisely those times when the demand for their labor was dropping. Beyond that, very few stayed at the OPM for more than a few weeks or months. A constantly changing population of poor women and children flowed through the courtyards and workrooms, never remaining long enough to develop significant skills. The OPM itself had little to threaten or promise them, and the resulting combination of low skills and weak discipline made for a workforce that held little appeal for employers and little income for the home. The girls living behind the locked doors of conservatories were, by contrast, a truly captive labor force. They had no mobility and few alternatives. Their numbers didn’t change with the rise and fall of economic cycles, and most stayed for between five and ten years. Conservatories could withhold food or other privileges from lazy or sloppy girls, they could increase punishments if girls rebelled, and they held out the promise that those who worked harder could earn larger dowries for their efforts. For their part the girls had few alternatives unless family members or a husband took them out of the home. The conservatory could not prevent family members from reclaiming an unhappy girl, and Bolognese conservatories more frequently dismissed those who were disruptive or quarrelsome. But for a girl with no other option beyond marriage, the conservatory’s control over dowries and even over the selection of husbands gave it a very strong hand over her. If she wanted to leave the home, she had to submit to its disciplines, and this included its work disciplines above all. Girls could work up to twelve hours a

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day under very rigorous conditions, and be denied food, mocked, and even imprisoned if they performed poorly or rebelled. “The work brings affliction and sadness,” admitted one Florentine conservatory, using a word (maninconia) that would later also be used to describe insanity. “They are in danger of despairing,” added a Bolognese administrator who was trying to convince his fellows to ease up on the girls. The particular pressures that bore on adolescent girls in charitable enclosures made for a large and captive workforce that was likely more disciplined, skilled, and motivated than any other in Bologna.80 By comparison, S. Gregorio’s workforce was untrained, less disciplined, and more mobile. This may have been the main reason why the ambition of the Senate and OPM to turn the workhouse’s ample spaces into a silk factory that would feed thread into Bologna’s huge and voracious mills was defeated in these first decades. Any hopes they may have had that paid work could gradually replace public subsidies or alms taxes as the main source of income were also dashed. The work performed by the poor wasn’t insignificant, but it was clear by the late 1590s that it would never replace the full range of expedients that had first opened S. Gregorio’s doors in 1563. Collection boxes, preaching campaigns, pledges, badgering appeals, and veiled threats to authorities to open the doors and let the poor spill back out on to the streets would continue to put food on the table. Rents, investments, and legacies were gradually increasing, and pledges and parish subsidies were reaching a level and a predictability that made them look a little like the parish rates that English and German poorhouses could count on year to year. Yet in 1600 as in 1563, the OPM’s largest single source of income was still “extraordinary gifts”—that is, patronal charity that its patrician male and female administrators could solicit at the last minute through immediate and sometimes desperate appeals to the Senate, religious houses, and their own friends and family.

Deeper in Debt and Richer All the Time: Building a Legacy The ups and downs of almsgiving and pledging can be attributed in part to donor fatigue, declining interest, and political calculation. Yet these shifts may also show how closely the Bolognese followed the OPM’s

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situation. One of the strengths and weaknesses of an institution that had many dozens of volunteers rotating through various offices and attending meetings of the corporale or congregazione was that good news and bad tended to travel quickly through the streets, meeting rooms, and homes of Bologna. Cardinal Giulio Pepoli wasn’t just speaking politely or metaphorically when addressing his OPM correspondents “as a brother to brothers.” Many of those involved were related by blood, marriage, or business and so had close knowledge of the OPM’s needs and resources. Donors responded as economic rationalists, trimming their pledges when times were good and needs were low, and increasing them when conditions worsened.81 One result is a series of balance sheets that swing constantly back and forth between deficits and surpluses. Yet the allied result was that the swings never lasted more than a couple of years. Figure 13 offers a few surprises.82 Some of the greatest surpluses accrued in the early 1590s when conditions in the city were at their worst and the numbers in the OPM’s homes at their highest. This could be a sign of fraud, of course, but it also suggests that the Bolognese were so shocked by conditions in those bitter years that they poured alms into the OPM faster than it could distribute them. At the same time, the highest surplus could be followed by the highest deficit when conditions reversed suddenly. If there were a few good years, donors likely assumed that the OPM was in a healthy state, and there would be a lag before they realized that the generous surplus of one year had evaporated in the heat of famine and plague a year later. What happened to these surpluses and deficits? Like other hospitals elsewhere in Europe, the OPM invested some of its surpluses in nonperishable foods like grain. This ensured that when growing conditions soured due to famine, or when an economic crisis or plague left people unable to buy at market prices, the OPM would have resources readily available in a practical form. Moreover, a stockpile of grain was an investment that saved money twice over, since it freed OPM officials from buying on the open market at times when prices were skyrocketing. They weren’t unusual in having this kind of reserve—hospital administrators across Europe aimed to build up similar stockpiles of food and goods. Bologna’s foundling home of the Esposti had to have 150 corbe

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20,000 18,000

deficit surplus

16,000 14,000

Lire

12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0

9 81 83 85 7 9 91 93 95 7 9 71 73 75 7 15 15 15 157 157 15 15 15 158 158 15 15 15 159 159 Years

Figure 13. Surpluses and Deficits at the OPM, 1570–1600

of grain (roughly a month’s supply for three hundred people) in storage at all times, and some institutions from Siena’s S. Maria della Scala to Amsterdam’s Burgerweeshuis actually mandated having a full year’s supply on hand so as to be ready when the need hit. Count Giovanni Pepoli’s proposed “Big Heap of Mercy” worked on the same principle of buying and stockpiling in times of plenty so that the poor could buy food more cheaply in times of famine.83 The OPM treasurer recorded these purchases and other short-term investments in a fund called the Avanze/Desvanze (literally “surpluses/ deficits”) that appeared in the OPM’s libri mastri together with the records of its debts and loans. By absorbing surpluses and covering shortfalls in deficit years, this fund evened out the annual swings in the OPM’s accounts. A particular year can give us an idea of the number of people involved as investors, creditors, and pledge holders. In 1583 the OPM administrators were consolidating the results of a couple of decades of relative stability, unaware that a series of famines would soon hit in waves at the end of the decade, flooding its courtyards with hungry poor and doubling its costs. By that year, the OPM had acquired seven major properties, a set

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of houses in Bologna, and shares in three investment funds worth a total of 57,290.16.7 lire. Thirteen major legacies worth 8,402.5.4 lire generated regular payments, while fourteen small ones totaled 364.3.8 lire. Fifty individuals had pledged regular amounts both small and large, while eleven monasteries owed amounts ranging from 20 to 210 lire. Officials had been able to plow bits of excess income into building up stores of livestock, food, wine, and wood, to the point that their reserve totaled almost a year’s worth of food expenses: 19,815.7.0 lire. Between debts, legacies, and investments, the OPM’s treasurer in 1583 could tally assets, capital, resources, and loans worth 93,274.10.0 lire. Against this he booked a series of liabilities that included loans from and obligations to fifty-eight small and ten large creditors. Some of these were other institutions like the Ospedale degli Esposti or S. Maria del Baraccano. In cases like this, the OPM might be the administrator of a single large property whose annual rents had been directed by a testator to a series of institutions. It also booked as debts any possessions of poor individuals who had entered one or another of the shelters. Most owned only a handful of lire; one woman in the OPM actually held 290.16.7 lire in trust, a figure equivalent to two years’ earnings by a laborer. The most telling figure among the liabilities is 41,641.4.11 lire overdrawn on the fund of Avanze and Desvanze.84 This represented twenty years of accumulated deficits. At twice the annual budget, it was a staggering sum. It indicated that the OPM was financially unsustainable. However moderate the annual swings of deficits and surpluses might be, and however successful its effort to have a year’s worth of food supplies sitting in storage, the OPM was sliding deeper and deeper into debt on its operating budget. It was a very different picture with the OPM’s endowment. The operating budget may have been sinking, but OPM’s store of testamentary legacies and endowment donations began growing almost from the day its first shelter opened. Bolognese men and women named it in their testaments, and the small and large sums accumulated steadily. Endowments had always been a cornerstone of hospital finance. One reason why “reformers” of charitable institutions were so keen on taking pilgrims’ hospitals, and shifting their focus toward helping specific categories of local poor was the lure of capturing and redirecting these endowments.

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It was thanks to portfolios rich with rental properties and deposits in the municipal- or papal-funded debts that institutions like the Ospedale degli Esposti, S. Maria del Baraccano, and S. Bartolomeo di Reno could begin offering services from the moment they turned out the pilgrims and began sheltering local poor children instead. Their endowments gave them a stable income that allowed them to meet expenses regardless of the ups and downs of annual alms gathering. Had the OPM gained even part of the income from the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice, it would have enjoyed the same advantage. Since the Senate refused to transfer that rich legacy to it, the OPM had to work hard in order to build up its own endowment, above all by capitalizing on the shadow of death in Catholic spirituality. The prayers of the worthy poor could help the souls of the worthy rich enter paradise, and civic and ecclesiastical leaders instructed notaries and preachers to highlight the various homes’ needs when drawing up wills for clients or preaching sermons to parishioners. Some donors on their deathbeds preferred onetime gifts that went immediately to buy the food, clothing, linens, and medicines that the poor needed to survive. These could swing significantly from year to year and hit impressive peaks during plagues and famines. Other donors thought more about the long-term prospects for both the OPM and their own souls, and gave investments that were intended to produce results (and obligations) for years into the future.85 The OPM noted these perpetual gifts separately. They could be ongoing charges on the estates of other heirs or institutions, or possibly sums meant to be invested in real estate or debt funds. Figure 14 shows that while the annual amounts here tended to be smaller than the onetime gifts, they generated a steadily increasing flow of investment income.86 The first gifts were modest: Pietro Fachinetti gave forty soldi a year and Alessandro Zavagli eight lire annually in their 1566 testaments— together these could purchase no more than a couple of corbe of grain.87 The OPM was still struggling to get into people’s consciousness, though the low levels of income from invested legacies in these first years may also be due to something as simple as accounting methods. The income from investments jumps suddenly after the administrative reforms of 1574, when the OPM began keeping its books in semesters rather than

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8,000 7,000

Burial & requiem

Legacies – perpetual

Legacies – single

Rents & interest income

6,000

Lire

5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0

70

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73

15

76

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79

15

82

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15

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91

15

94

15

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Figure 14. Testaments, Requiems, and Legacy Income at the OPM, 1570–1600

trimesters. Other shifts in accounting likely accompanied the administrative changes. Moreover, in its first decade the OPM had been forgoing revenue-generating properties and the local bond market to invest heavily in itself. It sank almost 10,000 lire into buying the group of houses that it turned into the boys’ shelter of S. Maria della Pietà just inside the S. Vitale city gate.88 The first truly significant legacy to the OPM came from Pietro Bonetti in 1570. His testament declaring the OPM to be his universal heir brought two farm properties in the Bolognese contado, a house in the city, two smaller plots of land, and ample amounts of capital in a bank and on the Bolognese bond market—over 37,000 lire in all.89 Other large legacies gradually followed: 1,000 lire from Matteo Amorini in 1573, 4,000 lire from Lodovico Torelli in 1584–1585, and an equal amount from Alideo di Sede a few years later; 2,125 lire from Bartolomeo Zani in 1594 with the promise of an equal amount annually after that.90 The conservators and syndics on the OPM congregazione opted to invest these growing funds in urban houses, rural farms, and various monte or investment funds, thereby joining the financial rush that gave Bologna the most active bond

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market in late sixteenth-century Italy. They spent almost 50,000 lire on urban and rural properties, and invested another 10,000 lire in shares on different monte by the end of the century. Some testators required this in order to ensure that their legacies would generate the funds for the requiem observances they tied to the gift.91 Others simply gave the house or land directly, as when Ariosto Dalle Valle gave a house in the Saragozza neighborhood on the opposite side of the city with the stipulation that its rents be used to dower S. Gregorio girls.92 Yet others deeded the rents only, preferring to keep the properties themselves in family hands.93 Overall, most gave money or property, and only a few offered regular gifts of food.94 Land and shares in civic debt gave both security and flexibility. The OPM sometimes borrowed funds to tide it through difficult times, most notably the lean years of the early 1590s, and it used its properties as collateral.95 Private citizens did the same and sometimes drew on confraternities and charitable institutions as their lenders. There were two main instruments that borrowers and lenders used. In the francazione the owner transferred title over a property to the lender for a fi xed period. This was usually between three and nine years, but could extend to twenty-nine. He then “rented” the property back at a rate that represented about 6 to 7 percent interest, and at the end of the term he bought the property back for the original sum. A censo simplified matters somewhat. The owner still put forward property as collateral, but never transferred ownership. In return for a certain sum of capital guaranteed against the property, he paid “rents” that once again represented 6 to 7 percent interest. The term was indefinite, leaving the owner free to redeem the loan at any time. If he defaulted, the lender could liquidate the property to recover the loan. Some confraternities tied up significant funds in francazioni and censi to patricians and even to their own members, believing that these loans were an investment that built goodwill while accumulating both financial and political capital.96 The OPM for its part used both instruments but only rarely. It lent money on a francazione at least once to a convent, but only rarely did it extend funds to private citizens.97 One exception was a significant one: a 6,200-lire francazione agreement with Giovanni di Ermes Bentivoglio in 1579 as he was trying to raise a dowry for his sister, Savingia. Giovanni

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offered a plot of land in the former signorial family’s rural estate of Bentivoglio as collateral, and paid 6 percent interest on the loan.98 The OPM was doing Giovanni Bentivoglio a favor but it was not giving him a special deal: most of its loans, investments, and rents generated between 6 and 7 percent annually.99 When testators tied their legacies to ongoing obligations like masses, dowries, or the distribution of food, the OPM had to keep the capital out of its operating budget and find secure investments. This was what lay behind the paradox that it could sink ever deeper into debt even as it was getting richer and richer. And the OPM was not alone in this. Matthew Sneider has plotted the steady expansion of patrimonies by Bologna’s major charitable ospedali through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through deliberate strategies adopted by confraternal administrators, they became significant players in the urban and rural economy.100 The big hospitals like S. Maria della Vita and S. Maria della Morte worked actively with their growing portfolios of properties. They frequently sold the farms and houses left to them to in order to consolidate far-flung rural properties, to exchange marginal lands for more productive ones, and to develop their holdings. Through francazione and censi, they also became significant players in the local mortgage market. Some institutions drew on their capital when times were tight: S. Bartolomeo di Reno made francazione agreements on some rural properties in order to keep food on the table through the difficult 1590s, but it redeemed these as soon as possible once better times returned. In other cases, administrators devoted so many financial resources to the property and investment market that they were not able to meet their charitable obligations. The trustees for Conte Giovanni Pepoli’s “Big Heap,” the Pio Cumulo di Misericordia, bought a steady stream of properties and bonds to the point that by 1618 the Heap had twenty-nine small and large investments totaling almost 80,000 lire. Between rents, loan payments, and redemptions on these and thirty-two additional loans and properties, it took in just over 28,000 lire in that year.101 The OPM’s syndics and conservators needed no encouragement to invest in real estate. They too matched funds and sold the properties testators had left them in order to pick up a choice farm.102 In other Italian cities this wasn’t always the case. The Venetian government feared losing

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too much property to religious institutions where it would be out of their control and free of taxes, and so it limited land purchases by law and steered these institutions instead into public debt shares. By the end of the seventeenth century, two-thirds of the endowments of Venice’s confraternities were in public debt. Genoa’s syphilitic hospital achieved an even higher rate of 75 percent, though this was largely due to the number of bankers in its administration.103 The vigorous buying and selling sometimes happened when the OPM was named as a joint heir with others of a particular house or estate. Testators were turning to the OPM as a sort of central clearinghouse for legacies whose income they wished to divide among various charities. They frequently matched it with the foundling home of the Esposti, the orphanages of S. Maria del Baraccano, S. Bartolomeo di Reno, S. Maria Maddalena, S. Croce, and S. Giacomo, and even the convent of Corpus Domini.104 Sometimes the properties were simply sold and the assets divided equally, as when the OPM divided a 1,580-lire legacy with S. Onofrio or a 3,750-lire legacy with the Esposti and S. Bartolomeo di Reno, and when it discussed how to divide a 20,000-lire legacy promised to a group of institutions by two brothers.105 But testators big and small increasingly gave the OPM title to the property and entrusted it with distributing the revenues to the others.106 It’s a sign of how the Bolognese themselves recognized the various homes and shelters they had established as constituting a definite civic network. And it shows too that they trusted—and expected—the OPM to work in two ways. Not just as a central civic service for the distribution of charity to the poor, but also as a central civic service for the collection and redistribution of alms and legacies to other charitable institutions in the city.107

The OPM was raised through a few key ambitions and was gradually whittled down through a few key realities. The movers who promoted it through the 1550s and 1560s thought that through the OPM they could rationalize the collection and distribution of alms in the city. They planned to move beyond sporadic alms to a new predictable and annual alms tax drawn from families and institutions according to their abilities, and dedicated to the shelter. They envisioned putting the young and able

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poor to work across Bologna and creating an Ospedale di S. Maria della Misericordia outside the city walls that would become a site for practical charity. Poor women and children would shelter in this factory-scale workhouse to unreel silk cocoons that would feed the financial needs of the OPM while also feeding the silk mills lined along the city’s Reno Canal. We can track all these ambitions in the plans of the Senate, in the size of the armies of men and women who volunteered to raise pledges and collect alms taxes, in the recruiting of institutions and individuals from the silk industry to supervise the workhouse, and in the efforts to find and supervise work in shops, homes, and the shelter itself. It’s worth noting that however much members of Bologna’s elite differed sharply on how the administration of the OPM might reflect the politics of the city, they agreed that it could radically reshape poor relief in the city and integrate poor women, men, and children into the economy. The first decade was hard on these optimists. Each of their strategies faltered. Traditional alms gathering earned less than anticipated, and very few individuals wanted to commit to anything like an alms tax that might bind their hands in the future. Institutions ranging from monasteries to guilds to the papal legation to the organs of local government itself evaded those same commitments just as skillfully, despite the hectoring of OPM administrators and the threats of papal authorities. As far as work was concerned, boys and girls might be able to pick up short-term assignments as laborers or servants, but both they and the adult poor had less luck persuading textile merchants that they could reel cocoons, lay out flax, or spin wool as well as workers in other charitable shelters or in convents. This series of disappointments triggered the reforms of 1574 that would see the OPM shed much of its communal republican organization in favor of a narrower administrative congregazione, a more concentrated and powerful executive committee drawn in part from the Senate, and more disciplined workhouses at S. Gregorio and S. Maria della Pietà. Paid labor by the poor would never meet financial expectations, but it became more important as a form and goal of general discipline at the OPM. The OPM’s ambitions were not realized, but we should not assume that the place itself was a failure. It was created out of makeshift and adaptation and these continued to help it survive. Expenses may have

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skyrocketed, but income was rising too, even if not fast enough. The failure of alms taxes was perhaps the biggest financial disappointment, but alms of various kinds from individuals, guilds, confraternities, magistracies, and above all testators still generated the most income overall. We cannot cite donor fatigue here, because the Bolognese continued to pour more “new” alms into the OPM than into any other charity in the city. They were so generous that it was arguably a more valued institution than even the hospitals of S. Maria della Vita and S. Maria della Morte, which could thank centuries of accumulated endowments for their higher overall income. Patronal charity kept the OPM afloat and added steadily to its own endowment. Textile piecework was critical to plans for making practical charity self-sustaining, and its failure at S. Gregorio was perhaps the biggest strategic disappointment for OPM supporters. Yet women and children in S. Gregorio continued to work both in and outside the home, and the income they brought in continued to rise, albeit slowly. Moreover, the Bolognese remained convinced that work could be the salvation of charitable shelters so long as it was applied and modified strategically. While work at S. Gregorio never reached the potential that some officials had dreamt of in the 1550s and 1560s, it continued to produce income through the end of the century as administrators focused more on silk and tightened up on discipline in the hope, apparently, that they could duplicate the greater success of Bologna’s conservatories. In those homes, work became ever more disciplined and ever more important as a means of meeting the young women’s present and future needs. And the city’s silk industry continued to flourish as it sucked up what these women produced. The OPM had been born as the evolutionary adaptation of traditional forms of caritas and misericordia. It differed more in scale than in type from the help offered for centuries by Bologna’s hospitals, confraternities, guilds, and the Commune itself to poor women, men, and children. Almost every other charitable hospital and institution in Europe faced the same historical trajectory as the demand for services outpaced the optimism and generosity of early donors. And every city had to find new ways of combining practical and patronal charity in order to keep these institutions open. Even if it failed to live up to the forms and expectations

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that had swirled around in the heady and politically charged 1550s, ’60s, and ’70s, the OPM’s admirers in Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Rome continued to cite it as an example for their own governments to follow in order to deal more effectively with growing numbers of poor women, men, and children. That said, we miss the scale and creativity of what the Bolognese were doing if we limit our inquiry to a history of a single institution. These detours to focus on the political and financial issues swirling around the OPM have been necessary to help us understand some of contexts and challenges that shaped a very important part of Bologna’s welfare network. Yet they have gradually moved us away from exploring the life cycle of women’s poverty and the efforts of many different sixteenth-century Bolognese to find new ways of helping poor women survive at vulnerable times in their lives. It’s time to return. The wheel of poverty kept turning, and while the OPM remained a key institution, other creative new tools and resources for the poor began emerging outside of it. These were often spearheaded by charismatic individuals and groups who were outside the politically active class and who, as a result, were less concerned with promoting any particular political agenda through their charitable work. They focused instead on plugging the gaps in Bologna’s evolving welfare system. The OPM’s S. Gregorio, S. Maria della Pietà, and S. Orsola shelters offered food, shelter, and clothing, but much of this was to those at either the beginning or the end of their lives. A poor female might, hypothetically, begin and end her life at S. Gregorio in a complete turn of the wheel. But what of the difficult years in between?

chapter 5

The Wheel Keeps Turning Moving Beyond the Opera

he bolognese continued experimenting with new ways of assisting poor women for decades after the OPM opened. Some of their most imaginative plans—a dowry savings bank, maternity benefits, health insurance, and unions—developed in the latter half of the sixteenth century. There were a few telling differences between these innovations and the experiments of earlier decades that had culminated in the OPM. The evolution toward the OPM had been collective and local, driven forward by confraternities, guilds, hospitals, and magistracies made up of Bolognese citizens and focused on the needs of other Bolognese. By contrast, a series of forceful and imaginative individuals, many of them immigrants to Bologna, moved the plans of the later sixteenth century forward. They thought above all of serving all those who lived in the city regardless of where they had come from. They mixed patronal and practical forms, and emphasized both more self-help and mutual assistance, and also greater levels of discipline. The OPM had been a civic project and a collective effort drawing in dozens of men and women from different magistracies and confraternities, with few individuals standing out from this broad-based civic effort. Conceived as a response to growing demographic and subsistence pressures, it was born out of local confraternal models and midwived by local

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political bodies like the Tribunes, the Elders, and the Senate. Their series of bold moves, botched initiatives, sly calculations, reversals, and makeshift adaptations together constituted a collective and evolving response to female poverty. They knit together various existing hospitals and charities into a spreading network of care that aimed to stretch over the entire Bolognese citizenry. Each year hundreds of volunteers cycled in one- or four- or six- or twelve-month terms not only through the OPM itself but also through every other hospital and shelter in the city. These cycles necessarily overlapped, and ensured that experience gained in one institution was applied in another. This army of hundreds of lay volunteers also ensured that Bologna’s charitable network was deeply rooted in its civil society and in its political system, reflecting all their deep divisions and tensions. Relatively few individuals emerge out of this mass of hundreds whose collaboration, competition, and adaptation led eventually to the opening of the OPM. No recorded political debates, letter collections, or pamphlets allow us to distinguish individual voices in the civic conversation that gave Bologna one of the most advanced and integrated system of poor relief in mid-sixteenth-century Italy. Carlo Duosi galvanized the citizens who, characteristically, organized as a confraternity in order to open S. Marta in 1505. Silvio Guidotti was memorialized after his death as one of the leaders who got the conservatories going in the 1520s and who had a hand in running each one. Giovanni Pepoli saw the OPM as a work of the Bolognese popolo, promoting it through the 1550s and helping it meet its budget and its administrative needs from the 1560s into the 1580s. Beyond this, and beyond the usual lists of committees and donors, we do not know which individuals may have taken the lead in writing the proposals for the 1548 or 1550 plans, in pushing the reformed statutes for the city’s leading confraternities in the 1550s, or in spearheading the OPM’s 1564 statutes or its 1574 revisions. These were largely collective actions. Though local citizens took the lead, their efforts at creating a more broad-ranging system of social welfare also engaged participants from far outside Bologna, above all from high curialists serving terms in the papal legation. As the largest and wealthiest city in the Papal State, Bologna was a useful laboratory for those curialists eager to work on some of the

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leading social issues of the day outside of the political hothouse that was Rome. Some had first come to the city as university students and they retained a rich range of connections with leading local families. Many took on key roles in refining and implementing the OPM: Giovanni Angelo de’Medici was an outsider who may have promoted the 1548 plan when serving as vice legate, and who approved the 1560 plan soon after becoming pope. He issued the bull that created the poorhouse of S. Maria della Misericordia, and also brought in Carlo Borromeo to broker local support. Borromeo in turn brought in Pier Donato Cesi as the fi xer who could fashion a stronger financial foundation for the OPM by convincing the religious houses to commit to alms taxes. Under the Bolognese pope Gregory XIII, “locals” and “foreigners” collaborated in 1573–1574 to recast the OPM’s corporate administration along more bureaucratic congregational lines, and then applied the model to Rome a year later. In that year (1575), Gregory XIII authorized Rome’s confraternity of SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini to open poorhouse in an old Dominican friary on the Appian Way, and here as in Bologna the poor were sent in procession out to their new home outside the city walls.1 Bologna’s construction of a network of civic welfare was never isolated or purely local or ever truly finished. Even those Bolognese patriots who lauded the OPM as a sign of local vision and generosity admitted that it would have collapsed without these strategically placed outsiders who pushed and pulled at different stages in the first few decades. While many locals tailored this new cloak of misericordia to stretch over Bologna’s poor, they patched it together out of pieces of the city’s existing social fabric, and above all its hospitals and confraternities. If the innovations that resulted in the OPM came out of collective action and drew on existing resources, then by contrast the new plans and institutions of the 1570s, 1580s, and 1590s tended to come from the drive and money of individuals or the efforts of small groups working independently from Bologna’s civic magistracies. They were less interested in retailoring the old than with weaving something new. Some were passionate about “reforming” particular groups of marginal women while others pioneered forms of mutual assistance for the working poor. Many had moved to Bologna as young men and earned fortunes in the textile trade: this included silk merchants like Bonifacio dalle Balle and

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Francesco Panolino, or a wool merchant like Marc’Antonio Battilana. Others were patrician women like Hippolita Volta Boncompagni who tired of working under a fractious group of men at the conservatory of S. Croce and recruited a large group of women to start and personally staff the new conservatory of S. Giuseppe. There were more local clerics like Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti who thought charity ought to have a more disciplinary edge if it was to usher in a more moral and spiritual society. A few, like Giovanni Pepoli, had become frustrated with the existing political system and promoted new initiatives outside it. Some were legally considered foreigners, even if they had lived in Bologna for decades, and as such they could not take a significant role in administering a major civic institution like the OPM. What united this group was their often passionate and direct engagement in their charitable work. They poured their energies and their fortunes into it, and often forged personal relations with the poor girls and women under their care. The laity among them were deeply religious, though seldom orthodox, and their emphasis on forming personal contacts with the poor came out of a conviction that conversion and reform began in individual hearts. Reaching beyond local charitable models and institutions, they often deliberately ignored local administrative traditions. Yet when their initiatives ran into trouble, as all eventually did, they fell under the eye and then the care of a watchful senatorial oligarchy. And when local confraternities or patricians came to the rescue, as they inevitably did, these same local models and traditions were imposed on these once innovative and unorthodox homes, plans, and confraternities. The OPM had emphasized supporting the worthy poor in their homes, enclosing and educating the able-bodied poor in the workhouse, and expelling foreign indigents. Yet in all of this ambitious activity there was little left for the working poor, the group that the Elders and Tribunes—champions of the popolo—had been working to support earlier in the century. It was to these working poor that the charismatic individuals dealt with in this chapter most often reached out. We see a sudden flowering of new mutual assistance groups that emerge outside the political magistracies, the hospitals, and the confraternities, and that aimed at helping precisely the working poor with insurance-like mutual assistance programs. Once again, many of the individuals and groups

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propelling these plans forward were “foreigners” who were ineligible to draw on the network of civic benefits that Bologna’s confraternities and magistracies had crafted. Many of their efforts were directed largely and even exclusively toward women, particularly adults, and they saw marriage and family as the solution to a host of social ills. So many men and women launched different projects in these decades of the 1570s–1590s that it is difficult to replicate the clearer narrative arc that we can trace through of the first half of the sixteenth century. This chapter will consider separately three forms of help that emerged together in the last three decades of the century: enclosed shelters for adult women, investment funds, and mutual assistance groups. Along the way, we will also look a little more closely at some of the charismatic individuals who drove these experiments forward.

Enclosing the Circle: Shelters and the Reform of Poor Women Hippolita Vespucci was having trouble fitting in. She may have been in her early twenties or perhaps even her thirties when she approached the sisters of S. Maria dei Servi asking to be vested as a tertiary. Some young women like Hippolita became tertiaries if they couldn’t afford a dowry or if eligible suitors had disappeared, leaving them scrambling to find some kind of respectable social position. Hippolita seemed to be looking for cover, because while she embraced the title of “Sister,” and the habit that went with it, she couldn’t help embracing a series of men as well. The Servites took a dim view of her activities on the side and wanted her gone, citing “a lack of merit.” Hippolita begged forgiveness and a second chance, so in April 1592 the Servites packed her off to a new lay shelter in Bologna, the Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo. The new home aimed to help adulterous women rediscover their vows, prostitutes exit their profession, and concubines start a new life. Part halfway house and part reformatory, the Casa del Soccorso proved to be a pretty good cover too, because Hippolita was soon at it again. After mounting frustration with this young woman who seemed unable to keep her mind and body out of trouble, the Soccorso decided it was time to pass her on: the scribe recording her exit wrote that she “was thrown into the Mendicanti so

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that she would not be able to sin any more.” Hippolita wasn’t alone: The Casa del Soccorso threw out Florida de Bussi and Giulia Massarenti for “insolences,” Giovanna Bonelli for getting pregnant, and Gentile “without a name” (Gentile senza cognome) for neglecting to mention that she had a young dependent daughter. Others were overtaken by their past lives: of Lutia di Fabri, the scribe wrote tersely, “she came to a bad end and was killed.”2 The shelters that opened in the 1570s and 1580s responded directly and specifically to the poverty of adult women at the fringes of society. They were, if anything, even more exclusively female than anything that had opened before. These homes often had a more disciplinary edge than the shelters that had opened in the first decades of the century, even if the discipline wasn’t always extreme or punitive. Discipline arose from the increasing drive in all homes to make redemption and reform a fundamental part of charity: these women were not just threatened, but threatening. Like Hippolita Vespucci, they might not fit in, but they weren’t going to be left to their own devices either. These shelters aimed to remove the threat by first taking the woman out of society and then taking the sin out of the woman. Beyond that, the women entering these new homes were older, and so were considered more responsible for their poverty than foundlings and orphans. This was particularly the case if they suffered a poverty that arose more directly out of their sexuality. They were “worthy poor” largely in the sense that they were worth helping: born locally, married respectably, or helped by prominent patrons. If some were dragged kicking and screaming into a place they saw less as a home or shelter than as a prison, then at least the ones doing the dragging were also worthy, and these worthy rich acted in the hope that a period of more enclosed and disciplined governance might restore some worth to the woman as well. The range of new homes opening up reflected the range of challenges that adult women faced. Those caught in marriages with abusive and violent men and with no other options for returning to family or living independently could find a refuge in the Pia Casa delle Malmaritate (the Pious House of the Badly-Married). And women whose route out of such marriages or out of poverty generally had been via the sex trade on the streets could enter the Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo (the House

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of Assistance of St. Paul) in order to have a new start. They could also enroll their daughters in the shelter of S. Croce (the Holy Cross), both to relieve their own poverty and to give their daughters an option beyond prostitution. Girls from better homes who needed only temporary help in mid- to late adolescence might find shelter with a collection of patrician women who opened a Casa di S. Gioseffo (House of S. Joseph). The drive behind these homes was less about sympathy with women in these situations—some thought that unhappily married women and prostitutes had only themselves to blame—than about a desire to prevent them from compounding one evil with another and then spreading it through the city. The Malmaritate was the first to open, and its founders may have been looking to imitate the OPM and its famously successful Holy Week 1563 launch when they approached a popular Capuchin preacher Francesco da Fugnano to stir up support in the city. They weren’t disappointed. Fra Francesco’s dynamic sermon cycle in the civic basilica of San Petronio in 1571 pushed the Bolognese to offer funds and resources for the shelter. The Malmaritate would end up moving around to a few locations in its early years until in 1606 Archbishop Alfonso Paleotti secured it a site on Via Lame, a main street cutting through the silk district on the west side of the city, and close to the convent of the Convertite of SS. Giacomo e Filippo. It moved within a decade to another site near the foundling home of the Esposti on Via S. Mamolo, the main road leading south out of the city and into the Apennines. 3 While shelters for abused and “unhappily married” women multiplied across Italy from the mid-sixteenth century, we know very little about how they operated because the early records for most have either been lost or were never kept.4 We can tease a few details about Bologna’s Malmaritate out of two small ledgers: one for the years 1600–1602, and the other for the years 1612–1614, around the time that it moved to its new site at Via S. Mamolo.5 Its location in the earlier period isn’t entirely clear—one source puts it in a private home on Via Brochindosso, just inside the eastern city walls and hence close to the OPM’s cluster of three shelters. Yet the home’s first ledger itself seems to suggest that the Malmaritate women may have found space within the convent of the Convertite. After the 1606 move, a resident community of nuns ran the shelter

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under the title of S. Maria della Casa Pia (St. Mary of the Pious House), and these sisters were directly and deeply involved with the laywomen in their care.6 Many laywomen were brought to the home by one of the sisters, and Prioress Ginevra Silvaggi assigned each one entering a particular nun as her companion. In these years the women who were fleeing unhappy marriages were joined by others who simply were at a turning point and needed time and space to plan their next step: widows, girls on the verge of marriage, and women just out of prison. The Malmaritate was, for many of these women, a halfway house for a time of transition in their lives. Of fifty-two women who entered in 1600–1602, eleven became nuns and a further four tried that route but were turned down by the convents they applied to. The ratio remained roughly similar a decade later. Of thirty-two women entering in 1612–1614, six went on to become nuns and another seven contemplated it seriously before deciding against it or being rejected by Prioress Silvaggi. Of those who left, very few actually returned to husbands—just two in each of these two cohorts. Most of the women leaving the Malmaritate returned to blood kin, and to female kin above all—mothers most often, but also aunts, sisters, cousins. Some even returned to female servants, and in 1614 Benedetta di San Pieri went back to her nursemaid. Few rejoined male kin.7 These women did not spend a long time enclosed in the Malmaritate. Most stayed only about eight weeks, though some were gone in a week and others stayed nine months. And some returned again after having left: only three of the first cohort but eight—or fully one-quarter—of the later cohort. There was no particular pattern here; one returned after ten days and another after fourteen months. They or their sponsors had to pay fifteen lire a month to live in the Malmaritate, and some even paid in advance for longer terms than they actually stayed. Some women fled to the home and others were deposited in it. The community of nuns sheltered and protected these women without tightly enclosing them. They clearly wanted to create an environment that had stimulations and not just discipline. Bologna’s convents were famous for their active musical life, complete with publishing composers and public concerts, and the Malmaritate aimed to fit in. After its organist, Sister Artemisia, died in July 1600, the nuns looked around

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for someone to replace her. It took time to find a promising candidate, and when Dalia arrived in early December for the Christmas season she initially looked good enough that they offered to accept her as a nun four days later. Yet the intense round of services over the next couple of weeks showed up Dalia’s weaknesses as a singer and musician, and shortly after Christmas she was sent packing to her aunt’s house to take lessons in singing and playing, with the promise that she’d be accepted as a nun as soon as she’d learned to play the organ. A week later Antonia Caterina arrived to try out for the post, but she too left before the end of the month, rejoining her sister on the outside so she could pursue a public career. It’s not clear if Dalia ever did return or whether the nuns ever managed to recruit another organist, but they did manage to keep up a cultural life. One of the last notes in the second ledger records the nuns traveling together with the laywomen to see the Madonna di San Luca at S. Petronio and to hear its choir sing a motet.8 Was the Malmaritate a refuge, a convent, a prison or something else again? Lucrezia de Berti needed to flee from her husband, Fulvio da L’Avoglia, in 1612, and waited at the Malmaritate for her father, Angelo, and brother, Bertollo, to take her back home even though the home itself was in such rough shape (“si guasto”) that she had to be moved temporarily into the Convertite. The Malmaritate had opened to shelter precisely women like this, but as we look further through the ledger we find few women in similar situations. Giovanna Salla arrived on S. Martin’s Day on the orders of the papal legate, who covered her stay for sixteen weeks before she was sent to the Torrone, Bologna’s prison for capital criminals. She stayed there only ten days before the archbishop ordered her released and returned to the Malmaritate. Here she remained another twenty-two weeks before finally leaving with her husband, Lorenzo Salla. Ginevra Luchatelli arrived in December 1612 intending to become a nun and bringing a 1,000-lire dowry with her provided by a Florentine gentleman, Tomaso Bontempo; she may have been the concubine that he was setting aside in order to marry someone of his own station. Within a month she took her first vows as Sister Ginevra, but by August it was clear to all that she did not fit into either the vocation or the home, so the Malmaritate’s vicaria, Sister Modesta Beliselli, formally divested her of her habit and returned her to her mother.

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Was there any other place that these women could fit in? The atmosphere in Malmaritate homes across Italy was much looser than in convents, and could even be a little rough. At least one priest, don Maria Toscho, turned around on his heel and quit the day he was to start hearing confessions. The shelter on Via S. Mamolo was a refuge for Lucrezia de Berti, a prison for Giovanna Salla, a novitiate for Ginevra Luchatelli, and possibly a brothel to don Maria. In short, it was no one thing, and it certainly wasn’t a shelter limited to abused and “unhappily married” women. At any particular moment there might be only a handful of laywomen living there, and what united them was less a common experience of failed marriage than a need for some safe place where they could negotiate the passage from one form or stage of life to another.9 Many women faced those passages. How would they manage them? The fear driving the Malmaritate was that poor girls and women whose families had in some way fallen apart and who had few options for earning enough to live independently, would drift into prostitution. This was no urban myth, and even those poor women whose families remained intact sometimes turned tricks in order to make ends meet or to negotiate a better life. Every downturn in the silk industry released a flood of women into the Bolognese sex industry. This was one of the reasons that “respectable” artisans, merchants, and professionals thought that the women working in textile trades were fundamentally lazy and immoral. Beyond these periodic employment crises, Stefano D’Amico notes that “particularly for women of the lower orders, sexuality did not always represent a private aspect of life as much as a tool that could be used, with moral indifference, to pursue a better existence.”10 D’Amico writes in reference to a trio of women in seventeenth-century Milan, a mother, Angela Visconti, with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Margherita, and her sister, Anna Castelli. Angela’s husband, Alberto, was an unemployed wool weaver reduced to drinking and begging, while the three women spun silk and made ribbons and lace at home. They knew of alternatives: years before, Angela and Anna’s own father had prostituted their stepmother and had been publicly whipped and paraded around on a donkey for it. Aware that a night with a client could earn them more than two or three days in silk piecework, Angela and Anna now set about to pimping

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the teenage Margherita. Eventually all three women entered the sex trade as donne di partito, that is, neither courtesans nor streetwalkers but something in between that was more akin to escorts or companions with a roster of regular upper class clients. It was these clients, rattling through the neighborhood at all hours in their carriages, who bothered the neighbors enough that they eventually denounced the trio. Angela was fingered as the bawd in the group, and for this was punished and exiled; Margherita and Anna were let go and disappear from the records. They may have followed her over the border, or may just as well have returned to their clients. Everyone from clerics to parents to lawmakers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had commonly seen organized prostitution as a lesser evil than rape and assault. Any responsible city government concerned with public order and with the social and psychological health of the unmarried males living in or passing through the city set out to provide sex to them commercially by establishing protected red-light districts and opening civic brothels. This approach gradually evaporated through the sixteenth century as prostitutes were fingered as the chief vectors for venereal disease and as agents of moral sickness. To live near a brothel or on the edge of a red-light district was to experience everything from strolling minstrels to screaming johns. Prostitutes could be good neighbors, but they inevitably attracted bad companions. Faced with a rising chorus of complaints, city governments moved from franchising civic brothels toward registering and policing individual prostitutes. This turned what had perhaps been an informal and occasional activity into a professional designation, complete with registries, license fees, and courts to handle commercial disputes. Florence’s Office of Good Reputation (Ufficio dell’Onestà) turned from a magistracy that franchised civic brothels to one that registered, prosecuted, and protected prostitutes. Bologna’s Office of Receipts (Ufficio delle Bollette) had begun around 1376 as an office keeping an eye on foreigners, and expanded through the fifteenth century to franchising the civic brothel and maintaining the civic registry for prostitutes, possibly because so many prostitutes and their clients came from outside the city. In a later regulation, this Office set out its targets quite ecumenically as “Foreigners, Jews, and Whores” (Forestiere, Hebrei, et Meretrici).11

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Bolognese authorities tried controlling prostitution through brothels, licensed districts, and sumptuary laws through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with the aims of containing disorder and advancing morality.12 In a city full of foreign university students and young itinerant workers, this meant increasing rather than restricting access to sex workers. Bologna’s lawmakers moved its civic brothel from one location adjacent to the main university college residences, to another closer to the silk district, while also allowing some prostitutes to work independently. By the mid-sixteenth century, the Bolognese joined Venice, Florence, Milan, and Cremona in closing the brothel altogether and moving to a policy of licensing particular streets and registering prostitutes. Here again, they initially aimed to balance the needs of textile workers and university students when selecting streets where prostitutes could live and work. Authorities in many Italian cities swung back and forth from one approach to another in the same way, and while policy and policing were in constant flux, regulation of prostitution was usually quite a good and profitable business for civic governments. The efforts made to prosecute women like Angela, Anna, and Margherita in Milan were driven less by moral outrage than by the fact that they hadn’t paid their registration fees or because they were becoming a public nuisance. What seemed like a decisive turning point in Bologna came in the mid1560s, when a flurry of public proclamations aimed to push prostitutes into a few designated streets and force them to wear the white shawl that was the public sign of their profession. Bishop Gabrielle Paleotti was the major force behind this drive, and with him the language of filth, evil, wickedness, and pollution now resonated through the regulations. A little over a year after taking office in January 1566, Paleotti’s name began appearing with those of the legate and Standard Bearer of Justice on a series of new decrees on prostitution that public officials posted in public spaces and pronouncing from street corners. It was the first time that any of Bologna’s bishops had done this kind of thing, and it signaled the moral campaigns that would become the hallmark of Paleotti’s episcopacy. Before Paleotti, the Office of Receipts had contented itself with repeating regulations on clothing, and giving rather vague and flexible guidelines on where they could stand and how they should act. Prostitutes entering a church should “stand in inferior places and separately from

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honest women,” they should stay in the quarters they’d been assigned to (if in fact they’d been assigned to one), and they must not dress as men. The Office of Receipts seemed more determined to extract fees from the women and heavy fines from hostel and tavern keepers who were running unlicensed brothels.13 Three proclamations (bandi) that Paleotti promoted in 1567–1568 were decidedly more rigid.14 They reduced to three the number of streets that prostitutes could practice on, and set high fines for anyone outside those zones who rented to a woman practicing “l’arte Merettrica.” They threatened flogging, public humiliation, and steep fines for prostitutes who strayed off them. Earlier regulations aimed to keep prostitutes and their noise away from monasteries and convents, and Paleotti now reinforced that while squeezing them into hearing distance of a few specific churches where preachers would work up sermons that would shame them out of the profession.15 This was all in the self-contained world of church and state regulation, and it did not last long. Paleotti’s regulatory crusade sputtered out in less than a year. Both the papal legate and civic officials, including the patricians who ran the Office of Receipts, reacted strongly to the archbishop’s interventions into areas traditionally under civic regulation. Pope Pius V supported them and left Paleotti hanging in a clear confirmation that raison d’état trumped religious idealism in the temporal governance of the Papal State. And not just there; Paleotti’s close friend Carlo Borromeo was learning the same hard lessons as he clashed with local patrician officials and Spanish rulers in Milan.16 By 1571 Paleotti’s name no longer appeared on the proclamations regarding prostitution. Though he still appealed a couple of years later to Gregory XIII to confirm his authority over the local legate in a wide range of areas included prostitution and concubinage, the Bolognese pope kept the Tridentine reformer on a shorter leash. Regulations on prostitution in Bologna eased up considerably in their rhetoric and restrictions, if not quite their number; from 1571 to 1630 officials issued fifty-four proclamations, yet they were not out to reform prostitutes by force of law. Civic officials were still more concerned with disorder than morality, and so aimed mainly to keep prostitutes close to their clients, to keep the general noise and disorder of red-light districts away from convents, and to keep registering fee-paying sex workers in their ledgers.17

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But who should pay the fees? Many Italians were acutely conscious of the pressures that led women temporarily into the sex trade, and demonstrated a degree of tolerance if the women did not violate deeper social norms or become a public nuisance. The woman who might turn tricks occasionally out of a sheer need to survive ought to be discrete and not bring her family or neighborhood into disrepute. The girl who might be the companion of an individual man, possibly married, ought to remain faithful to him until he decided to set her up with a husband. This was really a form of concubinage, and it was how Angela Visconti had set up her daughter in Milan. Margherita Visconti might even have recovered the status of an “honest woman” had she married the liquor vendor that her prominent and wealthy lover found for her. In the streets and shops where the working poor lived, “fidelity was considered more important than virginity.”18 In a city like Bologna, full of foreign university students who remained for a few years before returning to homes elsewhere in Italy or over the Alps, this had been an option for some adolescent girls from the Middle Ages. The girl was commonly accepted as a student’s amazia, and this may well have been the life that Ginevra Luchatelli had been living before her Florentine gentleman gave her the 1,000-lire dowry that was to secure her a place in Bologna’s Malmaritate convent of S. Maria della Casa Pia.19 Shifting morality generated a lot of regulation and a lot of sermonizing, but much of it was hypocritical and unenforceable. That said, the moral currents were changing. Religious leaders like Paleotti vigorously, if a bit quixotically, fought the sex trade that their clerical forebears had accepted as a “necessary evil.” While this remained the tacit position of many Italians, more religious reformers both lay and clerical now also preached that the professional prostitute was a key symbol of social license and decline. They mounted ambitious efforts to get women out of the profession that had often, paradoxically, been foisted on them by the demands of licensing and registration. This may have been a factor underlying both Paleotti’s crusade and the sharp reaction it drew from civic officials. By making the rules so tight and the punishments so severe, he was aiming to keep women out of prostitution in the first place, since once a prostitute was forced into taking a license it would

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take her a lot of money and effort to get out of the profession. It was too easy to get on the registry, and too hard to get off it. Neighbors, gossip, and street politics played a part here. For much of the sixteenth century, the testimony of a few neighbors was enough to put a Bolognese woman put on the list of the Office of Receipts, and from that point she was ordered to pay fees. Yet in streets run on gossip where neighbors quickly fell to arguing over a host of things, this easy defamation proved too convenient a weapon, and the Office of Receipts couldn’t easily separate truth from lies. From 1586, authorities required that at least two neighbors give sworn testimony that a particular woman was practicing prostitution, and the local parish priest had to back them up.20 A woman wanting to get off the list had to stop taking paying customers while still continue paying license fees for a few months until neighbors and the priest testified that she had indeed left the profession. Many of those who were deeply concerned with the issue realized that the only way to get girls and women out of prostitution was to address the economic needs that had driven them into it. Prostitution was the reality that loomed largest for adolescent and adult females in the life cycle of poverty. It’s no surprise that many of those who promoted protective institutions for women cast their charitable work as a direct battle against the threat of the sex trade. Foundling homes and all of the orphanages for girls established in the first decades of the century claimed to be preventing young women’s slide into prostitution. Pius IV asserted the same thing for the OPM in his 1560 bull establishing the welfare service. The new institutions opened in later sixteenth-century Bologna were even more focused. The Malmaritate aimed to snatch adult women up before they hit the streets, the Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo would raise those who had already fallen, and the conservatory of S. Croce would shelter the daughters of prostitutes—and particularly the pretty and the homeless ones—because these girls were thought to be in greatest danger of entering the sex trade. One person provided the moving force behind both the Casa del Soccorso and S. Croce: a silk merchant Bonifacio dalle Balle. Most of the pimps operating at the time in Bologna were women, and some of these were prostitutes introducing their daughters to the profession. Dalle Balle reasoned

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that the most direct response to both problems was to remove girls like this from their mother’s care and into a surrogate home where they could be raised and educated before being married to a husband that the home had found for her.21 Bonifacio dalle Balle stands out among the innovators of these decades both because he was the force and funding behind two major shelters for women, and because he left behind a stash of records on his life, his convictions, and his betrayal by Bolognese religious and civic authorities. The youngest and most shiftless of the three sons of a merchant family, he never married but devoted his life and considerable fortune to charitable work with prostitutes after a dramatic conversion experience. Just how dramatic is a little hard to tell, since dalle Balle wrote three separate accounts of it. In one, he was walking the night streets of Bologna’s redlight district. Falling in step behind a prostitute who was walking with a companion, he overheard her sigh, “Who will deliver me from this life?” Jolted by her distress, and conscious of his own misspent youth, dalle Balle decided at that moment to devote his fortune, his properties, and his life into developing his shelters for prostitutes and their daughters. He wrote elsewhere of coming across a twelve-year-old girl in the same seedy quarter holding off a mob of taunting boys with a stick. Thinking perhaps of the dangers facing his own illegitimate daughter, Anna, conceived with a servant, he tracked down the girl’s mother and persuaded her to let him take her away and lodge her with a woman who would raise her at dalle Balle’s expense. Elsewhere again, dalle Balle wrote of finding another girl abandoned on the city street and of placing her with another female guardian.22 Dalle Balle’s informal efforts to keep these girls out of the sex trade led him to set up a couple of shelters. Yet look to his writings, and it’s clear that it’s his own life that he is rescuing as much as the lives of vulnerable girls and women. The three differing accounts of his moment of conversion are clearly efforts to get the narrative right. Dalle Balle adopted a personal lay vocation, never marrying or joining a religious order, signing his share of the family business over to his brothers, studying theology intently, and devoting his energies to his charitable shelter for young illegitimate girls like his own daughter—who was, however, packed off to a convent. He preached to the girls in Santa Croce, wrote sermons and

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tracts for them that pay scant regard for the intermediary role of saints and clerics, and wrote the multiple and sometimes contradictory autobiographical fragments that cast his life and work as a morality tale. He even moved into a private apartment within the S. Croce complex, an action that predictably set Bolognese tongues wagging but one that came out of his determination to cast his lot fully with the girls. Dalle Balle’s religion was intensely Christocentric, and he may have been one of those spirituali attracted to Protestantism, or simply one of the many spiritual idealists of the time who did not fit neatly into any orthodoxy. In all three autobiographical narratives his conversion occurs at age thirty-three, the age of Christ when he was crucified, and a powerful symbol for those aiming to live the imitatio Cristi. Dalle Balle’s orphanage is the only one in Bologna dedicated not to the Virgin Mary or some saint, but to Christ’s cross. His shelter for former prostitutes was not dedicated as so many others were to a hero of Catholic conversion like St. Mary Magdalen, but to Paul the apostle, converted on the road to Damascus and the popular icon for those who based their faith on the New Testament gospels and epistles. Dalle Balle claimed that he wished to “work in the world for the greater glory of God and to establish a current of love between the creation and the Creator.”23 This was not likely top of mind for the administrators of the OPM. While we may recruit Bonifacio dalle Balle into the shadowy ranks of the spirituali, it is important to remember that whatever his theological ideals, he demonstrated a flexibility and focus that allowed him to recruit many local clergy into the rescue work that was for him the essence of true religion. He was certainly no less religiously motivated than they were, and he courted both Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti and his nephew and successor, Alfonso. When financial necessity pressed hard in the early 1590s, he also turned for help to a group of Franciscan tertiaries. Together they built and staffed larger quarters, and fought off Franciscan conventuals who laid a claim to the property that the tertiaries had turned over to the home. Yet dalle Balle’s Franciscan brothers also began recruiting other highborn patrons with the promise that they would be able to place girls in the home, and they sought out piecework contracts in the silk industry to keep the girls busy and the bottom line healthy. Dalle Balle protested this erosion of Santa Croce’s purely

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spiritual purpose, but the tertiaries were growing tired of their dreamy and slightly self-righteous idealist, and the two were moving toward conflict through the first decade of the seventeenth century. The Malmaritate home and S. Croce orphanage that emerged in the 1570s and ’80s aimed to prevent women from falling into prostitution, but for some women these measures came too late. Whatever financial difficulties had forced them into prostitution, the regulations, fees, and policing associated with registration now made it all the harder to get out. Florence’s Magistracy of the Onestà required prostitutes who wanted to get off the civic registry to continue paying fees for six months without actually practicing, and made the woman then get her neighbors and priest to testify that she had not been turning tricks through this period. Bologna’s parallel Office of the Receipts charged a far lower registration fee, but also made it difficult to get off the registry. This was why those who wanted to get women out of the profession realized that they would need to back up their words with room and board. Some had opened a convent for what were called the “converted” (convertite) in 1559. Women who wanted to enter this convent of SS. Giacomo e Filippo needed both a significant dowry and also the will to put their whole former life behind them by taking the veil as nuns.24 These two prices proved higher than many women were willing or able to pay. And here we meet dalle Balle again. In 1589, as his S. Croce conservatory was expanding toward bankruptcy, Bonifacio dalle Balle teamed up with a noble widow, Pazienza Barbieri Bolognetti, to open a home offering temporary shelter to sex workers who wanted to get out of the trade. They directed their new Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo specifically to prostitutes like Hippolita Vespucci who we saw earlier—women who were too poor to afford the nuns’ dowries required at the convertite convent of SS. Giacomo e Filippo, and who in any event hoped to get back out into the world as a wife or a servant. Milan had opened just such a home dedicated to S. Valeria in 1532, and a century later had a ten more institutions that served in one way or another to get or keep women out of the sex trade. Venice had its Casa delle Zitelle and Rome its S. Caterina della Rosa, and practically every other city in Italy followed suit.25 Like the Malmaritate home and the S. Croce conservatory, the Casa del Soccorso moved around to a few locations around the city before

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settling in a house on the opposite end of town. The quarters on Via Galliera, the main street north out of Bologna, were within a few blocks of SS. Giacomo e Filippo on Via delle Lame and the two shelters maintained close links.26 Only a couple dozen girls and women lived there at a time and, as at the Malmaritate, most remained for only a few months; very few stayed as long as a year. The girls or their sponsors paid a very modest monthly fee of three lire for their room and board, just a fifth of what it cost to lodge at the Malmaritate. Sponsors included family, friends, preachers, and wealthy patrons, but it also happened that a man who had pimped, bought sex from, or even raped a girl might pay to get her off the streets and out of his hair. Merchants and shopkeepers were considered better sponsors than gentlemen because the latter promised much but paid little. Paying more could secure better conditions (like a single room), but having no funds simply meant that the women would have to work for their living, possibly as cooks or cleaners in the home, or possibly even by taking in sewing or spinning. As at the OPM, many Bolognese were drawn to the work of the Casa del Soccorso and left legacies that stabilized funding and eventually allowed it to take in women who could not afford its fees.27 Not all girls entered the Casa del Soccorso voluntarily, and some left by slipping out of the windows and scurrying over the roof. A handful came and went a few times, pushed back into the Soccorso by their relatives or sponsors. Others, like Hippolita Vespucci, were expelled because they lacked the intention or will to reform. Some of those brought in for the obligatory admission interview stated directly that they had no intention of coming. Others already resident were diagnosed as “melancholic” or “possessed,” “disputatious”, or “hysterical”—all administrators’ code words that suggest profoundly unhappy women who were not accepting their incarceration lightly. Not all of these women were prostitutes, though they may have drifted into the sex trade to survive when their lives turned complicated. Santa di Nadel Manzolino’s husband, Agostino, married another women and then disappeared. By the time a priest brought her to the Casa del Soccorso, her dowry was gone and it wasn’t known whether her husband was even alive. Benedetta Palmieri’s husband, Girolamo, used up her whole dowry and then went off to war; after three years he returned and she left with him. Both these women stayed

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long enough that it’s likely they were brought in as much to be staff as for any morally restorative purpose. Life inside could be grim: no visitors, no letters, no singing or music, and not even much talking together. Brawls sometimes broke out, and in some cases the two or three resident matrons responded by tightening the screws to the point where they lost the ability to work with the girls and women and had to be let go—one was “too bossy” and another “too austere,” but in contrast there was also another dismissed because she was “too affectionate.”28 It’s unlikely that this was a frequent complaint. Milan’s S. Valeria shelter was certainly seen by some girls as a prison, and it didn’t help that here too some girls were forced into it by the very men who had raped them. While their founders may have seen conversion homes and convents as a refuge for prostitutes aiming to get out of the profession, they could end up as places that intensified sexual exploitation. As part of their strategy for getting off the hook, Margherita Visconti’s aunt Anna had claimed that the family wanted to enroll the girl at S. Valeria and had sought help from two neighborhood nobles because it was well known that only the word of a powerful patron could open the door for a girl. But the word came at a price—Aunt Anna claimed that the men had been perfectly willing to give their recommendation, so long as they could first have a night with Margherita. Aunt Anna’s accusation, whether true or not, hints at what the rumors on the street were about S. Valeria, about the girls in it, and about the men who had put them there.29 Public scandals fed this notoriety. Venetian authorities had executed the pious and scholarly priest of a newly opened Convertite convent in 1561 when it turned out that he had turned the shelter into his personal brothel. Don Pietro Lion peeped in when the women stripped for their baths, and then flattered, seduced, intimidated, imprisoned, and even beat the beautiful ones that he wanted to have sex with in order to get them to submit to him. That in itself did not win the priest his execution, but providing abortifacients to ones who became pregnant certainly complicated his case. 30 While some girls escaped Bologna’s Casa del Soccorso out the window, others left by the door. Of the two dozen women admitted in the first three years, one was killed and eight were expelled, either for insolence, for crimes, or for getting pregnant. Three moved over to the OPM’s S.

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Giorgio or S. Orsola homes to be servants and two became nuns. The rest simply disappear from the record. Things settled down once the home itself had been open for a few years. Looking ahead through its first seven decades, a total of 603 girls and women entered the Casa del Soccorso, 43 of them more than once. We have records of 364 of them leaving: 110 married, 107 returned to family, 89 were entrusted to another party, 33 became servants, 25 became nuns, and the remaining 81 fled or were expelled—those keeping the ledger recorded that they had left but not how, why, or to what fate. Those marrying left with dowries ranging from 100 to 650 lire, most of them from family or benefactors. And most of those returning to family rejoined female relatives in place of male. 31 If Bologna’s S. Croce and Malmaritate homes were preventatives, then this Casa del Soccorso was a purgative. It was for girls and women who had already “fallen” but who could be socially cleansed through the isolation and penitential discipline of an enclosure. Tight enclosure and firm discipline were not necessarily part of the original design. Although Bonifacio dalle Balle was deeply religious and deeply committed to protecting and redeeming girls from prostitution, the shift into a harder disciplinary and even punitive regime at the Soccorso and at S. Croce came after only a few decades, when he had been pushed out of the administration of both homes. By the last decade of the sixteenth century and even more in the early decades of the seventeenth, the same would be true across Bologna’s charitable shelters, including the OPM’s S. Gregorio. There had always been a degree of discipline in these shelters, but it had not been the significant driving force that it would become in the seventeenth century. The earliest homes had been relatively passive and accommodating in all senses of the word, particularly in their earliest years. Worsening conditions from the 1590s onward shook the financial foundations of many homes at the very time when charity, discipline, and enclosure were coming to be seen as synonymous, and this in turn forced a tightening of all belts. Financial caution also shaped a more innovative alternative to the disciplinary approach with girls whose sexual honor was in danger. In 1606 a small group of patrician women, working with a Jesuit father Giorgio Giustiniani, opened the Conservatorio di S. Giuseppe (Conservatory of

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St. Joseph) to offer immediate and short term refuge to adolescent girls. While this returns to an earlier stage of the life cycle of female poverty, the approach these women took reflects the more personalized charity of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The women put aside the elaborate entrance procedures that existing conservatories like S. Marta, S. Maria del Baraccano, and S. Croce used to weed through applicants. They also abandoned those homes’ practice of keeping girls for years into their late adolescence and then finding them a husband and providing a dowry. The women of S. Giuseppe offered to give short-term help to respectable girls—any who had already been servants or who had previously lived in the OPM shelter of S. Gregorio need not apply. The gentlewomen wanted to help girls who could readily be placed as servants in better households or whose families could arrange their marriage and dowry. This circle of women came from the most prominent and well-connected families in the city, including Hippolita Volta Boncompagni, Marchesa Diamante Campeggi Pepoli, and Marchesa Giulia Paleotti. There was a tradition of women like this working closely with Jesuits on charitable activities, going back to when priests of the new order first arrived in Bologna in the 1540s.32 They worked efficiently and effectively, quickly assembling a large portfolio of properties whose rents could float the operation, and passing dozens of girls through the small shelter in a few years.33 Like Bonifacio dalle Balle, they did it all without benefit of formal statutes and outside the administrative structures common in other Bolognese hospitals and shelters. And like dalle Balle and other reformers of the later sixteenth century, they did it with a strong spiritual drive that made them create direct and personal relationship with their wards. Dalle Balle’s on-site apartment and personal mentoring of girls may have raised eyebrows at S. Croce, but like the Malmaritate’s system of pairing nuns with individual girls, he was making charity more personal and effective. The patrician women at S. Giuseppe were working toward the same end. Each girl entering S. Giuseppe received a protector or patron from among the company of laywomen. Some women did this more than others, and a few may not have done it at all: through the best-documented years of 1628–1636, forty-six girls entered the community and all but eight

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had patrons. Diamante Campeggi Pepoli mentored twelve and Margherita Angiosoli Fantuzzi eight, but seventeen different women mentored at least one girl through these eight years, and for periods that could range from a few weeks to a few years, but averaged about two years. 34 S. Giuseppe did not find husbands or provide dowries for its girls, but its patrician patrons did persuade some of their peers to take in girls as servants. They brought the girls into their own homes for periods of a few weeks in order to train them for service or prepare them for marriage. Taking personal responsibility for individual girls was not part of the regime in Bologna’s older homes, but was what the reformers behind the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century shelters commonly took on. At S. Giuseppe it seems to have lasted until about 1636, when a series of changes shifted the home’s focus.

Credit Where Credit Was Due: Investing in Marriage Thirteen-year-old Virginia Lintrù crosses Piazza Maggiore with her father, Bartolomeo, passing through the crowds in front of S. Petronio and heading toward the massive door under an adjoining portico that leads into the Ospedale della Morte. Typhus has been racing through the famine-choked city, but father and daughter have not left his hosiery shop to bring food to a sick relative or consult with a doctor. They pass by the Morte’s main door and move on down the street to the office of the S. Petronio Building Commission ( fabbriceria) where they have an appointment with an officer of the Monte del Matrimonio, one of many charitable agencies clustered near the Ospedale della Morte that have offices or meeting rooms in its newly renovated quarters. The Monte’s scribe, Giovanni Maria Bagni, works for the Building Commission as well, and has kept his office there, steps away from the hospital. When Virginia and Bartolomeo enter he pulls down the Monte’s ledger and finds the record of Virginia’s account. Bartolomeo deposited twenty-five lire in Virginia’s name in 1583, and every two years since then has had to return on his own but preferably with Virginia herself so that Bagni can verify that she is still alive. These biannual visits will continue for another decade; in 1601 Virginia will marry, and her last visit will be with her husband in order to pick up the seventy-five-lire dowry that is

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waiting for her. As he opens the ledger, Bagni pages past the entries of Susanna and Isabetta, daughters of Giovanni Battista dalle Ruote, who were the first girls in Bologna to get accounts at the Monte. They too will marry in a little over ten years, though to husbands considerably more prominent and with dowries up to ten times greater than Virginia’s.35 Fathers and daughters are not the only ones visiting Giovanni Maria Bagni in his small office. Gentlewoman Sulpicia Isolani Pepoli also opened accounts in 1583 for two of her servant girls, Iacoma Mattioli and Antonia Muzzarelli. These girls may have come to the office for the biannual visits with one of the senior Pepoli servants, or perhaps while out themselves getting food for the Pepoli household in the maze of market streets just north of the hospital where Bologna’s butchers, fishmongers, and fruit and vegetable vendors ply their wares. And Pepoli’s peer, Laura Gandolfi Bentivoglio, had been opening accounts steadily for girls from the same time: nine in all from 1583 to 1589 for girls ranging in age from one to eighteen. 36 Girls like Virginia, Susanna, and Iacoma were the beneficiaries of a new savings bank that had no parallel anywhere else in Italy. From 1583 the Monte del Matrimonio opened accounts for individual girls and accepted deposits from their parents, other relatives, employers, and patrons. It even allowed accounts for boys heading for the priesthood or university, though in the end only a handful of these were ever opened. Other cities had dowry funds: Rome, Venice, Naples, and perhaps most famously Florence’s Monte delle Doti established in 1425. Yet these were all investment funds meant primarily to ease the dowry burdens of the wealthy while also supplying funds to cash-strapped city governments which issued bonds. And other cities had deposit banks connected to charitable institutions, but these were aimed primarily at meeting those institutions’ desperate need for liquid capital. Philip Gavitt expands on how important deposit banking became to institutions like Florence’s Innocenti, where women consistently made up over half of all depositors. Yet most of these were married women or widows, and most were from the ranks of the wealthy. Only 18 percent were servant girls saving for dowries. More critically, the accumulated sums on deposit made the Innocenti too attractive to Medici dukes perennially hungry for cash, and

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that together with questionable management through the 1570s spurred a run on the Innocenti’s bank, which drove it into bankruptcy by 1579.37 By contrast, Bologna’s monte was a savings bank directed primarily at the working poor and explicitly at dowries for artisans’ daughters like Virginia and servant girls like Iacoma and Antonia. Bartolomeo Lintrù had made the minimum deposit of 25 lire, and while Giovanni Battista della Ruote had made deposits many times larger, there was a limit to what the monte would allow him to put into a girl’s account—no more than 500 lire. Artisans could open accounts with just a few lire, on the understanding that interest would not accumulate till the amount on deposit reached 25 lire. Stipulating a maximum deposit was just as important. It signaled that the primary beneficiaries of the fund would not be patrician girls like Susanna and Isabetta dalle Ruote, whose families had a wide range of investment options open to them. The group targeted by the Monte del Matrimonio was precisely those families and individual girls who had trouble scraping up even a few lire to put aside for a marriage that was far into the future—much farther than the next meal or rent payment.38 The Monte del Matrimonio was the most imaginative of all the social innovations to emerge in Bologna in the sixteenth century. With no imitators anywhere, it was certainly the most distinctive. It aimed at precisely the most difficult challenge within the life cycle of women’s poverty: saving for a dowry. It was virtually impossible to marry without some kind of dowry, but with wages at chronically low levels, it was also virtually impossible to save the amount needed. Dowries for girls from artisanal and mercantile families ranged around 100 to 200 lire—an amount equal to what most men in those same families earned in a year. Civil servants earned less than 150 lire and even university lecturers had a base salary of only 200 lire. Of the 8 to 17 lire that these artisans and minor professionals earned in a month, food costs would consume at least two-thirds, and rents ranged from half a lire at the very lowest end to about 3 lire for a modest apartment.39 Add clothing, alms, and other household necessities, and the average family could expect to have no more than a handful of spare change at the end of the year. This was the reality for people who were not even considered poor. Moreover, it was the reality in good

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times: when famine pushed up food costs or sickness kept a wage earner from work, these families balanced on the brink of collapse. A few strategies helped families like this weather periodic bad times. Any hand in the home that could spin thread, sew clothes, or do errands added pennies to the family purse. Confraternities steered funds to sick members, covered their funerary costs if recovery never came, and sometimes gave dowries to girls they had left orphaned. Families, neighbors, and parishes helped each other with money, goods, and services, and civic institutions like the OPM distributed bread to those who still lived in their home. On a more systematic level, the Monte di Pietà extended small, low-cost loans to those who had no more collateral than some clothing or furniture or tools—it was essentially a pawn bank lending small amounts to artisans or laborers who needed some money to tide them over a temporary difficulty. Valeria’s father, Bartolomeo, may have borrowed small sums from time to time if he was sick, or work was slow, or he needed to buy some new tools or a quantity of cloth in order to fill an order. Susanna and Isabetta’s father, Giovanni Battista dalle Ruote, was too well off to borrow from it, but he or the Pepoli or Bentivoglio gentlewomen may have donated or lent money to the Monte di Pietà as it sought to build up the capital that it lent out to poor. However much these makeshifts might get a family through a crisis of a few weeks or months, they could do little about the looming liability of a dowry. Providing dowries became one of the most prominent forms of patronal charity from the sixteenth century, driven both by Catholic Reformation values and by the bare fact that dowry costs were escalating across the board. Bologna had its share of dowry charities—offered through guilds, confraternities, parishes, private legacies, and even the Monte di Pietà itself, which was administering so many separate dowry funds by the middle of the sixteenth century that it established a separate agency to deal with them. By the middle of the seventeenth century these various funds subsidized roughly half the marriages in the city.40 Most of these dowries came with strings attached that left some girls detached— cast off if they lacked a good reputation, if they had once held a job in a tavern or a home, if they weren’t Bolognese born, or even if their parents had come from outside the city. The moral controls around dowries given as charitable gifts could extend even past the marriage ceremony

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itself. A young wife could lose her charitable dowry if its donors heard that the life she shaped with her husband included some gambling or drinking or what they considered irresponsible or wasteful purchases. It was the working poor who had the hardest time meeting all these conditions. This was a challenge to all those Catholics who believed that marriage and family were the foundation of a healthy society and the key to addressing women’s poverty in particular. Marriage was a tool against poverty, but if the poor could not afford marriage itself, then no other strategies would ever be able to get off the ground. As a result, even as the OPM was taking shape, the conviction grew in many quarters that something had to be done to help poor girls and their families save a dowry. They thought that the OPM workhouse could help by steering girls’ earnings into dowry accounts, but more had to be done for the larger numbers of girls outside its gates. The Monte di Pietà wrote to Gregory XIII in 1572 proposing that Bologna adopt some version of Florence’s model, where depositors fi xed terms and high returns, but others in the city thought that the Florentines had set both the minimum deposit and the interest rate at too high a level. In response, the Monte di Pietà simplified its proposed Monte Gregoriana by bringing the minimum deposits from fifty down to twenty-five lire, the terms from twenty down to seven years, and the returns down to a guaranteed 4 percent. Yet it also complicated the process by adding a plan to use alms to subsidize charitable dowries for the very poor and stringing lengths of red tape around the procedures for depositing and redeeming funds. These left the proposal a dead letter.41 The Monte del Matrimonio that finally emerged was a savings fund pure and simple. There were no fi xed terms, no guaranteed returns, no charitable dowries, and very little red tape. By launching it on St. Gregory’s Day 1583, we can assume that its sponsors wanted to draw Pope Gregory XIII into the plan in some way, but in fact he took no role in it and the pope who finally did give formal approval was Sixtus V in 1586. A lack of documents obscures the plan’s origins, though it seems from the beginning to have followed local norms and expectations. The Senate backed it but had little direct involvement. The S. Petronio Building Commission and the archbishop provided office space, and the Ospedale della Morte provided meeting rooms, just as it did for many

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Bolognese confraternal charities. The Monte di Pietà took deposits and managed financial oversight—just as it did for a host of other local charities. The Monte di Pietà also provided the closest model for an administration made up of twelve executive officials representing different social groups drawn from and reporting to a congregation that was made up of all the depositors. Some of the men who served on the executives and congregations of other hospitals and charities also took their turn on the Monte del Matrimonio. Bonifacio dalle Balle, founder of the conservatory of S. Croce and the shelter of the Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo, served in this monte’s congregation in 1607–1608.42 The Monte del Matrimonio was clearly a collective effort. Yet one fascinating and somewhat mysterious person emerges as its prime mover. Marc’Antonio Battilana lobbied the Monte di Pietà early in 1583 asking that it accept the deposits of the new savings fund, and later appealed to a senator—possibly Giovanni Pepoli—for help in negotiating the Senate’s patronage and protection for it. Battilana appears in the early records of the Monte del Matrimonio itself as the officiale perpetuo or permanent officer. He is one of the most intriguing characters in mid-sixteenthcentury Bologna, even though he’s a person about whom we know very little. A wool merchant from a prominent family in Budrio, he came to Bologna around 1556, and a few decades later became deeply involved in a cluster of institutions that were oriented to helping women secure their futures. One was the Monte del Matrimonio, and another was the Compagnia dei Poveri, which will be discussed below. A third was a Capuchin convent that Battilana envisioned as “a great help to all those poor families who find themselves with girls (creature) who want to serve God but who, for lack of the 500 ducats [2,000 lire] and more that the convents want now, can’t realize this good will.” The convent he proposed would not open until a few decades after Battilana died. Adding to the mystery surrounding this wool merchant is the fact that we do not even know when he died, other than that it was sometime in 1584 or 1585.43 The Monte del Matrimonio was an instant success. In the first year 60 accounts were opened, and 101 in the second. And then things fell apart: 40 accounts in 1585, 20 in 1586, and by 1591 not a single one. Bologna was by then in the grip of a perfect storm of famine, plague, and economic collapse. While these would have made savings even harder

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to accumulate, it was in fact a minor regulation that turned most people away. If an account holder died, the entire deposit was forfeit to the Monte del Matrimonio, which redistributed the funds among the remaining depositors. With children dying all the time—including the Monte’s very first depositor and eventually 22 percent of the first seven years’ account holders—this was a gamble that few working poor or minor professionals could afford to make. By 1592 the punitive rule had been dropped and the new terms were laid out on broadsheets posted to every church door and at the four corners of the Piazza Maggiore: when an account holder died the capital would be returned to depositors and only the interest would be forfeit. Depositors would also have the option of shifting the account to another beneficiary. Very slowly Bolognese depositors returned: 1 new account in 1592, then 7 the next year, then 5, then 14. By the 1610s roughly 40 new accounts were being opened annually, rising to around 70 by the 1620s and 120 by the 1630s. The numbers continued rising until they reached well over 300 accounts annually by the end of the eighteenth century. Economic historian Mauro Carboni’s highly detailed statistical analysis of the monte’s records through these centuries allows a close look at the operation of this unique institution. Over the two hundred years from 1583 to 1796, 35,856 accounts were opened. Most accounts paid out in nine to eleven years, and gave the girls double the sums originally invested. At its peak, a third of all couples marrying in the city drew at least some of their dowry from the Monte del Matrimonio.44 Fathers like Bartolomeo Lintrù and Giovanni Battista dalle Ruote represented 58 percent of the depositors before the collapse, but as the monte rebuilt from the 1590s employers, confraternities, institutions, and parishes joined in. Families fell to about 20 to 30 percent of depositors, and in about 10 to 20 percent of these cases more than one family member contributed to the account.45 Of course, this represents named depositors. When a baker or draper or carpenter went to the office of the monte to make a deposit, the coins in his purse could have come from anyone: his brothers or sisters, his mother, or even a friend or neighbor. They very likely also came from his daughter herself. If she did any paid piecework for artisans, or unreeled cocoons for a silk merchant, or spun thread for a wool weaver, her earnings would be paid to her father. Since

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the monte took deposits of any amount at any time, it was easier for girls working, for instance, in the silk trade, to bank the money they earned in the short but intense period through the spring and summer when most piecework took place.46 Similarly, when employers like Sulpicia Isolani Pepoli opened accounts for girls like Iacoma and Marietta whom they had taken on as domestic servants, they were not performing an act of patronal charity. They were business people looking ahead to their contractual obligation to provide a dowry as part of the girl’s payment at the end of a five- or seven- or nine-year term. It was more often merchants and professionals opening these accounts than society ladies like Pepoli. They tended to open the accounts at around age ten, when girls often started as servants. By contrast, families waited until age fourteen to sixteen when opening accounts for their own daughters, sisters, or nieces. In these cases, the account and the eventual dowry were not a sign of the employer’s generosity or beneficence, as they are frequently described. They were the deferred payment of the girl’s own wages, and so should rightly be considered the girl’s own earnings. In this sense the Monte del Matrimonio represented the evolving shape of practical charity, based more on facilitating self-help and mutual assistance than on attracting patronal generosity. This was the case with one of the OPM’s own employees, “Appolonia of the Bastardini,” who moved into S. Gregorio in 1569 as one of the overseers of women’s textile production. She earned little more than pocket money for five years, but then left in 1574 with a lump sum of 250 lire “belonging to her” that she had negotiated when she first came to work at the home. Well over half of the accounts opened in the Monte del Matrimonio to the midseventeenth century were by employers providing for this kind of final contractual payout for girls they employed as domestic servants.47 So the Monte del Matrimonio was effectively a savings bank that allowed poor adolescent girls to save for their own dowries. This reading of the situation is underscored by another of the monte’s rules: a girl had full rights to redeem the account that had been opened in her name when she married or entered a convent. She did not require the permission of depositors. In fact, she required nothing more than the written testimony of a priest or abbess as to her change of status. Since it was

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in the employer’s own best interest to make deposits as soon as possible in order to gain the benefit of compound interest, the monte’s system worked to the benefit of the many girls who left their employer’s service, voluntarily or not, before the end of their contract. They could claim their dowries without having to take legal action against an unhappy boss. It was an amazing and, for the times, an entirely uncommon suspension of the kinds of moral and social controls that usually sat so heavily on a young women’s actions.48 Those institutions that wanted to continue to control girls’ choices, like the conservatories of S. Maria del Baraccano and S. Marta, could do it only if they operated outside the fund. As a result they tended to avoid the Monte del Matrimonio. Girls in these institutions also earned their own dowries, under the terms of a system that is also often described incorrectly as “dowry charity.” While charitable donation sometimes supplemented the dowries that conservatory and orphanage girls gained, they earned a significant portion of it through their own piecework in the orphanage workshops. Conservatory statutes everywhere invariably required that special ledgers track this work so that the proper amounts could be credited to individual girls’ accounts. Yet administrators just as invariably found this system of tracking to be too complicated, and while historians frequently repeat the injunction, there is no record of any home in Bologna, Florence, Turin, or elsewhere ever actually adopting it.49 S. Maria del Baraccano reverted to averages, noting that in a stay of seven to ten years the average girl would have done enough work of various types to have earned the 100-lire dowry that the institution would “give” her on leaving. Family, neighbors, and charitable patricians could supplement what she had earned in order to boost that amount, and their donations would be credited to her account in the conservatory’s books of debit and credit. It was fundamentally the girl’s own work that built up a girl’s own dowry in a conservatory. This did not mean that she had control over it. The same conservatories that banked girls’ earnings exercised the tightest control over when, how, and to who those earnings were paid out. The Baraccano again offers a telling example. From 1576, it gave girls part of their dowry in cash and goods, but left part in investment credits on various Bolognese monte to which it retained part title.

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Administrators argued that this ensured that the young couple would not waste the dowry on unnecessary purchases. It also made the dowry easier to recover in case the married couple violated social or moral norms or broke the law. And if the woman died without children, the Baraccano could more easily repossess the funds and add them to the accounts of other girls.50 None of this could happen with a Monte del Matrimonio dowry. It was guaranteed to be paid in cash to the girl herself the day after she produced proof of marriage or monacation. There were few questions asked and no strings attached. Only one institution managed to secure an exemption to this rule, and that was the OPM’s S. Gregorio shelter. From 1640, S. Gregorio was able to open accounts that weren’t in the names of individual girls, but that it could assign to any girls the institution decided on. It was up to the Lady Prioresses of the Company of Gentlewomen to determine which girls had been sufficiently obedient and well behaved to deserve one of these dowries, and what was at issue was as much the reputation and “onore” of the shelter as the girl’s own deportment. Controls like these might have been intended to make the girls and women in S. Gregorio more disciplined textile pieceworkers like their counterparts at the Baraccano or S. Croce. The prioress even approved the selection of the husband a girl married or the monastery where she would take vows, and these Monte del Matrimonio dowries could not be paid out until the girl produced the prioress’s signed license.51 Most girls did opt for husbands. The dowries they brought into marriage rose steadily: over half of the first year’s group had less than 100 lire at marriage, but the median dowry had risen to 266 lire by 1613–1614 and to 380 lire by 1633–1634. The statistics are skewed by a few larger dowries, including some over 500 and a handful over 1,000. What is perhaps more important as a gauge of the monte’s effectiveness as a savings bank for the working poor is that fully one-third of dowries through the full course of the seventeenth century remained under 100 lire.52 This was in keeping with the size of dowries exchanged among the poor. If we take the foundling home of the Esposti as an example, the “normal” dowry in 1601 was 25 to 40 lire plus clothing, though girls who had performed additional service to the home over a long time might be voted a supplement of 50 or 100 lire or more by the Esposti’s governing congregazione.53 This was

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less than half the size of dowries offered decades earlier by the Innocenti in Florence, and as Gavitt points out the typical artisanal dowry in Florence had by that point risen to about 800 lire.54 Few girls took their monte dowries into convents. Just over 20 percent of the first cohort of 1583–1584 became nuns, but the number dropped steadily to 8 to 10 percent by the late seventeenth century and 6 to 7 percent by the end of the eighteenth. The girls who became nuns were far from the working poor: most were the daughters of notaries, doctors, and even nobles. They tended to cash in their accounts at an earlier age, and had more to show for it when they did: the twenty-two girls of 1583–1584 who became nuns closed their accounts at age twenty (three years younger than the average of those marrying), and took out dowries more than double what their marrying counterparts averaged (311 lire vs. 145 lire). These were girls whose wealthier families were sending them into convents as part of a family strategy of consolidating property or concentrating resources on one or two siblings who might be allowed to marry. But not all nuns fit this picture. Some poor girls never married, perhaps due to a disability or because they needed to nurse aged parents. Their deposits accumulated with their own years, and by the time they reached their thirties or forties their relatives had passed away. From 1627, the monte allowed women in this situation to withdraw their dowries at age forty-five, regardless of whether they had married or not. If they wanted to access the funds before this time, one of the few options open to them was to take vows as tertiaries. The monte tried at first to prohibit these younger women from cashing in their accounts unless they were entering an enclosed convent. It became even more vexed by the early eighteenth century with the rise of an order of Franciscan tertiaries who rejected both collective life and distinct habits, and who allowed members to live with relatives and wear ordinary lay clothes. Yet the monte’s own rules giving women control of their own dowries tied its hands. It effectively became the means by which a small number of working poor women in their thirties and forties—never more than about 6 percent of depositors—managed to start a modest but semiindependent life with a purse of 300 or 400 lire or more.55 The early statutes described account holders as “creditors” (creditori), and this was more than just a conventional bookkeeping term.

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Monte officials invested the funds they collected almost immediately in a narrow range of financial instruments—some into property-backed loans known as francazioni and censi, but the bulk into shares on one or another of the public debts then active in Bologna. The Papal States were leading a European financial revolution in the use of public debt, with a 400 percent increase in amounts borrowed from 1526 to 1599. When the Protestant Reformation slashed spiritual revenues coming to Rome from northern Europe, papal financial officials turned aggressively to secular sources like taxes, bonds, and securities. The stability of the papacy itself meant that investors were willing to accept lower interest rates on their investments. Depositors received as much as 8 percent in the midsixteenth century, but over the next hundred years this dropped to 4 percent and then 3 percent, allowing the papacy to borrow ever more money without increasing its carrying costs. Wealthy families and institutions dominated the list of investors because they aimed above all for long-term stability over short-term profits.56 Bologna was one of the most active centers in the Papal States—and indeed in Italy generally—issuing public debt through the later sixteenth century. There was a voracious appetite locally for capital. Bologna’s public debt rose by almost 500 percent in the last half of the sixteenth century, and in the 1590s alone, authorities raised 1.2 million scudi through bonds paying 6 to 6.5 percent. A mixed range of small and large investors bought the first bonds, but from the late sixteenth century onward institutions like convents, confraternities, and other charities steadily increased their share of Bologna’s ballooning debt.57 Among these was the Monte del Matrimonio. A scant three days after taking its first deposits, the Monte del Matrimonio purchased a 600lire share on the Monte dell’aumento di carne, and in early July it took out two more on the Monte Giulio and the Monte della Gabella Vecchia. These were safe, profitable, and easily redeemed investments, paying 7 to 8.22 percent, and the Monte del Matrimonio had a lot of money to invest: over 3,300 lire a year for the first three years, reaching 19,500 lire by 1591. Once it recovered from the drop of the late 1580s and early 1590s, it posted average annual gains of 2150, 4,800, and 7600 lire through the 1610s, growing to over 25,000 annually by the 1630s and never falling below 30,000 lire after the 1650s. In its early years, the monte purchased

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public debt shares almost exclusively—86 percent of its total capital of 104,621 lire in 1627. Yet at that point it shifted its investment strategy and put ever larger amounts of its growing capital into francazioni and censi, to the point that public debt shares fell to under 60 percent.58 The figures may be dry, but the reality behind this was a live one— and also a familiar one. Francazioni and censi were loans made primarily to wealthy Bolognese, and the shift of capital into these instruments came at a time when these borrowers were themselves taking a greater role in the administration of the Monte del Matrimonio. Developments here mirrored what we have already seen in other confraternities and in the OPM. In its early years, the monte had rotated its administrators frequently. Monthly meetings of all depositors (the corporale) kept the executive of twelve officials (the congregazione) on its toes, reviewing and approving all investment strategies. They clearly preferred a conservative strategy of investing heavily in public debt. In reforms of 1627 and 1643, the corporale was reduced to a rubber stamp while officials on the congregazione moved to terms of two years and four years before finally ending up with life terms. Hence there was in the Monte, as in Bologna’s Senate, and in the OPM a progressive “closing” as power shifted from broad membership bodies like the corporale to narrow executive ones like the congregazione. Fewer and fewer people served in office, and more and more of them came from closely linked senatorial families even if they were not themselves of senatorial rank.59 These patricians favored a strategy of lending to their own peers. As a result of this, the Monte del Matrimonio became a convenient source of loans for the Bolognese patriciate. The working poor became the creditors of the worthy rich. There was more than naked self-dealing here, though there was undoubtedly a fair share of that. Debt shares lost their luster by the 1690s when the local government, in a fit of fiscal responsibility, liquidated nineteen existing funds that had been paying 4 to 10 percent and replaced them with a single new fund paying 3.5 percent. Shifting a significant share of its capital into private loans allowed the Monte di Matrimonio to pay its depositors a rate that was consistently between 0.5 and 1 percent higher than what they would have earned by investing in the public debt. Public debt shares fell immediately to 40 percent of the total portfolio, and continued dropping through the next century.60

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Some of these changes may have left founder Marc’Antonio Battilana spinning in his grave. His carefully crafted fund for poor savers had become an easily accessed fund for rich borrowers. Admittedly, this worked to the benefit of those girls, families, employers, and institutions who deposited money into the monte where they got higher rates of return and so produced a larger dowry. And the monte remained safe: no bubble burst its capital and no borrower’s default made deposits and dowries disappear. And no charity muddied the waters. Dealing with the Monte del Matrimonio first helps throw into contrast Bologna’s “other Monte,” the far larger Monte di Pietà. We’ve encountered it thus far largely as the financial manager for local charities and a central bank for the city. Yet it originated as a source of low-cost loans to the poor, and that remained its core business. In this monte, the relations of borrowers and lenders were reversed, though dowries and the plight of the working poor continued to serve as common threads. By the time that Marc’Antonio Battilana opened the Monte del Matrimonio, Bologna’s Monte di Pietà had already been operating for a century. It opened in 1473 as a charitable pawnbank whose main source of capital was donations and deposits from wealthy Bolognese. Monti di Pietà proliferated across Italy in the later fifteenth century, pushed by Franciscan preachers like Bernardino da Feltre as a means of giving poor people in need of short-term credit some alternative beyond Jewish moneylenders.61 Bologna’s Monte achieved little for the first three decades because the signorial family of the Bentivoglio controlled a tax on the Jewish moneylenders that earned them significant income, and they were loath to support competition. Julius II resuscitated the Monte shortly after ejecting the Bentivoglio in 1506. He set a limit of six lire on loans, and stipulated—perhaps unnecessarily with a limit that low—that only poor people could borrow. They could go to one of a number of offices in the city and countryside, bringing the goods that the office would hold in storage as security. When ready to redeem their pawn after a few days, weeks, or months, they returned with the money and paid a small administrative charge. If this time never came, the pawned goods were held for eighteen to twenty-four months before being put up for auction.62

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Even more than many of the other institutions we have looked at thus far, the Monte di Pietà aimed to smooth out the disruptions of episodic or life cycle poverty. The often fiercely anti-Semitic preaching of its Franciscan promoters pictured Jewish moneylenders pulling at the thread of some temporary dislocation, whether it be a child’s illness or a father thrown out of work, and then unraveling the very fabric of a family’s life with their high interest rates. In a city like Bologna that was increasingly dependent on the very cyclical textile industry, debt was a large part of life for most artisans and almost all the working poor.63 The overwhelming bulk of borrowers and lenders were men. Yet women also took advantage of the monte. Judging by the earliest ledger it was largely widows who did so, borrowing smaller sums than men did and taking longer to repay. One hundred and eighteen women took loans in the first six months the monte was operating in Bologna, most borrowing around one lire and none more than two. Yet only eighteen (15 percent) managed to redeem their pawns, most after two to four weeks and on payment of a couple of pennies (denari) interest, if any at all.64 As the Monte di Pietà expanded in the sixteenth century, it wasn’t only the rich who invested or the poor who borrowed. As we have already seen institutions like confraternities and shelters used it when they wanted more control than the Monte del Matrimonio allowed over the dowries they were saving for. Sometimes the private depositors weren’t even particularly wealthy: some poor couples used it as a place to invest the dowries that they had already gained. Girls of the Conservatory of S. Maria del Baraccano had no choice in this because the conservatory administration saw this as a way of keeping some control over the capital while allowing the newly married couple to collect the interest. As in every other charity we have looked at, the monte began with an administration based on a confraternity comprised of all depositors/ lenders, but moved steadily toward a more restricted appointed group. At the beginning, the confraternity’s corporale voted annually on which twelve of its members would comprise the executive Congregation of Presidents. Initially merchants, professors, artisans, lawyers, and nobles all rubbed shoulders in this small group. The corporale proposed a set of names drawn from its membership, from which the Senate then selected

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four citizens and four nobles. A cathedral canon, Franciscan abbot, university professor, and Senate member took the remaining four seats in a congregation that was intended quite deliberately to reflect the full social range of Bolognese society. This broad-based and annually rotating administration gradually gave way to a narrow group of patrician men serving longer terms as the monte’s capital and its role in Bolognese society increased.65 This mirrored developments elsewhere in Italy, where monti administrations became ever narrower as their capital became ever greater and as elites generally and rulers like Florence’s Duke Cosimo I de’Medici in particular found them a convenient source of ready capital.66 By 1562, members of Bologna’s congregazione no longer had to be drawn from the ranks of the corporale, and two years later three of the noble members were granted life terms in order to provide greater continuity. From 1540 it was making loans to the Commune, and in 1548, 1563, and 1592 it took over the collection and administration of some judicial fines, taxes, and fees. As we have already seen, it also assumed the financial administration of most of the charitable institutions in the city: the orphanages of S. Marta, S. Maria del Baraccano, and S. Bartolomeo di Reno, the syphilitics’ infirmary of S. Giobbe, OPM, confraternities like the Compagnia dei Ciechi and the Compagnia dei Poveri, which we will see below, and, of course, the Monte del Matrimonio. Active in civic, institutional, and private finance, the Monte di Pietà was essentially becoming the central bank of Bologna, significantly increasing the capital available for small loans to the poor. Yet since it was a charitable service and a pious work it was also ultimately under the oversight of the archbishop of Bologna. This was a critical point on which the two monti diverged. The Monte del Matrimonio was an investment bank where the deposits of the poor became loan capital for the rich. The Monte di Pietà was a charitable bank where the deposits, gifts, and investments of the rich became loan capital for the poor. They were complementary financial institutions, and credit from the poor always had, as its reverse side, credit for the rich. The two institutions worked so closely together that it soon became possible to go to the wickets of the Monte di Pietà to make deposits and withdrawals on the Monte del Matrimonio. Yet even as it was becoming

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the local bank, financial administrator, and investment broker, the Monte di Pietà remained fundamentally a pious charity. Making the Monte del Matrimonio a bank pure and simple was perhaps Battilana’s most careful move, and one of his wisest. By restricting itself to banking functions and avoiding all charity, the Monte del Matrimonio could pass as a purely secular investment service rather than as a pious work, or luogho pio. This left it free of ecclesiastical oversight and interference. Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti’s official apostolic visitors came knocking as early as 1587, but were turned away. The struggle played out repeatedly over the next two centuries, with the archbishop’s representatives pointing to the papal bull of foundation and the close links with the Monte di Pietà and other luoghi pii to justify their claim to review administration, audit the books, and appoint officials. Yet Monte del Matrimonio officials consistently refused, and eventually commissioned a lawyer’s report to clarify how and why they operated as a purely lay institution outside of canon law and hence outside of clerical oversight.67 This insistence was not simply an abstraction that distinguished it from the Monte di Pietà. It was one of the key factors that kept the Monte del Matrimonio from suffering the very different fate experienced by another of Marc’Antonio Battilana’s experiments, the mutual assistance fund known as the Compagnia dei Poveri.

Beyond Charity: Mutual Assistance and the Working Poor In December 1586, a Bolognese silk worker, Lucia di Bartolomeo, gave birth to a baby boy. This was her third pregnancy in five years, and Lucia’s experience with the other two had not been easy. The first had died within three weeks, and the second, at eighteen months, was sickly. Lucia herself had experienced the realities behind the French proverb, “a pregnant woman has one foot in the grave.” Long and difficult labors had exhausted both baby and mother, and it was weeks before she could return to helping her husband, Bartolomeo, weave silk thread into the veils that were Bologna’s biggest export. Their income had dropped right at the moment when they needed to buy food and medications. Bartolomeo was determined to have another child, and on hearing of a new Bolognese confraternity, the Compagnia dei Poveri—or Company of the

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Poor—that seemed to offer assistance, he registered the two of them and began paying dues and planning pregnancy. Over the course of the next year, Bartolomeo and Lucia regularly walked south through the quarter of Porta Procola to the Compagnia’s oratory to attend Divine Office and pay their dues. Through the spring and summer when Lucia had no trouble finding work reeling cocoons and spinning thread, it was easy to gather the money for dues. The payments became harder as this work dried up in the autumn, but they managed not to miss a payment or a service. There was never more than a handful of other worshippers at the oratory. Lucia’s trips became more frequent as her pregnancy progressed, and soon after the baby arrived, Bartolomeo sent notice to the confraternity. Within a few days, two visitors from the Compagnia dei Poveri came to the home to check on the status of baby and mother. Lucia was still too weak to work, but the baby was reasonably healthy. A few days later, the visitors returned with forty soldi for Lucia. If only the story were that clear. Lucia, Bartolomeo, and their three babies are invented characters, standing in for the many thousands of poor textile workers who worked, married, and procreated in a city whose economy had been transformed through silk. While they may be invented, the confraternity that helped them, the Compagnia dei Poveri, is not. It did indeed exist, and for a period in the 1580s–1590s, thousands of workers were drawn to its insurance programs. These programs were not invented, but at the same time it’s not entirely certain to what extent they were ever implemented or fully realized. If they did exist, however, it would be the first example of insurance-based maternity benefits in Renaissance Italy. Like the Monte del Matrimonio, it was a new vehicle of self-help and mutual assistance, of a kind that would not become more common in Europe until the nineteenth century. The Compagnia dei Poveri was established in 1576 by seven poor artisans caught up in the intense religious exercises with which Bologna was combating “these calamitous times” (questi calamitosi tempi) of plague.68 The artisans (“poveri e di essercito mecanico”) were all originally from outside Bologna, and so would have fallen outside the new charitable provisions that the Bolognese were offering (and restricting) to citizens and those long resident in the city. One evening after vespers

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in a Franciscan confraternity, the seven men joined a large group in procession along a designated route connecting the cathedral, the convent of Corpus Domini, the conservatory and confraternal shrine of S. Maria del Baraccano, and the OPM’s chapel at S. Gregorio. While passing these spots that were so symbolic of Bologna’s civic system of charity, they decided that they wanted to start some kind of group that would help “foreign” artisans and working poor like themselves. The artisans formed a confraternity that, although formally under the title of S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, was soon known simply as the Compagnia dei Poveri.69 They soon caught the eye and support of Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti, who secured quarters for them in the Francisan confraternal hospital where they’d first met, and who also approved their first statutes.70 The statutes implemented basic elements of mutual aid that look like a form of unemployment insurance, but the Compagnia dei Poveri stalled soon after. The founding artisans were sidelined as power moved into the hands of more upscale administrators, whose earliest decisions drove the Compagnia toward bankruptcy. The problem here was less their plan for an unemployment insurance system based around dues of two pennies (quattrini) weekly, than it was their decision to sink 1,250 lire into new quarters, with part up front and part due in five years.71 These five years were the ticking clock of doom for the Compagnia dei Poveri. In spite of some wealthy patrons, it was soon clear that the mortgage could barely be floated, let alone redeemed. The Compagnia could have ended up as yet another short-lived bright idea in a city that had no shortage of them, but for the arrival of another patron with deeper pockets, broader imagination, and greater commitment to the original charitable goals: Marc’Antonio Battilana. As we saw earlier, Battilana had also migrated from outside Bologna and made a fortune in wool. He now aimed to turn some of his experience and profits to doing good. He came to the rescue of the Compagnia dei Poveri in 1583, just before the mortgage came due, and paying off that particular liability was one of his first acts. He then spearheaded a new set of statutes, even though the ink was barely dry on the first set. The artisans had penned some statutes in 1577 with fourteen chapters that set out a conventional program of charity, spiritual direction, and moral improvement. Battilana’s 1583 statutes were more than six times as

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long, with eighty-seven chapters laying out an ambitious plan for mutual aid with significant administrative detail. Sick members notified officials, who dispatched visitors (three per quarter and in office for threemonth terms) to assess financial needs. The executive voted on each case, and helped deserving members who were paid up with the confraternity (with dues no more than three months in arrears) and with God (evidence of recent confession but no word on communion). The key here was fi xed dues and fi xed benefits. Visitors delivered five to seven soldi weekly until the poor member was well. If the illness was an incurable disease, the company raised additional sums on appeal to company members. At a time when manual workers might earn forty to sixty soldi weekly, this five to seven soldi would hardly be enough in itself to keep a family afloat, yet together with parochial and other funds it might keep them alive, albeit barely. If the sickness was serious and the family also needed help, the visitor would help get them into some kind of shelter.72 A breadwinner’s illness was a common source of family destitution, but there were others. Since famines often overturned family budgets, the Compagnia dei Poveri organized special food distributions for members.73 Perhaps optimistically, it committed to securing medical services for members and dowries for their daughters in those years when income allowed. It projected opening a shelter for those poor daughters of members who were about to marry, presumably to relieve the family of the expenses of raising them. This was something that Bologna’s confraternity for the shamefaced poor (the Opera dei Poveri Vergognosi) had started five decades earlier, but no one had tried extending this solution for family poverty to the ranks of the working poor. Yet the Compagnia dei Poveri’s greatest innovation was in maternity benefits. Female members who had been registered with the confraternity for a least a year and who were fully paid up in dues would receive forty soldi in one or two installments after giving birth.74 This maternity benefit was in keeping with the Compagnia dei Poveri’s sick benefits. If a standard sick benefit was five to seven soldi per week, then the new mother’s forty soldi would be the equivalent of six weeks’ payment, roughly the time she was to wait before churching and the return to social and working life. Of course, even given differential wage rates, this forty soldi probably represented only a small fraction of the amount that a woman

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could expect to earn in full-time piecework, and so in practice it did little more than compensate for her reduced productivity in the first months following delivery of the child. Yet while these unemployment and maternity benefits were both quite modest, they nonetheless offered a decent return on investment. Men paid sixteen pennies (denari) monthly, which was about one-half of 1 percent of the monthly earnings of a minor craftsman, modest shopkeeper, or lower-level civil servant. Women paid twelve pennies monthly for a full year before being eligible to draw down benefits, but in this case too the math was in a woman’s favor: a year’s dues of twelve soldi triggered a maternity benefit of forty soldi.75 The Compagnia dei Poveri’s ambitious plans for unemployment, health, and maternity benefits are so unusual that they verge on the improbable. Yet there were some precedents and parallels in Bologna. Guilds and confraternities had long histories of mutual assistance, though these tended to swing into action in times of sickness and matched needs and resources with less rational calculation. In Bologna, two other mutual aid groups emerged in midcentury based on the model of an artisanal confraternity but clearly aimed from the beginning at offering some kind of unemployment assistance for the working poor. One for shoemakers emerged in 1556, and another for silk spinners a few decades later. Mauro Carboni compares these to the compagnonnages found in northern Europe, although while some compagnonnages dedicated themselves to facilitating the travels of journeymen, Bologna’s groups focused entirely on the needs of resident day laborers.76 Both groups originated apart from the guilds regulating these trades and, unlike them, both accepted foreigners into their membership—perhaps not surprising when foreigners were among the founders.77 Both helped out members who were too old to work, but neither offered maternity benefits. They were selective in what they borrowed from confraternities, adopting the usual moral standards that barred from membership those who blasphemed, gambled, or kept a concubine. Yet they decided not to pursue any organized collective religious life beyond funerary rituals. As a result, the archbishop never came to visit. The working poor weren’t the only ones attracted to this kind of insurance plan. Some of Bologna’s existing confraternities adopted similar forms of mutual aid. The Compagnia di Buon Gesù adopted a

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dues-based sickness benefit in 1588 with prescribed weekly premiums and predetermined scales of assistance. Two other confraternities soon followed suit.78 So insurance-based sickness and unemployment benefits were perhaps not so unusual. And Bologna even had examples of aid for pregnant women and their families. In 1569, the magistracy of the Elders had initiated payment of maternity benefits—which they called “doni di natalita” to “poveri dipendenti”—possibly poor employees of the civic government, but possibly the poor more generally. This was as much baby bonus as it was maternity benefit.79 The Jewish confraternity known as the Chevrat Nizharim, established in 1546, had included regular dues and guaranteed maternity benefits in its first statutes of 1546: women who were on the list of alms recipients received twenty soldi on the birth of a male or female child. A separate set of statutes for the women emphasized that, as part of their equality with males in the brotherhood, women paid alms equally: “Everyone gets money, and the women too will pay their share, as they all have a common purse, that is, they are partners in the expenditures of the Chevrat Nizharim.” Taken together, the obligation to pay and the right to maternity benefits constitute a form of mutual assistance much like insurance.80 What we don’t know is whether the Compagnia dei Poveri’s ambitious plan ever got going. No account books or minute books survive for the decades when its insurance plans may have been in operation.81 But there was definitely word on the street, and we know for certain that people flocked to join it. Reports issuing from a series of episcopal visits from 1581 through 1652 record a steadily increasing membership.82 Yet those same visitors’ reports hint at other tensions. One report of 1583 explains the system of payments and benefits laid out in the statutes, and notes that these benefits had drawn in a “great number of poor” (grandissima quantità dei poveri).83 Yet the visitor complained that the new members had little in mind beyond the benefits—few came to worship at the Compagnia oratory or participate in processions or funerals because all were “poverelli,” and had to work. The company’s liturgical life was underdeveloped and both the confraternal oratory and the public church were in bad shape, with no ornament and bare altars.

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A return visit three years later noted that the Compagnia still had no investments or properties, and that it earned all of its income from alms gathered in its public church and by two itinerant alms collectors. These together generated only 300 to 350 lire annually (enough for 150 to 175 maternity benefits at forty soldi, or 1,200 to 1,400 weeks of unemployment support at five soldi per week). Things weren’t much better a decade later in 1595, when the membership had skyrocketed to 2,500— about 1,300 men and a slightly smaller number of women. These numbers made it the largest confraternity in the city by far, easily twice the size of the next largest brotherhood. Yet only a handful of members came regularly to worship in the oratory. The episcopal visitor noted that the congregation gave dowries to help some girls marry, but he said nothing about the unemployment insurance or maternity benefits. Had all 2,500 members been fully paid up in their dues, the Compagnia ought to have had 1,760 lire to work with annually—enough to give 880 mothers maternity benefits or 7,000 weeks of unemployment payments to men. Yet the visitor reported that in fact they did not have “reliable income.” This was hardly surprising given the fact that famine and unemployment were ravaging Bologna through that decade. Yet the visitor was thinking in particular of what he called entrada ferma, that is, the kind of secure income from testaments, rents, or financial investments that older confraternities enjoyed and that the OPM and Monte del Matrimonio were steadily accumulating.84 The episcopal visitors were more concerned with ensuring worship than with insuring workers. The tone of their reports suggests that they were well aware that most members took an opposite view, and it vexed them. The first visitors of 1581 had laid down some strict regulations on fi xing and furnishing the oratory, and on confirming the archbishop’s oversight over everything from accounts to processions.85 The 1586 visitors were shocked to find that confratelli were sometimes preaching and saying vespers without a priest, while the 1593 visitors complained that the brothers and sisters had hired a friar to hear their confessions and offer communion without asking permission of the local parish priest. All these were traditional liberties that Bolognese confraternities took as

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a matter of course. Yet all were targeted by Archbishop Gabrielle Paleotti for elimination as part of his plan to make Bologna a beacon of Tridentine orthodoxy and practice. The 1595 and 1598 visitors also seized on the fact that the company’s statutes did not have proper archepiscopal approval. This was a minor point, but one with deeper resonance, since the Compagnia dei Poveri was officially a luogho pio. The statutes the visitors were referring to were those penned or at least inspired by Battilana in 1583, that is, the ones that set out the details of the innovative insurance program. These had replaced the earlier set of 1577, which had far less detail about charity, but which did carry the archbishop’s signature. Was it a curial bureaucrat’s myopia, or something more profound, that led the episcopal visitors to hammer at this point through the later 1590s and into the next century? Members of the Compagnia dei Poveri initially resisted, but the visitors would not ease up on the demand for “reform.” By the time that members of the Compagnia dei Poveri finally ceded the point with new statutes in 1627, theirs was a significantly different Compagnia. Following the development that we have become familiar with by now, the group of annually elected officials had become a selfperpetuating congregation of upper bourgeois and patricians that operated through scrutiny and sortition rather than through open votes. A rector drawn from the Senate or nobility, and a prioress drawn from the patriciate (“una signora nobile e d’autorità”) headed up the Compagnia, whose broader membership corporale now included far fewer laborers and journeymen and more shopkeepers and master artisans. Women’s dues were raised, but the services offered to members seemed to have dropped to little more than access to a doctor kept on retainer. Spiritual services and obligations were left unchanged.86 It is impossible to determine whether this Bolognese confraternity ever actually implemented its pioneering maternity benefits for working couples like Lucia and Bartolomeo. There is simply no clear evidence. What evidence we have suggests that despite Marc’Antonio Battilana’s ingenuity with investments and skill with a balance sheet, the plan may have been too ambitious. It may have faltered because Battilana failed to anticipate peoples’ responses, just as he had failed to anticipate the effect of letting the Monte del Matrimonio seize the account of any depositor

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who died before marriage. That rule had brought the monte close to collapse, and necessitated a quick “reform.” In the case of the Compagnia dei Poveri, there would have been serious problems balancing income and expense, particularly without accumulated capital and the steady revenues of legacies. Part of the problem was the cyclical nature of employment in the textile trades. Thousands of workers like Bartolomeo were regularly thrown out of work at the same time, meaning that dues income collapsed precisely when the need was skyrocketing. A second problem was the difficulty of keeping women like Lucia from dropping out of the plan shortly after they had had a baby and claimed the maternity benefit. Given the Compagnia’s rapid increase through the early 1590s and then its equally rapid fall in the latter half of the decade, it seems likely that the ambitious plan gathered significant excitement but not much more, and that the insurance plan and maternity benefits were never quite realized.

Through the latter half of the sixteenth century, Bologna continued to be a place whose citizens generated some of the most innovative options for helping poor adolescents and women negotiate the challenges they faced at midlife and survive as active members of the community. The Bolognese developed a range of new tools, from short- or long-term institutional care to savings funds to insurance plans that represented the evolving forms of practical and patronal charity. They aimed to find ways that would allow women to help themselves through what they could earn by their own work. Girls could draw on some of these tools if their families fell apart, adolescents could use others to save for marriage, and older women could use yet others to save a marriage or find new options after a marriage had ended. The tool that looked most like what could be found already in Bologna and across Italy and Europe was enclosure. Conservatories like S. Croce and S. Giuseppe held adolescent girls in a kind of protective custody that kept them off the streets while keeping them in the local economy. Shelters like the Malmaritate and the Casa del Soccorso kept adult women from troubling and being troubled by others. All four positioned themselves at different points on the life cycle of poverty, but all four worked

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on the same principle of practical charity found at the OPM and its S. Gregorio workhouse. They removed the poor woman from her family and neighborhood in order to get her ready for a new life, and combined the woman’s work with donors’ alms in order to keep the home open. And all four shelters ringed this practical charity with increasing levels of discipline. Yet only a fraction of Bologna’s women had the freedom to be shut up in enclosures. Most were too busy working and maintaining families. The more innovative tools developed by the Bolognese in these years were those that poor working women could pick up and use to shape their own lives. The Monte del Matrimonio helped young women turn their work as servants or silk workers into dowries, while the Compagnia dei Poveri allowed them to plan for pregnancy or prepare for the inevitable bouts of sickness or unemployment. These were tools that moved beyond formal efforts to discipline the unworthy poor and that reflected a drive to help the working poor. We should remember that these were experiments above all, and look at who and how they aimed to help. At a time when Bolognese politicians and financiers were experimenting aggressively with new forms of public finance and private investment, merchants like Marc’ Antonio Battilana were experimenting just as creatively with savings plans and forms of insurance seldom tried before. Battilana and his colleagues weren’t concerned primarily with disciplining or incarcerating the poor. They aimed to find ways that would let women help themselves, and that would pool resources to get the maximum effect. Their fundamental goal was still profoundly conservative, since they promoted both marriage and maternity as a way of merging the needs of poor families with the needs of the city at large. Yet some of their experiments helped poor single women to chart a path as single women. Whether that was by design or by accident, it shows that there was at least as much creative imagination and daring experimentation applied to the social problem of helping poor working women as there was to the problem of helping or policing the indigent. Each of these institutions, experiments, and tools came out of the vision and drive of an individual or a small group of socially and religiously driven reformers. Each responded to and expanded from gaps in the civic network that had been taking shape over the first half of the

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sixteenth century and that had culminated in the OPM by 1560. Each would encounter significant difficulties after a few years or decades. Their most imaginative features were often the most expensive or problematic. As a result, impending financial collapse was often the trigger that forced these innovators to negotiate with Bolognese authorities in order to find some way for their experiment to survive. This replayed what had happened at the OPM itself, where communally inspired innovations like the alms tax and the armies of volunteer collectors and work finders faltered and were swept away after the first decade. Those experiments that veered furthest from local norms were sometimes the ones that faced the greatest resistance from civic or ecclesiastical authorities. Survival might then involve removing or marginalizing the founders and suppressing precisely what had been most innovative and daring. In this way, as we will see in the next chapter, the S. Croce conservatory for prostitutes’ daughters would become a conventional shelter for orphaned and abandoned girls, and an active silk workshop. The S. Giuseppe conservatory would develop into a boarding home for illegitimate girls from patrician families. The Compagnia dei Poveri would become a conventional devotional confraternity. Each of these had started with an idiosyncratic administration and each developed over time into something far more conventional. The Monte del Matrimonio was the most successful at resisting this drift into convention. It fought repeatedly and successfully into the eighteenth century to keep out of the archbishop’s oversight. Its argument that it was not a luogho pio but a secular service allowed it to survive into the twentieth century.87 It was the most successful, likely because it was the most useful. Apart from helping girls and their families save for dowries, it was an excellent means for patricians to provide at one and the same time for both their servant girls dowries and their own property purchases. It was the most like a bank, and Bologna already had in the Monte di Pietà a bank that worked under ecclesiastical oversight. By contrast, the Compagnia dei Poveri was least successful at maintaining itself. It turned into the reverse image of what its founders had intended. It had initially moved far beyond being a confraternity and into completely uncharted territory, and with some imaginative direction, it might well have metamorphosed into an insurance fund. Yet in the face

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of a financial collapse, and under pressure from ecclesiastical authorities, it reverted into a more conventional confraternity. The Compagnia dei Poveri became far more conventional than its artisanal founders, or Marc’Antonio Battilana, or its thousands of working poor members had hoped, yet this made it satisfyingly conservative for those episcopal visitors and well-off members who found in plenary indulgences all the insurance they wanted. Poor women like Hippolita Vespucci, Virginia Lintrù, and Lucia di Bartolomeo lived at a time when the Bolognese were still experimenting with an extraordinary range of solutions to the problems of women’s poverty. Patrician women like Hippolita Volta Boncompagnia and Diamante Campeggi joined merchants like Bonifacio dalle Balle and Marc’Antonio Battilana in a push to find ways that would help adolescent girls and older women help themselves. They were driven to creativity by the political, economic, and demographic challenges of the later sixteenth century—a large, wealthy, and powerful city adapting to its place as the second city of the Papal State. What would happen when political tensions had subsided, when economic growth waned, and when religious reform focused less on charity than on consumption?

chapter 6

Baroque Piety and the Qualità of Mercy

n a moment of frustration, the male officers of Bologna’s pioneering welfare service the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM) gave a firm and semipublic slap on the wrist to their female compatriots. The female officers were spending a lot of money on finery, festivity, and feasting, for themselves, for the poorhouse staff, and for the poor themselves. Moreover, they weren’t keeping a tight enough rein on the women and girls under their care. The men asked them to curb their spending so that the money could be better spent giving basic food and clothing to those in the OPM’s three hostels for the poor. And they wanted the movements of the poor women to be far more tightly controlled. Their demand came in a set of “Inviolable Chapters and Rules to be Observed in the Future by the Lady Prioresses and the serving Chamberlains of the Mendicanti” (Capitoli e Leggi Inviolabili da osservarsi per l’avvenire dalle Signore Priore e Camerlenghi de’Mendicanti pro tempore).1 These were printed like the broadsheet bandi that city officials plastered across the city whenever they wanted to warn of plague, announce new regulations on food safety or crime, or proclaim a holiday. We don’t know for certain whether these “Inviolable Chapters and Rules,” dated February 22, 1654, were ever posted publicly like other bandi. They demonstrate that the tensions around gender, class, and the appropriate forms of

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charity that had divided the OPM over a half century before still resonated strongly. There were some significant changes of course. Raising and spending money was as much a concern in 1654 as it had been when the male officers of the OPM had written the Ordini e Provisione some sixty years earlier. Yet the greater concern now lay in keeping a closer eye over poor women’s movements into, within, and out of the S. Gregorio shelter. The “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” complain that the Lady Prioresses have not kept adequate records of the whereabouts of those women and girls placed as domestic servants or textile workers in the city, with the result that no one knows where they are and no one visits them. In response, they decree that any girl who moves to some other shop or employer without seeking permission will now be denied any chance of returning to S. Gregorio. The prioresses have also been admitting women on their own authority without going through the proper procedures and without approval of the male executive and congregation. They have been too lax in letting women out as well, allowing others like the resident female warden to authorize this rather than reviewing all requests personally and issuing the necessary license in their own hand. Poor women have too much freedom within the home as well. They hang around the men’s courtyard and at the iron entrance gates gossiping with friends on the other side. They turn up in the living quarters of the priests and of other male employees like the porter or tailor, claiming to be bringing food, or sweeping or changing the sheets, but clearly up to no good.2 There are costs to this laxity, and not just to the honor of the home. Certainly women’s free movements in and out of shops, the workhouse, and private bedrooms for no good reason endanger that highly valuable and easily lost asset: “Be judicious in granting permission to leave the property because of the scandals that sometimes arise.” With an eye on the bottom line, the “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” also forbid poor women from going to the S. Gregorio refectory for bread and wine more than once per day. The warden may no longer give out bundles of firewood and kindling for the rooms where women sleep—no fires anywhere but in the common rooms and in the workrooms. Clothing is still a major expense and a major issue: the prioresses may no longer dress up the poor with elaborate items like stockings, shirts, sleeveless vests,

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and separate attachable sleeves that are made of cloth bought outside the home. The girls and women must wear the OPM’s standard issue uniform cloak (camurra), and when they leave the S. Gregorio shelter and return to the city for work or on a special license to visit family, they must wear it in such a way that everyone can see the stylized “M,” which is the logo of the OPM on their chest. No more draping hair, or a shawl, or even a towel over the logo to hide it.3 The “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” urge the Lady Prioresses in particular to keep a closer eye on all the poor women’s movements, work, and needs. They must boost the textile work that brings in income: the silk reeling, spinning, and weaving, the lace making, and the sewing. If any of the girls or women get sick, they are to be moved over to the OPM’s S. Orsola infirmary as quickly as possible where they can be cared for more efficiently. The Lady Prioresses still have responsibility over the OPM’s annual search for alms on St. Gregory’s Day, and in addition they are allowed to search through all the parishes of the city during the Octave of Pentecost, and once annually through all the rural parishes around Bologna as well. Whatever they manage to gather in these three designated collections is for their use exclusively. If the “Orders and Provisions” that we read about in Chapter 1 worried about costs, then these “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” obsess about enclosure. It’s a telling shift. Both broadsheets focus on women, and both see threats to the reputation of the home in the actions of upperand lower-class women alike. Both blame the lax hand of indulgent or inattentive female supervisors for the problems of female wards. Both aim to negotiate the complicated relations between practical and patronal charity. The earlier broadsheet feared that ordinary almsgivers who supported the shelter might stop giving for the OPM’s daily needs if they saw their charity lavished on treats, clothes, and silverware. The later one worries about the OPM’s honor and moral reputation when people hear that its girls and women are getting dressed up and wandering in, out, and around both Bologna and the S. Gregorio shelter itself without much control or even much to do. And indeed, these “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” worry entirely and only about women—both those in the care of the home and those supposedly governing over it.4 Beyond fretting about the female wards and wardens in the home, they also

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worry that the Lady Prioresses take on their supervisory position without much thought, and then execute it without much attention or commitment.5 As a result, however much the male officers aimed to inject more discipline and work into poor relief, “enclosure” at the OPM was anything but tight. Passing a host of rules was more a sign of weakness than of strength. Naming these rules “inviolable” betrayed an underlying anxiety, because violations of and by women, and particularly young women, were clearly very much on these men’s minds. The male officers who had penned the “Orders and Provisions” in the 1590s still hoped optimistically that with proper administrative discipline, the OPM’S income and expenses could be balanced out and the institution’s experiment in self-supporting practical charity could be made to work. They had aimed to discipline the patronal charity of their female counterparts so as to save the reputation of the home. Their counterparts a few decades later who issued the “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” pushed discipline more firmly into the home itself, emphasizing that it was the loose behavior of the poor girls and women living there that threatened S. Gregorio’s reputation and hence its future. Like their predecessors, they also wanted to see how the OPM could be made to work. Yet in moving to tighten the rules, narrow the categories, and restrict the numbers of female poor, they were moving from practical charity into something that was far more punitive. By the mid-seventeenth century many other homes in the Bolognese network of welfare institutions were using increased discipline to limit their liabilities. At the same time, by appealing to the Lady Prioresses’ sense of honor and concern for personal reputation, they showed a sharper awareness that patronal charity remained a vital key to making these experiments work. This strategy also found many imitators locally, as sponsorship, fees, and patronage changed many institutions beyond all recognition. The OPM was not alone in believing that tighter enclosure was the best way to both punish and reform the adolescent girls and women under its control. It was not alone in adopting extensive sets of disciplinary rules that it printed up and posted publicly as broadsheets to catch the attention of poor people seeking relief and rich people seeking assurance. Yet beyond paper sheets of rules, what opens a window into the changing life of the charitable homes are the records of who came in

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and out, who ran the homes and how, and where the money was spent. This latter point bears particular attention. At the OPM as at many other of Bologna’s charitable shelters, seventeenth-century administrators worked hard to limit radically their charitable activities in order to wrestle down costs. They charged new fees for services that once had been free. They complained incessantly about not having enough money. At the same time, they sank ever-larger amounts into the oratories, paintings, and furnishings that constituted the “devotional consumption” of the baroque period. Cultural patronage transformed the look and feel of Bologna’s shelters, oratories, and meeting spaces, and helped propel the city into a leading role as a center for baroque art. But it came at a cost, and the ones who paid were the women and children living in those shelters. Every institution dealing with the poor, and with female life cycle poverty in particular, followed this apparently paradoxical practice. In some cases, and particularly in the case of smaller shelters that had been born out of the personal fortunes of intensely driven founders, the service cutbacks, fee increases, and expanding devotional consumption came after these impassioned charismatics had died or been pushed aside. New administrators took innovative homes that had been built on a personal vision and had often consumed a personal fortune, and they refitted them into both the bureaucratic norms and the social, political, and liturgical needs of the city. These broader civic needs sometimes eclipsed the immediate needs of women who were wrestling with poverty at one stage or another of their lives. Bologna’s system of social welfare continued evolving through the seventeenth century, although less through experimentation and creative innovation than through retrenchment and discipline.6 As innovation faded it came to resemble other cities in the handling of poor women. We can see more clearly both the operation of the gender ideology sketched by Mary Perry in Seville and demands of the lineage ideology outlined by Philip Gavitt in Florence. As we quickly sketch the changes in Bologna’s system, we find that there was less political uncertainty and conflict to expand it outward, and less industrial dynamism to drive it forward. The religious framework for charity had shifted as the Catholic Church itself became more focused and disciplined, and as the place of the poor

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in the social and spiritual imagination shifted. Makeshift and adaptation still dominated, but if on one hand there was more security for the worthy rich, then on the other there seemed to be somewhat more confusion about just who constituted the worthy poor.

Bringing Discipline to Practical Charity We can begin again at the start of the life cycle and start by considering the foundling home of the Esposti, or “Bastardini.” From the late sixteenth and through the seventeenth century, it was taking in anywhere from two hundred to three hundred infants annually from Bologna and the surrounding countryside, and nursing them was among its highest and most unavoidable costs. Wetnursing ate up almost a third of the Esposti’s annual budget, and so from 1570 the foundling home began charging a twenty-five-lire fee called “the alms of the baby” (l’elemosina di un bambino). This was roughly equivalent to the cost of hiring an individual wetnurse privately for eight months, and it would become the Esposti’s price for taking in illegitimate children. Whether understood as a fine, a fee, or alms, the twenty-five-lire price was meant to dissuade casual abandonment. If a father refused to pay, the Esposti turned to the mother. These mothers—most no more than adolescent girls—were easier to track down, particularly since Bologna’s midwives were under orders to report any unmarried pregnant women. The Esposti warden pursued them, and any mother who could not pay the twenty-five-lire alms-fine was forced to move into a special dormitory within the Esposti complex and work for a year as an unpaid resident wetnurse suckling many infants at a time. The only infant she was not allowed to nurse was her own.7 This alms-fine came to generate between a fifth and a sixth of the Esposti’s income through the seventeenth century. Putting it on the turntable with the baby was the best way to ensure that no further questions would be asked, and 70 to 86 percent of foundlings were abandoned with the necessary sack of coins. Yet this still left many whose mothers were tracked down and imprisoned as involuntary wetnurses in the onsite House of the Wetnurses (casa delle balie) at the rear of the Esposti complex. Since the home usually paid nurses three to four lire monthly

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on the open market, imprisoning these unmarried lactating mothers for a year was not just punitive discipline but also good business. Or so it seemed to officials who were struggling to cover the cost of wetnursing in the late 1560s, when it had steadily increased to almost 50 percent of total expenses. Within two years, the figure dropped to 38 percent, but officials couldn’t celebrate their success for too long. Wetnursing costs certainly dropped, a sign that young mothers imprisoned in the home were taking on more of the work of feeding the babies. Yet at the same time, the costs of feeding and sheltering these young imprisoned mothers shot up, and more than offset any savings. The cost of feeding and clothing the “famiglia” of the home—essentially all staff and children, including the wetnurses—ballooned from just over 20 percent to just under 60 percent of total expenses between 1567 and 1593. Throughout this period and stretching on to the end of the next century, the combined costs for wetnurses and feeding and sheltering the famiglia in the Esposti home consistently made up roughly 75 percent of the Esposti’s steadily rising expenses (see Table 3).8 A second problem with the “alms of the baby” was less immediately apparent. More and more priests started to tell the archbishop that young women were coming in the confessional and admitting to having aborted their fetuses or killed their babies because they could not pay the alms or face imprisonment. Thanks to their intense lobbying, Esposti officials reduced the “alms of the baby” to fifteen lire in 1729.9 By this point it was clear that the “alms of the baby” were counterproductive economically, and so the decision to keep the fine represented an ideological stance about discipline and disincentive rather than any economic logic. Moving further along the life cycle, we can see that financial pressures also weighed down Bologna’s conservatories for adolescent girls. Together with shifting expectations about care and discipline, these pressures forced a series of changes through the seventeenth century. In midcentury, the conservatory of S. Maria del Baraccano reduced the numbers of girls it would take by 50 percent—from seventy-five to almost forty—so as to better afford and control the girls in its care. Although it had always been the most selective of Bologna’s conservatories, it began limiting entry even more to those orphaned and abandoned girls who had long inventories of personal property and long lists

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Table 3. Wetnursing and Living Expenses at the Ospedale degli Esposti 1567–1593

Year

Wetnursing Costs

Living Costs

Total Expenses

1567 %

4541 41.45%

2389 21.81%

10953

1570 %

5286 49.85%

2486 23.44%

10602

1572 %

4838 38.64%

3765 30.07%

12519

1587 %

7522 41.25%

5596 30.69%

18233

1588 %

7947 46.24%

4749 27.63%

17186

1589 %

7606 49.96%

4021 26.41%

15222

1590 %

7719 33.78%

9988 43.71%

22846

1591 %

5264 22.28%

13895 58.83%

23617

1592 %

4591 20.13%

13401 58.76%

22804

1593 %

2897 15.11%

11323 59.09%

19161

Wetnursing + Living Costs as % of Total 63.26%

73.29%

60.71%

71.94%

73.87%

76.37%

77.49%

81.11%

78.89%

74.20%

Note: Figures are in lire with % of total expenses for the year. ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo, detto degli Esposti, Serie III, ms. 10 (1567–1572), ff. 126, 224, 360; ms. 15 (1587–1594), 113, 203,239, 283,324, 380, 488.

of relatives willing to pledge funds for the generous dowries that would ensure their speedy exit. The dowry funds that the Baraccano provided to its girls when they married or entered a convent rose from 100 lire in the 1550s–1560s to 200 by the 1580s and over 300 by the early 1600s. Administrators became increasingly concerned about this ever growing liability, even though each girl had effectively earned her dotal “gift”

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through her own spinning and linen weaving in the Baraccano’s workshops, something the home itself recognized when it gave larger “gifts” to girls who had lived and worked longer within its walls. While they froze the Baraccano’s share, girls’ dowries continued climbing, reaching over 1,000 lire by the middle of the seventeenth century. The difference was made up by the girls’ own families and patrons, and it demonstrates that the Baraccano was shifting over from being a site of practical charity to one of personalized patronal charity.10 In these same early decades of the seventeenth century, the conservatories of S. Croce and S. Giuseppe, which had experimented with more distinctively personal forms of sheltering and raising girls, were both taken over and “reformed” so that they would look more like other homes in Bologna. We already saw that at S. Croce, Bonifacio dalle Balle’s vision clashed with that of the Franciscan tertiaries very soon after he had recruited them to help fund and run the home. By 1609 the two parties were at loggerheads. Dalle Balle wanted to give prostitute’s daughters a shelter that provided all the spiritual training and personal contact of a contemplative religious community while offering a little work as a means of preparing them for lives that would be different from their mothers. The tertiaries aimed for a self-supporting conservatory like S. Marta or the Baraccano that was linked to the silk industry and that would shelter and employ girls for seven to ten years before marrying them off with dowries based in part on what they had earned through their reeling and spinning. The tertiaries’ leader, Alessandro Massarenti, began spreading rumors that the old merchant was not quite as pure and selfless as he seemed, and stoked the local gossip about why he kept a private apartment in the S. Croce conservatory. With some deft bureaucratic manipulation, the tertiaries in 1609 adopted a set of statutes that pushed dalle Balle to the side and instituted the administrative model adopted by Bologna’s other hospitals and conservatories in the 1550s. The new statutes certainly improved accountability, efficiency, and political oversight, and Archbishop Alfonso Paleotti and the Senate quickly endorsed them. A senator would now move into position as rector, and the S. Croce girls would be moved into the local economy as the conservatory became a center for spinning silk thread. Alessandro Massarenti would move into dalle Balle’s apartment

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a few years later. The tertiaries soon realized that more could be gained by working with highborn patrons, and so they also moved beyond seeking out prostitutes’ daughters and instead recruited more worthy girls whose families or sponsors could afford to grease the admission application with a subsidy or the pledge of a dowry. With a large enough donation, patrons could now place girls directly in the home, and paying a higher fee brought a girl better quarters and diet. The tertiaries and local patricians shared key goals, and their common interests quickly transformed S. Croce. Clergy disliked dalle Balle’s spiritual freelancing and local elites were concerned with preserving the safe and accessible home that his eccentric beliefs had first brought into being. S. Croce was simply too convenient place to lodge the nieces, neighbors, or bastards that they or their friends and clients were responsible for, and they believed, not without reason, that the home needed the discipline of patrons, statutes, and income if it was to survive at all. One person’s enthusiasms, qualms, or religious quirks could not stand in the way of building a holy and a safe society.11 Along with the Baraccano and S. Croce, another conservatory that changed significantly in the early seventeenth century was S. Giuseppe. This was where about a dozen patrician women had been taking in a somewhat smaller number of girls and providing them with immediate and limited care, most distinctly through a system of partnering or mentoring that assigned a woman to each girl. The women had been extraordinarily cautious in managing the home: each spring they sat down to determine how much money they had and how many girls they could support with it. They then opened the doors for that number and no more, often taking all the girls in at once: eight in June 1617, nine in April 1618, eight in April 1619. They were reluctant to collect fees, and were gradually expanding the home’s endowment so as to be able to give better care to more girls. After moving through a series of buildings, in 1628 they purchased quarters just inside the southern city walls on Strada Castiglione.12 For reasons that are unclear, in 1631 the Jesuit priest working with these women, Giorgio Giustiniani, pressured them to allow six men of his Congregation of Gesù Maria to join them in running S. Giuseppe.13 These men quickly took over financial administration, record keeping,

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and provisioning, and within very few years other changes followed. S. Giuseppe moved under the authority of the archbishop in 1632, and began building a public church in 1636. This was also the year that it abandoned its system of personal mentoring. Larger numbers of girls were accepted at younger ages and for far shorter periods of time—the average time dropped from two years to just under seven months. There was now also more emphasis on charging fees and getting payment in advance. Under the women’s direction, many girls had left S. Giuseppe with debts that some were never able to repay. Under the men, the population doubled to about fourteen or fifteen, fees were raised from ten to twelve lire monthly, and no girl would be allowed in unless a threemonth stay had been paid in advance.14 S. Giuseppe’s church was finished in 1639 and its first statutes were penned in 1641. By 1646, there were roughly equal numbers of men and women in the administration.15 Yet many of the features that had made it distinct from Bologna’s other conservatories—particularly the personal mentoring—had disappeared, and it now matched more closely the local administrative model that had first taken shape in the 1550s. This had essentially meant pushing the women aside, something that the Jesuits often did when they saw a local charitable institution moving toward maturity.16 The new statutes’ preface includes an unconvincing story that the women had asked for the men’s help because they felt overwhelmed and out of their depth. In fact, the women had steadily expanded the home’s endowment, whereas once the men took over its stability, efficiency, and even its record keeping declined. From offering short-term shelter to vulnerable girls in need, S. Giuseppe moved to being something more like a boarding school or fee-based hostel. It required payment in advance, offered better grades of care to those with more money to spend, and dropped the system of patron mentoring that had been its most innovative and characteristic feature. Like S. Maria del Baraccano and S. Croce, it became a place where a wealthy patrician could board his illegitimate adolescent daughters or ward until he could arrange a marriage or some other place for her.17 This was one of the points where gender ideology and lineage ideology converged. Financial pressures led more shelters to experiment with fee-paying custodianship, and this of course tended to keep the truly indigent

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outside the doors. Moving another step further along the life cycle, we can see that at homes oriented to older women, these pressures sometimes also served to break down distinctions between different enclosures and to increase the links and traffic between them. This wasn’t simply disciplinary transfers like Hippolita Vespucci’s circuit from the convent of the Servites to the Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo and then on to the OPM’s S. Gregorio. In the early seventeenth century, the Convertite convent of SS. Giacomo e Filippo, where former prostitutes were supposed to be able to start a new life by taking the veil as nuns, began to take in other needy women on short stays for a fee. The records are ambiguous, but it seems to have become some kind of overflow residence for the Malmaritate shelter. The two institutions became so close that Archbishop Alfonso Paleotti encouraged the Malmaritate to move to a new site near to the Convertite on Via Lame in the northwest part of Bologna. It did this in 1606, but remained there for less than a decade before moving south across town to Via S. Mamolo.18 The Convertite nuns responded by expanding their connections instead with the nearby Casa del Soccorso, leading to an odd movement of young women back and forth between these two homes. Founder Bonifacio dalle Balle had been pushed out of the Soccorso by 1606, replaced here as at S. Croce by Alessandro Massarenti and a few patricians who brought in a more efficient, focused, and disciplined administration.19 From at least 1630, the Soccorso began acting as an informal probationary house screening girls who had applied to take orders at the convent of the Convertite. Girls who were clearly not up to the challenge of living communally according to the Soccorso’s rules would not get a chance at the even stricter regime followed at the Convertite.20 At the same time, the Convertite now started taking in large numbers of women who would otherwise have headed to the Soccorso, perhaps lodging them in the same beds where it had sheltered the Malmaritate’s women a few decades earlier. The rooms might have been the same, and the women staying in them still had to pay, but the terms had apparently changed. The old ledger recording Malmaritate lodgers had described them as “living” (havitavano) in the Convertite. The new ledger described women as “imprisoned” (carcerate) by the nuns of the Convertite. The Convertite was more secure than the Soccorso, and the girls and women

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held there would find themselves under tighter custody and firmer discipline. The numbers involved were so high—over 2,960 between 1649 and 1679—that it’s hard to imagine that their stays lasted very long. Figure 15 charts the entrants from this ledger and shows that, given the gaps in the records (five years out of these two decades), the actual number was likely much higher.21 The very purpose of enclosure was clearly changing by the midseventeenth century. Profit and punishment were the forces sending more women into enclosures that had originally opened as protective shelters offering practical charity. We saw earlier that within a few decades of opening the Malmaritate had become a generic shortterm shelter that actually took in few “unhappily married” women but accepted many boarders who simply needed a safe place for a couple of months to negotiate some challenging passage in their lives. And if, as frequently happened, it was family, a lover, or a pimp who sent an adolescent girl or older woman into a reformatory enclosure, the results could be hard on everyone. It is important to recognize that the increasing shift toward discipline was aimed not just at punishing a woman for past offenses, but also at steering her in a new direction. A public notice that the Casa del

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Figure 15. Women “Imprisoned” in the Convertite Convent, 1649–1679

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Soccorso di S. Paolo printed and distributed in the seventeenth century may look at first glance to be purely about punitive discipline. It laid out the conditions for entry and the rules to be followed by those who got in, and set these strictly enough that no one should be under any illusions about how hard life would be inside the home. On closer inspection we can see that it is equally concerned with helping women develop their own commitment to change and their ability to live in community with others.22 The officials emphasized that the request to enter should come from the woman herself, not some third party, and that it should come out of a sincere desire to restart her life after an unfortunate moral fall. She had to be able to focus on the future without ongoing worries about money, and so should be accepted only if the cost of her stay had been paid in advance. For the same reason, she had to be free of outside obligations, without any dependents like young children or aged parents, so that she could cut herself off thoroughly from her past life and start afresh. She couldn’t be a habitual or registered prostitute, and she wasn’t to have any direct contact with the people of her former life, through either conversation or even gifts. A woman entering this enclosure had to immerse herself completely in a new community so that she could develop new habits, and this meant that she had to be sensitive to the others in that community. It wasn’t just a matter of following rules, though that was a given. If she mocked others, or was stubborn or argumentative, she had to go. She wasn’t to keep a dog, a chicken, or any other animal because animals would make the shared living space dirty and noisy. She couldn’t leave without permission, because apart from putting her own reform in doubt, it would cast a cloud on the home as a whole and hence on all the other women in it.23 These rules represented desired goals, and the Soccorso’s ongoing financial needs in a heavily patronal culture likely ensured that they were more often advertisements on paper than operative in daily life. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that the increased discipline behind them was less about punishment pure and simple than about restoring a moral balance and a healthy communal life. What power did a printed handbill have? As presses spread and paper became cheaper, more homes aimed to order their internal affairs by mass-producing sets of rules, advertising flyers, fund-raising appeals,

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and administrative forms. Reviewing these helps us track some of the shifts through the seventeenth century in what officials thought their homes were for and how they ought to be run. The Casa del Soccorso printed up a series of small sheets aimed at priests that described its work with poor, destitute, and shady women and asked to be named in the sermon or set on a collection list. Smaller forms the size of notecards that could be slipped into the hand of a friend advertised that “the poor House of S. Paolo finds itself in great need of. . . ,” followed by a blank space into which the warden or official could write a quantity of food, wood, or alms. Another small Soccorso form, looking almost like a bill, came close to duplicating the infamous alms taxes that had caused the OPM so much grief a few decades earlier: 24 You are requested for Christ’s sake [lit. “by the bowels of Christ” (in Visceribus Christi)] to be pleased to send the alms, promised this past Lent of 1639, for the support of the poor penitents in the House of Succour of St Paul in Galliera to Signore _____________ who has been appointed by the Congregation to receive the alms for your parish of ______________. For which, from the Lord on High, you will receive abundant remuneration. The donation should be ____________ for the months ___________.

Printed forms usually expressed no more than administrators’ wishes, but sometimes the technology advanced discipline in more concrete ways. The OPM developed printed forms for the Assessors of the Poor to fill out as they went door to door conducting their census of the poor. One set of forms listed all the parishes in the four quarters with seven columns so that assessors could tally separately the numbers of men, women, boys, girls, lame, blind, and foreigners. The assessors were to record the single poor in black ink, and families in red. They had another form to record information on individual heads of households who were applying for aid: their age, birthplace, length of residence in Bologna, regular attendance at communion, whether they were healthy or sick, whether free or indentured (di stato libero), whether practicing a craft, whether married, and the number of male and female children they had together with their ages.25

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With printed forms and bureaucratic techniques, the charitable institutions multiplying across Italy through the seventeenth century gathered alms more aggressively, tightened their oversight of entrances and exits, paid more attention to work, gathered more income from properties and investments, and controlled expenses more strictly. And disciplined their girls and women. While fee-paying shelters like S. Croce and S. Giuseppe might use discipline to prepare girls for marriage, and lay enclosures like the Casa del Soccorso used it to prepare women for life, the dynamics unfolding at civic workhouses like the OPM were more simply punitive. From Genoa to Venice to Florence, more and more Italian cities were opening workhouses in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Rome’s SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini had opened in 1581, Turin’s Casa del Soccorso in 1584, Florence’s Ospedale dei Mendicanti in 1621, and Genoa’s monumental Albergo dei Poveri in 1653. A civic workhouse changed the local dynamic from the time it opened, and each new home that came after it altered that dynamic even further. One key shift came with yet another form that frequently emerged in these same cities: the beggar’s license. The license to beg helped criminalize poverty and turned poorhouses into prisons, since it became a means of forcing many more poor off the streets. As more “voluntary” shelters emerged where a well-off person could install a girl or woman for a fee—one she might subsidize through her own labor—the civic workhouses became places of involuntary enclosure. This was hardly charity at all, and in Bologna the OPM came to focus ever more directly on simply containing women and became far less creative in determining what they ought to do or become. New regulations adopted at Bologna’s OPM shortly before Christmas in 1670 show that the “Inviolable Rules” of 1654 had not stopped the girls and women in its care from being sexually active, either voluntarily or as targets of assault. The new rules point to suspicions that informal prostitution had become entirely common as a strategy by which poor women survived on the streets. OPM administrators certainly seemed to assume that a poor mother’s sole interest in her daughter lay in pimping her. Yet their response now moved beyond reform of the woman or protection of the adolescent girl to preserving their own institutional reputation by effectively cutting their losses. The new rules handled the problem

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not by tightening regulations yet again, but by allowing the OPM to wash its hands of the girls and their mothers. Wardens could no longer accept girls over age twelve at all unless all members of the male executive agreed that she faced a situation of extreme necessity, particularly the death of a father. A girl sent out to be a servant or worker with some family in the city could no longer return to the Mendicanti. She could not even continue to use the name or wear the badge of the Mendicanti: “Her childhood is extinguished as soon as she leaves” (la figliuolanza sia estinta subito uscire). All OPM girls were to be released at age eighteen, just as boys were. Yet while boys would be turned out the door, girls could be released only into the care of brothers or paternal uncles. They were never to return to the care of mothers unless it could be verified that these were of “good life, reputation, and customs” (buona vita, fama, e costumi), and that they had the resources to maintain them honorably and to dower them. If her male and paternal relatives were unable or unwilling to take the girl back (if she was “recusate”), and if there was no other possibility for sending her out of S. Gregorio, then they could pay a fee of five lire per month to board her there. If they were unwilling or unable to pay this, then the girl herself would have to find work to the level of at least two or three soldi per day in order to remain at S. Gregorio. Anything she earned above this would be hers to keep. Anytime she failed to earn that sum, her food rations would be cut.26 The OPM was reinventing itself. It now focused its charitable care on children more than on adults. While it seemed to be following the example of S. Croce and S. Giuseppe in fi lling more of its beds with fee-paying boarders, the key difference was that it simply housed these wards and did little to train or prepare them or to arrange their future as those other homes did. A census carried out at around this time showed that 70 percent of those living in the home were orphaned children, with twice as many girls as boys.27 Only those who were physically or mentally challenged could stay beyond their eighteenth birthday, and even they could stay only if some family member or benefactor paid a regular fee for their maintenance. The Christmas 1670 regulations stipulated that the OPM would accept adult women and men who were insane (matte or matti), but only at a rate of five soldi per day paid in advance.

Table 4. Senate Subsidies to OPM 1600–1732 Year

Lire

Year

1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621 1622 1623 1624 1625 1626 1627 1628 1629 1630 1631 1632 1633 1634 1635 1636 1637 1638 1639 1640

793.06.08 46.13.04 1493.06.08 1093.06.08 893.06.08 818.06.08 573.06.08 693.06.08 693.06.08 680.00.00 646.13.04 718.06.08 3843.06.08 676.13.04 887.13.08 743.13.04 587.06.08 827.06.08 773.13.04 1603.13.04 1793.13.08 1094.06.08 11708.01.04 3807.06.08 267.06.08 1347.02.00 153.13.04 3153.13.04 3257.06.08 2367.10.04 24093.13.04 5351.17.00 2387.06.08 2317.07.08 693.13.04 421.05.00 400.00.00 2056.12.00 1000.00.00 500.00.00 654.00.04

1641 1643 1644 1645 1646 1647 1648 1649 1650 1654 1655 1675 1677 1679 1680 1685 1687 1688 1703 1706 1707 1708 1710 1711 1712 1713 1715 1716 1717 1718 1719 1722 1725 1727 1729 1732

Lire 56.10.00 100.00.00 245.14.00 1209.13.04 1000.00.00 6000.00.00 10,700.00.00 17,039.15.00 1375.00.00 2000.00.00 1000.00.00 1500.00.00 1700.00.00 1500.00.00 2000.00.00 300.00.00 200.00.00 500.00.00 70.00.00 200.00.00 150.00.00 160.00.00 360.00.00 160.00.00 160.00.00 150.00.00 330.00.00 350.00.00 150.00.00 200.00.00 270.00.00 300.00.00 370.00.00 200.00.00 200.00.00

Note: “1715. Nota dell’Ellemosine Caritativamente havesse l’Opera Pia de Poveri Mendicanti per L’Ill.mo Regimento dell’Anno . . .” ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, Busta 76, Fascicolo #7, “Mendicanti Limosine.”

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If relatives missed the payments, the mentally ill man or woman would be turned out the door. It’s unlikely that anyone enforced these draconian regulations to their full extent, yet it shows that the OPM had moved far from its founders’ original ambition of being the keystone of a sophisticated civic network of charitable institutions that helped women at particular stages along the life cycle of poverty through a combination of practical and patronal charity. And it wasn’t only the OPM administrators who were changing their image and intentions. The Senate’s subsidies to the OPM plummeted soon after the changes announced at Christmas in 1670. While those alms had continued to fluctuate wildly through the first half of the seventeenth century, senators had usually given over 1,000 lire annually. In periods of serious crisis like the plagues of 1622 and 1630, they gave over 10,000 or 20,000 lire to the agency that everyone still considered to be the city’s central vehicle for handling social disasters. Yet as Table 4 shows, the Senate reduced its alms to 300 lire by 1685 and in the years following usually gave well under 200 lire annually. So where was the money going?

The Aesthetics of Poverty and the Qualità of Mercy In May 1657 the masters of Bologna’s Silk Guild took stock. They wanted to tally up all that they had given to the Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti over the previous eighty-five years. They had started giving alms regularly in 1572, and a careful accounting showed that over the decades they had donated a total of almost 30,000 lire. They had a special bond with the boys of the OPM’s S. Maria della Pietà shelter just inside the S. Vitale city gates, and had given many alms to ornament the church there. The guildsmen had bought candles, lamps, communion ware, silk banners and altar cloths, and iron fittings—possibly to lock the chapel and secure the treasure of goods or apparati—worth a total of 17,083.19.4 lire. Their true pride and joy was a painting of the Triumph of Job, the patron saint of the guild and no stranger to the suffering of the poor. They had commissioned it in 1601 from none other than Guido Reni, the greatest painter in Bologna at that time and perhaps at any time. But

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great painters have patrons more worthy than a collection of silk merchants, and it had taken the guild thirty-five years of badgering Reni before he finally delivered the painting. Thirty-five years and 7,500 lire. The painting brought the total that the Silk Guild had invested in S. Maria della Pietà to 24,583.19.04 lire. On top of this, the silk merchants had given the OPM 4851.15 lire to help buy things like food, clothing, and shelter, meaning that its alms over this eight-decade period totaled 29,435.14.04 lire.28 Of all Bologna’s twenty-seven guilds, the Silk Guild had the greatest direct interest in the health of the OPM.29 As we’ve seen, the workhouse was established in part with the intention of providing the cheap labor that would keep Bologna’s many massive silk mills turning. And turning a profit. These ambitions were never quite realized. The girls and women at the OPM’s S. Gregorio shelter did devote much of their labor to reeling silk cocoons and spinning silk thread, but as we have seen, their work never became a highly productive engine feeding the industry’s whirling bobbins, and other girls working in conservatories and convents elsewhere in the city simply produced much more. All the same, it’s puzzling that the Silk Guild apparently directed so little of its charity to S. Gregorio. It may indicate that many of the children who actually clambered around the massive water-powered mills loading up those bobbins were OPM boys who had walked over to the silk district from the S. Maria della Pietà shelter on the other side of town. This might explain the Silk Guild’s great interest and enormous investment in furnishing the church where the boys recited the Divine Office, studied Christian doctrine, and heard the mass. Yet it’s also puzzling that the practical and profit-oriented businessmen of one of Bologna’s leading guilds should devote so much of their charity to liturgical furnishings and a single canvas, and so little to feeding, clothing, and sheltering the boys who were their workers and to some extent their future. Averaged over the full span of years, their gifts to cover daily living expenses at the OPM came to only one-sixth of their total giving. It amounted to barely more than 57 lire annually, or about a third the wage of a single artisan. By contrast, they had put over five times that much, almost 300 lire annually, into candlesticks and silk tablecloths.

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It wasn’t only patrician Lady Prioresses who found patronal charity so compelling. The Silk Guild was caught up in the drive toward “devotional consumption” that was reshaping the physical, religious, and charitable landscape of Bologna over the course of the seventeenth century. Bologna was being entirely rebuilt with new and renovated churches, oratories, and hospitals in the baroque style. While a tourist going to Florence can find many churches with sober and restrained interiors decorated with medieval and Renaissance paintings, when she heads on to Bologna she will have difficulty finding anything that doesn’t have the baroque period’s exuberantly emotive altarpieces, towering gilded pillars, or frescoed ceilings open to heaven. This isn’t due just to the cultural politics of tourist-driven restoration.30 The creative energy and money that had been going into charitable institutions like hospitals and shelters in the sixteenth century was moving over into oratories and churches in the seventeenth. As baroque became the signature style of the Tridentine church, its promoters and patrons wanted to extend it beyond Rome to the second city of the Papal State. Capturing emotion and will through the arts and architecture was at the core of baroque spirituality and missions, and it was extraordinarily expensive. Churches, convents, and monasteries absorbed the bulk of funds, but the governors of Bologna’s charities and the officers of its confraternities proved no less eager than priests, monks, and archbishops when it came to devotional consumption. And their appetite extended beyond what artists provided for the eye and ear to include more abstractly spiritual goods like indulgences and pilgrimages.31 One of the earliest churches to be reconstructed in the baroque style was the cathedral church of S. Pietro from 1570. Over the following two centuries few churches apart from the civic basilica of S. Petronio escaped the renovations that pushed out walls, raised ceilings, erected columns and pilasters by the dozen, and then used stucco, gilt, and fresco to confect extraordinary and sometimes unearthly spaces lit by candles and resonant with the sounds of choirs, musicians, and organs.32 Rebuilding the OPM’s S. Maria della Pietà church, where the Silk Guild had been so generous, was another early and expensive example. The OPM began this project in 1601 with the aim of carving out a major presence inside the

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city, and it quickly became a major civic project. All the city’s magistracies carved their names into the neo-classical lintels over its monumental doors, the city’s guilds contributed funds, and leading artists were commissioned to provide paintings. The altarpiece was reserved for Guido Reni, who produced a grand canvas of La Pietà dei mendicanti with the Madonna grieving over the dead Christ as five saints bowed in prayer over a model of the city that was flanked by four putti. There were no beggars in sight. The Pietà’s ceiling was raised and ornamented in 1667, and a new and towering portico was stretched across the facade in 1691 at the expense of the OPM rector, Count and Senator Hercole Pepoli, who posted a plaque on the facade to immortalize his patronal charity.33 The magistrates and guilds were so eager to put their names on these grand spaces because they realized that public acts of charity and patronage were more important than ever in fashioning individual and group reputation. A spreading aristocratic ethos bolstered by books like Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier or Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo placed a premium on concepts of qualità, that elusive inner attribute that combined blood, education, manners, status, and grace, and that demonstrated one’s fitness to rule. Even Machiavelli had argued that the canny Prince had to be seen by his subjects to be pious, generous, and ruling by innate ability and natural destiny, even if it was brute force that kept him in power. Public acts of mercy demonstrated qualità and so in Bologna, as in Venice, Florence, Turin, and a host of other cities, patricians and those who aspired to join their ranks moved deliberately to join and control those public bodies most identified with religious charity. Through the course of the sixteenth century they took over confraternities, hospitals, and guilds across Italy, often expanding and transforming their charitable work, ritual activities, and cultic spaces. This process of “ennobling” often resulted in marginalizing and even eliminating the existing membership of artisans, shopkeepers, and women from these same confraternities and hospitals, either deliberately or as an unforeseen consequence.34 In some cases the new wellborn members poured their own resources into this patronal charity and devotional consumption. In many more they drew on the accumulated resources of confraternal or hospital endowments that had been built up over decades or even centuries, and that were conveniently at hand.

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Changes at Bologna’s Compagnia dei Poveri exemplify the process, with its name lending an ironic twist to the relatively rapid metamorphosis of this company of the working poor into a company of the decidedly rich. As early as 1577 its artisan members had begun assembling a healthy share of that flood of plenary indulgences granted by some postTridentine popes (and Gregory XIII in particular) in their effort to sink the dangerous idea floated by Protestants and spirituali that God’s grace was a free gift.35 Even though the confraternity executive’s decision that same year to buy an abandoned and dilapidated hospital from the Franciscans for their headquarters had almost pushed the confraternity into bankruptcy and oblivion, the Poveri brotherhood was back on the property market within a couple of decades. It invested another 2,250 lire into yet more properties and negotiated with the Senate for permission to build its church out into the public street. Buying the land and building the church consumed the bulk of donations through this period, ranging from artisans’ gifts of 50 lire up to a legacy of 1,200 lire from Senator Silvio Albergati who lived nearby on Via Saragozza.36 In 1581, the apostolic visitor sent by Bishop Gabrielle Paleotti to examine the Compagnia dei Poveri was already calling on the confraternity to beautify its new oratory, forgoing masses until the altar had been fi xed, and holding off on processions until the archbishop approved. He had nothing to say about the charitable program.37 At least some members enthusiastically took up the challenge. Spiritual benefits were the lure that could snare more gifts and legacies, and in order to bait this particular hook the Compagnia dei Poveri forged an unusual special relationship with the cathedral chapter of St. John Lateran in Rome in 1602–1603. It legally transferred ownership of one of its own chapels to the Lateran chapter so that worshippers stepping into the space in Bologna were entering virtually St. John Lateran itself, and were thereby accessing directly that very well endowed church’s entire treasury of spiritual privileges, benefits, and indulgences. The Lateran chapter may have been attracted by the prospect of helping Bologna’s largest confraternity rebuild its space, or it may have responded to some lobbying by confratelli or archepiscopal officials intent on helping the Poveri respond to the apostolic visitor’s orders to build up its spiritual treasury and adorn its chapel. Regardless, the Lateran privilege triggered an escalating

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series of other privileges and honors that transformed the Compagnia dei Poveri over the next three decades. Gentlemen, ladies, nobles, and prelates soon flooded in to this confraternity of working men and women and began jostling for the privilege of buying ornaments, altarpieces, and liturgical furnishings at their own expense (“con il suo proprio spendere”). The number of legacies and endowments shot up, and within a few decades a team of priests was working in shifts saying thirty masses a day at this privileged Lateran altar in the heart of Bologna. The Compagnia dei Poveri was the first, and for over a century, the only confraternity in the city to engineer the legal fiction of a spiritually profitable property swap with the Lateran. The spiritual benefits attracted new members who had the resources, skill, and drive to turn the company around entirely, and who were more committed than the older membership of working poor had ever been to addressing the concerns of the apostolic visitors about the state of the building, the altars, and liturgical services.38 The Lateran franchise was not the only innovation stimulating devotional consumption at the Compagnia dei Poveri. In 1604, Pope Clement VIII granted the confraternity the right to liberate one prisoner annually who had been condemned to death, or one who had fled or been banned from the city for a capital crime. This was one of the classic legal loopholes of the ancien régime, fashioned less out of a concern for justice than as a way of signaling and advancing special privileges that could produce honor and income.39 Gregory XIII had first revived the practice locally by granting the privilege in 1576 to the Compagnia di S. Maria della Morte, whose members offered spiritual assistance to criminals condemned to execution. The Morte confratelli used their privilege to release a relatively large number of women, and unlike their counterparts in Milan do not appear to have used it in order to earn money through kickbacks given under the guise of alms. The Compagnia dei Poveri followed the Morte’s example in many respects, marking the event with an impressive procession and festival. Members bearing banners and torches and accompanied by two groups of musicians marched from their church down to the Torrone prison to liberate the new brother or sister. The released prisoner got a new gray gown, a lit torch, and a privileged place in the procession that marched

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to the legate for a blessing and then back through the streets to the confraternal chapel for a mass and sermon. She or he also got a bill: for the torches, for the musicians, and no doubt for the gown and any celebrative feast afterward. Dressing the event so heavily in the trappings of baroque spirituality and then charging the considerable costs to the one liberated suggests that even if the Compagnia dei Poveri wasn’t following the Milanese model of using liberations to make money directly, it was using them unabashedly to feed its own devotional consumption and so make a bigger mark on the city. Making liberation available to those who had been banned or who had fled the city to avoid punishment suggests that they were more interested in selling the privilege to the wealthy and powerful than in making it available to poor and marginalized women.40 The ancient and wealthy Compagnia della Morte could better afford to be generous to the poor and marginalized than the relatively new and impecunious Compagnia dei Poveri. Yet the new patrician members taking over at the Poveri were intent on closing the gap. They leveraged their new privileges to gain alms for more dramatic processions, awesome spaces, and liturgical furnishings, showing that they had an acute sense of the dynamics of honor, theater, and money underlying baroque spirituality. They were spending money to raise money, and it worked. Lateran privileges and the power of liberations helped the Compagnia dei Poveri gain the funds and status to commission artworks for its oratory and launch a series of elaborate annual processions that drew in Bologna’s most powerful confraternities, including both S. Maria della Morte and S. Maria della Vita. At one of these in 1624, the company received what was quite literally the crowning touch that all of Bologna’s confraternities vied for but that only a select number received: a public coronation on the steps of S. Petronio for the painted image of Mary that served as its altarpiece and that its members periodically took in procession around the streets of the city.41 The Compagnia dei Poveri’s first surviving balance sheet dates from 1652, and shows no income from dues and no outlay for unemployment, health, or maternity benefits. The income came instead from a large property portfolio containing the very fi xed investments (entrada ferma) whose absence worried the early apostolic visitors. Expenses included primarily processions, requiem masses, and ornamenting the

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church.42 The confraternal endowment had been built up through a host of small gifts and a growing number of large ones. Filippo Masolino had given 50 lire in 1594 without any conditions or obligations. His alms were swamped by larger gifts like the estate promised by the artisan Tommaso Biamaci in 1585 and finally ceded on his death thirty-five years later in 1620. On top of this came a few truly colossal sums like the 8,000-lire dowry that Barbara Tassi first promised in 1637 and that her executors transferred in 1650.43 Testators flocked to the Compagnia dei Poveri as its privileges, status, and alms moved in step with each other and rose ever higher. The overflowing balance sheet shows that Bologna’s “Company of the Poor” had metamorphosed into a club of the rich. It had been drained of its poor and its purpose and had developed by the mid-seventeenth century into an upscale confraternity with a financially secure membership that saw the confraternity as a vehicle to demonstrate its piety, patronage, and taste. Poverty was a purely abstract and metaphorical concept for these new confratelli and consorelle. They had no need of practical charity or mutual assistance on the scale and model envisioned by the confraternity’s founders, organized by Marc’Antonio Battilana, and desperately needed by the working poor who had made it the city’s largest confraternity within a decade. Yet the metaphor of poverty was clearly a powerful one in the self-fashioning and public positioning of the city’s elite in the years after the Council of Trent, particularly as they were expected to perform public acts of charity and so demonstrate through their mercy the qualità that made them fit rulers of Bologna. The Compagnia dei Poveri was not the only confraternity to turn its embarrassment of riches toward devotional consumption rather than to charitable functions. While the Esposti’s congregazione was willing to imprison single mothers in order to reduce their payments to wetnurses, they were not so mean when it came to came to paying artists, architects, and builders to adorn the spaces in which they met. Through the sixteenth century they had been acquiring canvases from artists like Prospero Fontana, Biagio Pupini, and Girolamo da Carpi. Decades earlier the Bentivoglio had spearheaded a massive reconstruction project for the Esposti’s quarters complete with a prominent arcaded facade on Strada S. Mamolo that echoed the portico of the Innocenti in Florence. The

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project ran out of funds when the Bentivoglio were run out of town, and it had ground to a halt in 1511 with its upper story unadorned. The congregazione never bothered completing the portico, but turned by the seventeenth century to expanding the cultic spaces within the complex for themselves and their wards. They began with their own oratory (completed and decorated by 1647) and then commissioned Gabriele Chellini, who had designed palaces and villas for Bolognese patricians, to reconstruct the entire complex (1677–1686), including within it a new and attractive church with an altarpiece by the local artist Giulio Valeriani.44 Another institution that did, unlike the Esposti, finish its porticoes was the OPM itself. Decades before it finished off the reconstruction of S. Maria della Pietà with a monumental portico on via S. Vitale, it was adding one to S. Gregorio. The long portico was erected a century after the beggars had first walked into S. Gregorio to inaugurate it as a shelter. It was part of a series of efforts to upgrade the shelter, the collection of relics in the church, and even the new street that now bordered the S. Gregorio shelter on its west side and that connected Via S. Vitale to the north and Via Emilia to the south. The portico was the most public face of this broader renovation project, and so it was outfitted with plaques that credited both Pope Clement IX and Cardinal Legate Carlo Carafa while also recording that two of the Lady Prioresses, Lavinia Manzola Duglioli and Dorothea Marescalca Zambeccari, had provided the funds and motive force driving the project.45 The OPM’s monumental porticoes were only two in a series of architectural projects by which Bologna’s major charities and hospitals were reshaping Bologna’s urban fabric. The ospedali of S. Francesco, S. Bartolomeo di Reno, and S. Onofrio marked prominent intersections with new buildings in the severely classical style that was popular locally and brought numerous commissions to brothers Domenico and Pellegrino Tibaldi.46 S. Maria della Morte and S. Marta extended their presence along whole city blocks in prominent locations, and S. Maria della Vita raised its profile with a dome that towered over Piazza Maggiore. Bologna was famous for its porticoes, and this form allowed some of these institutions to do little more than raise impressive facades across otherwise unchanged buildings, a clever architectural technique that the architect Sebastiano Serlio had advertised in his influential treatises

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and that Jacopo Vignola had demonstrated in his brilliant Portico of the Banks that was built to form the monumental east wall of Piazza Maggiore from 1565 to 1568.47 Other patrons took the portico in an entirely different direction. An arcade of 666 arches that stretched from the Saragozza gate up to the shrine of the Madonna di San Luca was perhaps the most extreme example of it as a both a viable free-standing form and the epitome of conspicuous devotional consumption.48 Confraternities, guilds, religious houses, and wealthy families divided up the costs (and the patronal credit) arch by individual arch. These porticoes and oratories may seem superfluous and puzzling investments for charities that were struggling to find the funds to feed and shelter their wards, and that were cutting charitable benefits and charging fees in order to balance their budgets. Yet they were vital stage sets where donors acted out the theater of spirituality and publicly demonstrated their charity and their qualità. Christians had lived for centuries with the tension of whether to invest their alms in the poor of Christ or the palace of God. It had split the Franciscan order more than once, fed the observance movements of the fifteenth century, and heated Savonarola’s thunderous preaching: “In the primitive Church the chalices were of wood, the prelates of gold; in these days, the church hath chalices of gold and prelates of wood. . . . what doest Thou, O Lord? Effunde iras tuas in gentes [Pour out thy wrath among the peoples]!”49 It is too quick and easy to dismiss devotional consumption as self-serving hypocrisy, particularly if we remember the more complicated dynamics of “showing the poor a good time” that we began with. In returning to those dynamics now, we need to remember that it would be wrong to paint those who were pouring their alms into feasts, processions, artwork, and liturgical furnishings as indifferent to the fate of the poor. What does become clear, however, is that they had aestheticized poverty, and were becoming more disconnected from the living poor around them. Romanticizing “the beggar” and ornamenting hospitals and oratories was becoming more common at the very time that treatment of actual poor vagrants was becoming more punitive and disciplinary. The Bolognese were hardly alone in this. Over the course of the sixteenth century, beggars moved from the margins and into the center of artworks as subjects in their own right. Sometimes this attention was

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negative, with the market for satiric images that mocked the lazy false beggar being strongest in northern Europe. Artists could sell these images in Italy too, and Giulio Cesare Croce (1550–1609) and Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1634–1718) were just two versatile Bolognese artists at the beginning and end of the seventeenth century who found in the various classes and types of the poor a rich subject for songs, stories, popular engravings, and woodcuts. A parallel approach developed in sacred art, where beggars became the idealized bearers of important theological points about humility, dependence, and charity. Tom Nichols argues that this was a particularly strong theme among Bolognese artists like Annibale Caracci and Domenichino, who populated their paintings of saintly charity with crowds of the poor who were monumentalized, noble, and even joyful.50 Sometimes these poor dominated the composition, pushing the saint up into a corner so that the artist could focus on the active relations among poor people who were helping each other: beggars sharing alms, mothers helping children, boys lifting friends up to get the saint’s attention and alms.51 Did Caracci and Domenichino show the poor engaging in mutual help and practical charity because this had been the aim of all the debates and experiments held locally during the years when they were growing up? We could ask the same question about Sebastiano Serlio, who apprenticed and practiced in Bologna through the very years when charitable hospitals like the Baraccano, the Esposti, and S. Marta were taking shape. Serlio later included guidelines for hospitals and charity houses in his Five Books of Architecture—one of the only theorists of the time to do so. We can only speculate what these artists may have absorbed from the lively discussion, unusual experiments, and creative atmosphere in Bologna in those decades, and how it may have shaped their expectations, thinking, and practice. There certainly emerged and spread out from the city an approach to art that wedded a deep naturalism with profound religious emotion. Paintings of the poor and of the patron saints who interceded on their behalf became critical carriers of the Bolognese baroque. That style’s distinct forms may then be an indirect example of how the concrete examples and underlying values of Bologna’s innovative network of practical charity spread through Italy and even to other parts of Europe.52

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While we can’t tell whether the politicizing of poverty inspired Bologna’s architects and artists, we can certainly see that their aestheticizing of poverty inspired its elites. Romanticizing beggars allowed the wellborn and wealthy to continue, in more palatable form, that identification with the poor that was the lesson of Christ’s parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. It had been the symbolic heart of the medieval economy of charity where alms were traded for prayers, and it continued into the patronal charity that fit so well with devotional consumption. Most of those joining the Compagnia dei Poveri, taking on office at the Ospedale degli Esposti, or serving as Lady Prioresses at the Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti were trying to take Matthew 25 seriously as they poured time and money into their cause and kept up the fiction that they were brothers and sisters with the poor of the city. Identifying with the poor was problematic, however. The poor might be honored by God, but were they honorable? We saw previously that many of the early innovators in Bologna had worked directly and closely with the poor, from Bonifacio dalle Balle entering the S. Croce conservatory to catechize the daughters of prostitutes to society women of the Casa di S. Giuseppe teaching domestic skills to the girls in their care. Yet this close relationship seldom outlasted charismatic founders. Over time, and particularly as these homes became more uniform, bureaucratic, and familiar parts of the civic welfare network, personal dealings with actual poor people could be a threat to rather than a marker of honor and qualità. The worthy rich still wanted some kind of symbolic contact with poor Bolognese, but it had to be mediated and buffered so as not to disturb their romanticized view of The Worthy Poor, much less jeopardize their personal honor. We can see the values shifting at the Compagnia della Morte. Through the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this leader among Bologna’s confraternities had powerfully underscored the brotherhood of rich and poor by writing into a single Book of the Dead (Libro dei Morti) the names of all those poor who had died under its care, whether they were long-standing members of the confraternity, paupers who had died in the beds of its hospital, or capital criminals who had been comforted through their last hours by members of its conforteria. All were equal in the eyes of God, and insofar as the Book of the Dead was the roll call of

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heaven, having your name sandwiched between those of pilgrims, paupers, whores, and thieves could only help a well-born man or woman enter heaven. Yet so intense an identification with the poor eventually ran afoul of the expanding honor code and its concern with qualità. In 1588 the Compagnia della Morte started transferring the names of criminals out of the Book of the Dead and into a separate Book of the Executed (Libro dei Giustiziati), arguing explicitly that it was shameful for honorable members to have their names recorded together with murderers, heretics, and thieves, even if these criminals had repented and died in the faith.53 Oddly enough, at the same time increasing numbers of well-to-do Bolognese were following members of the Compagnia di S. Maria della Morte conforteria into the city’s jail cells to witness the intense hours spent comforting prisoners through their last hours before execution. These charity tourists grew so large in number that the confraternity complained that the overcrowding was getting in the way of the comforting itself. It tried halfheartedly to limit the numbers—halfheartedly because it was frequently members’ own family, friends, and colleagues who were trying to crowd in.54 The paradox here of embracing an aestheticized concept of poverty while keeping the flesh-and-blood poor at arm’s length was consistent with the general movement to romanticize and spiritualize poverty while ever more tightly disciplining the poor. The growing disconnect carried over into charitable endowments themselves. As poverty became more metaphorical and the actual poor grew more distant, administrators of charitable endowments found little difficulty in making themselves the beneficiaries of the money and property that was accumulating. This was a step beyond the Monte del Matrimonio turning the savings of the poor into the mortgages of the rich. The Compagnia della Morte had another group within it, the Company of Poor Prisoners (Compagnia dei Poveri Prigionieri), whose members provided food and beds for prisoners in the city’s jails and covered the fees that prisoners had to pay before they could be released. The early sixteenth-century account books listed this group’s income and endowment as “the goods of the poor” in a clear statement of who ultimately owned the money. Yet over the course of the century, the members of this group diverted more and more of their funds to liberating smaller

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numbers of well-born prisoners. At the same time, more than one confraternity followed the path we saw in the last chapter and effectively made its endowment available as a stable mortgage fund for patrician members. The trustees charged with dispensing the income of the abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice now came entirely from the Senate, rather than from the mix of social groups originally projected, and they distributed the funds at their own will without offering an audit to the legate. Some of this income now went into dowries for their own “poor” servants, together with funds from at least two other special taxes that had been adopted to raise funds to buy food in times of famine.55 Patricians with power over the confraternal purse were clearly ingenious in finding ways to exercise charity to their friends and clients, and in at least one other controversial case their ingenuity quite literally took bread out of the mouths of the poor. When establishing his Pio Cumulo di Misericordia in 1576, Count Giovanni Pepoli had entrusted it to a group of trustees drawn from confraternities and hospitals, religious houses, and local magistracies and headed first by the Confraternity of the Shamefaced Poor (Compagnia dei Poveri Vergognosi) and later by the larger, older, and wealthier Compagnia di S. Maria della Vita. After Pepoli’s murder in prison, it fell to these trustees to invest the money and generate the stockpile of grain that would be sold at below-market prices to the poor in times of famine. Their investments in censi, monte shares, and francazione leases to families, friends, and allies rapidly multiplied the capital, yet for almost four decades the trustees made no move whatsoever to purchase even a single sack of grain. The Pio Cumulo di Misericordia was becoming a phantom, almost like the Compagnia dei Poveri, which didn’t pay benefits or the endowment of the abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice, whose income seldom trickled down to reach the poor it was intended to assist.56 Grumbling grew in the city, and when challenged by Pepoli’s own descendants in 1614, the trustees of the Pio Cumulo responded that they could not buy a single corba of grain until one year’s income from their investments was enough to buy the full 4,000 corbe that Pepoli had ordered.57 They were certainly violating the spirit of Pepoli’s bequest and possibly also the letter of it, since the original text called for the grain to be purchased out of the capital and not the annual interest. Pepoli’s

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testament simply did not support their all-or-nothing position about buying no part of the stockpile until they could buy it all. With an accumulated capital of over 100,000 lire generating an income of about 5,000 to 6,000 lire per year, the trustees could have purchased enormous quantities of grain. Yet at the prevailing prices and rates of interest, and with the narrow view of the mandate that they were working with, no grain would be available for famine relief until the capital reached 650,000 lire—a distant prospect at best. The trustees split hairs when it came to reading the will but were generous when it came to lending funds to family and friends, and this finally pushed local and papal patience over the brink. In 1619, Pope Paul V dismissed the trustees and the Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita on the grounds that they had not followed the will of the testator (“l’Amministrazione non fosse eseguite secondo la mente del Testatore”). He ordered the legate and vice legate to appoint a new commission that could take over administering the fund and revise its admittedly confusing terms of reference. While the Vita immediately protested and went to court to defend the rights of investors, the writing was on the wall. Within two years Bolognese cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi had been elected pope, and one of his first actions on taking office as Gregory XV was to sign a bull passing the accumulated funds over into the care of the archbishop alone. Curiously, the bull paid even less attention to Giovanni Pepoli’s will than the trustees had. The innovative plan for a self-perpetuating fund that would channel low-cost food to families in the city and countryside during times of famine was abandoned entirely, and the accumulated funds were devoted instead to providing funds for widows who still had children to care for.58 And so another experiment died. Aestheticizing the poor reduced their presence and needs to an abstraction. It made it easier to ignore the spirit and letter of those creative sixteenth-century charitable experiments that had aimed to help poor women, children, and men survive. The poor were still a presence, but they evoked different reactions. As we saw above, from the early decades of the seventeenth century they were vilified more directly, particularly the women and adolescent girls, and they were disciplined more tightly in those shelters that would still take them in. Shelters like the Baraccano, S. Croce, and S. Giuseppe controlled their budgets by reducing

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available spaces and increasing fees. The administrators at the OPM, which could expand to over one thousand residents during economic recessions and contract to under three hundred during times of plenty, were coming to think that those thrown into poverty by the turning of the economic or the life cycle were actually showing themselves resistant to reform and so unworthy of help. Yet alongside these ever bleaker assessments and harsher policies, one can find some oddly contrary voices. In 1623 Bologna once again faced a famine and economic downturn that forced thousands into the OPM and left authorities scrambling to find a way to feed them.59 An anonymous chronicler of this famine recorded a procession in which many hundreds of children from the S. Gregorio shelter filed into and around the city on May 25: This morning the boys and girls of the Mendicanti, both large and small, went in procession to the 4 Crosses with prayers to our Lord for the present needs, being led by the Company of S. Sebastiano, and going in an orderly fashion two by two, and the number was more than 1200. A thing very lovely to see.60

“A thing very lovely to see.” The anonymous author was appreciating the order of the procession, admittedly a bit of a marvel when it was over twelve hundred starving children who were moving peacefully through the city in search of bread. But it’s a jarring comment all the same. Starving Bolognese had walked this route for centuries, and most chroniclers had commented on how hungry and destitute they were, and what a threat to public order they could easily become. Few if any commented on their loveliness. To describe the beauty of their procession was not just to feel little fear in their presence or distress in their situation. It reduced them to the role of actors in a pious tableau who deserved help because they were quiet, obedient, and orderly. One Bolognese later in the century who satirized these sentiments savagely by simply citing them blandly was the artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli. Mitelli produced engravings of daily life for the popular market and frequently drew moralizing pictures with a raw and critical edge. In 1699 he published an image that tore into the gap between metaphor and reality and lampooned the romanticizing of beggars and aestheticizing

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of poverty. In the process, he highlighted just how far from reality devotional consumption had led patronal charity, and how much Bologna’s vaunted system of charity had been degraded as a result. Mitelli showed a procession of young beggar boys dressed in rags, carrying rosaries and prayer books, and marching behind a crucifi x. This was “The Company of many destitute boys who occupy themselves together in public prayers, trusting in divine relief by means of the charity of devout fellow citizens” (Compagnia di molti miserabili ragazzi che s’impiegano unitamente in publiche preghiere, confidando nel divino soccorso, mediante le carità de divoti concittadini) (see Figure 16).61 It was not particularly lovely to see. Mitelli’s savage message wouldn’t have been lost on his contemporaries. In describing the beggars as a “compagnia,” the term used locally for confraternities, Mitelli bitterly underscores the extent to which the lay spiritual companies had abandoned their own charitable traditions and the city’s poor. If the worthy rich could march as though they were the worthy poor, why couldn’t the truly poor march as though they were the rich? It took a sharp satirist like Mitelli to point out the low comedy of a “Compagnia dei Poveri” made up of wealthy men and women who gave a few coins to the poor and then lavished many hundreds and thousands of lire on buildings, paintings, and liturgical furnishings for their own worship. Mitelli’s inversion underscored the fraud, futility, and hypocrisy of pious exercises that reduced poverty to a metaphor. This was no ritual procession that drew rich and poor together. The poor boys followed a set of religious exercises on their own and ended up with a parade that caustically mocked the tightfistedness and indifference of Bolognese citizens. As confratelli sank more of their resources into lavish private oratories, impressive gowns, ever more ornate crucifi xes, banners, images, and music meant to move them emotionally to remorse and piety, they were able to offer less truly substantial aid to poor neighbors, beggars, or street children.62 These were clearly very different times. The particular forces and conditions that had driven the Bolognese of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to weave innovative plans into a comprehensive welfare network had faded by the end of the following century. That network was certainly costly, and those who inherited responsibility for running it

Figure 16. G. B. Mitelli, “Compagnia di molti miserabili ragazzi che s’impiegano unitamente in publiche preghiere, confidando nel divino soccorso, mediante la carità de divoti concittadini” (1699). Source: Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna, Gabinetto disegno e stampe, Cartella Mitelli, n. 86. Used with permission.

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aimed to curb those costs by cutting services and increasing fees and discipline. Yet paradoxically they also proved willing to sink even greater sums into the paintings, music, oratories, and silverware that filled that network’s public and private spaces. What had happened? Fear, ambition, and the prospect of using the poor to help build a new economy locally had been at work over a century before when Bolognese reformers came up with a set of tools that could help girls and women navigate around the periods of poverty that would inevitably hit them at different points in their life. Deep political rivalries had split Bologna’s ruling class after Julius II threw out the Bentivoglio and reopened longsimmering tensions between the advocates of communal republicanism on one hand and bureaucratic oligarchy on the other. Through the decades that followed, supporters of the old republican magistracies like the Elders and Tribunes fought with promoters of the “new” oligarchic Senate to shape Bologna’s social and political order. Both shared a fear of the Bentivoglio and the family’s potential to recruit the poor in its efforts to regain the city. Both were wary of papal authorities who wanted to squeeze as much financially out of a newly recaptured prize city without triggering revolt. Both struggled to deal with unprecedented demographic crises, and both understood that women felt these crises first and hardest. Addressing the life cycle poverty of women was one of the few points on which these two parties could collaborate. They took the opportunity to merge social needs and industrial strategies in a distinctive experimental response that brought together practical and patronal charity. Some saw this as a chance to fulfill communalist misericordia and others as a way of demonstrating elite wisdom, efficiency, and caritas. Both saw how the promise of a rapidly expanding industry that needed workers could meet the threat of hundreds of poor girls and women and so release the economic potential stored in dozens of silk mills. The lure of this potential moved them a critical step beyond seeing welfare reform strictly in terms of passive shelters where alms could be gathered and distributed more rationally to deserving citizens. Mixed motives could converge around a single goal, and in this case the mix of fears, rivalries, emerging opportunities, and ambitions drove the evolution of a network of charitable institutions that emerged in mid-sixteenth-century Bologna, up to and

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beyond the emergence of the OPM and its poorhouse. These shelters, and the various plans for mutual assistance and credit that emerged later in the century were the responses of a dynamic society to a particular series of obligations, threats, and opportunities. There was no shortage of ongoing internal tensions, as the OPM’s 1574 statutes and the later “Orders and Provisions” make abundantly clear. Yet it was not until struggles broke out over control of S. Croce, S. Giuseppe, and the Casa del Soccorso in the early seventeenth century that there were clear signs that the more bureaucratic and oligarchic senatorial party in Bologna was extending its dominance beyond politics. The intermarrying elite set the tone and the agenda for culture and religion as well as politics, and they directed their energy, creativity, and resources into devotional consumption, with real consequences for the network of charitable homes and institutions. In these same years, the Compagnia dei Poveri was forced by archepiscopal authorities to promote devotional priorities over charitable ones. The spiritual priorities of a few rich members who were willing to cooperate with these authorities transformed and shrank a confraternity that had once been, thanks to the social priorities of a flood of poor members, the largest spiritual company in Bologna. The shift was emblematic of an aestheticizing of poverty that was working through a whole range of Bolognese confraternities and their charitable institutions. Ever more noble members aimed to associate themselves more closely with a romanticized concept of poverty while distancing themselves ever more deliberately from close contact with the actual poor. Like the Silk Guild, they directed more of their patronal charity to canvases, candlesticks, and choirs and less to bread, wine, and firewood. By the 1680s, the political threats had evaporated and Bologna’s social and economic dynamism were fading. The political threat of the Bentivoglio and the possibility that they might recruit Bologna’s poor to their cause was not even a distant memory. The former signorial family had long since been reabsorbed into the oligarchies of the Papal State, some in Rome, some in Ferrara, and some in Bologna itself. The political tensions between the republican and oligarchical parties had also largely passed away. The Elders and Tribunes of the People accepted their subordinate roles, while the ever-narrowing senatorial elite was confident in

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its ever-broadening powers. Ambitions about the unlocked potential of hundreds of poor in a network of charitable shelters had proven hard— impossible really—to realize. Adolescent girls in conservatories might well be efficient workers, so long as the incentives and the locks on their doors were strong enough. By contrast, adult women in shelters and general workhouses were a big disappointment economically, so work, subsidies, and imagination gradually faded, leaving little more than the locks on their doors. As the silk industry found its labor force in the countryside and in convents and conservatories, the other shelters for adult women gradually reshaped their purpose and character away from forms of practical charity that aimed to relieve female life cycle poverty through assisted self-help. They focused instead on the short-term punishment of the able-bodied, the paid boarding of orphaned children, and the long-term paid care of those disabled by insanity, or by the accidents of birth or old age. This was increasingly what practical charity looked like as the elites of the ancien régime lost both the economic ambitions and the social and political anxiety that had once made them responsive and creative. The tremendous innovation and experimentation that had built the most imaginative network of social welfare in sixteenth-century Italy ebbed away because the poor generally and poor women in particular were no longer a threat to be mitigated, a challenge to be reformed, or a resource to be exploited. They remained a symbol, though a complicatedly multivalent one. Who were the poor really? Were their greatest needs material ones, or were they more artistic and spiritual? Were the rich not, in their own way, poor and needy as Christ had preached? Giuseppe Maria Mitelli offers us a dramatic image with which to end a story of the rise and fall of an imaginative experiment in social welfare. Bologna’s charitable institutions still devoted themselves to dealing with poverty, and above all with women’s life cycle poverty, but a creative period of tensions and innovation was over. By the end of the seventeenth century Bologna’s system relied, as so many others in Italy and across Europe did, on a very conventional combination of fees and discipline. A self-absorbed social elite expropriated many of the institutions, forms, and resources of poor relief, and used them for its own purposes. Using Mitelli to end the story here suggests that the story does indeed have an

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end. Yet that is misleading. Mitelli’s satire points to a particular low ebb, but it is only a single image within a single line of development. He may highlight the unraveling of a particular line of initiatives within a particular set of institutions, but as we’ve already seen, these had themselves emerged as makeshift adaptations of earlier initiatives in institutions that had their own history. Bologna’s network of institutional supports for the poor consisted of many individual parts that had emerged at different times and under different conditions. They all rose out of the values of a very active civil society that emphasized collective action and that consistently aimed at finding new ways to help poor or vulnerable women in particular. This creative society’s messy evolution continued to throw up new, reactive, and adaptive plans that continued to employ older communal forms like guilds and confraternities, and that continued to demonstrate the interweaving of practical and patronal charity. The city developed an innovative system of city doctors who were paid only upon completion of a course of treatment, and then only if there was a cure.63 Guilds retained significant authority locally in regulating production and labor in the local economy, and in pushing innovations in methods and production techniques. The guild model was, in fact, so strong that local servants were able to move it beyond productive industries and into the service sector. This large group within the working poor formed a guild in the seventeenth century to defend their interests, and managed to keep it going into the eighteenth century.64 This suggests that creative plans for using collective organization and regulation to help the working poor were far from dead in ancien régime Bologna. All of these plans emerged in response to need and opportunity, and they evolved in defiance of any neat and linear narrative long after the Papal State, senators, and tribunes had disappeared, and the drives for qualità and devotional consumption had fastened on other goals. The French Revolution, the Risorgimento, and two world wars eliminated most traces of the society that emerged in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Or did they? Political upheavals might bring down a social order, but bits of older institutions and many older values reappeared in the new orders that replaced them. Twentieth-century Bologna became famous as a center of the cooperative movement and the Communist

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Party, apparently radical departures that we might see on closer inspection as continuations in altered form of practical charity, an economy managed for public benefit, and republican corporatism. The postwar welfare state aimed to build capacity and self-reliance, and relieved the most desperate forms of poverty by granting shelter, health care, and subsistence as a human right, often incorporating elements of the network first constructed centuries earlier. The nineteenth- and twentiethcentury process of readapting these older institutions to meet evolving needs was not unlike what happened in early modern Bologna, and women’s life cycle needs continued to shape many of them. The foundling home of the Esposti metamorphosed into a clinic for mothers and infants, while the OPM’s S. Gregorio and S. Orsola shelters evolved into a single and highly respected medical hospital. The confraternity of the Poveri Vergognosi, which had traditionally helped the worthy poor from better families, built university residences for young women, and the Monte del Matrimonio refocused its efforts on helping young women and men save for marriage and children, and offering charity to poor families.65 While the political and religious contexts have changed radically and the concerns around poverty and gender are less acute, the city continues to evolve through the politics and economics of makeshifts as a vibrant civil society.

Notes

i n t r odu c t io n 1. “La enorme gravessa di peccati commessi la notte nelle publiche strade . . . da alcuni mendicanti, la miseria di moltri altri di loro, che li conduce fi nalmente senza alcun sacramento di sta Chiesa a moriri sopra le strade al cospetto fi tutti a guisa d’animali brutti, et la insolenza de tutti loro nelle Chiese”. Temendo una “qualche provvisione divina”, i provveditori spiegano che “essendo tutte provisioni che tentate non ha giovato, doveche dalle esperienze passate siamo fatti avvertiti che altro remedio non vi sia che serar in un hospitale questi mendicanti si come hanno fatto molte citta’d’Italia, et in particolare Bologna”. Supplica al Senato presentata da Provveditori sopra Ospedali e Provveditori alla Sanita’ uniti in esecuzione della parte del Senato 1594, 15 marzo in merito alle risorse economiche dell’Ospedale di S. Lazzaro dei Mendicanti di Venezia. Archivio del Istituto di Ricovero ed Educazione di Venezia, Registro MEN B1, “Libro delle parti dell’Ospedale dei Mendicanti.” f. 2v. I am grateful to Andrea Vianello for this reference. 2. ASF, Pratica Segreta, ms. 184, “Regolamenti sopra Deputazione dei Poveri Bisognosi dal 1647 al 1677,” ff. 10r–11v. 3. ASF, Pratica Segreta, ms. 184, ff. 41r–48v (copy of selected parts of the first draft of the revised Bolognese statutes; the revised draft was adopted and published in 1574), 51r–53v (letter of March 11, 1576, to Grand Duke Francesco I seeking permission to license beggars). 4. On Genoa: Edoardo Grendi, “Ideologia della carità e società indisciplinata: La costruzione del sistema assistenziale genovese,” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta

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5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

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(Cremona: Biblioteca Statate, 1982), 59–75; Rodolfo Savelli, “Dalle confraternite allo stato: il sistema assistenziale genovese nel cinquecento,” Atti della società ligure di storia patria 24 (1984): 175–199. Andrea Vianello plots the rise and fall of institutionalization in Venice: Andrea Vianello, “The Confraternite dei Poveri: Confraternal Home Relief and Institutionalization of the Poor in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Venice,” in Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Christopher Black and Pamela Gravestock (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 96–111. On Florence’s shelter: Daniela Lombardi, Povertà maschile, povertà femminile. L’ospedale dei Mendicanti nella Firenze dei Medici (Bologna: il Mulino, 1988); Daniela Lombardi, “Poveri a Firenze: Programmi e realizzazioni della politica assistenziale dei Medici tra cinque e seicento,” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta (Cremona: Biblioteca Statale, 1982), 164–184; Nicholas Terpstra, “Competing Visions of the State and Social Welfare: The Medici Dukes, the Bigallo Magistrates, and Local Hospitals in Sixteenth Century Tuscany,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2001): 1319–1355. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Marina Garbellotti, Le risorse dei poveri: Carità e tutela della salute nel principato vescovile di Trento in età moderna (Bologna: il Mulino, 2006); John Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 4. Philip Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Philip Gavitt is certainly cautious in precisely this way, and evokes Pierre Bourdieu’s distinction between legal norms and actual practice to remind us that even the effects of the drive to patrilineal inheritance were not uniform or consistent. Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 24. Anton Blok, Honour and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001). See particularly the Introductory essay.

1 . show i n g t h e p o or a g o od t i m e 1. ASB OPM 2, item 6. The wide variety of official proclamations posted in Bologna can be seen in the exhibition catalogue Una città in piazza: Communicazione e vita quotidiana a Bologna tra Cinque e Seicento, ed. Pierangelo Belletini, Rosaria

Notes to Pages 22–24

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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Campioni, and Zita Zanardi (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2000). For a catalogue of proclamations issued by civic officials through the sixteenth century: Zita Zanardi, ed., Bononia manifesta: Catalogo dei bandi, editti, costituzioni e provvedimenti diversi, stampati nel XVI secolo per Bologna e il suo territorio (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1996). ASB OPM 2, item 6. The prioresses were assigned ten thousand braccia of cloth. Since one braccia was just over fi fty-eight centimeters, or approximately two feet, this was roughly equivalent to twenty thousand feet. Giovanni Calori, Una iniziativa sociale nella Bologna del ’500: L’Opera Mendicanti (Bologna: Azzoguidi, 1972); Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 179–205. Ospedali Maggiori developed in Turin 1440, Brescia 1447, Mantua 1450, Reggio Emilia 1453, Bergamo 1457, Milan 1459, Piacenza and Genoa 1471, Parma 1472, Ferrara 1478, and Modena 1488. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 32. The published plans: Provisione elemosinaria per li poveri di qualunque sorte della città di Bologna (Bologna: 1548); Modo et ordine per li poveri mendicanti fatto nuovamente nella citta di Bologna (Bologna: 1550). See also Calori, Una iniziativa sociale, 33–34. Edoardo Grendi, “Ideologia della carità e società indisciplinata: La costruzione del sistema assistenziale genovese (1470–1670),” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta (Cremona: Libreria del Comune, 1982), 59–75; Rodolfo Savelli, “Dalle confraternite allo stato: il sistema assistenziale genovese nel cinquecento,” Atti della società ligure di storia patria 24 (1984): 175–199. Andrea Vianello, “The Confraternite dei Poveri: Confraternal Home Relief and Institutionalization of the Poor in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Venice,” in Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Christopher Black and Pamela Gravestock (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 96–111. Daniela Lombardi, Povertà maschile, povertà femminile. L’ospedale dei Mendicanti nella Firenze dei Medici (Bologna: il Mulino, 1988); Nicholas Terpstra, “Competing Visions of the State and Social Welfare: The Medici Dukes, the Bigallo Magistrates, and Local Hospitals in Sixteenth Century Tuscany,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 4 (2001): 1319–1355. Nicholas Terpstra, “Confraternities and Public Charity: Modes of Civic Welfare in Early Modern Italy,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain, ed. John Patrick Donnelly and Michael W. Maher (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 97–106. Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991).

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11. For the most recent survey of these developments in Italian, see the essay collection: Adriano Prosperi, ed., Bologna nell’ètà moderna (secoli XVI–XVIII): I. Istituzioni, forme di potere, economia e società (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008). For the most recent survey in English, see the special issue, “Civic Self-Fashioning in Renaissance Bologna,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999). On the palaces built in the city: Giancarlo Roversi, Palazzi e case nobili del ’500 a Bologna (Bologna: Grafis Edizioni, 1986). On the rural villas of Bologna’s patriciate: Nadja Aksamija, “Architecture and Poetry in the Making of a Christian Cicero: Giovanni Battista Campeggi’s Tuscolano and the Literary Culture of the Villa in Counter-Reformation Bologna,” I Tatti Studies 13 (2011): 127–199; Nadja Aksamija, “Defi ning the CounterReformation Villa: Landscape and Sacredness in Late Renaissance ‘Villeggiatura,’” in Delizie in Villa: Il Giardino Rinascinmentale e i Suoi Committenti, ed. G. Venturi and F. Ceccarelli (Florence: L. S. Olsckhi, 2008), 33–63. 12. In 1576, the Senate gave 1,000 lire each to the building projects of the Jesuits and the Cathedral, and in 1758 it gave the same sum to the nuns of Corpus Domini for their construction. These regular construction subsidies appear under the category of “Altre varie spese” in the unpaginated annual registers of the fi nancial magistracy of the Camera, which oversaw the city’s budget: ASB Camera, Libri Contabili 1 (1519–1563) and 2 (1564–1588). On the Ornato: Carlo De Angelis and Giancarlo Roversi, eds., Bologna Ornata: Le trasformazioni urbane della città tra il Cinquecento e l’Ottocento, 2 vols. (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1994). The powers wielded by the Ornato had come initially through a bull of Sixtus III, but were expanded in the sixteenth century under Leo X, Pius IV, Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V; see the collection of decrees gathered together December 18, 1586: BCB Gozz 166 #9, ff. 91r–114v. For building by charitable institutions: Nicholas Terpstra, “The Qualità of Mercy: (Re)building Confraternal Charity in Early Modern Bologna,” Ritual, Spectacle, Image: Confraternities and the Visual Arts in the Italian Renaissance, ed. Barbara Wisch and Diane Cole Ahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 117–145; T. Barton Thurber, “Architecture and Civic Identity in Late Sixteenth-Century Bologna: Domenico and Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Projects for the Rebuilding of the Cathedral of San Pietro and Andrea Palladio’s Designs for the Façade of the Basilica of San Petronio,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 455–474. 13. On Piazza Maggiore and its architectural refashioning: Richard J. Tuttle, Piazza Maggiore: Studi su Bologna nel Cinquecento (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). For more on Aldrovandi, his museum, and his garden: Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 17–31, 256–258. 14. Richard J. Tuttle, “Against Fortifications: The Defense of Renaissance Bologna,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 41, no. 3 (1982): 189–201. 15. Caroline P. Murphy, “‘In Praise of the Ladies of Bologna’: The Image and Identity of the Sixteenth-Century Bolognese Female Patriciate,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 440–454. 16. Charles Dempsey, Annibale Caracci and the Beginnings of Baroque Style (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); Caroline P. Murphy, Lavinia Fontana:

Notes to Pages 28–32

17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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A Painter and Her Patrons in Sixteenth-Century Bologna (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture Volume One: Books I–V of “Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva,” ed. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture Volume Two: Books VI and VII of “Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva”, with “Castrametation of the Romans” and “The Extraordinary Book of Doors,” ed. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). The 200-lire cost of the horse race marking Gregory XIII’s election was covered by the Camera of Bologna: see under “Altre varie spese” in the unpaginated annual account books: ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili 1–3. Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna Perlustrata I (Bologna: 1650), 117. Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 96–98; Alfeo Giacomelli, “Conservazione e innovazione nell’assistenza bolognese del Settecento,” in Forme e soggetti dell’intervento assistenziale in una città di antico regimento (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1986), 208. John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). ASB Osp, S. Maria della Morte, ms. XI/19, “Libro Campione, 1510–1571,” cc. 2r, 7r. ASB PIE S. Maria Maddalena, 79, “Quaderno del Guardiano, 1574–79,” cc. 2r–v, 11r–v, 18r–v. BCB Gozzadini 182, #20, f. 121r–122v. The Festa della Porchetta generated many songs and pamphlets at the time, with some of the best by the popular writer Giulio Cesare Croce in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (including L’eccellenza e il trionfo del porco [Ferrara: 1594], La vera historia della piacevolissima festa della Porchetta che si fa ogn’Anno in Bologna il giorno di S. Bartolomeo [Bologna: 1599], and Canzone sopra la Porcellina che si trà giù del Palazzo dell’Illustrissima Città di Bologna, per la Festa di S. Bartolomeo [Bologna: 1622]). Croce added details and variations, noting that the costs were covered by the Anziani, who in the days before the festa had large quantities of pork roasted and delivered to highborn men and women and also to pregnant women and their families. Studies over the past century have aimed to push the festa’s origins back into the twelfth century, but while medieval chroniclers sometimes refer to races on S. Bartolomeo, there are no clear contemporary references to food being thrown from the Palazzo Communale before about 1542. The real flood of accounts and illustrations begins only in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when it became progressively more lavish. For a structuralist reading: Lorena Bianconi, Alle origini della festa bolognese della Porchetta: Overro San Bartolomeo e il cambio di stagione (Bologna: CLUEB, 2005). See also Lorena Bianconi, “San Bartolomeo e la Porchetta: Indagine storico-antropologica intorno a una festa popolare bolognese,” Atti e memorie della deputazione di storia patria per le province di Romagna, n.s. 58 (2007): 439–466.

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Notes to Pages 33–37

25. Giuseppe Guidicini, Cose notabili della città di Bologna, vol. 4 (Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1873), 69–75. 26. ASB PIE S. Maria Maddalena, 79, “Quaderno del Guardiano, 1574–79,” cc. 2r–v, 11r–v, 18r–v. Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 169–173. 27. Masini, Bologna Perlustrata, I, 252; “Ordine alli R. R. Curati intorno al cercare limosine per li poveri Mendicanti,” in Episcopale Bononiensis civitas et diocesis: Raccolta di varie cose, che in diversi tempi sono state ordinate da monsig. illustriss. et reverendiss. cardinale Paleotti vescovo di Bologna: Per lo buon governo della sua città e diocesi (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1580), 161–162. 28. The Cameral gifts to the poor were listed among “altre varie spese” in the annual unpaginated accounts. Clothing twelve paupers on Holy Thursday cost 180 lire in the 1570s, and had risen to 220 lire by the 1590s. The “Poor of St. Job” received a standard 100 lire throughout this period. ASB Assunteria di Camera—Libri Contabili 1 (1519–1563), 2 (1564–1588), and 3 (1589–1618). 29. For Venetian carnival ritual: Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 86–88. For opening-day celebrations at Florence’s Abbandonati orphanage (June 24, 1542): ASF, Compagnia poi Magistrato del Bigallo, 1679 cc. 35r, 37v.; Lucia Sandri, “I regimi alimentari negli ospedali fiorentine alla fi ne del Medioevo e in Età Moderna,” in Aspetti di vita e di cultura fiorentina, Lucia Sandri et al. (Florence: Accademia della Fiorentina, 1995), 8–12. 30. Christ’s parable of the sheep and the goats is in Matthew 25: 31–46. While Mary Magdalen was credited with this act in medieval Christian tradition, two of the gospel accounts do not name the woman (Matthew 26: 6–13, Mark 14: 3–9) while a third credits Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus of Bethany (John 12: 1–8). Luke’s gospel describes a similar action by an unnamed woman in the earlier stages of Jesus’s ministry (Luke 7: 36–50). Pope Gregory I conflated three gospel Marys and the unnamed women into the single Magdalen in 591, and this became the official Catholic position until 1969. Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995): 92–94, 133, 160–166, 194–195; Kristen L. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 18–35. Neither Haskins nor Jansen explores “wasteful” charity as a spiritual work done in imitation of the Magdalen, and it would be admittedly ambivalent, lying in a gray area between the vanitas and luxuria that characterize her before conversion, and the vita activa that characterizes her as a favored disciple after that point. 31. ASB OPM 2, filza 1. The Augustinian Canons took over S. Gregorio in 1254. It was in the control of the bishop of Bologna in 1317, given to the Canons Regular of S. Giorgio in 1419, used as a plague hospital in 1507, bought by the civic authorities and turned into a lazzaretto in 1527, but quickly adapted the following year to take in girls orphaned by the plagues of 1527–1528. Masini, Bologna Perlustrata, I, 117; Maria Lena Cinti, “Mendicità e carestie nella Bologna del Cinquecento: La fondazione dell’Ospedale dei Mendicanti” (Tesi di Laurea, University of Bologna, 1967–1968), 194–198. 32. Ospittalle di Mad.a S.ta Maria della Misericordia de Poveri Mendicanti (ASB OPM 300 Libro +, [1563–1566], f. 1r; ASB OPM 302 Mastro A, [1566–1569] f. 1r).

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33. “Primo hanno disposto, e statuito che’l’titolo dell’Hospitale che se instituisse per allogiar li poveri Mendicanti secondo la contentuta del Breve, sia questo Hospitale de Santa Maria della Misericordia de poveri Mendicanti.” The first chapter of the 1564 statutes states the name, and the second chaper adds the location: “Di piu hanno ordinato che’l luogo, e casa di detto Hospitale per hora sia li casamenti di san Gregorio fuori de la porta di Strasanvidale . . . Istitututione, provisione, e capitoli” [1564], n.p., [p. 3]. 34. Roisin Cossar, The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265–c. 1400 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); John Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). 35. Daniel Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). 36. The 1570 report sent to the Bolognese Legation in Rome still referred to the OPM’s main shelter as the “Ospitale di Madonna S. Maria di Misericordia”: AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart 638, fasn. 61n. (October 24, 1570). 37. Antonio Masini noted that he had died like a saint, and that he “had been grand in all his actions and a true imitator of the Great St. Gregory the Pope, and for his goodness and his superlative virtues he was universally mourned by all.” Masini’s encomium comes in a note in Bologna Perlustrata on the deceased pope’s “feast day” of April 10, and it suggests that there were efforts under way to promote the canonization of the pope, complete with attribution of miracles. Masini, Bologna Perlustrata, I, 277. 38. Gregory Martin, Roma Sancta (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1969), book 2, chap. 1, 107–108. 39. Gregory XIII preached October 5, 1583, and raised 1183.14.06 lire for the OPM, its largest one-day sermon collection since the Lenten series of Fra Teofi lo twenty years earlier: ASB OPM 307 Mastro D (1584–1589): f.124r. 40. Maria T. B. Russo, “Problemi e istituti dell’assistenza romana nel cinque e seicento,” Studi romani 34 (1986): 233–240; Paola Simoncelli, “Note sul sistema assistenziale a Roma nel XVI secolo,” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. G. Politi et al. (Cremona: Biblioteca statale, 1982), 121–172. 41. Cardinal Filippo Boncompagni was immediately supportive, writing to all the religious houses individually in 1572 to remind them of their obligations, and also asking the OPM itself for more details on its costs and obligations. ASB OPM Cart 7, vol 2, II, #3 (September 17, 1572). 42. The two sets of statutes: 1564 statutes: Institutione provisione, e capitoli dello Hospitale, e governo delli Poveri Mendicanti della Città de Bologna (Bologna: 1564). AAB Raccolta degli statuti, cart. 26, fasc. 29, item a. A 1573 draft of the new statutes is found in ASB OPM 2, #3, and officials clearly shared it with their counterparts in Florence, because a handwritten copy of this draft can also be found in ASF Pratica Segreta, ms. 184, ff. 41r–48v. The revised statutes were published in 1574 as Statuti dell’Opera de poveri mendicanti della Città di Bologna novamente riformati & ampliati (Bologna: 1574). ASB OPM 2, #2.

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Notes to Pages 40–41

43. The committee appointed April 19, 1573, consisted of Antonio Dolphi (deacon of the canons of the civic basilica of S. Petronio), Antonio Giavarini (a doctor of laws), Marc’Antonio Volta (a senator), Ovidio Bargelini, Hieronimo Zoppio, Alfonoso Leone, Gabriele Bronzano, and Horatio Zanchino. Statuti dell’Opera de Poveri Mendicanti [1574]: AAB Raccolta degli Statuti, Cart 26, fasc. 29, item b, p. vi. 44. The OPM report to the Bolognese legation in Rome sent two years after Gregory XIII’s death refers in shorthand fashion to “one and the other hospital of the Poor Beggars,” adding a further name only to the “ospitale fuori, detto S. Gregorio,” AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart. 638, fasc. 61n (April 13, 1587). As we will see below, the S. Gregorio shelter was also sometimes called the “Casa di Fuori” (Outside House) once a “Casa di Dentro” (Inside House) for boys and men had been opened within the city walls in 1567. 45. Gregory I’s feast day is not noted as one of the feasts observed in Bologna (“feste chi si osservanto nella città di Bologna”) in a 1574 guide authorized by Bishop Gabrielle Paleotti for the use of Bologna’s confraternities. Libro da compagnie spirituali (Bologna: Alessandro Benacii, 1574), 1. 46. The Mendicanti had received some indulgences from Popes Pius IV and Pius V to help with alms collection, but they were only temporal indulgences giving seven years to those who visited one of its two churches on Ascension Day, Good Friday, or Easter. Gregory XIII gave the first plenary indulgence in 1580, for anyone who came to either church on St. Gregory’s Day. ASB OPM Cart. 9, “Indulgenze dal 1569 al 1794,” #2 (seven years for visits to S. Gregorio or S. Maria della Pietà, the church of the Casa di Dentro, on Ascension Day—granted April 27, 1569, by Pius IV); #3 (seven years for visits to S. Gregorio on Good Friday—granted February 8, 1572, by Pius V); #4 (seven years for visits on Easter—granted March 31, 1574, by Gregory 13), #5 (plenary indulgence for visits to either S. Maria della Pietà or S. Gregorio church on S. Gregory Day— granted February 20, 1580, by Gregory 13). See also Masini, Bologna Perlustrata, I, 252. 47. ASB OPM 7, Item 1, “1603 al 1646: Bandi diversi per L’observanza della festa di S. Gregorio.” The text of the 1603 bando read: “Per parte, e comandamento dell Ill.mo et R.mo Mons. Card. Legato di Bologna, si Comanda ad’ogni et qualunque persona di che stato grado e conditione esser si voglia che debano honorare, et santificare la festa di S. Gregorio Dottore di S. Chiesa, che sera alli 12 del presente Mese di Marzo, tenendo serate le Boteghe, et astenendovi da esercitio mecanico, sotto pena de Lire 25 di quattrini da applicassi a luoghi pij, et altre ad Arbitrio de SS Ill.mo et R.mo. Data Bononie die 6 mensis Marti 1603.” Text, timing, and penalty remain the same through the period covered by this folio. The first 1603 text has notes added in different hands at the bottom that renew it for 1604 and 1605 (suggesting that 1603 may represent the first time the observance is celebrated). Also, on very bottom is the note from the city’s two banditori that they have announced this in the usual ways and places: “Noi Lodovico Rivali et Simon Bassi banditori di questa Ill.ma Cita di Bologna a’bian publicato il presente Santa bando in forma solita neli luochi solite questo di 11 di marzo 1603.” 48. Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Notes to Pages 42–47

49.

50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56.

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Press, 2003), 106–114; Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 75–76; “Charité, ” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité II (Paris: 1953), 507–661; “Miséricorde (Oevres de),” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité LXVIII–LXIX (Paris: 1979), 1328–1349. Brian Pullan makes a similar distinction while reversing the terminology in his essay: “Catholics, Protestants, and the Poor in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35, no. 3 (2005): 441–456. “hanno pero di piu ordinato doversi ancora instituire per la Compagnia sudetta de li huomini, un altra simil Compagnia di gentil Donne, & Cittadine da doversene far matricola, & imbursolatione da estraerne Assone a visitare l’Hospitale, & fare operar le Donne, & putte allogiate, tener conto de la biancaria s’indicar le Guardiane, e generalmente esser soprastante, & haver cura a quanto sapartiene a cura, e governo di Donna in simil soggietto, & opera.” AAB Raccolta degli statuti. Cart. 26, fasc. 29, #1, [5; 29]. On male officers [4–6, 12–29]. ASB OPM 2, #2, 27–28. “di trattarsi fra loro per utilità de detti poveri & per decoro del vivere loro in quelle parti che all’Officio di buone Madri di fameglia si ricercano.” ASB OPM 2, #2, 28. Through the latter half of the sixteenth century, the amount was fi xed at 739 lire for the Anziani “famiglia” and 296 lire for the Senate “segretari.” See under December expenses in the unpaginated annual folio account books issued by the Camera: The “tri pasti” for members of the College of Arts cost 200 lire annually. ASB Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili mss. 1 (1519–1563), 2 (1564–1588), and 3 (1589–1618). The 1573 draft revision of the statutes noted: “Et se cosa alcuna per la Congregatione loro si risolvera che ha da farsi; la qual’cosa si appartenga, non a loro, ma al Massaro overo ad altri officiali; sara officio della priora farne advertito esso Massaro o altri officiali predetti della Congregatione de gl’uomini; accio che non si manche di provederne opportunamente alli bisogni.” ASB OPM 7/3, [p. 74]. The 1574 published text retained this reading (ASB OPM 2, #2, 28), but by 1604, the OPM had changed the title of the chief officer from massaro to camerlengo. S. Maria Maddalena’s 1560 statutes authorized only the prior and masssaro to spend money on the feast, using no more than twelve lire of the confraternity’s funds; there was no ban on their putting in further funds of their own. The 1664 statute revision kept the confraternity’s contribution at twelve lire, but specifically allowed others beyond the prior and massaro to supplement this. ASB PIE S. Maria Maddalena, Cart. 2, ms. 2, c24r; ms. 3, cap. XX. Angelo Torre, Il consumo di devotioni: Religione e comunità nelle campagne dell’Ancien Regime (Venice: 1995). This competition made Venice a center for the composition and performance of baroque music but also made it increasingly difficult for the scuole to recruit officers. Jonathan Glixon, Honoring God and the City: Music at the Venetian Confraternities, 1260–1807 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Cavallo, Charity and Power, 98–152; Carolyn Valone, “Women on the Quirinal Hill, Patronage in Rome, 1560–1630,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 1 (1994): 129–146; Murphy, “‘In praise of the ladies of Bologna,’” 440–454. See also, Murphy, Lavinia Fontana, chapters 1 and 3.

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58. ASB OPM ms. 10, 40r–v. 59. Philip Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 95. 60. ASB OPM 2 #2 (1574 statutes), #4 (1603 reprint), and #6 (chapters pertaining to gentlewomen, and the broadsheet of Ordine e provisione). 61. The three were the church of S. Gregorio, rebuilt by the communal government in 1544; the church of S. Maria della Pietà within the Casa di Dentro, consecrated 1591; and the chapel of SS. Annunziata within the Ospedale di S. Orsola, which in April 1595 received a legacy of 1,000 lire from Senator Count Girolamo Boschetti to hire a priest who would live there and celebrate mass in the chapel. ASB OPM ms. 84, “Reportorio Opera Mendicanti 1200–1800” (April 19, 1595). 62. The 347 lire was recorded as “diverse robbe di mobili havuti per elemosina da diverse Gentildonne.” OPM 310 Mastro E (1590–1597), ff. 88r–v. 63. Signora Antonia Malvezzi spent 1451.19.10 lire and reimbursed 719.13.10 The value of this extraordinary volume of clothing may be what is recorded in an unusual entry of 2091.11 lire for clothing, linens, and underwear (biancheria) in the first semester of 1596; it is the only entry for biancheria in the thirteen semesters recorded in this Libro Mastro. OPM 310 Mastro E (1590–1597), ff. 203r; 225r–26v, 360r–v. 64. Sandri, “I regimi alimentari,” 15. 65. See n. 30 above. Haskin, Mary Magdalen, 224–290; Jensen, Making of the Magdalen, 18–35. 66. Ordinationi generali per il buon governo di tutti gli Hospitali della Città et Diocese di Bologna (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1595), 3, 7, 10, 12. See also Alessandro Pastore, “Usi ed abusi nella gestione delle risorse (secoli XVI–XVII),” in L’uso del denaro: Patrimoni e amministrazione nei luoghi pii e negli enti ecclesiastici in Italia (secoli XV–XVIII), ed. Marina Garbellotti and Alessandro Pastore (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 32–40. 67. Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 234–238; Cavallo, Charity and Power. 68. Two notebooks survive in the OPM Cart. 7 detailing the distribution of cloth and goods made by Lady Prioresses to staff in 1687 and 1701.These were likely similar to the ones that Prioress Antonia Malvezzi deposited in the archive in ca. 1596 (see n. 62 above). Item 8, “Tele, Mezzelane, Abiti di dette et altro, dispensate alle Case de Mendicanti, dall’ ill.ma Sig.ra Marchese Barbara Scappi Lambertini Priora di dett’Opera l’Anno MDCLXXXVII,” is comprised of two lists of goods given by Prioress Marchessa Barbara Scappi Lambertini in 1687. Lambertini noted staff members by name and recorded that each received at least “Brazza 8 tela, Brazza uno Canevallo reve, aguchio da Cucire, e stringa” [eight braccia of cloth, one braccio canevallo (likely a rough cloth of hemp, or canevo), some kitchen spoons, and laces]; some individuals also receive other gifts like wool stockings and mezza lana cloth. The second volume, Item 9, “1701 Libro della Vestita Fatta da Estate, e Inverno per L’Opera de Mendicanti sotto Il Priorato dell’Ill: ma Sig.ra Livia Alberici Pietramettara,” is organized similarly with lists of people in different segments of the OPM who in 1701 received cloth and outfits of clothing from Prioress Livia Alberici Pietramellara. It makes clear one key detail: one set of goods was for summer, and one

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for winter. Some of these are simply the uniforms and tools given by the OPM to its staff, but other items are clearly gifts, particularly those in Lambertini’s 1687 notebook. 69. The Marchesa Artimisia Magnani Malvezzi kept detailed accounts during her two terms as Priora (1705 and 1710). In 1705, they had raised a total of 6146.6.6 lire, including 3752.5.4 on St. Gregory’s Day alone. The fourteen dowries totaled 560 lire (median = 35 lire), while 1,860 lire went to meals (see menus 41r–45r), 400 to clothes, 300 to the churches, and 1,300 to establishing a garden of medicinal herbs at the S. Orsola infirmary. Expenses are itemized carefully through the volume and tallied on f. 55v. BCB, Fondo Malvezzi 201, # 2. The present to the incarcerated women was a gift of five soldi.

2 . wor t h y p o or , wor t h y r ic h 1. Bolognese authorities began blocking the streets in January 1556, half a year after Paul IV’s bull “Cum nimis absurdum” (July 14, 1555) ordered establishment of the ghettos. More permanent enclosure would follow in 1566, before the Jews were evicted entirely in July 1569. They returned in October 1586 and settled in the areas close to the old ghetto, and then were expelled for the last time by Clement VIII on February 25, 1593. Franco Bonilauri and Vincenzo Maugeri, eds., Guide to Jewish Places in Bologna (Rome: De Luca Editori, 2006), 11–16, 24–28. 2. On these four palaces see: Giancarlo Roversi, Palazzi e case nobili del ’500 a Bologna (Bologna: Grafis, 1986), 82–97, 140–151, 264–267, 278–281. 3. Alessandra, Matteo, and Betta are fictional creations, and this account of the April 18, 1563, procession of the poor into S. Gregorio is based on contemporary records. 4. Some key studies of life cycle poverty and gender: Philip Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Katherine Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Stuart Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1986); Vera Zamagni, ed., Povertà e innovazioni istituzionali in Italia dal Medioevo ad oggi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000). 5. Joel F. Harrington, The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 6. For some standard texts: Juan Luis Vives, On Assistance to the Poor, trans. Alice Tobriner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Martin Luther, “Ordinance of a Common Chest” and “Fraternal Agreement on the Common Chest at Leisnig,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 45, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962); Frank Reyner Salter, Some Early Tracts on Poor Relief (London: Methuen, 1926). On visual images: Tom Nichols, The Art of Poverty: Irony and Ideal in Sixteenth-Century Beggar Imagery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

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Notes to Pages 63–64

7. Certainly before specialized homes like Florence’s Innocenti arose, children were abandoned at fonts placed by the doors of general hospitals like S. Maria della Scala in Siena. There is a large literature on foundling homes, which is reviewed in Nicholas Terpstra, “Foundling Homes,” in Oxford Bibliographies Online: Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Margaret King (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). On gender disparities: in Nuremburg’s Findel, 40.8 percent of girls admitted to care from 1557 to 1670 died, as opposed to 33.2 percent of boys. Harrington, The Unwanted Child, 258–259. Gavitt initially estimated the difference in fi fteenth-century Florence as 52.2 percent for girls and 44.3 percent for boys, but later revised this to 72 percent for girls and 65 percent for boys. Philip Gavitt, Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence: The Ospedale degli Innocenti, 1410– 1536 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990); Philip Gavitt, “‘Perche non avea chi la ghovernasse’: Cultural Values, Family Resources and Abandonment in the Florence of Lorenzo de’Medici, 1467–85,” in Poor Women and Children in the European Past, ed. John Henderson and Richard Wall (London: Routledge, 1994), 73. 8. Volker Hunecke quite decisively locates the origins of institutional foundling homes in fi fteenth-century Italy. Volker Hunecke, “L’invenzione dell’assistenza agli esposti nell’Italia del Quattrocento,” in “Benedetto chi ti porta, maledetto chi ti manda”: L’infanzia abbandonata nel Triveneto (secoli XV–XIX), ed. C. Grandi (Treviso: Canova, 1997), 273–286. 9. Gavitt, Charity and Children; Lucia Sandri, ed., Gli Innocenti e Firenze nei secoli: Un ospedale, un archivio, una città (Firenze: Studio per edizione scelte Firenze, 1996); Lucia Sandri, “Modalità dell’abbandono dei fanciulli in area urbana: gli esposti dell’ospedale di San Gallo di Firenze nella prima metà del XV secolo,” in Enfance abandonnée et société en Europe, XIVe–XXe siècle (Rome: Ecole Francaise de Rome, 1991), 993–1015; Pier Paolo Viazzo, Maria Bortolotto, and Andre Zanotto, “Five Centuries of Foundling History in Florence: Changing Patterns of Abandonment, Care, and Mortality,” in Abandoned Children, ed. Catherine Panter Brick and Malcolm T. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 70–91. 10. The hospital was formally known first as the Ospedale di S. Procolo, and after its union with a home run by the Cathedral canons as S. Procolo e S. Pietro. Yet even official documents and public bandi referred to it as either the “Bastardini” or the “Esposti” (the name that will be used consistently here to avoid confusion). It admitted fi fty-one infants from August 1475 through December 1478. Ugo Santini, Bologna sulla fine del Quattrocento (Bologna: Niccola Zanichelli, 1901), 142; Mario Fanti, “L’Ospedale di S. Procolo o dei Bastardini tra Medieoevo e Rinascimento,’ in I Bastardini: Patrimonio e memoria di un ospedale bolognese, autori varii (Bologna: Amministrazione provinciale di Bologna, 1990), 12, 17, 23, 28, 34. 11. The wealthy and prominent militia Compagnia dei Lombardi and the cathedral canons’ Ospedale di S. Pietro were both merged into the Esposti in 1494, the former forcibly and only temporarily; once the Bentivoglio fell, it recovered its independence. Three rural ospedali in Mongiorgio, Savigne, and Zappolino joined in 1495, while the urban ospedali of S. Bovo and S. Maria Violetta joined in 1497 and 1516

Notes to Pages 64–68

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

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respectively. BCB B36 #34, ff. 103r–104v. See also: Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna Perlustrata I (Bologna: Erede di Vittorio Benacci, 1666), 416–417. Nicholas Terpstra, “Frati, confratelli, e famiglie dirigenti: fanciulli esposti tra carità e politica nella Bologna del Rinascimento,” in Confraternite, chiesa, e società: Aspetti e problemi dell’asscociazionismo laicale europeo nel età moderna e contemporanea, ed. Liana Bertoldi Lenoci (Bari: Schena Editore 1994), 105–114. See the acts of the seminar on “L’Ospedale degli Esposti: un archivio per la storia della città” (March 14, 1989) published in a special issue of Sanità scienza e storia 2 (1989), edited by Gian Paolo Brizzi and Fabio Giusberti, with particular attention to the editors’ preface (29–34), and the articles by Adanella Bianchi, “‘L’elemosina di un bambino’: Pratica e controllo dell’abbandono all’ospedale dei Bastardini (secc. XVI–XVIII),” 35–54; and Claudia Pancino, “La levatrice fra delazione e segretezza,” 117–126. BUB ms. 2012, Busta 8, #13 [1580]. BCB B694, pp. 265–266 [1588]. BCB B695, pp. 127–128 [1589]. BUB ms 89, Busta II #6, ff. 35r–v [1591]. Many of the Esposti’s own records, including those for the infants themselves, were lost when it moved across the street to the old Benedictine monastery of S. Procolo in 1801 and also when it was reorganized by the Napoleonic government in 1808. Only a limited number of fi nancial records and reports from the Esposti to other authorities survive, including reports from 1670 to 1691, which show abandonments ranging from 176 to 307 annually. Adanella Bianchi, “‘Le’elemosina di un bambino’: Practica e controllo dell’abbandono all’ospedale dei Bastardini (secc. XVI–XVIII,” Sanitá e storia 2 (1989): 39, 46–47. Philip Gavitt makes this concern with honor the focus of Gender, Honor, and Charity, his study of evolving charitable institutions for women in Florence. For an expanded treatment of what follows, see Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 28–36. For the Bentivoglio and their palace: Elizabeth Louise Bernhardt, “Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio between Fact and Legend: Marriage, Family, Politics & Reputation in Renaissance Bologna” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2006); William E. Wallace, “The Bentivoglio Palace: Lost and Reconstructed,” Sixteenth Century Journal 10 (1979): 97–114. Bentivoglio and his troops did aim to disrupt the city by ravaging the countryside after they were turned back from the city gates in March 1527. See Eliseo Mamelini, Cronaca e storia bolognese del primo Cinquecento nel memoriale di ser Eliseo Mamelini, ed. V. Montanari, Quarderni culturali bolognesi 3, no. 9 (1979): 52 [devastation March–May]. For the tensions between these ruling bodies within the government: Angela De Benedictis, ed., Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo) (Bologna: CLUEB, 1999). See particularly the essays by De Benedictis, “Identità politica di un governo popolare: la memoria (culturale) dei Tribuni delle Plebe,” 13–83; and Matthew Thomas Sneider, “‘Ai Collegi la ‘causa del popolo e deli poveri pestilenti’: Il governo dell’abbazia dei SS. Naborre e Felice, 1510–25,” 85–102.

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Notes to Pages 70–75

20. The dowry fund began in 1535: ASB PIE S. Maria del Baraccano, 43, #41/2. For the later expanded funds: Isabelle Chabot and Massimo Fornasari, L’economia della carità: Le doti del Monte di Pietà di Bologna (secoli XVI–XX) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1997), 17–42. 21. Giacomo Rinieri, Cronaca di Giacomo Rinieri 1535–1549, Edited by A. Antonelli and R. Pedrini. Bologna: Costa Editore, 1998. 29. 22. ASB Assunteria di Abbondanza, Diversorum 1, fi lze “Abbondanza Miscellanea 1523–1540.” This fi le contains many dozens of slips of the fede issued by border guards to allow merchants to go to the Palazzo Communale and collect their premium for bringing in sacks of “foreign” grain in 1539–1540. Most are signed by either the Capitano of Malalbergo, who controlled access along the canal from the Po River and Ferrara, or the tax collector at the Galliera gate, who recorded grain arriving from Siena. The fede noted the date, the number of sacks of grain, where it was coming from, and who was transporting it. 23. The Bolognese corba held seventy-eight liters and fed one adult for three or four months. Rinieri, Cronaca di Giacomo Rinieri, 302. 24. Rinieri, Cronaca di Giacomo Rinieri, 65–66, 72, 78–79. The price of grain rose from five lire ten soldi per corba in November 1539, peaking at thirteen lire per corba in April–May 1540. The parishes targeted were S. Procolo and S. Caterina de Saragozza. 25. There were public edicts on April 24, June 4, and June 12, and processions on May 2, 3, 6, 9, and 17, the last one bringing out all the guilds, confraternities, mendicant friars, and parish priests. The Marsili-Colonna wedding was celebrated May 13. Rinieri, Cronaca di Giacomo Rinieri, 78–82. 26. ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, ms. 178, 244v. (November 7, 1544). 27. “A cause che li poveri non alloggiasseno alli hospitali in confuso homini donne et putti insieme, S.S.R.ma ordino e dessigno li hospitali dove distinti et separati l’uno da l’altro dove havesseno da alloggiare gli homini dove le donne et dove li putti et impose pene alli contrafacienti,” ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, ms. 178, 244v. (December 10, 1544). 28. Provisione elemosinaria per li poveri di qualunque sorte della Città di Bologna (Bologna: Anselmo Giacarello, 1548), 1. 29. Giovanni Angelo de’Medici served as vice legate in Bologna June 26, 1547, to June 5, 1549. Mario Pasquali and Massimo Ferretti, “Cronotassi critica dei Legati, vice legati, e governatori di Bologna dal secolo XVI al XVII,” Atti e memorie del deputazione per la storia patria di Emilia Romagna n.s. 23 (1972): 133–134. 30. Provisione elemosinaria, 2–7. See also Zita Zanardi, ed., Bononia Manifesta: catalogo dei bandi, editti, costituzioni e provvedimenti diversi, stampati nel XVI secolo per Bologna e il suio territorio (Bologna: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1996), 18, #102; Giovanni Calori, Una iniziativa sociale nella Bologna del ’500: L’Opera Mendicanti (Bologna: Azzoguidi, 1972), 33–35. The 1548 plan also closely resembles the practice of zakat in Islam, where subsistence is distributed out of divine obligation rather than individual charity and often through personal relationships between rich families and needy poor. Amy Singer, Charity in Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30–65.

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31. Innocenzo del Monte (1532–1577) was adopted by the brother of Cardinal Giovanni del Monte, and was widely reputed to have been the cardinal’s lover before and after del Monte was elected Pope Julius III (February 7, 1550); he was not actively involved in the work of the Bolognese legation. He had little education or administrative ability, and while being born in poverty may have made him more sensitive to the needs of the poor, we have no evidence that it resulted in direct action against poverty. Julius III legitimated the eighteen-year-old and appointed him a cardinal shortly after his election. P. Messina, “Del Monte, Innocenzo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 38 (Rome: Treccani, 1990). 32. The Bolognese badges were called “ferlini,” and were used at least to the end of the sixteenth century in order to mark out those receiving public assistance. The early badges must have been cheap and disposable, because the city paid only ten to twenty lire annually for the stock that it needed. See the entries under “Spese varii” in the unnumbered annual volumes of the Camera: ASB Assunteria della Camera, Libri Contabili 1 (1519–1563) and 2 (1564–1588) and 3 (1589–1618). The idea of badging the poor was common across Europe as a means of identifying those with a right to beg and receive assistance; badges would be sewn onto coats or hats, and had to be visible at all times. Steve Hindle has tracked early local examples in Gloucester (1504), York (1515), Leicester and London (1517), Shrewsbury (1520), Coventry (1521), Lincoln (1543), King’s Lynn (1547), and Ipswich (1557) before the formal licensing of beggars in legislation of 1563. He notes that in the sixteenth century they were “badges of honor” that identified the wearer as respectable, worthy, and deserving of help, and they developed into signs of stigmatization only from the mid-seventeenth century. Steve Hindle, “Dependency, Shame and Belonging: Badging the Deserving Poor, c. 1550–1750,” Culture and Social History 1 (2004): 11–15. 33. The 1550 plan was published as Modo et ordine per li poveri mendicanti fatto nuovamente nella citta di Bologna (Bologna: 1550). For the role of the Elders: ASB Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1 (1530–1580), ff. 45v–48r; G. N. P. Alidosi, I signori Anziani consoli e Gonfalonieri di Giustizia della città di Bologna (Bologna: li Manolesi, 1670), 97. For the 1549–1550 plague: Rinieri, Cronaca, 236–238, 243; Zanardi, Bononia Manifesta, 20, #117; Calori, Una iniziativa sociale, 33–34. 34. Edoardo Grendi, “Ideologia della carità e società indisciplinata: La costruzione del sistema assistenziale genovese (1470–1670),” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta (Cremona: Libreria del Comune, 1982), 68–70. 35. “si puorghi maggiore suffragio che si puo, & che anche da tutto il Populo sia veduto à chi si porge la lemosina.” Modo et ordine, 4. 36. The four volumes, together with other documents regarding the poor, were registered by notary Francesco Mattessinali, the notary of the Camera degli Atti, when they were deposited on Christmas Day 1553; unfortunately they have not survived. ASB, Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1 (1530–1580), c.51r. 37. ASB Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1 (1530–1580), ff. 46r–48r 38. On December 18, 1511, papal troops burned and pillaged the convents of S. Francesco, S. Gregorio, and S. Ursolina outside the walls. The destructive campaign

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39.

40.

41.

42.

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Notes to Pages 78–81

carried on through June 10, 1512, when the papal commander, the duke of Urbino, set fields and wood lots around the city to the torch. Mamelini, Cronaca, 30–32. Reconstruction of the Church of S. Gregory began in November 1543. Rinieri, Cronaca di Giacomo Rinieri, 123. Measures promoting import of foreign grain: November 7, 1558; July 17 and 18, 1559; July 28 and 29, 1559 (Zanardi, Bononia Manifesta, 35–38, #225, 239, 240). Debt relief for peasants: August 7, 1560; July 17 and 18, 1562 (Zanardi, Bononia Manifesta, 41, # 263; 51, #326. The Essenzioni da tutti li datii per l’Introduzione di Frumento, e Biade forestiere (Exemptions on duties to promote the import of foreign grain and foodstuffs) were usually dated either in February, when seeding had been completed, or in July, after the harvest had started. See: ASB, Assunteria di Abbondanza, Stampe, Cart. 1, (1539–1579): July 28, 1559; July 17, 1559; February 17, 1560; May 15, 1562; July 19, 1563; July 8, 1563; February 21, 1563’ July 24, 1568; July 14, 1569; July 26, 1569; July 12, 1571). The bandi offered a sliding scale of premiums for foreign grain depending on the distance traveled, freed merchants of foreign grain from all price controls, and threatened fi nes of up to 500 scudi for any tax farmers who interfered with these shipments or tried to tax them (e.g., July 19, 1563, ff. 59–61). The bando of February 17, 1560 (ff. 11–12), noted that it had been proclaimed by Galeazzo Rivale, “trombeta publico,” from the public balcony (ringhiera) of the Palazzo del Podesta overlooking Piazza Maggiore. S. Maria del Baraccano (December 22, 1554) BCB Gozz 241 #1; Compagnia dei Poveri Vergognosi (1554); S. Maria della Morte (1555) ASB Osp 21(250); S. Maria della Vita (March 1555) BCB Gozz 215, #12. The infirmary of S. Giobbe had revised its statutes in 1526, the foundling home of the Esposti did so in 1570, and the orphanage of S. Bartolomeo di Reno followed in 1588. Mario Fanti, “La confraternita di S. Maria dei Guarini e l’ospedale di San Giobbe a Bologna,” in Confraternite e città a Bologna nel medioevo e nell’età modern (Roma: Herder Editrice, 2001), 451–485; Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 199–206. ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, ms. 178, ff. 328r–29v. (September 23, 1547). Bologna had cut its military budget almost in half from the 1520s to the 1540s. In 1524, for example, it paid 42,664 lire for a series of armed companies led by Bolognese patricians, and a further 36,870 lire for fi fty cavalry and an unspecified number of foot soldiers. In 1546 this had dropped to 46,000 lire, with 26,650 lire for infantry and palace guard, 14,000 lire for the cavalry, and 5,350 lire for the border guards. To the great frustration of a series of papal legates and officials in Rome, Bolognese civic authorities resisted increasing the amounts they spent on defense, with a particular battle breaking out in the 1570s over who should pay for repairs to the city’s crumbling walls, which had caused Morone so much grief three decades earlier. This was an expensive project with the Bolognese successfully avoided, giving only token amounts to fi x the worst damage. From 1594 they drew on discretionary funds to hire additional light cavalry (6,025 lire) and border guards (8,665 lire), but the amount officially devoted to military spending remained fi xed at 46,000 lire until at least 1603. See the unpaginated accounts in ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili 1 (1518–1563), 2 (1564–1588), and 3 (1589–1618). Some but not all delegates

Notes to Pages 81–88

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

51.

52.

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to the Council of Trent moved from Trent to Bologna in March 1547 to avoid plague; Charles V opposed the transfer, which was fi nally reversed September 17, 1547. “fortificasse prima con l’amore del popolo, il che si potra fare con rilassare le straordinarie gravezze.” ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, ms. 178, ff. 333r–v. (October 16, 1547). Giovanni Maria Dal Monte followed Morone as legate in 1548 and served until his election as Pope Julius III in 1550. On the dispute noted here, see: Cecilia Ciuccarelli, “Giustizia o sedizione? I Tribuni della Plebe tra Bologna e Roma, 1522–1559,” in Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo), ed. Angela De Benedictis (Bologna: CLUEB, 1999), 114–125. Sauli received the March 21 letter informing him of Julius III’s condition by early the next evening. He called together the Senate the following morning and reported back that day on his warning to them and on rumors of troop movements. He reported on his defensive moves on the 24th and got word on the 27th that Julius had died. He then called the Senate together again that day and the next to consolidate their support through the Sede Vacante. His last official letter on April 6 reported that the city was quiet. ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, ms. 1A, ff. 306r–326v. Marescalchi, Cronaca, 12. In this period, up to 20 percent of the adults in Bologna belonged to at least one confraternity: Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 83–132. The descriptions of the courtyards as “serrata” and “aperta” come from the 1564 statutes: Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564], n.p. [p. 9]. In the first year, the OPM spent 2,125 lire on new clothing for poor entrants to the poorhouse. Bishop Campeggi had been an active supporter of the OPM plan from the time he became bishop in 1555 until his death in September 1563, and his testamentary gift of 4,000 lire was the first large legacy the OPM received. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 41r–v. Doctors Roberto and Francesco, the doctors named in the first Libro Mastro for 1563–1565, received five lire monthly, while Giambatista received half that. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 6r–v, 17r–v, 40r–v. The 1574 statutes specified that the doctor ( fi sico) had to be trained, experienced, and expert (“dottorati . . . non per privilegio, ma in collegio de Dottori, & ben pratici & esperti nell’arte del medicare”): Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti, 17. These strictures were in keeping with Bologna’s exceptional patient-centered health service, which required payment only if a doctor’s cure was effective. See: Gianna Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healing, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). “Provisione del modo & ordine da servarsi nello accettare nella Casa de Mendicanti i veri poveri Mendici.” ASB OPM, 2 Stampe varie, 5a (handwritten original: 10-I1567), 5b (printed broadsheet). This is then expanded on in the revised statutes: Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574], 11–12. The OPM here claimed authority to set aside wills and make a first claim on the estate of anyone who died under its care, although I have found no evidence of lawsuits. On September 17, 1563, the OPM paid one lire “al chiavaro della Porta Stra S. Vittale chi aspettasse gli n.ri putti.” ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 18r–v.

304

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Notes to Pages 89–93

53. Bonilari and Megauri, Guide to Jewish Places, 25–26. 54. In 1563, S. Gregorio alone had a paid staff of seventeen: ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 6r–v, 9r, 17v, 20r–v, 29r–v, 35r–v, 40r–v. By 1587, the staff for the two homes had sunk to thirteen. AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart 638, 61n. 55. AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart 638, fasc. 61n. The OPM purchased the house from Alessandro Malvezzi for 6,000 lire on November 25, 1566; between OPM payments and releases by Alessandro and his son, Roberto, it was paid for by December 20, 1569. ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, busta 76, fasc. 7, “Mendicanti limosine.” 56. Shortly after opening, the OPM paid 643.15.4 lire on outfitting the kitchen. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 4r–5v, 31r–v. 57. Provisions for the warden couple: Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564]: n.p. [pp. 26–28], Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574], 17–18. On problems with the warden couple, see n. 59 . 58. AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart 638, fasc. 61n. Sisters Giovanna and Appolonia may have come from the house of Poor Clares dedicated to S. Bernardino e S. Marta that was one of the outgrowths of the first conservatory in Bologna. Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 31. Sister Appolonia is likely the woman also known as “Applonia di Bastardini,” a woman abandoned at the Ospedale degli Esposti as an infant who subsequently became an administrator there and who came to S. Gregorio in 1569 (see Chapters 4 and 5). 59. AAB Miscellanea Vecchie, Cart 638, fasc. 61n. The congregazione appointed Nascimbene di Nascimbeni and his wife on June 8, 1586, but escalating problems led the massaro to dismiss them a few months later; they refused to leave until the congregazione voted formally to fire them on November 12, 1586. Through this same time, the congregazione allowed Madonna Elena, widow of the former guardian, to continue working for the OPM “because of her goodness and experience” (per la sua bontà e prattica). BCB Malvezzi Cart 202, #3a, ff. 1r–v. Early status animarum censuses are inconsistent in their recording of Mendicanti residents. One for 1588 recorded 194 living in the shelter without distinguishing between men and women, or Inside and Outside Houses: BCB B694, pp. 265–266. The following year’s census distinguished 327 adults and 194 boys (total 521, but in 1591 once again gave only a total of 800 overall: BCB B695, pp. 127–128; BUB, 89, Busta II, #6, 35r–v. 60. Domenica paid fourteen lire in 1572 and 1573: ASB OPM 304 Mastro B, ff. 210r–v, 263r–v, 268r–v. 61. Modo e provisione [1550]: n.p. [p. 4]; Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564]: n.p. [p. 30]; Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574], 21–22. The sbirri Bigho and Mancino were paid for only eleven prisoners in 1563, while the espurgatori received a total of 210.17.6. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 6r–v, 13r–14v, 19r–v. For examples of the amounts given every few days for the “passagi di poveri”: ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 14r–v; OPM 304 Mastro B, ff. 237r–v. 62. ASB OMP 304, Mastro B, ff. 85r–v, 110r–v, 258r–v, 303r–v: ASB OPM 307, Mastro D, ff. 164r–v, 266r–v, 359r–v. ASB OPM 310, Mastro E, 180r–v, 387r–v, 405r–v. ASB OPM 311, Mastro F includes as “espurgatori” Iacomo Rioli from Ferrara, Captain Galasso Bargello, and “il Moretto” (ff. 155r, 419r.).

Notes to Pages 93–97

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63. The 1587 total of 72,000 included 1,255 friars, 2,260 nuns, and 1,001 in hospitals and shelters. Four years later in 1591, the number in hospitals had risen to 1,697, and the number of nuns to 2,430, while the number of friars had dropped to 1,123; total population that year was 64,871. By 1595, when the overall population had declined yet further to 58,944, the hospital population had dropped by a third to 1,044 while the number of friars (1,127) and nuns (2,480) was virtually unchanged. BBU ms 89, Busta II #6, 33r, 35r–36v. For more on the demographics of this period, see Athos Bellettini and Franco Tassinari, Fonti per lo studio della popolazione del suburbio di Bologna dal secolo XVI alla fine dell’ottocento (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1977), 45–94. 64. The bandi are found in ASB Abbondanze, Stampe Cart. 2 (1580–1591) and Cart. 3 (1592–1594), where they are fi led by date. The government first imposed price controls on March 6, 1586, and then repeated them on February 13, 1589; August 22, 1590; and July 8 and October 27, 1591. Gregory XIII had brought in the first of the “Estrazione” laws against hoarding (May 1, 1578), and they were imposed again on June 3 and July 1, 1592; July 3 and September 25, 1593; and September 15 and 16, 1594. Beyond this there were the usual premiums for those who import foreign grain (July 18, 1590), a prohibition forbidding those with their own food and flour supply from buying bread at the public stalls (August 13, 1590), and prohibitions on buying bread for resale (May 15 and June 18, 1591). 65. BCB Gozz 242 #8, pp. 104–105 (November 26, 1590). 66. The decree distinguished the employed from the unemployed, and explicitly excluded university students, merchants with a shop or business, professors at the university, soldiers, and public employees (like the beggar catchers themselves). BCB Gozz 242 #8: Provvisioni e bandi, pp. 101–102 (August 19, 1591). 67. ASB OMP 304, Mastro B, ff. 85r–v, 110r–v, 258r–v, 303r–v: ASB OPM 307, Mastro D, ff. 164r–v, 266r–v, 359r–v. ASB OPM 310, Mastro E, 180r–v, 387r–v, 405r–v. ASB OPM 311, Mastro F: Daily “catches” in the winter of 1600–1601 included seventy-two on November 11, forty on December 23, thirty-eight on December 30, and forty-two on January 6, 1601. In the second half of 1601, 490 were expelled, earning the espurgatori 195.17 lire (f. 300r–v.) 68. Entries for the “Subsidy of a Poor Person” (Susidio d’uno povero) appear in the Libro Mastro for 1598–1601. The list of donors that includes patricians and ecclesiastics, and while most sums ranged from between twenty to one hundred lire, a few donors gave amounts in the hundreds. ASB OPM 311 Mastro F, f. 345r–v. The term “general hospitality” is Steve Hindle’s: Steve Hindle, “Dearth, Fasting and Alms: The Campaign for General Hospitality in Late Elizabethan England,” Past and Present 172 (August 2001): 44–86. See also Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, The Culture of Giving: Informal Support and Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 333–372. 69. These threats became more common: BCB Gozz 242 #8, pp. 107–111 (two undated printed appeals for 1598, one from the archbishop and one from the vice legate; October 1, 1602; March 15, 1604). 70. What developed into the S. Orsola hospital began as the work of a confraternity. According to the chronicler Francesco Galliani, the men of the confraternity of Ss.

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Notes to Pages 97–100

Sebastiano e Rocco, who had their quarters on S. Vitale, obtained permission from the nuns who held the “casamento di S. Orsola” to put some beds in there for the poor infirm, whom they themselves helped. In the words of a later chronicler, “Per essere stata, et essere la gran carestia, et infermita li uomini della Compagnia di S. Sebastiano e Rocco di Stra. S. Vitale, mossi da carità impetrorono dalle R.R. Monache della Badia il Casamento fuori di Stra. S. Vitale chiamato il Casamento di S. Orsola, et in quello misero letti per Poveri Infermi, e cominciorono con l’Elemosine un Ospedale, e detti confrati li vanno loro stessi a servire, e si spera con l’opere della Limosina si seguira innanzi per sempre detto Benedetto Loco, che cosi possa essere, e sia.” BCB Fondo Malvezzi, 202, #11°. 71. These were the orphanage of S. Giacomo (1590) and the conservatories of S. Croce (1583) and S. Giuseppe (1606), described further in Chapter Five below. The seventeenth-century wave of new residential institutions aimed at helping particular categories of the aged: priests (Ospizio di SS. Vitale e Pompeo founded 1621 and opened 1633); old men in good health (Ospizio S. Giuseppe, o dei Settuagenari founded in 1642); and noble widows and girls (Collegio dell’Umiltà founded in 1698). Mauro Carboni, Massimo Fornasari, and Marco Poli, eds., La città della carità: Guida alle istituzioni assistenziali di Bologna dal XII al XX secolo (Bologna: Costa Editore, 1999), 60–61, 86–87.

3. tightening control 1. I am grateful to Matt Sneider for generously passing on information and references to the Pio Cumolo di Misericordia. ASB Osp, S. Maria della Vita, X/14, “Campione dell’Hospitale di S. Maria della Vita [1601],” ff. 107r–114r. For legal documentation on the early years of the Pio Cumulo, including copies of Pepoli’s 1576 will and later codicils, see also: ASB Osp, S. Maria della Vita, X/39, “Amministrazione del Cumulo della Misericordia, 1500–1600”; and AAB, Pio Cumulo della Misericordia, #53 Primo Campione dell’Instromenti del Cumulo della Misericordia. 2. Giovanni Pepoli was born the son of Filippo Pepoli and Elena Fantuzzi on May 28, 1521. His children all married: Ugo Giuseppe married Lucrezia Bentivoglio and later Maria Malaspina; Jacopo married Gentile Montesalvi; Ricciardo married Diamanta Lambertini and Laura Spada (though some reports give his second wife as Barbara Piatesi); and Elena married Cornelio Marsilij. All the men pursued military careers with foreign powers. ASB, Sala di Consultazione, Guidicini Alberi Genealogici, vol. III, ff. 97, 98, 99, 100. 3. Giovanni Pepoli was appointed to the Senate on October 22, 1555, replacing his deceased father, Count Filippo, and the fourth Pepoli to serve as a senator. He served on the Council of Elders in 1556, 1569, 1571, and 1581. G. N. P. Alidosi, I signori Anziani consoli e Gonfalonieri di Giustizia della città di Bologna (Bologna: li Manolesi, 1670). He also served as one of the Tribunes of the People in 1552 and 1557: Registro dell’Illustrissimi Signori Gonfalonieri del Popolo della città di Bologna, detti li Collegi o Tribune delle Plebe (Bologna: 1714), 42, 46.

Notes to Pages 100–101

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4. Pepoli first contacted Palladio through his own cousin in Venice, and then from June 1572 carried on an extended correspondence with the architect that remains in the S. Petronio archive. To Palladio’s frustration, Pepoli aimed for a cost-saving solution that would incorporate elements of the existing facade. Mario Fanti, L’Archivio della fabbriceria di San Petronio in Bologna: Inventario (Bologna: Costa Editore, 2008), 245–246. For the designs produced through this collaboration, see the entries by Howard Burns in: Marzia Faietti and Massimo Medica, eds., La Basilica incompiuta: Progetti antichi per la facciata di San Petronio (Ferrara: Edisai, 2001), 118. T. Barton Thurber sets Pepoli’s efforts into the context of a competition between political, papal, and episcopal authorities over which church would become the architectural leader in the city: either the civic basilica of S. Petronio or the cathedral church of S. Pietro. T. Barton Thurber, “Architecture and Civic Identity in Late Sixteenth-Century Bologna: Domenico and Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Projects for the Rebuilding of the Cathedral of San Pietro and Andrea Palladio’s Designs for the Façade of the Basilica of San Petronio,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 466–473. The plan remained unfi nished at Palladio’s death, and the facade remains unfi nished to this day. 5. Pepoli’s Pio Cumulo was in the care of eighteen trustees (seven clerical and eleven lay), all high ranking and each appointed as the representative of local clergy, government, or confraternities. They included the bishop and the governor; one member from each of the Elders, Tribunes, Masters of the Guilds, and Senate; the president of S. Petronio (a position Pepoli had held for many years); the priors of the local houses of the Dominicans, Observant Franciscans, and Jesuits; representatives from the confraternities of the Poveri Vergognosi, S. Maria della Morte and S. Maria della Vita; one representative from each of the ospedali of the Esposti, the Baraccano, and S. Giobbe; a canon of S. Pietro and one of S. Petronio. ASB Osp, Santa Maria della Vita X/14 cassaforte 2. #62, 108v–108r. 6. Babbi’s assessment is in a letter of September 5, 1585. For this and more on Pepoli’s almsgiving, see: Giovanni Gozzadini, Giovanni Pepoli e Sisto V (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1879), 149–152, 325; 320–340. On S. Francesco: ASB Osp, San Francesco, busta 12, #23 (November 13, 1587). I am grateful to Matt Sneider for the reference. For Pepoli and the syphilitic hospital of S. Giobbe: Mario Fanti, “La confraternita di S. Maria dei Guarini e l’ospedale di San Giobbe a Bologna,” in Confraternite e città a Bologna nel medioevo e nell’età moderna (Rome: Herder Editrice, 2001), 464. An anonymous chronicler described Pepoli as “il maggiore elemosiniero della Città, ed un singolar institutore delle maggiore Opere Elemosiniere” (BCB, B43, f.29r). 7. Pepoli was drawn for rector in the second term of 1565, but was unable to serve as he was out of the city in Rome: ASB OPM 7, May 16, 1565. 16-V-1565. 8. Gozzadini, Giovanni Pepoli, 223–233, 269–292. The Pepoli and Malvezzi led warring factions in the countryside outside Bologna, and under Gregory XIII their fights descended into violent brigandage. Sixtus V had appealed to Pepoli directly for help controlling the violence, and was enraged when Pepoli instead blocked papal troops and then refused to hand over the chief of a violent group of bandits on the grounds that his territory, as an imperial fief, was outside papal jurisdiction. Gozzadini’s

308

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21.

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Notes to Pages 104–114

highly sympathetic reading, heavily layered with nineteenth-century anticlericism, is offset by Paolo Guidotti, “Il drammatico processo al conte Giovanni Pepoli (1585) alla luce di nuovi documenti,” Il Carrobbio 12 (1986): 203–215, and also by Andrea Gardi, Lo stato in provincia: L’amministrazione della Legazione di Bologna durante il regno di Sisto V (1585–1590) (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1994), 242–252. This is a particular example of what Douglass North has described as “path dependence”: Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 100, 140. ASB OPM 2, fi lza 1. From February 1586 to June 1588, the congregazione met eighteen times. Locations included the Ospedale della Morte (four), the Council Chamber of the Anziani (six), the office of the Gonfaloniere of Justice (one), and the Guardiana’s chamber in the S. Gregorio shelter (one). The location is not given in six instances. BCB Fondo Malvezzi, Cart 202, #3a, “Atti e decreti della Congregatione de Poveri Mendicanti, 1586 23 febraro al 1609 6 Marzo.” For what follows: 1564 statutes: Institutione provisione, e capitoli dello Hospitale, e governo delli Poveri Mendicanti della Città de Bologna (Bologna: 1564); AAB Raccolta degli statuti, cart. 26, fasc. 29, item a. 1574 statutes: Statuti dell’Opera de poveri mendicanti della Città di Bologna novamente riformati & ampliati (Bologna: 1574); ASB OPM 2, #2. The men who took pledges were Assonti a ricercare li Elimosinanti, and those who collected pledges were Assonti a riscuotere. Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes]: n.p. [7–8, 22–23, 29–30]. See Chapter 4 for further details. ASB PIE, S. Maria del Baraccano, ms. 44, #46/1, 46/2; ms. 110, ff. 26r–v. Statutes reducing women’s early role were adopted March 25, 1553 BBA Gozz ms. 209, #1, pp. 3–18, 39. The rule appears in the 1479 statutes of the observant (stretta) company of S. Maria degli Angeli, and not in the rules of the hospital (larga) group, so this did not necessarily remove female confraternity members from the Foundling home. BCB Gozz ms. 203, #7, p. 145r. These were the confraternities of S. Bartolomeo di Reno, S. Maria dei Guarini, and S. Maria della Misericordia. For a fuller description of how women were shut out of confraternities and then later brought back in: Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 116–132. The agreements between S. Maria del Baraccano’s stretta and larga companies occurred July 2, 1553, and October 14, 1554 though they continued fighting into the eighteenth century: BBA Gozz ms. 209, #1, pp. 3–18, 39. AAB Raccolta degli statuti. cart. 26, fasc. 29, no. 1 (5; 29). ASB OPM 2, #2, 27–28. For what follows, see: Statuti dell’Opera de Poveri Mendicanti della citta di Bologna: Nuovamente riformati & ampliati (Bologna: Gio. de’Rossi, 1574). The eightmember committee to reform the statutes was appointed by the OPM congregazione

Notes to Pages 114–123

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

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309

on April 19, 1573, almost ten years to the day from the original procession into S. Gregorio, and was comprised of Antonio Dolfi (deacon of S. Petronio), Antonio Giavarini (doctor of laws), Marc’Antonio Volta (senator), Count Ovidio Bargellini, Hieronimo Zoppio, Alfonso Leoni, Gabrielle Brozzani, and Horatio Zanchini. The libri mastri follow this by moving from a trimestral ordering of accounts up through 1574, to a semestral ordering from 1575: ASB OPM 304 Mastro B (1570–1574) and 304 Mastro C (1575–1583). For a broader discussion of what follows, in the context of the cities’ networks of homes for orphaned and abandoned children, and with attention to the differences that gender made, see: Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 187–244. For an expanded discussion of this process, see Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 211–222. John Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 57–65; Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence 1494–1545 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 210, 266, 399, 420, 424; Lorenzo Polizzotto, Children of the Promise: The Confraternity of the Purification and the Socialization of Youths in Florence, 1427–1785 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 149–150, 176–180. The magistracy that Cosimo I proposed had a broad mandate to help the poor generally: “di disponer provedere et ordinare in benefitio commodo et sublevamento deli detti poveri” ASF, Magistrato Supremo ms. 5, fol. 62r–v (March 13, 1540) The anonymous and undated proposal for a poorhouse was penned at some point in the early 1540s. ASF Pratica Segreta 184 (F). John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280– 1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1982). For an extension of this analysis over a longer time frame: John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200– 1575 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). For what follows, see Angela De Benedictis, Repubblica per contratto: Bologna—una città europea nello Stato della Chiesa (Bologna: il Mulino, 1995), 112–164. Najemy, History of Florence, 82. Ian Robertson, Tyranny under the Mantle of St. Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002); Elizabeth Louise Bernhardt, “Genevra Sforza Bentivoglio between Fact and Legend: Marriage, Family, Politics & Reputation in Renaissance Bologna” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2006). Angela De Benedictis, Una guerra d’Italia, una resistenza di popolo: Bologna 1506 (Bologna: il Mulino, 2004). See also Part III, “La Guerra di Bologna,” in Gian Mario Anselmi and Angela De Benedicitis, Citta in Guerra: Bologna nelle “Guerre d’Italia” (Bologna: Minerva, 2008), 219–308. Angela De Benedictis, “Identità politica di un governo popolare: la memoria (culturale) dei Tribuni delle Plebe,” in Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo), ed. Angela De Benedictis (Bologna: CLUEB, 1999), 25–55.

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Notes to Pages 123–124

32. On patricians, the two hundred, and the Senate in Florence: R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 25–26; Samuel Joseph Berner, The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to Principato, 1530–1610 (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1969), 148–158, 170–184. See also: Athanasios Moulakis, Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence: Francesco Guicciardini’s Discorso di Logrogno (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 136–142. 33. There is no formal study of the use of the SPQB, which may have long-predated the Senate in any form; according to one early nineteenth-century source it was on a plaque (no longer extant) at the foot of the statue of Boniface VIII that was commissioned by the Consiglio del Comune in 1301, and for many years stood on the Anziani’s balcony on the Palazzo Comunale. Leopoldo Cicognara, Storia della scultura dal suo risorgimento in Italia fino al secolo di Canova, vol. 3 (Prato: Frat. Giachetti, 1823), 407. For a study of the medieval uses of the SPQR: Carrie Benes, “Whose SPQR?: Sovereignty and Semiotics in Medieval Rome,” Speculum 84 (2009): 874–904. 34. Alberto Guenzi, “Politica ed economia,” in Bologna nell’età moderna (secoli XVI– XVIII): Istituzioni, forme del potere, economia e società, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008), 336–338. 35. The actual number of guilds fluctuated from twenty-four to twenty-seven. Alberto Guenzi, “Governo cittadino e sistema delle arti in una città del Stato pontificio: Bologna,” Studi storici Luigi Simeoni 41 (1991): 173–182; Alberto Guenzi, “La tutela del consumatore: I ‘vitualli di prima necessità,’” in Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo, e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Paolo Prodi (Bologna: il Mulino, 1994), 733–756. 36. With its own earliest documents missing, some of the first references that we have to the Tribunes comes from complaints about them in Senate correspondence. This makes it difficult to determine even when their new name became common currency in Bologna. The earliest reference to the Tribunes is a 1510 plaque in the civic basilica of S. Petronio. The Senate supported the body’s aspirations to organize plague relief in 1517, but it opposed their appeal to Adrian VI in 1521 for expanded powers. Senate correspondence begins using the name “Tribunes” in 1523, in a hostile account of statutes that the Tribunes wish to adopt. A second set of statutes was developed with the aid of noted legal scholar Ludovico Gozzadini when he was a tribune in the first two months of 1532; Gozzadini was a tribune in 1519, 1528, 1530, and 1532: Registro dell’Illustrissimi . . . Tribune delle Plebe, 16, 23, 25, 26. He subsequently also served on the Senate from December 1532 to May 1536. The official record of membership in Bologna’s magistracies begins using the term “Tribuni plebis” only with the first term of 1529, before which it refers to the group consistently by the former name of “Confallonieri Popoli.” ASB Assunteria dei Magistrati, ms. 15, “Magistrati ab Anno 1505 usque ad 1593,” f. 65r. For the account of the fight given below, see Cecilia Ciuccarelli, “Giustizia o sedizione? I Tribuni della Plebe tra Bologna e Roma, 1522–1559,” in Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo), ed. Angela De Benedictis (Bologna:

Notes to Pages 124–127

37. 38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

44.

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CLUEB, 1999), 103–134; and De Benedictis, “Identità politica di un governo popolare,” 25–55, 103–134, 167 (plaque), 183–185 (1523 statutes). John G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). Najemy, History of Florence, 436–441. On the strength and adaptation of this tradition over a few generations, see most recently: Mark Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). More recently, John McCormick has read Machiavelli as an exponent of tighter controls on noble republicans (Ottimati) because all electoral systems have a natural tendency to work toward the benefit of the wealthy, who consistently manipulate the processes to the detriment of the electorate: John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 36–63. On Guicciardini: Moulakis, Republican Realism in Renaissance Florence, 136–142. Carlo Taviani, Superba discordia: Guerra, rivolta e pacificazione nella Genova di primo Cinquecento (Rome: Viella, 2008). For a summary of the argument, see: Carlo Taviani, “Confraternities, Citizenship, and Factionalism: Genoa in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Nicholas Terpstra, ed., Faith’s Boundaries: Laity and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, forthcoming). William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 1–52 (on republicanism generally), 232–292 (on the Giovani and Doge Leonardo Donà). See also De Benedictis, Repubblica per contratto, 24–105, for a discussion of the broader European phenomena and historiography in terms of corporatism and contractualism. Edoardo Grendi, “Ideologia della carità e società indisciplinata: La costruzione del sistema assistenziale genovese (1470–1670),” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta (Cremona: Libreria del Comune, 1982), 59–75; Nicholas Terpstra, “Confraternities and Public Charity: Modes of Civic Welfare in Early Modern Italy,” in Confraternities and Catholic Reform in Italy, France, and Spain, ed. John Patrick Donnelly and Michael W. Maher (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1999), 97–120. Machiavelli writes particularly strongly of the disputes between the Senate and the Tribunes as an ideological and class struggle in book I, chapters 3–6 of the Discourses. Ludovico Gozzadini sat on the magistracy of the Elders in 1505 and on the Tribunes at the beginning of 1532; at the end of that same year he was appointed by Clement VII as a senator. He subsequently served as Gonfaloniere di Giustizia (1533). Gozzadini formed relations with both Charles V and Clement VII during their two meetings in Bologna, and numbered among his students Ugo Boncompagni, the future Pope Gregory XIII. Not all members of the family sang from the same sheet: in 1550, Conte Annibale del Conte Hieronimo Peopli was drawn as one of the members of the Elders for the May–June term, but was not allowed to take his seat because he was described as a “huomo di chiesa.” This appears without further elaboration on a separate page of the official volume recording Bologna’s office holders through this period: ASB Assunteria dei Magistrati, ms. 15, “Magistrati ab Anno 1505 usque ad 1593.” f. 2r.

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Notes to Pages 128–130

45. For a detailed account of these events, and a transcription of Vincenzo Bovio’s proposal for political reform: Mario Fanti, “Un progetto di riforma del Senato e una vicenda di eresia a Bologna alla metà del Cinquecento,” L’Archiginnasio 79 (1984): 313–335. 46. As reported in Senate correspondence, Gozzadini had yelled “non lassate signori assassinare il vostro popolo, aiutelo, defendetelo, et piglate la sua protettione.” For the development of this dispute, see the essays in De Benedictis, ed., Diritti in memoria, carità in patria, and particularly those by Ciuccarelli, “Giustizia o sedizione?” (103–134, with description of Gozzadini’s outburst on p. 127), and De Benedictis, “Identità politica di un governo popolare” (13–83). Despite his high family, Count Vincenzo Gozzadini appears to have been marginalized in Bolognese politics, never serving as senator and only once serving as a member of the Elders (1534). ASB Assunteria dei Magistrati, ms. 15, “Magistrati ab Anno 1505 usque ad 1593.” f. 22v. He served four times as one of the Tribuni delle Plebe in 1520, 1526, 1536, and 1540: Registro dell’Illustrissimi. . . . Tribune delle Plebe, 21, 29, 32 47. In the annual Cameral accounts, over forty of the lower-ranked civil servants were listed as the “famiglia” of the Elders, including mace bearers, messengers, and musicians. This inflated the Elders’ budget significantly. At the same time, the secretary of the Senate received over twice the salary of the secretary of the Elders (540 to 192 lire), which is perhaps a better indication of where the real responsibility and power lay. ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili, 1–3. 48. “Limitazione di oper/re + 1534.” This document is found in a box of loose-leaf miscellanea from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries that has no internal order or numbering: ASB, Assunteria d’Arti, Notizie sopre le Arti, Cartone: “Notizie sopre il sollievo delle arti.” 49. G. N. P. Alidosi, I signori Anziani consoli, 97, 105, 110–111, 114–117. The range of activities undertaken by the Anziani can be found in: ASB, Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1 (1530–1580): cc. 45v–48r, 51r, 87r–89r, 100v, 109r–110, 114r–115v; ASB Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1I (1580–1599): cc. 112v–115r, 170v, 188r–v. See also: ASB Anziani Consoli, Libri Rossi 1 (Provisiones et decreta, 1530–1592) and 2 (1565–1598), although the records from Insignia 1 and 2 and Libri Rossi 1 and 2 do not overlap. Ugo Boncompagni had never been a member of the Elders, but he had been one of the Tribunes of the People in 1538. Registro dell’Illustrissimi . . . Tribune delle Plebe, 31. 50. The Anziani’s Insignia volume records the difficult conditions, but says little of its own action in addressing them: ASB Anziani Consoli, Insignia 1I (1580–1599). From September through December 1590 it recorded “gravissima carestia, caroprezzo inaudito nelle granaglie; alta mortalità tra i bambini e i poveri” (f. 112v–113r), and noted that a large amount of money had been distributed in alms, notwithstanding the exhausted treasury, due to the high number of poor, and to help them in the time of most grave famine (114v–115r). Five years later, the Insignia complained that in July and August 1595 Bologna had to host and feed ten thousand soldiers passing through under the command of Giovanni Francesco Aldobrandini, nephew of Pope Clement VIII, regardless of fact that there was significant famine in the city (f. 170v).

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51. The budget for the Anziani and its famiglia rose steadily from 9,906 lire in 1546 to 14,916 lire in 1566 to 15,639 lire in 1586. At the same time, the budget for the papal legation remained fi xed at 9,375 and that of the Senate at 8,000. Of course, these latter sums were accounting abstractions and the Senate in particular manipulated budget surpluses (which totaled 6,094, 13,096, and 100,812 respectively in those same years) and dispensed discretionary funds on things ranging from dowries to salaries to construction grants from a special account called “Other various expenses” (Altre varie spese), which emerged in 1572 at 9,100 lire, and doubled to 18,409 lire by 1586. ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili, 1–3. 52. For the early stages of this process in the fifteenth century, see Robertson, Tyranny under the Mantle of St. Peter. For its development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see: Mauro Carboni, Il debito della città: Mercato del credito fisco e società a Bologna fra Cinque e Seicento (Bologna: il Mulino, 1995). For a summary overview: Mauro Carboni, “Public Debt, Guarantees and Local Elites in the Papal States (XVI– XVIII Centuries),” Journal of European Economic History 39 (2009): 149–174. 53. Carboni, “Public Debt,” 162–163. 54. De Benedictis, Repubblica per contratto. 55. ASB Ambasciata Bolognese a Roma, Repertorio e Registri Diversi, regg. 4, “Compendio di Affari Trattati in Roma dall’Ambasceria di Bologna”; regg. 5, “Rubricella delli Tomi Primo, e Secondo del Compendio d’Affari trattati in Roma dall’Ambascieria di Bologna; dall’anno 1569 fi no al 1650.” The Senate paid the costs of its ambassador in Rome out of the special fund of Altre varie spese, with the cost rising from 4,088 lire in 157,5 to 6750 lire in 1586 and 7,000 lire from 1594 to 1618; beyond this it used the fund to cover varying sums in “tips” (mancie) to Roman officials: ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili, 1–3. 56. Mauro Carboni, “La formazione di una elite di governo: le alleanze matrimoniali dei senatori bolognesi (1506–1796),” Studi storici Luigi Simeoni 52 (2002): 9–46; Paolo Colliva, “Bologna dal XIV al XVIII secolo: ‘governo misto’ o signoria senatoria,” in Storia della Emilia Romagna, vol. 2, ed. A. Berselli (Bologna: University Press Bologna, 1977), 26–32. 57. Baldi’s “Bologna tyrannized” was formally titled “La Descrizione della città, territorio, qualità costumi e forma del governo e del popolo di Bologna.” Mario Fanti has edited and published a number of the anonynous manuscript complaints in different articles, including: Mario Fanti, “Le classi sociali e il governo di Bologna all’inizio del secolo XVII in un’opera inedita di Camillo Baldi,” Strenna storica bolognese 11 (1961): 133–179; Mario Fanti, “‘Bologna tiranneggiata per la perpetuità delli Cinquanta’: Un libello antisenatorio bolognese della prima metà del secolo SVII,” L’Archiginnasio 78 (1983): 41–102; Mario Fanti, “Un progretto di riforma del Senato e una vicenda di eresia a Bologna alla metà del Cinquecento,” L’Archiginnasio 79 (1984), 313–335. On the complaints of university professors in particular, see: Fanti, “Bologna tiranneggiata,” 93–95. See also: Giancarlo Angelozzi and Caserina Casanova, “Essere cittadini di Bologna,” in Bologna nell’età moderna (secoli XVI–XVIII): Istituzioni, forme del potere, economia e società, ed. Adriano Prosperi (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2008), 280–283.

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Notes to Pages 133–144

58. Guido Bartolucci, “Historian Engagé: Republicanism and Oligarchy in Carlo Sigonio’s Political Histories,” panel on “Libertas and Republicanism in Renaissance Bologna,” Renaissance Society of America, Washington, DC, March 23, 2012. 59. Carboni, “La formazione,” 8. 60. Caroline P. Murphy, “‘In Praise of the Ladies of Bologna’: The Image and Identity of the Sixteenth Century Bolognese Female Patriciate,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 440–454. 61. For letters of the sixteenth century: ASV, Segr. Stato, Legaz. Bologna, 1°, 2–4, 177– 184, 268–269. 62. Nadja Aksamija, “Architecture and Poetry in the Making of a Christian Cicero: Giovanni Battista Campeggi’s Tuscolano and the Literary Culture of the Villa in Counter-Reformation Bologna,” I Tatti Studies 13 (2011): 127–199; Nadja Aksamija, “Defi ning the Counter-Reformation Villa: Landscape and Sacredness in Late Renaissance ‘Villeggiatura,’” in Delizie in Villa: Il Giardino Rinascimentale e i Suoi Committenti, ed. Gianni Venturi and Francesco Ceccarelli (Florence: L. S. Olsckhi, 2008), 33–63; Giancarlo Roversi, Palazzi e case nobili del ’500 a Bologna (Bologna: Grafis Edizioni, 1986).

4. meeting the bot tom line 1. New palaces were springing up throughout the quarter, and particularly on Via Zamboni and Via S. Vitale, commissioned by the Fantuzzi (1561–1579), the Malvezzi Campeggi (1522–1548), the Orsi (1549–1560), and the Poggi (1549–1551). Giancarlo Roversi, Palazzi e case nobili del ’500 a Bologna (Bologna: Grafis Edizioni, 1986): 86–88, 108–112, 142, 154–157. 2. This description of alms gathering is based on two chapters of the 1564 statutes. The men who sought out pledges were called the Assonti a ricercare li Elimosinanti while those who collected on the pledges were the Assonti a riscuotere. Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes]: n.p. [7–8, 22–23, 29–30]. 3. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 18–23. 4. Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna Perlustrata I (Bologna: Erede di Vittorio Benacci, 1666: Reprint Bologna: Forni, 1986), 117. The letter to Pepoli was sent May 26, 1563: Maria Lena Cinti, “Mendicità e carestie nella Bologna del Cinquecento: La fondazione dell’Ospedale dei Mendicanti” (Tesi di Laurea, Università di Bologna, 1967), 257. 5. The relevant volumes of the Monte di Pietà’s Giornale and Campione record OPM deposits and withdrawals without distinguishing them in any particular way: Monte di Pietà, Libri Giornali 35.3 (1561–1568); Libri Campioni 36.3 (1561–1568). Similarly, the first account book for the OPM simply gives a running total for the first three years, at the end of which the balance of expense and income had reached 57,811.3.6lire. The figure obscures the actual costs of running the home, since it merges all capital costs into the general list of expenses. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 102r–v, 107v, 162r–v.

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6. Alessandro Pastore, “Usi ed abusi nella gestione delle risorse (secoli XVI–XVII),” in L’uso del denaro: Patrimoni e amministrazione nei luoghi pii e negli enti ecclesiastici in Italia (secoli XV–XVIII), ed. Marina Garbellotti and Alessandro Pastore (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 18–19. 7. The statistics in the graphs in Chapter 4 are drawn from the series of annual balance sheets found in the OPM libri mastri from 1563 to 1601: ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 102r–v, 107v, 162r–v.; ms. 302 Mastro A (1566–69), ff. 15r–v, 16r–v, 54r–v, 63r–v, 78r–v, 151r–v, 162r–v, 216r–v, 254r–v, 265r–v, 285r–v, 290r–v, 307r–v, 315r–v; ms. 304 Mastro B (1570–75), 29r–v, 121r–v, 185r–v, 241r–v, 296r–v; ms 305 Mastro C, (1575– 83), 190r–v, 200r–v, 229r–v, 254r–v, 280r–v, 305r–v, 334r–v, 361r–v, 377r–v, 408r–v, 439r–v, 472r–v, 494r–97v; ms. 307 Mastro D (1584–91), 121r–v, 159r–v, 190r–v, 198r–v, 220r–v, 262r–v, 269r–v, 300r–v, 311r–v, 343r–v, 350r–v, 389r–v, 403r–v; ms. 310 Mastro E (1590–97), 40r–v, 97r–v, 143r–v, 172r–v, 194r–v, 225r–v, 246r–v, 265r–v, 292r–v, 317r–v, 360r–v, 392r–v, 413r–v, 489r–v; ms. 311 Mastro F (1598–1601), 89r–v, 151r–v, 189r–v, 213r–v, 286r–v, 304r–v, 433r–v. 8. The median of 20,000 lire is consistent with the figure for the first years of the OPM. The first account book balances total income and expense for the three-year period 1563–6155 at 57,811.3.6 lire (or 19,270 per year). The figure inflates the actual costs of running the home, since it merges all capital costs into the general list of expenses, yet it is consistent with the note in the second libro mastro that total costs to 1570 were 135,775.19.9 lire. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 102r–v, 107v, 162r–v.; 304 Mastro B, ff. 81r–v. 9. The figures of those seeking aid are estimates from the letters of OPM governors to Cardinal Giulio Pepoli in Rome seeking ways of meeting the demand for food: ASB OPM Cart. 7 (October 9, 1591). 10. For sources see n. 7. 11. See Chapter 1, pp. 49–50. 12. These are all the specific existing abuses that collectors were ordered to refrain from according to a “Forma delle licenze di questuara,” which Paleotti proclaimed on January 15, 1579. See the chapter “Cose pertinenti a gli hospitali et altri luoghi pii,” in Episcopale Bononiensis civitas et diocesis: Raccolta di varie cose, che in diversi tempi sono state ordinate da monsig. illustriss. et reverendiss. cardinale Paleotti vescovo di Bologna: Per lo buon governo della sua città e diocesi (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1580), 160–161. 13. The general complied but required that the governors secure Fra Teofi lo’s consent; there is no record of whether or not he agreed or preached elsewhere in Bologna that year. ASB OPM 7, fi lze 2, #2 (August 30, 1564) and #3 (April 11, 1566). Diario Bolognese Ecclesiastico, e Civile per l’anno 1770 (Bologna: Lelio dalla Volpe, n.d.), 10. The twelve “cassette di cerca” cost 27.10.6. lire. ASB OPM 300, f. 5r. 14. Fiubba’s five favored Jesuits were: Giulio Mazarini, Giovanni Domenico Bonacorsi, Bartolomeo Biondi, Glaminio Gerengucci, and Ludovico Gagliardi. ASB OPM Cart 7, fi lze 2, III, #5 (April 13, 1585) and #6 (April 27, 1585). Gregory XIII preached October 5, 1583, and raised 1183.14.06 lire for the OPM, its largest one-day sermon collection since the Lenten series of Fra Teofi lo twenty years earlier: ASB OPM 307

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15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

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Notes to Pages 150–155

Mastro D (1584–1589): f. 124r. On preachers as fund-raisers: Mauro Carboni, “Alle origini del fund raising: confraternite, predicatori e mercanti nelle città italiane (secoli XIV–XVIII),” in Il fund raising in Italia: Storia e prospettive, ed. Bernardino Farolfi and Valerio Melandri (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008), 54–60. On Fiubba, also known as Fibbie: Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 179, 316. For sources see n. 7. Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes]: n.p. [27]; 16, 24, 25. For a broader discussion and more statistics, see Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 169–172. “ed in occorenza di Processione, e Sepolture di Morti debbi intervenirvi,” ms. 272, “Modulario non compilato per le ammissioni a bottega degli orfani.” See also: Istitutioni, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes], n.p. [15]; Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574 statutes]: 7, 14. The confraternity of S. Giacomo gained legacies worth 88,272.03.02 lire from the time it opened its new orphanage chapel in 1606–1607 until 1654. ASB Demaniale, S. Giacomo, ms. 12/6470, pt. 2, cc.3r–19r. Although a priest would be the celebrant at funerary and requiem rituals, a number of the legacies stipulate that the boys must be the ones who would sing or say a daily “De Profundis” for the soul of the testator. (ASB Demaniale, S. Giacomo, ms. 12/6470, pt. 2, c2r, 3r, 11r–13r). For balance sheets of 1612, 1646, 1652: AAB, Miscellanea Vecchie, Item G, cart. 158; Miscelleana Vecchie, G, Visite Pastorali, “Poveri Orphanelli di S.to Giacomo” [1646–1647]; and “Ospetal di S. Giacomo” [1652]. Steve Hindle, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c.1550–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Paul Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Joel F. Harrington, The Unwanted Child: The Fate of Foundlings, Orphans, and Juvenile Criminals in Early Modern Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). Cavallo, Charity and Power, 26–28. The Assonti a riscuotere collected on pledges already promised (“lemosine annue di gia tassate”), while the Assonti a ricercare li Elimosinanti were charged with gathering new pledges (“le nuove tasse elemosinarie di quel Anno”). Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes]: n.p. [7–8, 22–23, 29–30]. Turinese religious houses also pledged quantities of firewood, grain, and wine in a 1541 civic relief plan, though this was not intended to replace their provision to the poor who came to their door. Cavallo, Charity and Power, 18–19. In 1566, the OPM governors wrote to Bologna’s ambassadors in Rome asking them to lobby for a continuation of the tax exemption that Vice Legate Cesi had granted. ASB OPM Cart. 7, vol. 3. (January 30, 1566; March 9, 1566). A further letter of April 14, 1567, claimed that Cesi had been a prime mover behind the opening of the Ospedale in the first place, that it wouldn’t have gotten under way without the participation of the religious houses, and that if they reneged, the Ospedale might have to close.

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25. In order of volume, the number of corbe that homes pledged were: Archepiscopal Mensa and S. Michele in Bosco (seventy-two); Dominicans (forty); Benedictines of S. Procolo (thirty-six); Franciscan conventuals, Lateran Canons of S. Giovanni in Monte, and Augustinians of S. Giacomo (twenty-four); Benedictines of S. Stefano (twenty); S. Gregorio and S. Martino (eighteen); Servites, Crociferi, and Certosans (twelve); S. Barbaziano and Misericordia (six). In addition, the houses of S. Giuseppe in Contanti and S. Pietro Celestino pledged twenty-four lire annually. The pledges totaled 468 corbe annually. One Bolognese corba held seventy-eight liters and could feed an individual for two or three months. ASB OPM Cart. 1, #9, Cart. 2, #8. 26. The homes defaulting in 1567 were S. Martino (Carmelites), S. Giovanni in Monte (Lateran Canons), and S. Maria dei Servi (Servites); the conventual Franciscans and Benedictines of S. Stefano dropped the following year. By this time the OPM’s strongest clerical supporters were no longer in office in Bologna, though the governors continued appealing to them in Rome. Cesi had been vice legate for Legate Carlo Borromeo. Borromeo’s term of office was April 26, 1560, to September 1566, and Cesi’s term was January 22, 1564, to January 5, 1565; payments on the legation’s pledge of two scudi per month ceased with Cesi’s departure in January 1565, and two years later the governors were still appealing for its renewal. ASB OPM 1 #9a. OPM 7, vol. 3 (May 2, 1565; January 4, 1567; April 14, 1567; June 14, 1567; October 9, 1568). Mario Pasquali and Massimo Ferretti, “Cronotassi critica dei legati, vicelegati, e governatori di Bologna dal sec. XVI al XVII,” Atti e memorie della deputazione di storia patria per le province di Romagna n.s. 23 (1972): 135–136, 234–235; Giacomo Rinieri, Cronaca 1535–1549, ed. A. Antonelli and R. Pedrini (Bologna: Costa Editore, 1998), 302. 27. “questi penuriosi et calamitosi tempi dove crescano le bocchi all’opera et mancarono le elemosine.” ASB OPM Cart 7, vol. 2, I, #4 (October 13,1568). The letters to Cardinals Giovanni Morone, Carlo Borromeo, Alessandro Farnese, and Gabriele Paleotti—all of whom had direct experience with the OPM or its antecendents, and so were considered to be engaged patrons—had gone out four days earlier: ASB OPM Cart 7, 3 (October 9, 1568). 28. There are thirty-five letters from May 1565 through November 1568, followed by a four-year gap in the records; there follow fifty-three letters sent in 1572 alone, most complaining about the failure of religious houses to meet their pledges. ASB OPM Cart. 7, vols. 2 and 3. The letter to Cesi is fi lze 2, I, #4 (October 13, 1568). The letter cited is to Bishop Gabrielle Paleotti: “siamo astretti di abbandonare l’impressa et lassare andare questi poveri vagando per la citta cosa che si trafige il core, tanto maggiormente considerando che la mina di questa impresa per li religiosi, quali dovrano essere il spechio alli altri.” Cart 7, vol. 3 (July 26, 1572). 29. Cardinal Filippo Boncompagni was immediately supportive, writing to all the religious houses individually in 1572 to remind them of their obligations, and also asking the OPM itself for more details on its costs and obligations. ASB OPM Cart 7, vol. 2, II, #3 (September 17, 1572). 30. For sources see n. 7.

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31. According to a 1759 history, following Gregory XIII’s brief, 1 home defaulted in 1584, one in 1588, seven in 1589, five in 1590, one in 1591, and one in 1596. After Gregory XIII’s order of 1583 and Clement VIII’s of 1601, Innocent XI issued another order to the religious houses in 1687. OPM Cart. 2, filze 8 and 9. Bolognese patricians in Rome, like Hercole Riario, and the city’s ambassadors Camillo Bolognini (1590–1591), Count Fulvio Grassi (1591–1593), Alessandro Bolognetti (1593–1594), and Camillo Gozzadini (1594–1602) continued making interventions with curial officials in the 1590s, seeking to have them pressure religious houses and donors to honor their pledges: ASB Assunteria di Camera, “Lettere dell’Ambasciatore agl’Assonti all’Opera dei Mendicanti,” December 20, 1581; July 18, 1592; July 22, 1592; March 23, 1596; June 29, 1596 [these letters are inserted at the end of a bound volume of correspondence from 1634 to 1726]. “Serie degli’ambasciatori ordinarij della Città di Bologna a N.re S.re et alla S. Sede, e tempo che hanno in Roma risieduto,” BBA 43, f. 15. 32. For sources see n. 7. 33. For sources see n. 7. 34. Regular pledges from the Senate to the OPM had peaked at 8,000 lire in 1560, but dropped to 750 lire in 1563. After the drops to 400 lire in 1564 and 240 lire in 1566, they rose to 600 lire annually from 1567 to 1574, supplemented with an additional 1,200 lire in 1571 and 2,000 lire in 1573. ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, busta 76, fasc. 7, “Mendicanti limosine.” The S. Giobbe hospital received 100 lire each Christmas, the Holy Thursday paupers 160 lire, the S. Bartholomeo palio 200 lire, and the Corpus Domini procession just under 300 lire. See unpaginated annual accounts in: ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili 1–3. 35. The payment to Borromeo for the “recetatione della serenisima principesa di fiorenza” was ordered by the Tesoria Generale in Rome on May 29, 1566: ASR Camerale 1—Tesorerie Provinciali di Bologna, Busta 1, Register 8. f. 5r. The first year’s expenses were 10,142.14.4 lire. ASB OPM 300 Libro +, f. 102r–v. The payment to Nicolo Laparelli is in ASR Camerale 1—Tesorerie Provinciali di Bologna, Busta 1, Register 12, f. 1r. (December 3, 1572). 36. ASR Camerale 1—Tesorerie Provinciali di Bologna, Busta 1, Register 12: Payments to Seccadinari, Lambertini and Buoncompagni: f. 1r. (November 29, 1572; December 6, 1572), f. 3r (April 10, 1573). The dowries were for two Marescalchi girls and one Panzachia: f. 8v (April 6, 1574). The payment for entertaining the Prince of Bavaria: f. 8r (May 24, 1574). In 1566, Pope Pius V had given dowry gifts of 1,000 scudi each when Tadia and Angelica, the two daughters of Bartolomeo Bolognetti, married. ASR Camerale 1—Tesorerie Provinciali di Bologna, Busta 1, Register 8, ff. 6r (August 12, 1566) and 8v (December 16, 1566). The gold scudo was worth approximately 4.25 lire at this time. Giovanni Battista Salvioni, Il valore della lira bolognese dalla sua origine alla metà del secolo XVII (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1961), 558–559. 37. “sollicitare li elemosinanti tassati a pagar al depositario.” Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564 statutes] n.p. [29]. 38. The public “Declaration Favoring Whoever Spontaneously Offers Alms to the Opera de’Mendicanti, that they do not Contract any Obligation” (Dichiaratione fatta à favore di chiunque spontaneamente facesse elemosina all’Opera de’Mendicanti,

Notes to Pages 162–163

39.

40. 41.

42.

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che percio non si contragghi obligo alcuno) was issued on November 4, 1568, over the signatures of the papal legate, the episcopal vicar, the Standard Bearer of Justice, the vice prior of the Anziani, the prior of the Tribunes of the People, the rector, prior, master, and vice master of the OPM, and the notary of the Guilds. BCB Gozz 242 #6, p. 60–61. Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574], 26–27, 39. Guido Pepoli (1560–1599) was a son of Cornelio and brother to Filippo, who inherited the Pepoli family seat after Count Giovanni was executed in his prison cell by agents of the pope in 1585. He had purchased the position of treasurer in 1586 (although he was at that time only twenty-six years old) for 72,000 scudi; half of the 1589 sale price of 50,000 scudi went to guarantee interest on a new monte. Andrea Gardi, Lo stato in provincia: L’amministrazione della Legazione di Bologna durante il regno di Sisto V (1585–1590) (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1994), 80–81; Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna perlustrata, II (Bologna: 1666), 25. The OPM wrote to Cardinal Pepoli on September 21, 1591, and he responded on September 28. The same file contains correspondence with Pepoli family members in August 1582, October 1584, August 1586, September 1587, September 1588, and August 1589, all regarding pledges of grain. ASB OPM Cart 7, vol. 2, II, #2, 4, 7, 8, 9, III, #1, 3, 4. The passage quoted is from III, #3 (September 28, 1591). The OPM thank-you note was sent ten days later. ASB OPM Cart 7, #3 (October 7, 1591). A decree of August 22, 1590, had allowed a price of sixteen lire/corbe for foreign grain: ASB, Assunteria di Abbondanza, Stampe ms. 15, “Indice Stampe,” Cartone 2, ff. 109–110. Cavallo, Charity and Power, 20–22. The Gabella’s very independence from other tax-collecting institutions in Bologna would cause problems by the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but these were not yet apparent in the 1560s and ’70s, when it was still seen as a vital institution that helped maintain Bologna’s autonomy under Roman sovereignty. Mauro Carboni, “La Gabella Grossa di Bologna: La formazione di una grande azienda fiscale,” Il Carobbio 16 (1990): 113–122; Mauro Carboni, “La Gabella Grossa di Bologna: Crisi di una grande azienda daziaria,” Il Carobbio 17 (1991): 99–109. Matthew Thomas Sneider, “Ai Collegi la ‘causa del popolo e deli poveri pestilenti’: Il governo dell’abbazia dei SS. Naborre e Felice, 1510–25,” in Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo), ed. Angela De Benedictis (Bologna: CLUEB, 1999), 86, 99–101. An undated illustrated property register started in the 1580s recorded 130 urban properties, 41 of them along Via S. Felice and 42 along the Reno Canal, and 23 rural properties. ASB, Fondo Demaniale, Abbazia di SS. Naborre e Felice, 116/2037. See also 88/916 and 89/917 in this same deposit. Item 79/907b is a register prepared ca. 1554 of property transactions dating back to the thirteenth century. Its prologue confirms that there was still an active convent here, with an abbess and sisters “residente nel monasterio et convento di Sti Naboro et felice in bologna del Ordine de S. Chira.” The fi rst property transaction noted in the volume (of November 27, 1554) records fi fty-six nuns and repeats that they are of the Order of S. Chiara (ff. 1v–2r). The same deposit includes a history written in 1686 (“Origine della già Abbazia de SS. Nabore e Felice e del Bolognino del Morbo”), which claimed that the abbey had

320

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

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Notes to Pages 164–165

been in the control of an Assunteria of the Senate from the beginning, and that in that year it had an income of 106,272.13.2 lire and expenses of 114,683.2.0 lire. 45/873, ff. 2r–10r. The Tribunes’ own records are lost, but Matt Sneider has carefully traced their tangled and obscure history through senatorial and other sources. Julius II transferred the abbey in 1507, a period of extreme plague in Bologna. The 1517 agreement gave Soderini 1,200 ducats immediately and 350 ducats annually, to be paid through the banking family of the Cospi who would administer the holdings until the transfer was settled. The five trustees included four from the Tribunes of the People and the Masters of the Guilds (with one of them being a university professor) and one senator. Sneider, “Ai College la ‘causa del popolo e deli poveri pestilenti,’” 87–98. The purchase included the monastery, the church, and property measuring thirtythree tornature, thirty-eight tavole, and fi fty pertiche, with the buildings costing 10,000 lire and the land an additional 3396.3.7 lire. ASB, Fondo Demaniale, Abbazia di SS. Naborre e Felice, 45/873. On the concession of the Abbey’s trustees to the OPM: Institutione, provisione, e capitoli [1564 statutes], p. 3. The Esposti received 2,000 lire (July 7, 1536); the Poveri Vergognosi received 600 lire (February 28, 1539) and 500 lire (October 22, 1546), and shared 1,700 lire with the orphanage of S. Bartolomeo di Reno (December 29, 1540). Sneider, “Ai College la ‘causa del popolo e deli poveri pestilenti,’” 102, n. 56. It is not clear whether the 8,000 lire that the Senate gave to the Poveri Mendicanti in 1560 came from the revenues of SS. Naborre e Felice: see n. 26 above. ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, busta 76, fasc. 7, “Mendicanti limosine.” The 1550 plan was endorsed by Vice Legate Girolamo Sauli and Standard Bearer of Justice Giulio Felcini, and the heads of the Elders (Antonio Gessi), the Tribunes (Alberto Comi), the Masters of the Guilds (Angelo Ruggieri), and the Senate (Iacopo Zambeccari). Modo et Ordine [1550 plan]: n.p. [5]. The Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita was the fi nancial trustee for the Pio Cumulo di Misericordia, but management and disbursement of funds was in the hands of a commission of seventeen assembled with the balances characteristic of republican communalism and traditional civic religion: the bishop, the legate, representatives of the Elders, the Tribunes, the Masters of Arts, and the Senate, the president of S. Petronio, prior of S. Domenico, warden of the Capuchins, prior of the Jesuits, representatives of four major charitable institutions (the Morte, the Esposti, Baraccano, and S. Giobbe), and a canon from the cathedral of S. Pietro and the civic basilica of S. Petronio. ASB Osp, S. Maria della Vita, X/14, “Campione dell’Hospitale di S. Maria della Vita [1601],” ff. 107v–108r. In October 1593, the Bolognese Camera formally gained control over the income of SS. Naborre e Felice and the Bolognino del Morbo. Angela De Benedictis, “Identità politica di un governo popolare: la memoria (culturale) dei Tribuni delle Plebe,” in Diritti in memoria, carità in patria: Tribuni della plebe e governo popolare a Bologna (XIV–XVIII secolo), ed. Angela De Benedictis (Bologna: CLUEB: 1999), 64. The OPM received annual payments of 600 lire from 1572 to 1576, and then a “triennio” of 1,800 lire paid out in three installments of 600 lire from 1580 to 1582 and 1584

Notes to Pages 166–169

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52.

53.

54. 55.

56. 57.

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to 1586. The “Putti Bastardi” received 800 lire in 1578 and 1,200 lire in 1581 and again in 1582. The male orphans in S. Bartolomeo received 200 lire in 1582 while the ones in S. Onofrio (also called the “Putti della Maddalena” because their home was run by a confraternity of that name) received a triennio of 1,000 lire from 1584 to 1586. The Poveri Vergognosi received 300 lire in 1582 and 800 in 1586, while the Convertite received only 100 lire in 1582 and 200 in 1586. See relevant unpaginated volumes in ASB, Assunteria di Camera, Libri Contabili 2 and 3. The conditions of the 1590s did bring the return, on a reduced and voluntary level, of two earlier plans that mixed patronal and practical charity. In 1592, forty-two people agreed to “voluntary taxes” (tasse voluntarie) in amounts ranging from 3 to 150 lire and totaling 1234.12 lire. ASB OPM 310 Mastro E, f. 159r–v. A few years later, some leading families appear to have adopted the idea first raised in 1548 of adopting a particular poor family and providing for its needs. Entries appear in the libro mastro for 1598–1601 as the “Subsidy of a Poor Person” (Susidio d’uno povero). ASB OPM 311 Mastro F, f. 345r–v. Juan Luis Vives, On Assistance to the Poor, trans. A. Tobriner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 39–41; Luisa Ciammitti, “Fanciulle, monache, madre: Povertà femminile e previdenza a Bologna nei secoli XVI–XVIII,” in Arte e Pietà: I patrimoni culturali delle Opere Pie (Bologna: CLUEB, 1980), 461–520; Paola Foschi, “La Compagnia e il Conservatorio del Baraccano nella storia Bolognese,” in Il conservatorio del Baracano: La storia e i restauri, ed. Paola Foschi and Francisco Giordano (Bologna: Costa Editore, 2002), 25–27. Each set of statutes condemned laziness in beggars, some more harshly than others. Provisione elemosinaria per li poveri di qualunque sorte della Città di Bologna (Bologna: 1548), 1–4; Modo et ordine per li poveri mendicanti fatto nuovamente nella citta di Bologna (Bologna: 1550), 1, 3–4; Istitutione, provisione, e capitoli dello Hospitale, e governo delli Poveri Mendicanti della Città de Bologna (Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1564), 24, 26–28; Statuti dell’Opera de Poveri Mendicanti della citta di Bologna: Nuovamente riformati & ampliati (Bologna: Gio. de’Rossi, 1574), 8, 14, 23. It was a theme that lasted well into the future: Stuart Hughes, “The Theory and Practice of ozio in Italian Policing: Bologna and Beyond,” Criminal Justice History 6 (1985): 89–103. Istitutione, provisioni, e capitoli [1564], n.p. (p. 24); Statuti dell’Opera dei Poveri Mendicanti [1574], 22–24. On October 15, 1563, the OPM received 56.12.2 lire for “opere de Caldiera e fi latture . . . de lane fatte per le nre Povere,” and 4 lire “per Merce detratte da Nri Poveri.” ASB OPM 300 Libro +, ff. 21r–v. R. Savelli, “Dalle confraternite allo stato: Il sistema assistenziale genovese nel cinquecento,” Atti della società ligure di storia patria 24, no. 5 (1984): 175–199. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), 43–45, 284. On Italian merchants in Lyons, see Jacqueline Boucher, “Les Italiens à Lyons,” in Passer les monts: Français en Italie—l’Italie en France (1494–1525): Xe colloque de la Société française d’étude du Seizième Siècle, ed. Jean Balsamo (Paris: Champion: 1998), 39–46.

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58. Thomas Max Safley, Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 11–13. 59. Catherine Lis and Hugh Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Brighton: Hambleton, 1979). This followed in part on Foucault’s notion of the continuity of disciplinary regimes between industrial factories and prisons: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1977). 60. See, for example, Stuart Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1986), 20–55; Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Their Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 12–38. 61. The eight major Assunterie were Camera, Governo, Imposte, Ornato, Munitione, Pavaglione, Zecca, and Militia. There were in addition subordinate Assunterie with lesser mandates and longer-serving members, including most notably Abbondanze, Acque e Confini, Sgravamento, Magistrati, and Ambasciatori. Each of the major assunterie initially had five members; after expansion of the Senate to fifty, each gained a sixth members with the Camera and Governo getting a seventh. S. Verardi Ventura, “L’ordinamento bolognese dei secoli XVI–XVII,” L’Archiginnasio 76 (1981): 273–286. 62. Angela De Benedictis, Repubblica per contratto: Bologna—una città europea nello Stato della Chiesa (Bologna: il Mulino, 1995), 222–224; Verardi Ventura, “L’ordinamento bolognese,” 276–282, 295. The silk fair lasted from May 30 through August 1. 63. Carlo Poni, “Per la storia del distretto industriale serico di Bologna (secoli XVI– XVIII),” Quaderni Storici 73 (1990): 94–96. During periods of low water from July through October, the Senate appointed a silk master who would open the gates, diverting water to the silk mills after the grain mills had received a first and limited allotment; only after the silk mills had been served could a second allotment be delivered to the grain mills. Lia Gheza Fabbri, L’organizzazione del lavoro in una economia urbana: Le Società d’Arti a Bologna nei secoli XVI e XVII (Bologna: CLUEB, 1988), 42–43. It’s also worth noting that the bulk of the properties controlled by the Abbey of SS. Naborre e Felice lined the Reno Canal or were found on the streets in this area. 64. For the description of silk work that follows: F. Edler de Roover, L’arte della seta a Firenze nei secoli XIV e XV (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1999); F. Edler de Roover, Glossary of Medieval Terms of Business: Italian Series, 1200–1600 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1934), 330; Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Richard A. Goldthwaite, “An Entrepreneurial Silk Weaver in Renaissance Florence,” I Tatti Studies 10 (2005): 69–126; Luca Mola, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Roberta Morelli, La seta fiorentina nel Cinquecento (Milano: Dott. A Giuffrè Editore, 1976). 65. Doubled cocoons developed when two worms spun so closely to each other that the two cocoons merged. 66. The silk fair lasted from May 30 through August 1 annually. The term “pavaglione” suggests a piazza filled with tents and awnings under which the merchants bought and

Notes to Pages 174–178

67.

68.

69.

70.

71.

72.

73. 74. 75.

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sold cocoons, though some seventeenth-century images show only an open space. BCB, Gabinetto disegni e stampe, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, “Fiera dei follicelli da seta (1664).” John Florio gives “paviglione” as either a butterfly or ladybird, or as a variant on “padiglione,” which he defined as “a Pavillion, or Tent for the field. Also a Canapie.” John Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and English Tongues . . . (London: 1611), 349, 362; Poni, “Per la storia,” 93–167. P. Montanari, “Il più antico statuto dell’arte della seta bolognese (1379),” L’Archiginnasio 53–54 (1958–1959): 104–159 (the edition of the statutes themselves is on 116–159). Bologna had a population in 1581 of 70,661, of whom 36,482 were female. This rose to approximately 72,000 by 1587, but through the crisis of famine and plague of the following years its population would drop by approximately 13,000 to 59,000 by 1595. Athos Belletini, La populazione di Bologna dal XV secolo all’unificazione italiana (Bologna: 1961), 48, 61. A 1609 archiepiscopal census of the status animarum set the population of young girls (puellae) at 6,722. ASB Dem, Subcolletoria dello spoglio delle Galere, ms. 17/450, “Descriptio animarum civitatis suburb. et Diocesis Bonon.” Cited in Mauro Carboni, Le doti della “povertà”: Famiglia, risparmio, previdenza: il Monte del Matrimonio in Bologna (1583–1796) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1999), 40, n. 55. This is not to say that there was no domestic production involved in silk, and by the eighteenth century there were efforts to draw more women into textile guilds (particularly in the hemp industry) as a means of bringing them under regulation rather than allowing them to work in what was essentially a black market. In 1582 Bologna’s Silk Guild was exclusively male, but by 1796 it had seventy-two female and only fi fteen male members. Dora Dumont, “Women and Guilds in Bologna: The Ambiguities of Marginality,” Radical History Review 70 (1998): 6, 13–15. The two merchants were Vincenzo Cambi and Cristoforo Bonvalore, both serving as riveditori who screened entrants to the home. Istitutione, provisione, e capitoli [1564 statutes], p. 12. Massimo Fornasari, Famiglia e affari in età moderna: I Ghelli di Bologna (Bologna: il Mulino, 2002), 167. For cloth production at the Esposti: ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo, detto degli Esposti, Serie III, 10 (1761), Mastro I (1567–1572), ff. 126, 224, 360, Mastro N (1587–1594), ff. 113, 303, 239, 283, 324, 380, 448. Described variously as “Sor Appolonia, nostra soprastanto a S. Gregorio,” or “Appolonia di Bastardini, soprastante delle femine all’Ospedale” (f. 293r), she collected the money from merchants and passed it on to Master Giovanni Battista Scotti (e.g., f. 222r). She joined the OPM in 1569, and earned six lire per four months in 1571 (f. 28r), rising to eight lire (or 24 lire annually) in 1572 (ff. 163r–v and 293r–v). Folio references are to ASB OPM 304 Mastro B (1570–1574). See also: ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo, detto degli Esposti, Serie III, 10 (1761), Mastro I (1567–1572), ff. 126, 224, 360. For sources see n. 7. For sources see n. 7. For sources see n. 7.

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76. For sources see n. 7. 77. For sources see n. 7. 78. ASF, Compagnie religiose sopprese dal governo Francese, 112/57, ff. 142r–v, 182r, 208r, 264r, 307r. ASB PIE S. Maria del Baraccano, mss. 264, 265; S. Croce, ms. 149. For more comparative statistics drawn from a range of male orphanages and female conservatories in Florence and Bologna: Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 123–136, 289–292. 79. Dumont, “Women and Guilds in Bologna,” 8–9, 13–15. 80. Because “il lavoro apporto affl ictione, e maninconia,” the girls in Florence’s S. Caterina conservatory would be allowed to sing songs while they worked, although these were not to be secular songs. ASF S. Caterina, 7, cap. III/7. The Bolognese administrator was Bonifacio dalle Balle (see Chapter 5), and his claim that the girls were “in pericolo di disperarsi” made no discernible difference to his colleagues. ASF PIE S. Croce 2, fasc. 3, pp. 39–40. Lucia Ferrante, “Fanciulle, monache, madri: Povertà femminile e previdenza a Bologna nei secoli XVI–XVIII,” in Arte e pietà: I patrimoni culturali delle Opere Pie (Bologna: CLUEB, 1980), 475–479. 81. This would have included, for instance, Gregory XIII’s five Bolognese cardinals: Filippo Boncompagni (1572), Filippo Guastavillani (1574), Alessandro Riarij (1578), Giovanni Antonio Fachinetti (1583), and Alberto Bolognetti (1583). Masini, Bologna Perlustrata II, 678. All but Riarij were of senatorial families, and all had numerous relatives involved in Bologna’s charitable institutions. 82. For sources see n. 7. 83. OPM officials maintained a reserve, but were still debating in the eighteenth century whether having a full year’s supply on hand ought to be written into the statutes. BCB, Fondo Malvezzi 202, #8, f.4v. The movement toward a reserve at the Esposti appears in the draft and fi nal copy of the foundling home’s revised statutes of 1570, and shows just how much administrators feared a repeat of the shortages that had repeatedly hit the foundling home in earlier years, with devastating effects on the children living there. APB, Fondo Ospedale degli Esposti, Serie Miscellanea, Busta 1, fasc. 1/a (April 7, 1570); Busta 2, fasc. 1/a, “Capitoli, Ordini, Provisioni” (February 1569). The 1569 draft simply called for a reserve (39v), while the 1570 fi nal copy specified a supply of 150 corbe of grain (one corba could feed an adult for two to three months) that were to be locked in a granary secured with two keys, that were to be refreshed every September, and that could not be accessed with a vote of the full corporale. If any of these rules were broken, both the rector and the master (the two key holders) were to be thrown out of office (p. 91). Bologna’s S. Onofrio orphanage had similar regulations: ASB PIE, S. Maria Maddalena/S. Onofrio, ms. 5/IX (17-I-1587). For Amsterdam: Anne E. McCants, Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphanage Care in Early Modern Amsterdam (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 136–142. For Giovanni Pepoli’s “Pio Cumulo di Misericordia”: ASB Osp, S. Maria della Vita, X/14, “Campione dell’Hospitale di S. Maria della Vita [1601],” ff. 107r–114r. 84. These figures are given in a balance sheet found at the end of the OPM’s fourth libro mastro, summarizing accounts for the years 1575–1583: ASB OPM 305 Mastro C: 494r–496v(debitori), 496v–497v(creditori).

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85. ASB OPM 84 (February 21, 1590; June 11, 1594; April 19, 1595; January 8 and March 15, 1596; October 7, November 2, and December 20, 1597). 86. For sources see n. 7. 87. ASB OPM 84 (February 18, 1566; March 3, 1566). 88. A house and garden from Alessandro and Roberto Malvezzi cost 6,000 lire in 1566 and was paid for by 1569. There were three further purchases: from Marco Tullio Migliorini in 1570 (a house for 1,200 lire) and Leonardo and Elisabeth Segni in 1572 (a house for 1,450 lire), and from the Servites in 1575 (a house for 1,250 lire). It bought a fi fth house in the same location in 1599 (770 lire). All houses were on S. Vitale Street in the S. Leonard parish. ASB OPM 84, Reportorio Opera Poveri Mendicanti, 1200–1800 (November 25, 1566; March 13, 1568; May 27, 1569; January 30, 1570; January 16, 1572; August 27, 1575; December 14, 1599). A 1733 source claims that the Malvezzi donated the original property, but this does not seem to accord with contemporary accounts: ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, Busta 76, fasc. 8, “‘Narrazione istoria della istituzione di questo’: Opera Pià.” Among other exaggerations, the same account claims that Pope Pius IV ceded to the OPM all the alms given “daily, weekly, monthly, and annually” by monastic houses, shrines, and nobles, and also maintained that the Senate continually funded it at a high level, when in fact Senate subsidies collapsed after 1685. 89. Bonetti legacy: ASB OPM 84 (October 29, 1570). The farm properties were in the choice areas of S. Giovanni Persiceto and Budrio, the credit on the Monte del Moline was for 500 silver lire, and the deposit in the Amorini Bank was 1,300 scudi (equal at that point to 5,525 lire). The libro mastro that year put the value of the Bonetti legacy as 37,642.2.8 lire. ASB OPM 304 Mastro B, ff. 81r–v. For investments linked directly to the Bonetti legacy ASB OPM 84 (January 15, 1572; August 28, 1576; June 27, 1579; February 15, 1585). 90. ASB OPM 273, “Legati fatti al Mendicanti.” Matteo Amorini’s will was made out in November 1568 (36r–v), he died in November 1573, and his sons paid the legacy in 1574 (38v–39r); Alideo di Sede (November 1, 1589; 56v); Bartolomeo Zani (March 1, 1594 ; 67r). 91. ASB OPM 84 (February 21, 1590; March 15, 1596) 92. Dalle Valle calculated that the rents would support one dowry every four years. His heirs confirmed the donation a month later. ASB OPM 84 (October 1, 1575; November 19, 1575). See also ASB OPM 273, 43v–44r. 93. ASB OPM 84 (November 9 and November 27, 1596; October 7, 1597). 94. There are twenty-one gifts of food among the 243 legacies recorded from 1564 to 1608 in ASB OPM 273 (8.64 percent). Matteo Marescalchi gave 5.5 corbe of grain annually in 1567, and Stefano di Giovanni Pietro Serenucci divided one salma annually among the OPM and four other charities in 1575. In 1587, Count Romeo Pepoli ordered his heirs to give twenty-four scudi worth of food, wine, or wood annually. The donation most like a traditional harvest thanksgiving was Marc’Antonio dall’Armi’s 1599 obligation that his heirs annually turn over two corbe of grain, one castellata (ten corbe, or 785 liters) of white grapes, two hundred bundles of heavy firewood ( fassi di cavazzatura), and 10 percent of the harvest on a plot in the

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95.

96.

97. 98.

99.

100.

101.

•

Notes to Pages 189–190

countryside. ASB OPM 84 (January 22, 1567; April 29, 1575; August 17, 1587; July 3, 1599). Claudio Ermano Ferrari, Vocabolario bolognese co’sinonimi italiani e franzesi (Bologna: Tipografia Nobili, 1820), 68, 99. In August and September 1590, the OPM borrowed 2766.13.4 lire from Lavinia Ariosti and 500 lire from Girolamo Bero. It returned the funds to both by May 1595. ASB OPM 84 (May 9, 1595). S. Bartolomeo di Reno and the hospitals of S. Maria della Vita and S. Maria della Morte did the same thing during this famine: Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 179–80; Matthew Thomas Sneider, “Charity and Property: The Wealth of Opere Pie in Early Modern Bologna,” in Povertà e innovazioni istitutzionali in Italia dal Medioevo ad oggi, ed. Vera Zamagni (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000), 131–152. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 104–106; Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 165–170. In 1591 it lent 1,000 lire at 6 percent to the Sisters of SS.ma Trinità. ASB OPM 84 (February 13, 1591). Patricians Cesare (a senator since 1577) and Onofrio Malvassia and Galeazzo Fiubba gave security for the loan. ASB OPM 84 (June 27, 1579). Neither these men nor Giovanni Bentivoglio was a member of the OPM congregazione at the time of the loan. In May 1588 it bought a 4,000-lire credit on the Monte Concordia returning 240 lire (6 percent), and in 1595 it bought another of 400 lire on the Monte Nuove delle Moline returning 26 lire (6.5 percent). See also a 1594 loan of 2,000 lire to Emilio Barbieri returning 140 lire (7 percent). In one extreme exception, it took over a heavily discounted mortgage that Ludovico Gozzadini had given to Paolo Emilio Argeli. The original mortgage of 16,000 lire on 2,002 tornature of land had returned 1,120 lire (7 percent) to Gozzadini; the OPM assumed it as security for a 1,550 gold scudo loan (6,587 lire) to Gozzadini for which he paid 178 gold scudi annually (11.45 percent). ASB OPM 84 (May 24, 1588; January 18, 1594; August 18, 1595; September 20, 1595). Sneider, “Charity and Property,” 131–152; Matthew Thomas Sneider, “Charity and Property: The Patrimonies of Opere Pie in Renaissance Bologna” (PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2004). Unfortunately, the trustees were so eager to build up their investments that Pepoli’s goal of using the fund to help the poor buy grain cheaply during famines was not being realized—this money, too, went instead to fund mortgages; see below, Chapter 6. In 1618, the Pio Cumulo had twenty-nine loans on the books ranging from 150 to 8,600 lire, though twenty-five of these were for 1,000 lire or more. Total capital invested was 79,032.12.2 lire. The thirty-two properties, monte credits, and investments generated mainly small amounts but also included a maturing investment of 6932.17 lire on the Monte di Pietà. Total income expected in 1618, between rents and maturing investments, was 28,055.18.6 lire. The confraternity of S. Maria della Vita was included among the trustees of the Pio Cumulo and kept the accounts from 1583: ASB Fondo Ospedale, Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita, Series 10, busta 39, “Amministrazione del Cumulo della Misericordia, 1500–1600; #27, “Cumulo della misericordia per tutto l’anno 1618.”

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102. The clearest example—and the single most expensive property purchase—was a farm of 235 tornatura purchased in 1576 for 5,000 gold scudi (roughly 21,250 lire). The OPM used a gift from Marc’Antonio Colonna Marsigli, archbishop of Salerno, mortgaged some properties it had bought with the Bonetti legacy, and borrowed from the seller. ASB OPM 84 (August 28, 1576). 103. The Venetian scuole suffered seriously when the government decided to liquidate its public debt at the end of the seventeenth century. Carboni, “Alle origini del fund raising,” p. 76, n. 71. 104. ASB OPM 273, 2v, 3v, 12r, 51r, 61v, 62v, 66v, 69r–70r, 73r–74v. 105. The brothers promising the 20,000-lire legacy were Giulio Cesare and Alessandro, sons of Matteo Amorini, who had left 1,000 lire in his own 1568 will (see n. 72 above). The record of legacies does not note that the brothers ever followed up on their promise. ASB OPM 84 (October 30, 1579; February 28, 1592; October 28, 1598; October 29, 1598). 106. ASB OPM 84 (February 28, 1569; October 30, 1579; October 19, 1588; November 25, 1591; April 13, 1594; January 8, 1596. 107. In the most direct example of its work as a central charitable collection agency, some boys of the OPM’s S. Maria della Pietà shelter inside the city walls went out regularly with alms boxes to collect for the foundling home of the Esposti. In their best years they gained over 400 lire for the foundling home, though the amounts they gathered steadily decreased and seem to have stopped altogether by 1591. Sums collected annually by decade (in lire): from 1571: 473, 557, 468, 281, 323, 367, 300, 77, 111. From 1580: 151, 139, 158, 54, 85, 151, 114, 126, 174, 181. From 1590: 171, 95. Figures from the libri mastri for these years: ASB OPM 304, 305, 307, 310.

5 . the w heel k eeps tur ning 1. The statutes adopted in 1578 offer a history of the shift, and go into significant detail about the forms of care offered to pilgrims and Romans in the home. Statuti della venerabile Archiconfraternita della Santissima Trinita De’Pelegrini, & Convalescenti, nuovamente riformati, e stampati (Roma: Heredi d’Antonio Blado, 1578); ASR Ospizio SS. Trinita dei Pellegrini, ms. 521/274, 5–11, 82–93; Maria T. B. Russo, “Problemi e istituti dell’assistenza romana nel cinque e seicento,” Studi romani 34 (1986): 233–240; Paola Simoncelli, “Note sul sistema assistenziale a Roma nel XVI secolo,” in Timore e carità: I poveri nell’Italia moderna, ed. Giorgio Politi, Mario Rosa, and Franco Della Peruta (Cremona: Biblioteca statale, 1982), 140, 143–156. 2. Hippolita Vespucci “perseverando nelli pensiero del peccato et per altri suoi delitti fu cacciata nelli mendicanti accio non facesse piu peccati,” while Lutia di Fabri “fece mal fi n che fu amazzata.” ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 99/6918, “Libro dove si scrivono le donne quale entrano in Sto. Paolo,” ff. 1v–3r, 5v–6r. 3. Pope Benedict XIV suppressed the home in 1746 and merged its community of nuns into that of the Convertite. Mauro Carboni, Massimmo Fornasari, and Marco Poli,

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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Notes to Pages 201–204

eds., La città della carità: Guida alle istituzioni assistenziali di Bologna dal XII al XX secolo (Bologna: Costa Editore, 1999), 75, 84. Florence’s Malmaritate home opened in 1579 under the direction of a confraternity and sheltering about thirty women. Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums: From Refuges for Ex-prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 13. The two ledgers in ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822 are unnumbered. The first is titled “+1601”—Libretti delle provisioni che si pagavano le malmaritate e mondane che havitavano nelle Convertite. The second is titled “Male Maritate 1612+.” The sisters likely started the second ledger when they moved to their new quarters on Via S. Mamolo (the opening date in the unpaginated volume is May 15, 1612, and the latest is May 4, 1614). It records both the entrances of women who profess as nuns in the community (nine in 1612, eleven in 1613, three in 1614) and also the comings and goings of the lay “malmaritate.” It’s clear that there were more nuns than laywomen in this community. They had an abbess and a vicaria, and also employed four men to carry out the work of the home: a priest, a camerlengo who kept the books and served for only a year at a time, a fattore as a general handyman, and an agente who was likely an overall administrator. This was a far larger staff than they had had in 1600–1602, when the first ledger recorded only a prioress, Teodora di Barbieri, and a vicaria, Sister Cherubina, and may indicate that the Malmaritate had simply been a separate part of the SS. Giacomo e Filippo. At least some of its nuns came from the Convertite home: on January 1, 1614, Sister Paola di Farni, described as a “conversa,” died aged eighty-eight. ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822, “+1601,” “Male Maritate 1612+.” Of the 1600–1602 cohort, forty-one left; of the 1612–1614 cohort, twenty-six left. Of these, only two of the first cohort and four of the second returned to male kin. ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822, “+1601,” “Male Maritate 1612+.” In both ledgers, women’s stays ranged from 1 to 36 weeks. Of the forty-one women of the 1600–1602 ledger who did not become nuns, the average stay was 8.78 weeks and the median 5. Of the 32 women in the 1612–1614 ledger the average was 12.15 weeks and the median 8. For the aspiring musicians of 1600–1601: ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822, “+1601,” 3r–4r. The visit to S. Petronio was on May 4, 1614, and is the last item recorded in the second ledger. ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822, “Male Maritate 1612+.” ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822, “Male Maritate 1612+” (n.p.; November 7, November 15, and December 12, 1612; March 1613; Benedetta Pieri, who returned to her balia, February 27, 1614. Don Toscho came and went on March 13, 1613). On the links between textile depressions and the sex trade: Carlo Poni, “Per la storia del distretto serico di Bologna (secc. XVI–XIX),” Rivista storico italiana(1976): 96; Dora Dumont, “Women and Guilds in Bologna: The Ambiguities of ‘Marginality,’” Radical History Review 70 (1998): 8–9, 13–15; Stefano D’Amico, “Shameful Mother: Poverty and Prostitution in Seventeenth Century Milan,” Journal of Family History 39, no. 1 (2005): 113. For what follows, see 111–115.

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11. This was in a 1586 regulation: Bando et provisione dell’Uffitio delle Bolette, et Presentatione de Forestieri (January 4 and 5, 1586). This regulation aimed to control all foreigners’ movements into Bologna. Any “Forestiere, Hebrei, et Meretrici” staying longer than two days needed a formal permit. Tavern and hotel keepers had to provide information on visitors within eight days, and any “meretrici, cortegiane, casarenghe, Ruffiani, Ruffiane” living in the city had eight days in which to register; any exemptions that they may have secured earlier were declared null and void. The bando included a table of the taxes paid by those who entered the city from different places. Those entering by horse paid three times the rate of those entering on foot, and taxes varied slightly according to the city that the “foreigner” arrived from (thirty-three places are listed, including Milan, Genoa, Cremona, Asti, Padova, Pavia, but nothing from Florence or Rome). Jews paid a lower flat tax: twelve pennies by foot (most others paid sixteen to eighteen pennies), and twenty-four by horse (others paid thirty-six or fifty pennies, and some as high as seventy-two). BUB ms. 373, n. 3C, 151v–152v. 12. For a fuller account of the prostitution in Bologna, including both shifting civic regulation and also the interactions of prostitutes and their clients and neighbors, see the forthcoming dissertation of Vanessa McCarthy, “Negotiating Marginality: Prostitutes, Community, and Civic Regulation in Early Modern Bologna” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, forthcoming). Sumptuary proclamations and residential zones established in 1514 and 1525; zones then abandoned in 1545, before being reaffirmed and restricted in the “Paleottean” legislation of 1567–1568. 13. Bando sopra le meretrice, ruffiane, et gente disoneste circa il pisonare delle case, overo vendere, & quanto debbano star lontane da i Monasteri di Monache (February 1, 1565). BCB Gozz 166. #25 (f. 197). Bando contro le meretrici di via Centrotrecento [May 1566] BCB B43 #5 f. 21r. Provisione sopra le Meretrice [October 19 1566] BUB ms. 373, n. 3C, 148r–149r. 14. Paleotti’s regulations were issued in April 1567, May 1567, and January 1568. 15. It was the first bando that aimed to move prostitutes closer to churches: Bando sopra le Meretrici: Che debano habitare nelli contrate Assignateli (April 31 and May 2, 1567), BUB ms. 373, n. 3C, 149r–v. It allowed them to live in the neighborhoods of: Ramorsella in Stra S. Stefano, Braina de gli Asinari, Borgo Novo di S. Felice, Frassinago from Saragozza to the street leading to the Rondine, and Borgo di S. Caterina da Saragozza. Violators risked fi fty lashes given publicly, and a fi ne of ten scudi d’oro. A second bando issued a week later added the contrada of S. Croce at the end of Via del Pratello, but emphasized that by the end of the year prostitutes would have to relocate to one of the three permitted neighborhoods of Borgo Nuovo del Pratello, Santa Croce, and Braina: Bando sopra le Meretrici che Debano habitare nelle contrade Assignateli Riformato, et publicato in Bologna alli 9 Maggio 1567 (BUB ms. 373, n. 3C, 149v–150r). The third order—Bando sopra li Meretrici, et Riforma de gli altri bandi sopra cio fatti pubblicato in Bologna l’ult.o di Gennaro, e reiterato el p.o di Febraro, 1568—BUB ms. 373, n. 3C, 150v–151r—reiterated the particular streets named in the first bando of April 31, 1567, and the penalties for violating this. 16. Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince, One Body and Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 127–139;

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17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

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Notes to Pages 207–213

Weitse de Boer, The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter Reformation Milan (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2001). The ledgers survive from 1583. McCarthy, “Negotiating Marginality.” D’Amico, “Shameful Mother,” 113–115. Carol Lansing, “Concubines, Lovers, Prostitutes: Infamy and Female Identity in Medieval Bologna,” in Beyond Florence: The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. Paula Findlen, Michelle Fontaine, and Duane J. Osheim (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 97. Lucia Ferrante, “Pro mercede carnali . . . Il giusto prezzo rivendicato in tribunale,” Memoria 17 (1985): 45. Ibid., 46. ASB PIE S. Croce, ms. 2, fasc. 2, fasc. 3, pp. 1–30 (partic. 5–7, 9–14); ms. 2, fasc. 4; Ridolfo Vittori, “Bonifacio dalle Balle e le Putte di Santa Croce (1547?–1612)” (Tesi di Laurea, University of Bologna, 1985), 67–69, 123–137; Ridolfo Vittori, “La pietà di un mercante bolognese del tardo Cinquecento: Bonifacio dalle Balle e le putte di Santa Croce,” Il Carrobbio 12 (1986): 327–350; Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 40–43. The printed sheets that were produced in large quantities to explain the work and needs of the Casa del Soccorso to an audience of priests and public often included an image of Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road. See BCB Gozz, ms. 244, Section 6, 139 ff. A group of prostitutes entered the old S. Orsola convent outside Porta S. Vitale on April 10, 1559, and three months later eight of them made profession as Carmelite nuns in a ceremony overseen by Bishop Giovanni Campeggi. It gathered forty-one legacies totaling lire 4201.7.8 by 1578, but this was not enough to maintain the community. APB, Ospedale degli Esposti, Miscellanea, Busta 4, fasc. 2, “Convertite” [n.p.]; Lucia Ferrante, “Honor Regained: Women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in Sixteenth Century Bologna,” in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 47, 65; Gabriella Zarri, “I monasteri femminili a Bologna tra il XIII e il XVII secolo,” Atti e memorie della Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Province di Romagna n.s. 24 (1973): 141, 180. Carboni, Fornasari and Poli, Città della carità, 84; D’Amico, “Shameful Mother,” 114; Alessandra Camerano, “Assistenza richiesta e assistana imposta: il conservatorio di S. Caterina della Rosa a Roma,” Quaderni storici 28 (1993): 227–260; Monica Chojnacka, “Women, Charity, and Community in Early Modern Venice: The Casa delle Zitelle,” Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 68–91. According to some sources, from 1590 to 1602 the shelter occupied a home owned by the late Marc’Antonio Battilana (see below) on Via Broccaindoso: Giuseppe Guidicini, Cose notabili della città di Bologna (Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1868), 2:191; Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna Perlustrata I (Bologna: 1666), 212–213. The home on Via Galliera was purchased in 1602 for 6,500 lire. Ferrante, “Honor Regained,” 51, n. 43.

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27. The fee for better conditions was about five times the basic rate, or fi fteen to sixteen lire (by 1627), the same rate as that charged at the Malmaritate. Virginia Malvezzi Ruini’s bequest of a farm worth 3,250 lire (received in 1644) was the first to subsidize fees, generating enough interest to support a single woman; the woman designated would receive the subsidy until she married or entered a convent. Ferrante, “Honor Regained,” 48, 51–52; Carboni, Fornasari, and Poli, Città della carità, 75, 84. 28. Santa remained in the Soccorso from May 1595 to May 1605 (when she left to become the companion of Lucia Cavassi), and Benedetta from March 1601 to May 1605. ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo 99/6918, ff. 7v–8r, 8v–9r; Ferrante, “Honor Regained,” 50, 67, n. 35. 29. D’Amico, “Shameful Mothers,” 114. 30. To add to the notoriety of the case, the executioner charged with beheading Don Lion failed to make a clean cut and ended up quite literally hacking him to death. Mary Laven, Virgins of Venice: Broken Vows and Cloistered Lives in the Renaissance Convent (New York: Viking, 2002), 167–185. On contemporary views of abortion, John Christopoulos, “Abortion in the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 65 (2012): 443–484 Nicholas Terpstra, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 85–112. 31. In the case of the remaining 115 women, the ledgers record their entry but not their exit. Entry registers exist for the period 1589–1662: ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo 99/6918. For early entries, ff. 1r–6r. Statistics based on table in: Ferrante, “Honor Regained,” 49–50, 58, 67, n. 33. 32. Gabriella Zarri, Il carteggio tra Don Leone Bartolomeo e un gruppo di gentildonne Bolognese negli anni del Concilio di Trento 1545–63 (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa, 1986); Gabriella Zarri, “Ginevra Gozzadini dall’Armi, gentildonna bolognese (1520/7–1567),” in Rinascimento al femminile, ed. Ottavia Niccoli (Rome/Bari: Laterza, 1991), 117–143. 33. ASB PIE S. Giuseppe, cart 1, Libro +, pp. 22–25; cart. 23, “MCCXIII. Patti, conventioni, accordi, et oblighi con nostri lavoratori fuori in villa, da osservarsi,” ff. 5r–22v, 39r–41v, 52r–v. 34. Apart from these two women, only three others mentored more than one: Hippolita Boncompagni (three), VPC (three), and LB (possibly Lucretia Bero) (two). The length of stay for thirty-eight of the forty-six girls is given, and ranges from one week to 114 months, with an average of 25.14 months and a mean of 15. ASB PIE S. Giuseppe, ms. 23, pp. 8–38. 35. Susanna would marry Giacomo Boschette in 1603 with a dowry of 742 lire, and Isabetta would marry Girolamo Aste with a dowry of 458 lire. Their father served on the executive congregazione from 1587 to 1590. Mauro Carboni, Le doti della “povertà”: Famiglia, risparmio, previdenza: il Monte del Matrimonio in Bologna (1583– 1796) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1999), 97, 118, 159; Mario Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio in Bologna 1583–1983 (Bologna: Monte del Matrimonio, 1983), 164. The first statutes ordered parish priests to send records of deaths to the monte offices every month in order to keep track of depositors, but this proved too complicated; it is not clear

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36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

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Notes to Pages 218–222

when the more convenient system of biennial visits began. The monte maintained offices at S. Petronio and the archbishop’s palace. Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 55–61, 191–195. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 135, 137. Three significant examples are Siena’s S. Maria della Scala, Florence’s Ospedale degli Innocenti, and Naples’s Case Sante. Depositors could of course have used them to save for a dowry, though this was not necessarily the hospitals’ intention. Siena’s bank held the funds of pilgrims arriving from northern Europe and headed to Rome. The cash-strapped Florentine and Neapolitan hospitals began accepting deposits in an effort to secure liquid capital: Lucia Sandri, “L’attività di banco di deposito dell’Ospedale degli Innocenti di Firence: don Vincenzo Borghini e la ‘bancarotta’ del 1579,” in L’uso del denaro: Patrimoni e amministrazione nei luoghi pii e negli enti ecclesiastici in Italia (secoli XV–XVIII), ed. M. Garbellotti and A. Pastore (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), 153–162; R. Salvemini, “Operatori sociali, operatori economici: gli enti di assistenza napoletani in età moderna,” in Forme di povertà e innovazioni istituzionali in Italia dal medioevo ad oggi, ed. Vera Zamagni (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000), 297–299, 308–313; Philip Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 58–66. Statuti e Provisioni del Monte del Matrimonio di Bologna, Riformati, e stabiliti l’Anno 1627 (Bologna: Carlo Malisardi, 1631), 4–5. Alberto Guenzi, Pane e fornai a Bologna in età moderna (Venice: Marsilio 1982), 144–145; Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 44–45; Mauro Carboni, “The Economics of Marriage: Dotal Strategies in Bologna in the Age of Catholic Reform,” Sixteenth Century Journal 39 (2008): 371–388. Carlo Antonio Masini, Bologna perlustrata (1666; reprint, Bologna: A. Forni, 1986), 56. The Monte di Pietà handled eighteen funds at the time that it established the agency: Isabelle Chabot and Massimo Fornasari, L’economia della carità: Le doti del Monte di Pietà di Bologna (secoli XVI–XX) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1997). Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 64–65; Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 53. The start date of March 12 was likely symbolic and a deliberate effort to evoke the dotal charity of Gregory the Great and Gregory XIII because in fact the first deposits were not accepted until May 4, 1583. Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 55–61. The congregazione of twelve Ufficiali included one cleric, one university doctor, one senator, three gentlemen, three merchants, and three artisans. They served one-year terms but could nominate successors and remain in office for a series of terms. For a transcription of the first statutes and list of officials: Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 165–200. The appeal to the unnamed senator was dated June 8, 1583; Maragi speculates that the senator in question may have been Giovanni Pepoli, since Battilana flatters him as someone deeply involved in helping the poor of the city, particularly around the Hospital of S. Francesco (where Pepoli was indeed very heavily invested). Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 45–54; the letter itself is transcribed on 183–184. Mario Fanti, “Opere di assistenza e carità dal Medioevo al Cinquecento a Bologna,” Ravennatensia 10 (1979): 90–91. The Capuchin convent finally opened in 1628. Despite his extensive

Notes to Pages 223–226

44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

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involvement in the city’s economic, charitable, and religious life, Battilana does not appear to have applied for citizenship from the Senate. Giancarlo Angelozzi and Cesarina Casanova, Diventare cittadini: La cittadinanza ex privilegio a Bologna (secoli XVI–XVIII), Biblioteca de “L’Archiginnasio,” Serie III, n. 1 (Bologna: 2000). Fifty-nine of the first 268 depositors (1583–1590) died before marriage. The congregation changed the rules February 17, 1591, but then inexplicably failed to announce the change for 18 months, only posting its announcements on September 20, 1592. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 117–124, 163. Carboni offers a table with four-year averages from 1588 to 1792 on p. 121. Of the 162 accounts opened in 1583–1584, 27 (16.7 percent) had more than a single depositor but only 4 (2.5 percent) had two or more. Multiple depositors averaged 7 to 10 percent through the seventeenth century, rising to over 15 percent by the eighteenth. Of the 962 families opening accounts from 1583 to 1625, 241 fathers are identified by occupation, and they come from a wide social range, with mechanical trades dominating over professional activities. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 145–147, 157–158. The monte also anticipated situations in which a girl’s parents might have died before her marriage, assigning two officials to be the guardians of her account until she could redeem it. Statuti e provisioni, 12. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 126–147. For girls’ ages when their accounts were opened: 160–166. After the mid-seventeenth century the number of dowry funds opened by parishes and confraternities exceeded those opened by employers. “Appolonia di Bastardini, soprastante delle femine all’Ospedale” earned six lire per four months in 1571 (or eighteen lire annually), rising to eight lire (or twenty-four lire annually) in 1572; on top of this she received room and board. On April 29, 1574, “Appolonia di Bastardini, al Presente al Guberno delle Done in nostro hospitale” was paid 250 lire “per restitouirli come si dice al Giornale ac/ 1569 a M.o Oratio Zanchini.” ASB OPM 304 Mastro B (1570–1574): ff. 28r, 163r–v, 289r–v, 293r–v. See chapters 12–15 of the first statutes: Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 194–195. Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 166–167; Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 113. For an extended discussion of conservatory dowries, see Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 268–275. Carboni transcribes the text of the agreement with S. Gregorio in Le doti della “povertà,” 143–144. The first statutes promise redemption within one day, while later regulations extended this to three months. The certificate of redemption had to be authorized by the monte’s own officials. Ibid., 97. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 184–187. See particularly Figure 6 and Table 8. The Esposti set its minimum dowry at forty lire in 1601 and raised this to fifty lire in 1603, although three unnamed girls who entered convents in 1605 received only twenty-five lire. From 1607, the minute books record only those votes for dowries that exceeded these limits (forty-five girls over the following thirteen years to 1630, of whom thirty-two received dowries up to 150 lire, four dowries of 200 to 800 lire,

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54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

60.

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Notes to Pages 227–229

and nine dowries of unspecified amounts). ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo (Esposti), “Libro di Congregazione 1601–30,” Ser I/ ms.1, 4v, 19r, 34r, 47v–263v. Dowry inflation hit the Esposti as the seventeenth century progressed: from 1607 Esposti girls regularly received at least 100 to 150 lire, increasing to 150 to 200 lire by 1620, and then jumping to 500 lire in 1663. ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo (Esposti), “Libro di Congregazione 1631–53,” Ser I/ ms.3. The home’s governors raised the dowries “per facilitare maggiormente il maritarsi,” and even considered going as high as 600 lire. Financial problems brought a drop to 300 lire in April 1669, but they restored the 500 lire a year later. ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo, “Libro di Congregazione 1652–70,” Ser I, ms.4, ff. 91v–93r, 124v, 133v. For an expanded discussion, see: Nicholas Terpstra, “Real and Virtual Families: Forms and Dynamics of Fostering and Adoption in Bologna’s Early Modern Hospitals,” Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome: Italie e Méditerranée (forthcoming). Innocenti dowries rose from 150 to 300 lire in 1561. Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 98–100, 102. Statuti e provisioni, 11; Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 169–176. The papal debt rose from 211,207 to 762,095 scudi from 1526 to 1599, and then exploded in the seventeenth century, reaching 40 million scudi by 1672. At that point, the papacy paid 1.58 million scudi in interest to investors. Thanks to dropping interest rates, it was able to increase its debt by a further 11 million scudi by 1744, while interest payments rose only slightly to 1.6 million scudi. Mauro Carboni, “Public Debt, Guarantees, and Local Elites in the Papal States (XVI–XVIII Centuries),” Journal of European Economic History 36 (2009): 155–159. Bologna’s debt rose from 1,108,101 silver lire in 1550 to 5,424,437 in 1595, and the number of investors rose from 735 to 1,197. Local private investors represented 89.2 percent of the 1555 investors and 81.6 percent of the 1595 investors, though as interest rates fell the proportion of private investors did as well, reaching 51.6 percent by 1765. Over the same period, the percentage of institutional investors in the public debt rose from 7.6 percent in 1555 to 13.4 percent in 1595 and 43.4 percent in 1765. Carboni, “Public Debt,” 161–165, 171, 173. On depositors as creditors: Statuti e provisioni, 4, 5, 12; Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 100–121. See Figure 2 on p. 102. Also see Maragi, Il Monte del Matrimonio, 64–69. There was always significant continuity since, in an adaptation of Senate procedure, “retiring” officials nominated three successors from the corporale (and from the same social class and occupational group), from which the congregation would choose one. They could also serve numerous terms in sequence. Maragi, Il Monte di Matrimonio, 195–198. In the 44 years from 1583 to 1627, 182 people served on the congregazione. Over the 20 years from 1628 to 1647 this fell to 60, and then for the 157 years from 1647 to 1688 a total of 111 served. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 70–89. Public debt fell to 40 percent in the 1690s, ranged from 30 to 40 percent from the 1730s to 1760s, and dropped to under 10 percent from the 1770s to 1790. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 102–105, 113–115; Mauro Carboni, “Alle origini del fund raising: confraternite, predicatori e mercanti nelle città italiane (secoli XIV–XVIII),”

Notes to Pages 230–235

61.

62.

63. 64.

65.

66.

67. 68.

69.

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in Il fund raising in Italia: Storia e prospettive, ed. Bernardino Farolfi and Valerio Melandri (Bologna: il Mulino, 2008),76–77. From the 1990s a group of historians has conducted extensive research into the operations of the Monte di Pietà, starting in Bologna, extending to other centers, and addressing a range of issues from economic to cultural to material history: Massimo Fornasari, Il “thesoro” della città: Il Monte di Pietà e l’economia bolognese nei secoli XV e XVI (Bologna: il Mulino, 1993); Isabelle Chabot and Massimo Fornasari, L’economia della carità; Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Il denaro e la salvezza: L’invenzione del Monte di Pietà (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001); Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, ed., I conti dei Monti: Teoria e pratica amministrativa nei Monti di Pietà fra Medieovo ed Età Moderna (Venezia: Marsilio, 2008); Mauro Carboni and Nicholas Terpstra, eds., The Material Culture of Debt: Pawns and Pledges in Renaissance Italy, Special Issue of Renaissance & Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme (forthcoming). The monte had four offices in the city and three in the contado. It charged 5 percent for larger loans and 0 percent for smaller. Borrowers were notified before their pawns were auctioned, and retained the first right to buy them back. S. Verardi Ventura, “L’ordinamento bolognese dei secoli XVI–XVII,” L’Archiginnasio 76 (1981): 286–291. Dumont, “Women and Guilds in Bologna,” 9. Two loans were paid within a day, and the longest after seventy-seven days. Vanessa McCarthy, “Debtors and Creditors, Class and Gender: A Social History of the Monte della Pietà in Bologna in the Late Fifteenth Century” (History 1222 Seminar Paper, University of Toronto, 2006). McCarthy based this analysis on the first ledger of Bologna’s Monte di Pietà, published as: Armando Antonelli, ed., Il libro giornale del Monte della Pietà di Bologna: Studi e edizione del più antico registro contabile del Monte di Pieta di Bologna (1473–1519) (Bologna: 2003). Ciro Spontone, “Lo stato, il governo, et i magistrati di Bologna,” ed. S. Verardi Ventura as “L’ordinamento bolognese dei secoli XVI–XVII,” L’Archiginnasio 76 (1981): 286–291; Mario Maragi, I cinquecento anni del Monte di Bologna (Bologna: Banca del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, 1973), 44–48, 78–85, 355–361. Carol Bresnahan Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà of Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 262; Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 59–62. Monte officials commissioned the report in 1777. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 69–70. The first public bando giving provisions against this plague was issued on October 9, 1574, and there were a further thirty that directly addressed this particular enduring plague over the following three years. Zita Zanardi, ed., Bononia Manifesta: catalogo dei bandi, editti, costituzioni, e provvedimenti diversi stampati nel XVI secolo per Bologna e il suo territorio (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1996), 131–168 (#873, 876, 939, 945, 951, 956, 959a, 959b, 960, 979, 982, 985, 990, 991, 995, 1003, 1007, 1016, 1018, 1029a, 1029b, 1029c, 1030, 1034a, 1037, 1046, 1049, 1050a, 1056, 1077, and 1170a). This is taken from the prologue to the 1583 statutes: Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Fondo Demaniale (Dem), Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 24/6563, #3,

336

70.

71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77. 78.

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Notes to Pages 235–238

1r–3v. The seven artisans were Francesco di Mezadri di qm Antonio Mezadro of Mantua; Matteo di qm. Bart.o di Giurdi of Zola Predosa; Ludovico di qm Gabini di Barbieri of Ronchi da Crevalcore; Sebastiano di qm Ant.o Tarozo, of the comune San Zoane; Lorenzo di qm Zani Botazzo, called Ursi, of the comune of Bonconvento; Sebastiano di qm Gemignano di Masini, of the comune of Montevia; and Agostino di qm Matteo Manzolino, of the comune of Pimazzo. Apart from the first man whose father had come from Mantua, most of these artisans came from communes in the broader Bolognese hinterland. The route they followed in their procession had been laid out by Gabrielle Paleotti: Fanti, Compagnia dei Poveri, 35–39. Regole e Costitutioni da osservarsi da tutti quelli li quali saranno aggregati nella Compagnia delli Poveri, eretta sottoa la protettione della Regina delli Cieli, posta nella strada della Nosadella, la quale fu fondata . . . MDLXXVII di marzo (Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1577). Their first home was the same Franciscan confraternal hospital where they had first gathered for vespers. Their patron/intercessor was Cesare Cattani, who became the Compagnia’s first rector, with the possible assistance of the first prior, a Franciscan tertiary Giovanni Paolo di Giacomo Castaldini. ASB Dem, Comp di S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 1/6540, #4 (4-II-1577). The contract for the house purchase is the first administrative document in the company’s archive: ASB Dem, Comp di S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 1/6540, #4 (4-II1577). The confraternity had to pay fi fty-five lire annually, with the balance due in five years. The sale was guaranteed by four of the new confraternities conservators, together with M. A. Fiubba, a senator who was deeply involved with the two orphanages of S. Onofrio and S. Bartolomeo di Reno. ASB Dem, Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 24/6563, #3, ff. 20v–21v. ASB Dem, Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 24/6563, #3, ff. 42v–43v. ASB Dem, Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 24/6563, #3, f. 44r. ASB Dem, Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 24/6563, #3, 45v–46r. See also Fanti, Compagnia dei Poveri, 55. Average wages were eight to twelve lire per month: Alberto Guenzi, Pane e fornai a Bologna:90–91, 106–107, 144–145. The shoemakers’ group was known as the “Compagnia dei lavoranti calzolari.” Mario Fanti, “Istituzioni di mutuo soccorso in Bologna fra Cinquecento e Settecento: la Compagnia dei lavoranti calzolari,” in Povertà e innovazioni istituzionali in Italia, ed. Vera Zamagni (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000), 225–245 (an edition of its 1565 statutes is on 238–245). Dues in the Calzatori lavoranti were pegged at one soldo per month, and benefits were distributed at ten soldi per week, though limited to two weeks. While it offered no maternity benefits, it did offer health care, old-age benefits, and burial services. One of its first two syndics was Francesco Battilana, though it is not clear whether he was any relation to Marc’Antonio Battilana. The parallel group for silk spinners was dedicated to San Rocco. Carboni, Le doti della Povertà, p61. Fanti, “Istituzioni di mutuo soccorso,” 234–236. ASB Dem, Compagnia di Buon Gesù, busta 9/7631, fi lza 1 (revision of 2-V-1588). S. Maria dei Guarini and S. Maria della Carità developed similar plans in Bologna, and there were also parallel developments in Florence: Ronald F. E. Weissman,

Notes to Pages 238–246

79.

80.

81.

82.

83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

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“Brothers and Strangers: Confraternal Charity in Renaissance Florence,” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 15 (1988): 35. ASB Anziani Consoli, Insignia I, ff. 114v–115r. In an even earlier precedent, the chronicler Eliseo Mamelini noted that he had received subsidies from the Senate to support the twelve children that he was raising: Eliseo Mamelini, Cronaca e storia Bolognese del primo Cinquecento nel memoriale di ser Eliseo Mamelini, ed. V. Montanari, Quaderni Culturali Bolognese 3, no. 9 (1979): 41. The payments were noted in chapter 27 of both the 1546 and the 1547 statutes, and the statement of women’s equality in paying dues came in the set of statutes. Mauro Perani and Bracha Rivlin, Vita religiosa ebraica a Bologna nel cinquecento: Gli statuti della Confraternita dei solerti (Florence, 2000), 89, 94, 106, 123. The only records within the company’s own deposit in the ASB that date from the later sixteenth century are the statutes, some wills and property transactions (1/6540 and 20/6560), and copies of indulgences (12/6551). ASB, Dem, Inventory Fondo Demaniale 1B, p. 602. The records of visits kept in the Archivio Arcivescovile in Bologna (AAB): 1581: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), ff. 21r–v; 1583: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), f. 80r.; 1586: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 16 (H/508), ff. 63v–64r.; 1591: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), f. 173r.; 1595: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), f. 140.; 1598: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 22 (H/514), ff. 180–81 (22-X); 1613: AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 22 (H/514), ff. 198–99 (30-I); 1652: AAB, Miscellanee Vecchie, cart 167 (I/377), fasc. 54a. See also Fanti, Compagnia dei Poveri, 57–59. AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), f. 80r (23-X-1583). AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 16 (H/508), cc. 63v–64r (16-XII-1586); AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), c. 140 (25-VI-1595). AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/5111), ff. 21r–v. ASB Dem, S. Maria Regina dei Coeli. 24/6563, #5. Fanti, Compagnia dei Poveri, 87–93. Carboni, Le doti della “povertà,” 69–70. The Compagnia dei lavoranti calzolari likewise remained outside the archbishop’s orbit and visitations: Fanti, “Istitutzioni di mutuo soccorso,” 231.

6 . b a r o qu e p i e t y a n d t h e qua l i tà of m e r c y 1. Capitoli e Leggi Inviolabili da osservarsi per l’avvenire dalle Signore Priore e Camerlenghi de’Mendicanti pro tempore e dalli Ministri & altri per utile, e beneficio dell’Opera si nel Temporale, come Spirituale, cavati dalla Congregatione, fatta con l’intervento de gl’Illustrissime Signori Assonti dell’Illustriss. Reggimento sopra li Mendicanti, dell’Illustrissime Signore Gentildonne sopra detta Opera, & Illustrissimi Signori Ufficiali, & Assonti, eletti dalla sudetta Congregatione de’Mendicanti di 26 Febraro 1654, e come più latamente appare per Rogito dell’infrascritto Notaio di detta Opera. BCB Gozz 242 #8, p. 264. 2. The broadsheet has twenty numbered paragraphs, of which eight deal with women’s movements in and around the home and the city (1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 18), three with

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4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

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Notes to Pages 247–251

the men who may or may not enter the home (9, 12, 20), two with what the girls and women may or may not wear (2, 3), two with cost containment (7, 14, 17), one with work (5), and four with the office of the Prioresses themselves (6, 15, 16, 19). BCB Gozz 242 #8, p. 264. BCB Gozz 242 #8, p. 264, chapters 2 and 6. The camurra (with local variant spellings as camurre, camore, camure or camorre, gamurra or zimarra) was a long and large woman’s overgarment, open in the front and decorated with buttons and sleeves of various colors and fabrics that were often detachable. It was the item of clothing most commonly pawned at Monte di Pietà. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “From the Closet to the Wallet: Pawning clothes in Renaissance Italy,” in The Material Culture of Debt: Pawns & Pledges in Renaissance Italy, ed. Mauro Carboni and Nicholas Terpstra, Special Issue of Renaissance & Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme (forthcoming). The nearest census in time is one of 1660, which shows that there were 100 women and 330 girls (putte) at S. Gregorio, and 105 men and 160 boys divided between the Casa di Dentro and S. Gregorio. AAB Miscellanea vecchie, cart. 638, fasc. 61n. With 62 percent of the wards being female, this was close to the gender breakdown found a century before when the shelter first opened. In its penultimate chapter, the broadsheet waxes nostalgic about former times when the rector, prior, and massaro (by 1654 called the camerlengho) went as a group to the house of the woman whose name had been drawn for the position in order to convince her to take it on. It calls for a return to this practice, and advises these officials to be ready to place themselves between the woman and those people—husbands, children, and family—who will try to convince the woman not to take the job on. They needed now to give the woman a better idea of what the work entailed so that she would be prepared to do it diligently. BCB Gozz 242 #8, p. 264, chapter 19. For a more focused and detailed examination of developments through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see the essays in: Forme e soggetti dell’intervento assistenziale in una città di antico regime: Atti del IV colloquio (Bologna, 20–21 gennaio, 1984) (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1986). In 1528, the Esposti paid its wetnurses 1913.11.6 lire, or just over 31 percent of its annual budget of 6078.19.7 lire. ASB Osp, Ospedale degli Esposti, III/1, ff. 61r–77v (see payment 75v). By 1587, the amount had grown to 7522.13.8 lire, which was now 41.25 percent (the largest single item by far) of the annual budget of 18,233.3.1 lire. ASB Osp, Ospedale degli Esposti, III/15, f. 113v. For the “elemosina di un bambino”: APB, Fondo Ospedale degli Esposti, Serie Miscellanea, busta 2, fasc. 1/a, f. 30v; Adanella Bianchi, “‘L’elemosina di un bambino’: Pratica e controllo dell’abbandono all’ospedale dei Bastardini (secc. XVI–XVIII),” Sanità scienza e storia 2 (1989): 43–45; Claudia Pancino, “La levatrice fra delazione e segretezza,” Sanità scienza e storia 2 (1989): 117–125. Figures in the table are derived from the libri mastri: ASB, Ospedale dei SS. Pietro e Proculo, detto degli Esposti, Serie III, ms. 10 (1567–1572) and ms. 15 (1587–1594). In 1692, the amount spent on wetnurses was 10,758 lire (29.1 percent) and other living costs (food, wine, and wood) were 10,875 lire (29.41 percent), so the two together

Notes to Pages 251–256

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

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represented 58.5 percent of total costs of 36,976 lire. See ms. 33 (1684–1692), f. 403 r–v. See also Bianchi, “‘L’elemosina di un bambino,’” 46–53. Bianchi, “‘L’elemosina di un bambino,” 46–53. For more on this process, see Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 127–133, 269–272, 274–277; Luisa Ciammitti, “Quanto costa essere normali, La dote nel conservatorio femminile di Santa Maria del Baraccano (1630–1680),” Quaderni storici 53 (1983): 469–497. ASB PIE S. Croce, 2, fasc. 3, pp. 33–35, 39–40; Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 98–101, 132–133. Mauro Carboni, Massimo Fornasari, and Marco Poli, eds., La città della carità: Guida alle istituzioni assistenziali di Bologna dal XII al XX secolo (Bologna: Costa Editore, 1999), 61. The girls’ matriculation list (ASB PIE S. Giuseppe 23) divides into three parts: the first with thirty girls from 1616 to 1619 (pp. 1–7), then a gap in records until a second phase with purchase of the house in 1628 and the entry of forty-six girls to February 1636 (pp. 8–38), and then a third phase with thirty-six girls from the dropping of mentorships in April 1636 until the list ends in February 1641 (pp. 38–55). The last large group brought in under the old terms was fourteen girls who were accepted in April 1639 (pp. 45–51). The prologue to the 1641 statutes claims that the women were overwhelmed by the demands of administration, but their successes since 1606 belie this. Institutione della casa di S. Gioseffo con le Regole e forma di vivere, Da farsi osservare per le Putte, che si ammaestrano dentro di quella (Bologna: Gio Battista Ferroni, 1641), 3–5. Four censuses in the later seventeenth century show that at any one time there were eleven to fourteen girls and approximately four staff at S. Giuseppe, for a total of fi fteen to twenty. AAB 619, no. 31, f. 31r–v. This was the gender division in the list of officers chosen for 1646: see AAB 619, no. 31 (January 16, 1646). Olwen Hufton, “Altruism and Reciprocity: The Early Jesuits and Their Female Patrons,” Renaissance Studies 15, no. 3 (2001): 328–330. ASB PIE S. Giuseppe, cart 1, Libro +, pp. 22–25. For more on this development, see also Terpstra, Abandoned Children, 222–241. It’s even possible that the Malmaritate was using the Convertite as its own primary location: see the two homes’ ledgers in ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 3/6822. Both record fees being charged at the level of fi fteen lire per month, but the fees actually paid varied significantly from person to person. As at S. Croce, the Soccorso began to keep formal administrative records only after dalle Balle was ousted. This is one reason why its early history can be difficult to trace. The records of the governing congregazione “Sessioni della Congregazione della Casa del Soccoso di S. Paolo: Libro Primo,” run from September 1, 1606, to 1656 and are among five manuscripts bound together without internal cataloguing as “Sessioni ed altro” in ASB Dem S. Giacomo e Filippo, 99/6918. The new administration consisted of a president, counselor, three male and three female visitors, and six conservators. The group that replaced dalle Balle was more highborn than the

340

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25.

26.

27. 28.

•

Notes to Pages 256–264

tertiaries who had moved him out of S. Croce, and Massarenti served as counselor in 1607. ff. 1r–3v. Cardinal Archbishop Ludovico Ludovisi formally requested in 1630 that the Casa del Soccorso serve as the Convertite’s “Casa del Probazione.” Lucia Ferrante, “Honor Regained: Women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in Sixteenth Century Bologna,” in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 65, n. 15. “Donne Carcerate dal 1649 sino al 1680 per le M.M. Convertite.” This is one of the five small ledgers in ASB Dem SS. Giacomo e Filippo 99/6918 (see n. 18 above), and is followed by another recording those “carcerate” from 1680 to 1692. It’s possible that the two gaps in the record reflect periods when lodging was actually suspended and policies changed, since the average entrances over the three shorter periods are quite different: from 1649 to 1659 entrances averaged 161.72 per year, from 1663 to 1669 they fell to 70.85 per year, and from 1672 to 1679 they rose slightly to 85.62 per year. “Conditioni che devono havere le Donne per essere ammesse e potere stare nella pia Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo.” Undated printed notice in BCB Gozz 244, ff. 139r–v. A girl who left without permission would need a positive vote of the entire congregation before she could be readmitted, and a girl who returned to her old ways after leaving was to be ostracized, with staff, officials, and other girls forbidden from having any contact with her. BCB BBA Gozz 244, f. 139v. “Si prega V.S. in Visceribus Christi voler mandar l’elemosina, che destinò la Quaresima passata del 1639, per sovenimento delle poveri Penitenti nella Casa del Soccorso di S. Polo in Galliera al Sig [ ] quale dalla Congregatione e stata deputata à riceverla nella sual Parochia di S. [ ] Che da S.D.M. ne receverà abbondante remuneratione. Dovranno essere soldi [ ] per Mesi [ ]. These and other forms can be found in BCB Gozz 244, #6. BCB Malvezzi 202, 7A. Modi per conservare e soccorrete l’Opera de Mendicanti. Items 11/C, a, b, c. The forms are undated but are identified in the inventory as being of the seventeenth century. Yet another undated form from the same general period listed “The Ways to More Easily Provide for the Hospital of the Mendicanti” under the three headings of Alms, Virtue, and Industry. BCB Malvezzi 202 7B, Modo per più facilmente provedere l’Hospedale de Mendicanti. The proclamation also reiterated a clause that had appeared frequently in the past, i.e., that the guardiano could not allow any woman into S. Gregorio on the basis of a recommendation from the Lady Prioress, the camerlengo, or another official, but only by means of a written license signed by at least two of the three male executive heads. There was no similar regulation regarding men. BCB, Fondo Malvezzi 202, #3b Bando: “Feria secunda, di verò decima quinta Mensis Decembris 1670”(Bononiae: Typis Haeredis Victorij Bentatij, 1671). Of the 695 inmates, 330 were female children and 160 were male. In addition there were 100 adult women and 105 adult men. ASB, Assunteria dei Magistrati, Affari Diversi, Busta 76, fasc. 17, “Limosine fatte dall’Arte della Seta.” The Reni painting was commissioned in 1601, and the guild

Notes to Pages 264–266

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

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had to work hard to get it from Reni by 1636. It is now in Paris. Sybille EbertSchifferer, Andrea Emiliani, and Erich Schleier, Guido Reni e l’Europa: Fama e fortuna (Bologna, Nuova Alfa Editoriale—Credito Romanolo, 1988), 204–206. This information and reference is from: Pierangelo Bellettini, ed., Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna (Bologna: Nardini Editore, 2001), 202. Different sources give anywhere from twenty-five to twenty-seven guilds in Bologna in the early seventeenth century: see A. I. Pini, I libri matricularum societatum bononiensium (Bologna: Archivio di Stato di Bologna, 1967), 26–27; Lia Gheza Fabbri, L’organizzazione del lavoro in una economia urbana: Le Società d’Arti a Bologna nei secoli XVI e XVII (Bologna: CLUEB, 1988), 24–25. Although of course tourist-driven restoration does shape what has been restored and to what period. While Florence and Siena were designated by post-Risorgimento governments as “medieval” and “Renaissance” cities, Bologna was designated a “medieval” and “baroque” city. See three recent works that explore the cultural politics of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century restorations: D. Medina Lasanksy, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); John Easton Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen, Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Yannick Portebois and Nicholas Terpstra, The Renaissance of the Nineteenth Century/Le 19e siécle renaissant (Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003). Angelo Torre, Il consumo di devozioni: Religione e communità nelle campagne dell’ancien regime (Venice: Marsilio, 1995). On the link between baroque spirituality, architecture, and liturgy, see: Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). On ecclesiastical architecture and the baroque in Bologna, see: Carlo De Angelis and Giancarlo Roversi, eds., Bologna Ornata: Le trasformazioni urbane della città tra il Cinquecento e l’Ottocento (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1994), 115–123. On the construction of the Jesuit church of. S.Lucia in particular, see the essays in: Anna M. Matteuci and Giampaolo Brizi, Dall’isola alla città: I Gesuiti a Bologna (Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1988). T. Barton Thurber, “Architecture and Civic Identity in Late Sixteenth-Century Bologna: Domenico and Pellegrino Tibaldi’s Projects for the Rebuilding of the Cathedral of San Pietro and Andrea Palladio’s Designs for the Façade of the Basilica of San Petronio,” Renaissance Studies 13 (1999): 455–474. S. Maria della Pietà has the sober and austere classical form associated with postTridentine architecture in Bologna. The first stage was completed in 1604. Lorenzo Capellini and Giuliano Gresleri, eds., Guida di architettura: Bologna (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2004), 122. Other leading painters of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries commissioned to produce work for the church include: Lavinia Fontana, Bartomoleo Cesi, Bartolomeo Passarotti, Alessandro Tiarini, and Mastellata. On Guido Reni’s altarpiece, see: D. Stephen Pepper, “Guido Reni: New Documents for the Pietà dei Mendicanti,” The Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1060 (July 1991): 441–445.

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34. For the clearest description of this process, see: Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also: Nicholas Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 171–225. Edward Muir set the development in a broader context in his response to Robert Putnam’s views on civil society and social capital in Italy: Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” in Patterns of Social Capital, ed. Robert I. Rotberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41–67. 35. ASB Dem, Comp. di S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 12/6551, #3 is a list of indulgences and spiritual privileges: 18-V-1577: Gregory XIII gives a plenary indulgence to all members on the day of their admission and in articulo mortis, and to any of the faithful who enter the church on the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary; these indulgences are renewed by Clement VIII on May 17, 1602. These popes also concede an indulgence of one hundred days on every member who comes to worship or a meeting of the congregation. August 14, 1591: Gregory XIV gives plenary indulgence to all who enter church on day of the Circumcision of Christ (January 1). This privilege is for five years only. July 21, 1610: Paul V grants plenary indulgence to all who visit church on days when the image of the virgin is publicly displayed. Examples of “indulgence inflation” are numerous: for example, Pius V had in 1568 granted forty days’ indulgence to teachers in schools of Christian doctrine each time they taught. Gregory XIII increased this in 1575 to a plenary indulgence to everyone who joined a school of Christian doctrine as a teacher. AAB Miscellanea Vecchie 798, “Indulgenze alla Congregazione della Dottrina Cristiana.” 36. The Franciscans’ Ospedale della Nosadella had been overstretched and compromised during a serious plague in the early sixteenth century, and the confraternity running it had relocated to a new site at the corner of Via Pratello and Via S. Felice by 1511 or 1512, where it built a new hospital to the design of Domenico Tibaldi. ASB Ospedale, Osp. S. Francesco, I/1, “1576: Ordinationi delle Congregatione fatte dalli oficiali della Compagn. di S. Francesco sino all’anno 1611,” 2v–5v, 12r–14v; Francesco Menchetti, “Nuovi study sulla chiesa di Santa Maria delle Laudi e l’Ospedaletto di Bologna,” Il Carrobbio 32 (2006): 65–73. The old hospital was “profanato,” and used to stable animals and store wood and kindling for sale. ASB Dem, S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 23/6563 #3, c. 3. After buying the abandoned hospital, the Compagnia dei Poveri purchased additional lands for expansion in 1598, 1600, and 1615, and received Senate permission for construction that intruded on the public street in 1585, 1604, and 1615. ASB Dem S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 21/6560, #1, D9A, D10. These were purchased with a string of legacies from 1581 to 1610, most in the range of 50 to 300 lire given in return for various memorial services. Most are from artisinal/ bourgeois donors, and the largest is the gift of 1,200 lire given by Senator Silvio Albergati, ASB Dem, S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 1/6540. 37. AAB Visite pastorali, vol. 19 (H/511), cc. 21r–v. 38. Under this privilege, the Compagnia dei Poveri gave the chapel to the Lateran chapter, and then leased it back. Details of this arrangement, first signed on February 15,

Notes to Pages 268–270

39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

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1603, and then renewed every fi fteen years thereafter, are given in ASB Dem, Comp. S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 12/6551, #1, 2. As early as 1608, a chronicler was lauding the new noble membership at the Compagnia dei Poveri: F. Cavazzoni, Corona di gratie e gratie, favori e miracoli della gloriosa Vergine Maria fatti in Bologna. BCB ms. B 298, 317–318. See also Mario Fanti, La chiesa e la Compagnia dei Poveri a Bologna (Bologna: Dehonane, 1977), 95–100. For more on the practice of “liberation from death”: Alessandra Parisini, “Pratiche extragiudiziali di amministrazione della giustizia: la ‘liberazione dalla morte’ a Faenza tra ’500 e ’700,” Quaderni storici 67 (1988): 147–168. For early practices in Bologna: Nicholas Terpstra, “Theory into Practice: Executions, Comforting, and Comforters in Renaissance Italy,” in The Art of Executing Well: Rituals of Execution in Renaissance Italy, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008), 152–153. The Poveri Congregation voted on whom they would liberate, and the rector then presented this individual’s name to the legate. If confirmed, the rector then informed the criminal’s procurator that he must cover the costs of “due cori di musici,” a “torcia infiorata” for the company, and two more torches to accompany the crucifi x. On the day of liberation, the confratelli donned their black robes and went in procession bearing the company standard to the capital prison of the Torrone within the Palazzo Communale. The rector, prior, and assunti there released the criminal who then received the gray robe and torch so that he or she would be suitably outfitted to get the blessing of the legate. Upon returning to the confraternal quarters, they offered brief prayer to the image of Mary in the public church before heading to the private oratory. The released one stood in the place where members were chastised for their failings, and the confraternity’s Padre Spirituale delivered an exhortation on the Christian life, reminding the criminal to be grateful to the BVM for her grace. Unfortunately, we do not have lists of those who were liberated. Fanti, La Chiesa e la Compagnia dei Poveri, 103–104; Terpstra, “Theory into Practice,” 152–153. Fanti, La Chiesa e la Compagnia dei Poveri, 104–115. Other Marian images crowned in this way include the Madonna di S. Luca (1603), the Madonna della Pioggia (1604), and the Madonna del Soccorso (1612). Terpstra, Lay Confraternities, 210– 211; F. Calzoni, Storia della chiesa parochiale di Santa Maria in via Mascarella e dei luoghi più cospicui che si trovano nello di lei giurisdizione (Bologna: Stamperia S. Tommaso Aquino, 1785), 109–117. Fanti, La Chiesa e la Compagnia dei Poveri, 93–95, 115–122. Tomasso Biamaci married twice, and his widow, Lucretia Ronchi, recovered her 200-lire dowry from the estate on October 24, 1620. Margherita Cedrelli, possibly a servant, niece, or an illegitimate daughter, also received a dotal gift of 400 lire. On January 5, 1637, Signora Barbara Tassi gave all her goods to the Company on condition that it would pay her 400 lire annually until her death, at which time it would become the sole heir of her estate. The 8,000-lire gift of cash and goods represented Tassi’s dowry, brought into a first marriage to Nicolo Manzini (February 1, 1593), and then into a second marriage to Pompeo Gorgiani (August 17, 1609) before coming to the Compagnia dei Poveri on May 31, 1650. These legacies are all recorded in:

344

44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49.

50.

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Notes to Pages 271–273

ASB Demaniale, S. Maria Regina dei Cieli, 21/6560, #1. The unpaginated rubric records items alphabetically and by number: A4, A6, D6, D7, D9, D14, T2. On expansion of the complex and its churches, and the artworks: G. Monari, “Crescita e trasformazione di uno spazio ospedaliero,” and Giampiero Cammarota, “I luoghi e le opere,” in I Bastardini: Patrimonio e memoria di un ospedale bolognese, Autori varii (Bologna: Amministrazione provinciale di Bologna, 1990), 139–146; 147–162; see also 91–104, 163–87. The plaque nearest the main entrance at the north end of the portico praises the pope, the legate, and OPM Rector Senator Francesco Azzolini. Two additional plaques beside a doorway under the portico credit Lavinia Manzola Duglioli and Dorothea Marescalcha Zambeccari, and note that the latter had made a major push to gather funds on St. Gregory’s Day. De Angelis and Roversi, Bologna Ornata, 43–44. While Pellegrino Tibaldi is well studied, the work of his brother Domenico is only starting to receive more attention. Gabriele Paleotti has often been credited as the inspiration for a severe classicism in architecture and more didactic naturalism in painting, but Domenico Tibaldi’s many commissions from lay and ecclesiastical patrons suggest that this classicism clearly struck a deep chord in the city and resonated beyond the influence of a single prominent cleric. See: Francesco Ceccarelli and Deanna Lenzi, eds., Domenico e Pellegrino Tibaldi: Architettura e arte a Bologna nel secondo Cinquecento (Venice: Marsilio, 2011). For more on Paleotti’s influence on art: Ilaria Bianchi, La politica delle immagini nell’età della Controriforma: Gabriele Paleotti teorico e committente (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2008). For a guide to the range of buildings noted here, see chapters 3 and 4 of Capellini and Gresleri, Guida di architettura: Bologna. To patricians who were burdened with ramshackle medieval palaces, modest incomes, and actively building neighbors, Serlio wrote: “Oh sir, I can remake at least the facade of your house within a year with this same classical architecture that your neighbors are building in” (O messer tale, o voi fate ch’io vegga fatta almeno la facciata della vostra casa in termine d’un anno, con quella Architettura che son fatte le altre a voi vicine). Serlio offered a series of illustrations showing how a medieval palace could be regularized and refaced at a fraction of the cost of a new building: Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte le opera d’Architettura et prospettiva (Venice: G. De Franceschi, 1619), 157; De Angelis and Roversi, Bologna Ornata, 139. The arcade was built from 1674 to 1793 to shelter pilgrims and processions heading to and from the fi fteenth-century shrine, which was itself rebuilt from 1723 to 1775. Girolamo Savonarola, “A Preacher of Reform,” in The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (New York: Viking Penguin, 1968), 647. See also: Girolamo Savonarola, A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003); Stefano Dall’Aglio, Savonarola and Savonarolism (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2010). Tom Nichols, The Art of Poverty: Irony and Ideal in Sixteenth Century Beggar Imagery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), xix–xx.

Notes to Pages 273–276

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51. Nichols emphasizes Caracci’s St. Roch Giving Alms (commissioned 1587 by the confraternity of S. Rocco in Reggio Emilia, and completed in 1595) and Domenichino’s fresco St. Cecilia Giving Alms in the Roman church of S. Luigi del Francesi. Nichols, The Art of Poverty, 170–183. 52. Andreas Henning and Scott Schaefer, Captured Emotions: Baroque Painting in Bologna, 1575–1725 (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008); Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiano Serlio on Architecture Volume One: Books I–V of “Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva,” ed. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). 53. The earlier Books of the Dead are in BCB Fondo Ospedale, mss. 53 and 54. The later one, beginning in 1588, is ms. 55, while in 1644 the confraternity drew up an alphabetical list limited to the highborn Bolognese that it had buried over the previous two hundred years (ms. 57). Terpstra, “Theory into Practice,” 138–140. 54. Terpstra, “Theory into Practice,” 154–156. 55. One of them dated to 1505 and was levied on cartloads of wood, while the other from 1630 was to help families affected by plague. Mario Fanti, “‘Bologna tiranneggiata per la perpetuità delli Cinquanta’: Un libello antisenatorio bolognese della prima metà del secolo SVII,” L’Archiginnasio 79 (1984), 95, 101; Nicholas Terpstra, “Confraternal Prison Charity and Political Consolidation in Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” Journal of Modern History 66 (June 1994): 217–248; Terpstra, Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion, 161–70. 56. Pepoli was not opposed to investments, and before his murder the fund invested 17,000 lire in two censi and two francazioni. By 1618, there were 79,032.12.2 lire in twenty-nine property investments ranging from 150 to 8,600 lire, and 28,055.18.6 lire in thirty-two loans or monte deposits ranging from 1.10 to 6932.17 lire. The Ospedale della Vita held the largest property loan, and had borrowed a further 5,661 lire, for a total of 13,261 lire. ASB Fondo Ospedale, Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita, Series 10, #39, “Amministrazione del Cumulo della Misericordia, 1500– 1600,” fasc. #27, item a. For administration, see: ASB Ospedale, Santa Maria della Vita Series 10, #14, cassaforte 2. #62, 108v–108r; and also AAB Pio Cumulo della Misericordia, #53 Primo Campione dell Instromenti del Cumulo della Misericordia (with copies of legal documents from 1576 through 1621), and #54 Secondo Campione dell Instromenti del Cumulo della Misericordia (with copies of legal documents from 1621 through 1625). 57. The trustees’ response on July 13, 1614, argued that Pepoli had stipulated that the purchase could be made only after there had been two years of plenty, and that this situation had not occurred since his death. With grain prices at two gold scudi (or 8.8 lire) per corbe, it would cost 33,600 lire to purchase the 4,000-corbe reserve. ASB Fondo Ospedale, Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita, Series 10, #39, “Amministrazione del Cumulo della Misericordia, 1500–1600,” fasc. #23. Pepoli had built in numerous additional provisions to make grain available to hospitals, poor nuns, liberated slaves, and farmers in the contado, and this confused the situation sufficiently that the trustees could argue with some narrow justification that they were being responsible interpreters of his will.

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Notes to Pages 277–285

58. Paul V’s August 19, 1619, breve: ASB Fondo Ospedale, Ospedale di S. Maria della Vita, Series 10, #39, “Amministrazione del Cumulo della Misericordia, 1500–1600,” fasc. #26. For the legal documents that affect the transfer from 1621 to 1625, see: AAB Pio Cumulo della Misericordia, #54. See also: Gli archivi delle Istituzioni di carità e assistenza attive in Bologna nel Medioevo e nell’Età moderna (Bologna: Istituto per la storia di Bologna, 1984), 132–134. 59. Births in the Bolognese countryside had peaked in the 1610s, and even though births in the city were declining, food shortages were pushing people from the country into the city. Guido Alfani, “Population and Environment in Northern Italy during the Sixteenth Century,” Population (English ed.) 62, no. 4 (2007): 559–595; see particularly paragraphs 64 and 65 and Figure 5. 60. 25 maggio [1623] Giovedi. Questa mattina li putti e putte de Mendicanti tutti tanto grandi quanto piccoli sono andati processionalmente alle quattro Croci con pregare Nostro Signore per li presenti bisogni, erano guidati dalla Compagnia di S. Sebastiano et andorono ordinatamente a due a due, e passarono il Numero di 1200. cosa belissima da vedere. BCB Fondo Malvezzi 202, #11b. The four crosses had marked four different intersections in the core of the city for centuries. 61. Biblioteca Comunale del’Archiginnasio, Gabinetto disegni e stampe, Cartelli Mitelli, n. 86. For a recent reprinting: Pierangelo Bellettini, Rosaria Campioni, and Zita Zanardi, eds., Una città in piazza: Comunicazione e vita quotidiana a Bologna tra cinque e seicento (Bologna: Editrice Compositori, 2000), 179. 62. Carrie Churnside, “Images of Crying in Bolognese Sacred Cantatas: The Jesuit Influence,” British Postgraduate Musicology, viii, http://www.bpmonline.org.uk/ bpm8/churnside.html#b18 (accessed July 20, 2010); William A. Christian Jr., “Provoked Religious Weeping in Early Modern Spain,” in Religious Organization and Religious Experience, ed. John Davis (London: Academic Press, 1982), 33–50. 63. Gianna Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healing, and the Law in Early Modern Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 64. Rafaella Sarti, “L’Università dei Servitori di Bologna, secc. XVII–XIX,” in Corporazioni e Gruppi Professionali nell’Italia Moderna, ed. Alberto Guenzi, Paola Massa, and Angelo Moioli et al. (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 1999), 717–754. 65. Gli archivi, 57–61, 91–96, 115–128, 135–139. For some examples of Bolognese social innovations through the balance of the early modern period and into the twentieth century, see the essays in Forme e soggetti, and also Vera Zamagni, ed., Povertà e innovazioni istituzionali in Italia: Dal Medioevo ad oggi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2000).

Bibliography

a . p r i m a r y s ou r c e s A1. Archival Manuscripts and Materials Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna (AAB) Miscellanea Vecchie: Cart. 167 (I/377). Cart. 619, no. 31 (Conservatorio di S. Giuseppe). Cart. 638. Item G, cart. 158. Item G, Visite Pastorali (“Poveri Orphanelli di S.to Giacomo” [1646–1647]); (“Ospetal di S. Giacomo” [1652]). Visite pastorali: vol. 15 (H/508). vol. 19 (H/511), [1581, 1583, 1586, 1591, 1595, 1598]. vol. 22 (H/514), [1613,1652]. Pio Cumulo della Misericordia: #51 Repertorio dell’Archivio del Pio Cumulo della Misericordia. #53 [N 1195] Primo Campione dell Instromenti del Cumulo della Misericordia. #54 Secondo Campione dell Instromenti del Cumulo della Misericordia. Raccolta degli statuti: Cart. 26, fasc. 29, no. 1. Archivio Provinciale di Bologna (APB) Fondo Ospedale degli Esposti, Serie Miscellanea: busta 1, fasc. 1/a.

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Acknowledgments

his book represents an effort to bring together into a single narrative a series of projects that have appeared over the past twenty years as separate studies dealing in some way or another with the intersections of politics, charity, religion, and gender in late Renaissance and early modern Bologna. Individual pieces of the puzzle have focused on orphans or criminals or civic religion, and confratelli and consorelle have almost always managed to make it into the picture. The basic argument was signaled in an early article entitled “Apprenticeship in Social Welfare: From Confraternal Charity to Municipal Poor Relief in Early Modern Italy,” and I’ve worked out the details in other articles, books, and conference papers over the years since that was published. This book puts these various pieces together, sometimes quite literally, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to expand on the details and offer more contextual framing and a broader narrative for work that has come out in bits and pieces. Confraternities, institutional charity, and civic religion have remained at the core of the story, but the narratives around local politics and gender have gained more detail as it’s become clearer to me how they interweave and drive the story. One of the initial draws to studying fi fteenth- and sixteenth-century Bologna was the fact that there was relatively little written on it. There were few works in English, and even Italian scholars seemed more interested in the city’s medieval or modern periods than in its Renaissance and early modern history. Of course, this meant that one of the serious challenges to studying the Renaissance in Bologna was the fact that there was relatively little written on it. But no longer. Even if the more ample historiographies of Florence and Venice still generate admiration and envy for “Bolognisti,” the situation in both Italian- and English-language scholarship has changed significantly in the past two decades. Questions about charity and assistance have led much of this new work on Renaissance Bolognese history. A 1984 conference by the Istituto per la storia di Bologna generated two important volumes that helped to set direction early on, in part because one

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of these volumes was a guide to archival resources. Another major conference on charity and philanthropy followed in 1999, bringing together scholars from across Europe to compare notes on how charity and welfare had developed in Bologna and in different parts of the peninsula since the medieval period. This conference and the accompanying volume were sponsored by the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, which has steadily expanded its support for new research, conferences, and publications. More recently the Centro Studi sul Rinascimento of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna has been expanding its academic program as well. I would like to thank both foundations for their support of the work brought together here. Over the years, I’ve benefited enormously from the work and personal generosity of many colleghi bolognesi, above all Mauro Carboni, Angela De Benedictis, and Mario Fanti. While the notes and bibliography demonstrate my intellectual debts to these and many other scholars, they cannot convey the impact of friendships, of conversations and conferences, of assistance given in libraries and archives, and of the excitement that comes from sharing newly discovered materials and ideas. There are many scholars in or of early modern Bologna who have helped at various stages along the way, including particularly Gian Mario Anselmi, Giuliana Gemelli, Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, Paolo Prodi, Adriano Prosperi, Vera Zamagni, and Gabriela Zarri. Anna Maria Scardovi opened doors at the Archiginnasio, and at the Archivio di Stato Ingrid Germani offered consistent help in locating documents while Giancarlo Busati, Giuseppe D’Uva, Alessandra Scagliarini, Alessandra Servadei, Rosetta Tirelli, Silvana Cavicchi, Grazia Inguì, Mariella Baglio, Alessandro Mancaruso, Maria Concetta Napoli, Liborio Nocera, and Licia Tonelli were the welcoming face and daily life of that rich and indispensable archive. Colleghi bolognesi in and from other parts of the world have offered ideas, critique, and practical assistance in tracking down materials, particularly Sarah Blanshei, Babette Bohn, Christopher Carlsmith, Simon Ditchfield, Giancarlo Fiorenza, Federica Francesconi, Randi Klebanoff, Lance Lazar, Kate Lynch, Michael Maher, Thomas Matthew Sneider, Ken Stow, Fabrizio Titone, Andrea Vianello, and the late Shona Kelly Wray whose sudden and tragic death is felt sharply by all who knew and worked with her. A number of graduate students and research assistants made sense of random documents and long series of data, and have become colleghi and amici. I would like to thank Ian Beacock, Elizabeth Bernhardt, Edwin Bezzina, Winston Black, Sheila Das, Cynthia De Luca, Jennifer De Silva, Kristina Francescutti, Pamela Gravestock, Victoria Loucks, Vanessa McCarthy, Sandra Parmegiani, Sarah Rolph Prodan, Colin Rose, Jamie Smith, and Jenea Tallentire. At various stages in the research and writing of particular parts of the book, old friends and new provided support in the form of publishing and conference opportunities, particularly Sheila ffolliott, Margery Ganz, Jules Kirshner, John Law, Colm Lennon, Barbara Wisch, and Danilo Zardin. Paul Grendler encouraged, supported, and directed this work from its earliest stages and over many years since, and Konrad Eisenbichler has been a close colleague and friend from the time some first glimmers emerged as a doctoral dissertation. More than a colleague, he has been un vero confratello, and is joined in that sodality by Christopher Black and Nicholas Eckstein. Mary Posthuma was the most generous of friends through the many years when research was under way, and her apartment on Via S. Felice, in an old convent and not far from the former red-light district, was a place where visitors found intense conversations, good food,

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and endless laughs. When at long last it came time to pick up the various threads spun over many years of research and braid them into a narrative, David Lines and Ingrid De Smet secured an invitation to the Institute of Advanced Study at Warwick University where the work could be started. Benjamin Arbel, Miri Eliav Feldon, and Moshe Sluhovsky provided the space, time, and opportunity to continue the braiding during an extended stay in Israel, and ensured that work and play were healthily balanced. Back in Canada, Marvin Anderson helped to locate a quiet retreat where a first draft could be fi nished. Don Baxter and Jack Couperus subsequently provided another where a second could fi nally be wrapped up. As it happens, this manuscript was the last of many written in the cabin at Miller Lake that they very generously offered as a retreat to a series of authors over a long period of years. When the draft was fi nished, Jan Van Eijk, incomparably sharp of eye and wit, generously applied both to the task of looking it over. I needed the eye, and he needed the wit; he may need it even more when he fi nds the errors that I’ve allowed back into the manuscript—they are mine, all mine. After all this braiding was done, Carol Lansing and Ed Muir picked up the end of the rope and did much to pull the project forward. None of this work could have happened without the support of various funding agencies, research centers, and universities. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) funded most of the research with a series of research grants, and the Chancellor Jackman Research Fellowship in the Humanities (from the Jackman Humanities Institute) and a Katherine Coburn Travelling Fellowship (Victoria College) provided the time and funds necessary to fi nally bring it all together at the end. The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti), the Institute of Advanced Study (University of Warwick), and the M. E. Curiel Institute for European Studies (Tel Aviv University) all provided collegial places to work and share ideas. Other institutions have also lent considerable support over time, including Luther College (University of Regina), Victoria College (University of Toronto), and the Jackman Humanities Institute (University of Toronto). The Department of History and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto have provided a supportive and engaging professional environment. Angela was there from before the beginning as really the first of the colleghi bolognesi who shared in the discovery of the place, people, and ideas. She is the one who has done the most to make possible each subsequent step along a long and sometimes very winding road. Nigel, Christopher, and Alison joined us at an early stage for these twists and turns, and their company made it more of an adventure. They tolerated long absences, were dragged around to libraries and archives, and spent more time at academic conferences than can possibly have been healthy for preadolescents. That they have emerged from it all with grace, humor, and curiosity intact is more than we could have hoped, and what we most wish for as they carry on down winding roads of their own.

Index

Accettatori di Poveri. See Assessors of the Poor Albergati, Silvio, 267, 342n36 Aldrovandi, Francesca, 47 Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 26–27, 290n13, “alms of the baby,” 250–251 alms tax, 154–155, 158, 160–162, 165, 183, 191–193, 197, 243, 259 Amorini, Matteo, 188, 325n90, 327n105 Amsterdam, 153, 324n83; Burgerweeshuis, 185; rasphuis, 169–170 Anziani. See Council of Elders Aquaviva, Claudio, 149–150 Archiginnasio Palace, 25–26, 84, 174 artisans, 13, 20, 22–23, 28–29, 44, 47, 49, 63, 66–68, 70, 74, 79, 113–121, 138–141, 160, 167, 169, 174, 178, 204, 219–223, 227, 231, 234–237, 240, 244, 264, 266–267, 270, 332n42, 336n69 Asinelli, 57 assessors, 75, 78, 88, 91–95, 105, 108 Assessors of the Poor, 91, 259 Assunteria del Pavaglione, 171, 176 Assunteria dell’Abbondanza, 130, 171 Assunteria della Camera, 171, 301n32 Assunteria di Magistrati, 171

Augsburg, 2, 169 Aumône-Générale, 168–169, 175 Avignon, 120, 163

Babbi, Francesco, 101, 307n6 Bagni, Giovanni Maria, 217–218 Baldi, Camillo, 132–133, 313n57 Bartolini, Bartolomeo, 91 Battilana, Marc’Antonio, 198, 222, 230, 233–235, 240–244, 270, 330n26, 332n43, 336n76 beggar catchers, 92–93, 304nn61–62 beggars’ badges, 75, 301n32 beggar’s license, 2, 92, 260, 287n3 Beliselli, Modesta, 203 Benedictine order, 69, 163, 299n15, 317nn25–26 Bentivoglio, Annibale I, 121–122 Bentivoglio, Ermes, 68, 80 Bentivoglio, Giovanni diErmes, 189 Bentivoglio, Guido, 80–82 Bentivoglio, Laura Gandolfi, 218 Bentivoglio, Sante, 121–122 Bentivoleschi, 68, 82, 122 Biamaci, Tommaso, 270, 343n43 Bianchi, Bagarotto, 127

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Bologna, civic expenses, 81, 130, 302n42, 313n51 Bologna, confraternities: Compagnia di Buon Gesù, 237, 336n78; Compagnia dei Ciechi, 232; S. Maria dei Guarini, 79, 106, 302n41, 308n17, 336n78; S. Maria della Morte, 36, 78, 90, 107, 190, 193, 268– 271, 274–275, 307n5, 326n95; S. Maria degli Angeli, 64, 79, 106, 111, 308n16; S. Maria della Vita, 78, 90–91, 100, 190, 193, 269, 271, 276–277, 302n40, 307n5, 320n48, 326n95, 326n101, 345nn56–57; S. Maria Maddalena, 45, 51, 191, 295n54; Compagnia dei Poveri, 222, 232–244, 267–270, 274–276, 279, 282, 342n36, 342n38, 343n43; Compagnia dei Poveri Mendicanti, 76, 86, 106, 110, 113, 135, 141, 151; Compagnia dei Poveri Prigionieri, 275 Bologna, conservatories: S. Croce, 178–181, 191, 198, 201, 209, 210–212, 215–216, 222, 226, 241, 243, 253–256, 260–261, 274, 277, 282, 306n71, 329n15, 339n19; S. Gioseffo, 157, 201, 339n13; S. Giuseppe, 198, 215–217, 241, 243, 253–255, 260–261, 274, 277, 282, 306n71, 317n25, 339n14; S. Maria del Baraccano, 25, 66–69, 78–79, 106, 110–112, 163, 177, 179, 181, 186–187, 191 216, 225, 231–232, 235, 251, 300n20, 308n18; S. Maria della Castitate, 67; S. Marta, 57, 66–70, 90, 96, 216, 225, 232, 253, 271, 273, 304n58 Bologna, foundling home: Ospedale degli Esposti, 33, 64–66, 70, 73, 78–79, 103, 111, 164–165, 176, 184–187, 191, 201, 226, 250–252, 270–274, 285, 298nn10– 13, 299n15, 302n40, 304n58, 307n5, 320n46, 320n48, 324n83, 327n107, 333n53, 338nn7–8; House of Wetnurses, 250–251, 338nn7–8 Bologna, hospitals: S. Giobbe, 34, 66, 79, 100, 159, 232, 302n40, 307nn5–6, 318n34, 320n48; Ospedale della Morte, 25, 107, 217, 221, 308n11, Ospedale Maggiore, 22 Bologna, orphanages: S. Bartolomeo di Reno, 25, 33, 67, 79, 106, 150–152,

•

Index

164, 187, 190–191, 232, 271, 291n24, 302n40, 308n17, 319n50, 320n46, 326n95, 336n71, S. Giacomo, 152, 191, 306n71, 316n19, 317n25, S. Onofrio, 31, 33–34, 45, 51, 151–152, 165, 191, 271, 321n50, 324n83, 336n71 Bologna, women’s enclosures: SS. Giacomo e Filippo, 201, 212–213, 256, 328n6, 240n21; Casa delle Malmaritate, 200–204, 208–216, 241, 256–257, 328nn4–6, 331n27, 339n18; Casa del Soccorso di S. Paolo, 199–200, 209, 212–215, 222, 241, 256, 258–260, 282, 330nn23–24, 331n28, 339n19, 340n20, 340n22, 340n24, 343n41 Bolognetti, Patienza Barbieri, 212 Bolognino del morbo, 126, 163–164, 177, 319n43, 320n49 Bonasoni, Giovanni, 164 Boncompagni, Filippo, 40, 156, 293n41, 317n29, 321n81 Boncompagni, Hippolita Volta, 198, 216, 244 Boncompagni, Ugo. See Gregory XIII Bonelli, Giovanna, 200 Bonetti, Pietro, 188, 325n89, 327n102 Bontempo, Tomaso, 203 Book of the Dead, 274–275; Book of the Executed, 275 Borromeo, Carlo, 84–85, 159, 197, 207, 317nn26–27 Bottrigari, Francesco, 127 Bovio, Annibale, 128 Bovio, Vincenzo, 127–128, 130, 132, 312n45, Bruges, 60, 168 Budrio, 222, 325n89 Buoncompagni, Boncompagno, 160, 318n36

Calabria, 173–174, 183 Campeggi, Giovanni, 83, 86, 143, 330n24 “Capitole e Leggi Inviolabili.” See “Inviolable Chapters and Rules” Capuchin order, 201, 222, 320n48, 332n43 Caracci, Agostino, 27, 52

Index

Caracci, Annibale, 27, 52, 273, 345n51 Caracci, Lodovico, 27 Carafa, Carlo, 271 caritas, 14, 37–42 Carmelite order, 156, 317n25, 330n24 Carnival, 31–34, 292n29 Casa delle Malmaritate, 200–204, 208–216, 241, 256–257, 328nn4–6, 331n27, 339n18 Casa di dentro. See S. Maria della Pietà Casa di fuori. See S. Gregorio Castelli, Anna, 204–206, 214 Castiglione, Baldassare, 98; Book of the Courtier, 266 censi, 189–190, 228–229, 276, 345n56 Cesi, Pier Donato, 155–156, 159, 197, 316n24, 317n26, 317n28 Charles V, 27, 80, 85, 302n42, 311n43 Chellini, Gabriele, 271 Chevrat Nizharim, 238 Clement IX, 271 Clement VII, 85, 311n43 Clement VIII, 157, 268, 297n1, 312n50, 318n31, 342n35 compagnonnages, 237 Company of Gentlewomen, 42–43, 112–113, 226 Congregazione di Gesù Maria, 254 Congregation of Presidents, 231 congregazione, 16, 22, 42–43, 105–108, 110, 113–118, 135, 142, 145, 156, 161, 184, 188, 192, 226, 229, 232, 270–271, 304n59, 308n11, 332n42, 334n59, 339n19 Convertite. See Bologna, Women’s Enclosures, SS. Giacomo e Filippo corporale, 16, 22, 42–43, 48, 105–106, 110, 113–118, 135, 141–142, 145, 156, 167, 184, 229, 231–232, 240, 324n83, 334n59 Corpus Domini, convent of, 25, 191, 235, 290n12, Corpus Domini, feast of, 33–34, 41, 56, 128, 318n34 Council of Elders, 26, 32, 44, 68, 71–75, 84, 100, 105, 107, 109, 113–114, 120– 123, 128–131, 135, 158, 161, 170, 196, 198, 238, 281–282, 301n33, 306n3,

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307n5, 311nn43–44, 312nn46–47, 312n49, 320nn47–48 Council of Trent, 27, 50, 80, 270, 302n42 Cremona, 206, 329n11 Croce, Giulio Cesare, 273, 291n24 Cyprus, 174

da Budrio, Alessandra di Giovanni, 55–58, 62, 85–86, 297n3 da Carpi, Girolamo, 270 da Feltre, Bernardino, 230 da Fugnano, Francesco, 201 da L’Avoglia, Fulvia, 203 da Trevino, Fra Teophilo Galloni, 85 dalle Balle, Bonifacio, 197, 205, 210–222, 244, 253, 256, 274, 324n80, 330n22, dalle Ruote, Giovanni Battista, 219 dalle Ruote, Isabetta, 218–220, 331n35 dalle Ruote, Susanna, 218–220, 331n35 dalle Valle, Ariosto, 189 de Berti, Lucrezia, 203–204 de Bussi, Florida, 200 de Zani, Bartolemea, 49 de’ Medici, Cosimo, 68, 121, 125 de’ Medici, Giovanna (of Austria), 159 de’ Medici, Giovanni Angelo. See Pius IV de’ Medici, Giulio, 125 de’ Medici, Grand Duke Alessandro I, 116 de’ Medici, Grand Duke Cosimo I, 116–117, 232, 309n26 de’ Medici, Grand Duke Ferdinando I, 2 de’ Medici, Grand Duke Francesco I, 1, 101, 287n3 de’ Medici, Lorenzo, 125 debt, 3, 78, 131, 183–191, 228–231, 255, 302n39, 327n103, 334nn56–57, 334n60 del Monte, Innocenzo, 75, 301n31 della Casa, Giovanni, 98; Galateo, 266 Desiderio, Innocenzo, 143 devotional consumption, 14, 46, 52–53, 249, 265–284 di Bastardini, Appolonia, 176, 304n58, 323n72, 333n47 di Bianchi, Pompeo, 87 di Fabri, Lutia, 200, 327n2 di Nascimbeni, Nascimbene, 91, 304n49 di Rizardi, Giovanni, 89

374

di San Pieri, Benedetta, 202 di Santolini, Don Jullio, 90 di Sede, Alideo, 188 discipline, 2–13, 17, 23, 53, 61, 70, 76–78, 84, 87, 91, 93, 97–98, 104, 109, 118, 153, 160, 167, 170, 182–183, 192–195, 200, 202, 215, 226, 242, 248–260, 277, 281, 283 Domenichino, 273, 345n51 domestic service, 29, 63, 65–66, 74, 82, 141, 167–168, 192, 202, 210–219, 224, 237, 242–243, 246, 261, 276, 284, 343n43 Dominican order, 69, 156, 197, 307n5, 317n25 Donà, Leonardo, 125, 311n40 donne di partito, 205 dowry, 17, 29, 35, 39, 53, 59, 65, 69, 74, 100, 126,133, 154,164, 182, 189–190, 195, 199, 203, 208, 212–231, 236, 239, 252–254, 270, 276, 300n20, 318n36, 325n92, 331n35, 332n37, 333n47, 333n53, 343n43 Duchy of Savoy, 5 Duglioli, Lavinia Manzela, 271, 344n45 Durer, Albrecht, 60

Elders. See Council of Elders enclosed shelters, 5–6, 13, 17, 29, 56–57, 89, 97–98, 168, 170, 172, 175, 183, 199–202, 215, 227, 241–242, 247–248, 256–258, 260, 297n1 Erasmus, Desiderius, 60, 166 Esposti. See Bologna, foundling home espurgatori. See beggar catchers

Fachinetti, Pietro, 187, 324n81 famine, 2, 20, 23–24, 27, 37, 49–50, 56, 58–59, 65–74, 89, 93, 95, 99–102, 129–130, 137, 162–165, 184–187, 217, 220, 22, 236, 239, 276–278, 312n50, 323n68, 326n95, 326n101 Fantuzzi, Margherita Angiosoli, 217 Farnese, Alessandro, 80–81, 317n27 feasting and festivals, 19, 22, 30–41, 46, 51, 53, 245, 268–269, 272, 294n45, 295n54 ferlini. See beggars’ badges

•

Index

Ferrara, 22, 25, 71, 75, 81, 99, 282, 289n4 Festa del Porchetta, 31–32, 34, 291n24 Fiubba, Marc Antonio, 149–150, 315n14, 336n71 Florence, 1–3, 8, 15, 23–26, 34–37, 64, 67, 85, 99, 101, 115–125, 133–134, 148, 172, 174, 176–177, 182, 194, 205–206, 212, 218, 221, 225, 227, 232, 249, 260, 265–266, 270, 288n4, 292n29, 293n42, 298n7, 298n9, 299n16, 310n32, 324n78, 325n80, 328n4, 329n11, 332n37, 336n78, 341n30; Compagnia di S. Maria del Bigallo, 116–117, Monte delleDoti, 218; Office of Good Reputation, 205, 212; Ospedale degli Innocenti, 64, 176, 218–219, 227, 270, 298n7, 332n37, 334n54; Ordinances of Justice, 119–120; Ospedale dei Mendicanti, 1–2, 24, 260, 287n1; Provveditori sopra li derelitti e mendicanti, 3, 23 Fontana, Lavinia, 27, 47, 341n33 Fontana, Prospero, 270 food provisioning, 78, 186–189, 302n39, 324n83, 325n94 “foreigners” and “outsiders,” 12, 23, 41, 61, 71, 82, 92, 94, 148, 197–199, 205, 237, 259, 329n11 foundlings. See Bologna, foundling home; orphaned and abandoned children francazione, 189–190, 276 Franciscan order, 69, 163, 211, 227, 230–232, 235, 253, 267, 272, 307n5, 317nn25–26, 336n70, 342n36

Galateo, 266 Gandolfi, Giuseppe, 159–160 Genoa, 3, 22–26, 76, 124–125, 133, 168, 191, 194, 260, 287n4, 289n4, 329n11; Albergo dei Poveri, 260; Ufficio dei poveri, 3, 23; Ufficio dell’elemosina dei poveri, 76 ghetto, 56–57, 297n1 Giustiniani, Giorgio, 215, 254 Gonfaloniere di Giustizia. See Standard Bearer of Justice Gonfaloniere di Popoli. See Standard Bearers of the People

Index

Gozzadini, Camilla, 47 Gozzadini, Ludovico, 126, 129, 310n36, 311n43, 326n99 Gozzadini, Vincenzo, 129, 132, 312n46 grain imports, 78, 302n39 Gregory I, 38–39, 41, 50, 292n30, 294n45 Gregory XIII, 14, 26–27, 32, 38–39, 41, 49, 130–131, 135, 150, 156–157, 197, 207, 221, 267–268, 290n12, 290n16, 293n39, 294n44, 294n46, 305n64, 307n8, 311n43, 315n14, 318n31, 324n81, 332n42, 342n35. See also St. Gregory Gregory XV, 277 Guazzo, Stefano, 98 Guicciardini, Francesco, 125 Guidotti, Silvio, 70, 196 guilds, 5–6, 9, 11–12, 15, 28, 38, 42, 44, 62–64, 68–69, 75, 81, 84, 99, 102–103, 105, 120–123, 128–130, 135, 143, 154, 158, 161, 171, 174–176, 192–195, 220, 237, 263–266, 272, 282, 284, 300n25, 310n35, 323n69, 340n28, 341n29

health benefits, 17, 28, 108, 169, 195, 199, 234–241, 261, 269, 272 Holy Roman Empire, 125

investment funds, 186, 188, 199, 218 “Inviolable Chapter of Rules,” 245–248

Jesuits, 25, 39, 149–150, 215–216, 254–255, 290n12, 307n5, 315n14, 320n48, 341n31 Jews, 56–57, 61, 83, 88–89, 93, 97, 205, 230–231, 238, 297n1, 329n11 Julius II, 11, 15, 24, 39, 122, 126, 163–164, 230, 281, 320n44 Julius III, 81–83, 128–129, 301n31, 303n45, 303n46

Lady Prioresses, 19, 21, 42, 44, 46, 49, 52–53, 226, 245–248, 265, 271, 274, 296n68 Lambertini, Cesare, 160

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Lanari, Cristoforo, 162 Laparelli, Nicolo, 159, 318n35 Lateran order. See Rome legacies, 183–191, 269 Leo X, 68, 122, 130, 290n12 liberation of prisoners, 268–269, 343nn39–40 life-cycle poverty, 2, 14–15, 17, 53, 58, 61–63, 78, 97–98, 103, 136, 231, 249, 281, 283, 297n4 Limoges, 163 Lintrù, Bartolomeo, 217, 219–220, 223 Lintrù, Virginia, 217–219, 244 Lion, don Pietro, 214 Luchatelli, Ginevra, 203–204, 208 Ludovisi, Alessandro. See Gregory XV Lyon, 2, 60, 153, 168–170, 172, 175, 321n57

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 81, 128, 266, 311n38, 311n42; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, 125–126 Madonna della Misericordia, 38, 71, 88, 136 Madonna di San Luca, 203, 272 Magnifico Ufficio, 75 Malvezzi, Antonia, 49–50, 147, 296n63, 296n68 Manzolini, Vincenza, 99 Manzolino, Santa diNadal, 213 Martin, Gregory, 39 Masolino, Filippo, 270 Massarenti, Alezzandro, 253, 256, 340n19 Massarenti, Giulia, 200 Massari delle Arte. See Masters of the Arts Masters of the Arts/Guilds, 68, 75, 81, 100, 105,120, 123, 129–130, 161, 307n5, 320n44, 320n47 Masters of the Colleges, 123 maternity benefits, 17, 28, 195, 234, 236–242, 269, 336n76 Mattioli, Iacoma, 218 medical care, 87–88, 303n50 Menegati, Alessandro, 26 Milan, 22, 25–26, 36, 204, 206–208, 212, 214, 268–269, 289n3, 329n11; S. Valeria, 212, 214

376

Mirandola, 80 misericordia, 14, 37–42 Mitelli, Giuseppe Maria, 273, 278–280, 283–284, 323n66 Modena, 99, 289n4 Monte del Matrimonio, 218–234, 239–243, 275, 285 Monte dell’aumento di carne, 228 Monte della Gabella Vecchia, 163, 228, 319n41 Monte di Pietà, 23, 69, 74, 107, 143, 220– 222, 230–233, 243, 314n5, 326n101, 332n40, 335n61, 335n64, 238n3 Monte Giulio, 228 More, Thomas, 166 Morone, Giovanni, 73, 76, 80–83, 302n42, 303n45, 317n27 mutual assistance, 12–13, 16, 28–29, 41, 60, 71, 102, 195, 197–199, 224, 233–238, 270, 282 Muzzarelli Antonia, 218

Nantes, 163 Naples, 133, 218, 332n37 Nicholas V, 122, 131 Nuremburg, 2, 153

Observant movement, 85, 111, 307n5, 308n16 Office of Receipts, 205–209, 212 oligarchy, 25, 64, 78, 98, 104, 118–122, 130–131, 134–135, 160, 198, 281 Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti (OPM), 1–3, 14–16, 19–24, 27–37, 43–54, 61–62, 76–77, 83–98, 101–120, 135–138, 142–171, 176–201, 209–216, 220–221, 224, 226, 229, 232, 235, 239–248, 256, 259–266, 271, 274, 278, 282–285, 293n33, 293n36, 293n39, 293n41, 294n44, 294n46, 295n35, 296n68, 303n49, 303nn51–52, 304nn55–56, 304n59, 308n21, 314n5, 315nn8–9, 315nn13–14, 316n24, 317nn26–29, 318n31, 318n34, 318nn38–39, 320n50, 321n55, 323n72, 324nn83–84, 325n88, 325nn94–95, 326nn98–99, 327n102,

•

Index

327n107, 344n45, 346n60. See also S. Gregorio; S. Maria della Pietà; Bologna, orphanages, S. Bartolomeo di Reno, S. Onofrio Opera Pia dei Poveri Vergognosi, 78, 106, 164–165, 236, 276, 285, 302n40, 307n5, 320n46, 320n50 “Orders and Provisions,” 19–21, 29, 45–53, 247–248, 282 Ordini e Provisione. See “Orders and Provisions” orphaned and abandoned children, 22, 28–39, 45–46, 57–61, 66–70, 76, 84, 86, 90, 97, 110, 112, 117, 140, 152, 169, 175, 182, 200, 220, 225, 243, 251, 261, 283, 292n31, 309n23

Palazzo Comunale, 26, 32, 72, 93, 107, 109, 129, 291n24, 300n22, 343n40 Paleotti, Alfonso, 201, 253, 256 Paleotti, Gabrielle, 101, 149–150, 198, 206, 211, 233, 235, 240, 267, 294n45, 317n28, 335n69 Paleotti, Giulia, 216 Paleotti, Leona, 47 Palladio, Andrea, 26, 100, 290n12, 307n4, 341n42 Palmieri, Benedetta, 213, Panolino, Francesco, 198 Paris, 2, 63, 163, 340n28 Parma, 36, 81, 289n4 patrician women, 27, 44, 47, 112–113, 134, 198, 201, 212, 215–216, 219, 224, 244, 254, 268, 306n71 patronal charity, 14–20, 30–31, 36, 39, 41–43, 46–47, 50, 52–53, 60, 62, 73–76, 79, 86, 95, 104, 126, 136–137, 140, 142, 158, 160–166, 183, 193, 220, 224, 241, 247–248, 253, 263–266, 274, 279, 281–284 Paul II, 122 Paul III, 80, 127–128 Paul IV, 56, 83, 156, 297n1 Pavaglione, Fiera del, 171, 173–176, 322n61, 322n66 Pepoli, Conte Cornelio, 161, 319n39 Pepoli, Diamante Campeggi, 216–217 Pepoli, Filippo, 306n2

Index

Pepoli, Giovanni, 99–105, 125–165, 185, 190, 196, 198, 222, 276–277, 306nn2– 3, 307n8, 332n43 Pepoli, Guido, 161–162, 319n39 Pepoli, Hercole, 266 Pepoli, Sulpicia Isolani, 218, 224 Piazza delle Scuole, 174 Piazza Maggiore, 25, 31, 64, 76, 81, 84–85, 100, 107, 217, 223, 271–272, 290n13, 302n39 Piedmont, 169 Pio Cumulo di Misericordia, 100–102, 105, 165, 185, 190, 276, 306n1, 307n5, 320n48, 326n101 Pius IV, 74, 83–85, 106, 144, 209, 290n12, 294n46, 325n88 Pius V, 207, 290n12, 294n46, 318n36, 342n35 plague, 2–3, 19–20, 23–24, 27, 36–37, 56–58, 65–68, 74–76, 80–81, 124, 162–163, 184, 187, 222, 234, 245, 263, 292n31, 301n33, 303n42, 310n36, 320n44, 323n68, 335n68, 342n36, 345n55 Poitiers, 163 Poor Laws (English), 153 poor women, 5–6, 39, 42–43, 53–54, 57, 61, 70, 73–74, 80, 85, 97–100, 109–110, 137, 146, 148, 169, 175, 182, 192–195, 198–199, 204, 221, 227, 244–249, 260, 277, 281, 283 Pope Clement IX. See Clement IX Pope Clement VII. See Clement VII Pope Clement VIII. See Clement VIII Pope Gregory I. See Gregory I; St. Gregory Pope Gregory XIII. See Gregory XIII Pope Gregory X. See Gregory XV Pope Julius II. See Julius II Pope Julius III. See Julius III Pope Leo X. See Leo X Pope Nicholas V. See Nicholas V Pope Paul II. See Paul II Pope Paul III. See Paul III Pope Paul IV. See Paul IV Pope Pius IV. See Pius IV Pope Pius V. See Pius V Pope Sixtus V. See Sixtus V population 174–175, 323n68

•

377

practical charity, 14–17, 28–31, 50–53, 60–69, 79, 84–85, 100, 136, 140–142, 165–166, 192–193, 224, 242, 248, 250, 253, 257, 270, 273, 283, 285, 321n51 processions, 22, 33–34, 38–40, 51, 57, 61, 72–73, 76, 85–86, 97, 108–109, 116, 128–130, 152, 197, 235, 238–239, 267– 272, 278–279, 297n3, 300n25, 308n21, 318n34, 335n69, 343n40, 344n48 prostitution, 5, 17, 35, 50, 60, 182, 201, 204–212, 215, 260, 329n12 Provisori, 74 public debt, 130–132, 228–233, 313n51 Pupini, Biagio, 270 qualità, 266, 270–275, 284

Rabasco, Ottaviano, 32 Razzi, Don Silvano, 48 Reni, Guido, 263–266, 340n28, 341n33; La Pietà dei Mendicanti, 266 Reno Canal, 163, 172, 192, 319n43, 322n63 Ringhieri, Innocenzo, 127 Rinieri, Giacomo, 70–72 Romagna, 82 Rome, 11, 24, 26, 28, 38–39, 48, 52, 68, 82, 84–85, 89, 91, 98, 100, 123–136, 143, 148, 155–156, 159, 161, 194, 197, 212, 218, 228, 260, 265, 267, 282, 293n36, 294n44, 302n42, 313n55, 316n24, 317n26, 318n31, 329n11, 332n37; SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini, 39, 197, 260, 327n1; St. John Lateran, 156, 267–269, 342n38 Rouen, 153 Rucellai, Cosimo, 125

S. Bernardino da Siena, 111 S. Caterina della Rosa, 212, 330n25 S. Francesco, 25, 55, 66, 100, 157, 271, 301n38, 307n6, 332n43, 342n36 S. Giovanni Battista, 36, 57, 66, 126, 163–164 S. Giuseppe (conservatory),198, 215–217, 241, 243, 253–255, 260–261, 274, 277, 282, 306n71, 317n25, 339n14

378

S. Gregorio, (OPM shelter), 3, 21, 36–37, 40–43, 51, 57, 66–70, 76–77, 89, 96–98, 136, 145, 148, 151, 156–157, 164–170, 175–177, 181, 183, 189, 192–194, 215–216, 224, 226, 235, 242, 246–248, 256, 261, 264, 271, 278, 28, 292n31, 294n44, 294n46, 296n61, 297n3, 301n38, 304n54, 304n58, 308n11, 317n25, 333n51, 338n4, 340n26 S. Leonardo, 57 S. Maria delle Vergine, 117 S. Maria della Casa Pia, convent of, 202, 208 S. Maria della Pietà (OPM shelter), 49, 89–90, 96, 145, 148, 151, 166, 168, 178, 188, 192, 194, 263–265, 271, 294n46, 296n61, 327n107, 341n33 S. Maria Regina dei Cieli. See Bologna, confraternities, Compagnia dei Poveri S. Orsola, 49, 57, 96, 145, 147–148, 194, 215, 247, 285, 296n61, 297n69, 305n70, 330n24 S. Petronio, 26, 39, 85, 100, 127, 149–150, 174, 201, 203, 217, 221, 265, 269, 294n43, 307nn4–5, 309n21, 310n36, 320n48, 328n8 S. Petronio Building Commission, 100, 217, 221 S. Stefano, 33, 66, 157, 317nn25–26, 329n15 SS. Giacomo e Filippo (convertite), 201, 212–213, 256, 328n6, 240n21 Salla, Giovanna, 203–204 Salla, Lorenzo, 203 Sauli, Girolamo, 82, 320n47 Savonarola, Girolamo, 60, 119, 125, 272 Seccadinari, Niccolo, 160, 318n36 Sede vacante, 81, 303n46 Sedici Riformatori, 121–122 Senate, 13–26, 44, 68, 75, 78, 80–85, 94, 99–136, 143, 154, 158–165, 170–175, 183, 187, 192, 196, 221–222, 229–232, 240, 253, 262–263, 267, 276, 281, 290n12, 295n52, 303n46, 306n3, 307n5, 310nn32–33, 310n36, 311n42, 312n46, 312n47, 313n51, 313n55, 318n34, 322n61, 325n88, 334n59, 337n79, 342n36 Serlio, Sebastiano, 27, 271, 344n47; Five Books of Architecture, 273

•

Index

Seville, 2, 5, 8, 249 Sicily, 173–174 Siena, 71, 111, 185, 298n7, 300n22, 332n37, 341n30; Ospedale di S. Maria della Scala, 185, 298n7, 332n37 Signonio, Carlo, 133 silk fair. See pavaglione Silk Guild, 175–176, 263–265, 323n69 silk industry, 11–13, 16, 25, 69, 142, 163–183, 192–193, 197, 201, 204, 206, 211, 223–224, 233–234, 237, 242–243, 253, 263–265, 282–283, 322n62–69, 336n 76 Silvaggi, Ginevra, 202 Sixtus V, 101–103, 131, 162, 221, 290n12, 307n8 Soderini, Francesco, 164, 320n44 Soderini, Piero, 124 Spagnollo, Jacopo, 92 Spain, 125 spirituali, 211, 267 SS. Naborre e Felice, abbey of, 163–165, 171, 187, 276, 320n46, 320n49, 322n63 St. Bartholomew’s Day, 31–34 St. Gregory, 38, 41, 293n37. See also Gregory I St. Gregory’s Day, 22, 36, 40–44, 52–53, 149, 221, 247, 294n46, 297n69, 344n45 St. Leonard, 31, 34 Standard Bearer of Justice, 72, 120, 206, 318n38, 320n47 Standard Bearers of the People, 120, 123

Tassi, Barbara, 270, 343n 43 textile work, 171–177, 206, 234, 246–247 Tibaldi, Domenico, 25–26, 32, 271, 342n36, 344n46 Tibaldi, Pellegrino, 271, 344n46 Torelli, Lodovico, 188 Torresani, Hercole de Domenico, 143 Torrone prison, 203, 268, 343n40 Toscho, don Maria, 204, 328n9 Tribunes of the People, 68, 71–72, 81, 84, 100, 105, 113–114, 124, 126–131, 135, 137, 161, 163–165, 196, 198, 281–284, 306nn3–4, 310n36, 311n42, 318n38, 320n44, 320n48

Index

Tribuni delle Plebe. See Tribunes of the People Turin, 5, 8, 24, 47, 140, 148, 153, 225, 260, 266, 289n4, 316n23; Casa del Soccorso, 260 Turquet, Étienne, 169, 175 Ufficio dell’Onestà. See Florence Ufficio delle Bollette. See Office of Receipts unemployment, 17, 28, 74, 182, 235–242, 269 uniforms, 21–22, 33, 44, 50, 52, 247, 296n68 University of Bologna, 25–26, 84, 132– 133, 163, 174, 197, 206–208, 218–219, 232, 285 Urbino, 82, 301n38

Valeriani, Giulio, 271 Venice, 1, 3, 15, 23–24, 26, 34, 37, 46, 60, 93, 100, 123–126, 133–134, 148, 162, 172, 191, 194, 206, 212, 218, 260, 266, 287n4, 295n56, 307n4; Casa delle Zitelle, 212, 330n25; Provveditori alla Sanità, 3, 23, 287n1; Scuola Grande della Misericordia, 37 Vespucci, Hippolita, 199–200, 212–213, 244, 256, 327n2

•

379

Vignola, Jacopo, 25; Portico of the Banks, 84, 272 Visconti, Alberto, 204 Visconti, Angela, 204–206, 208 Visconti, Margherita, 204–208, 214, 217 Vives, Juan Luis, 60, 166, 168, 297n6 Volterra, 164

Weber, Max, 117 widows, 17, 20, 29, 31, 39, 53, 55, 58–59, 63, 67, 76, 91, 97, 109, 118, 202, 212, 218, 231, 277, 306n71 Wittenburg, 60, 153 workhouses, 1–3, 14–17, 24, 260 working poor, 12, 16–18, 20, 58, 60, 67, 87, 102, 120, 197–198, 208, 219, 221, 223, 226–237, 242, 244, 267–270, 284 worthy poor, 29, 60, 62, 70, 74–75, 85, 95, 152, 160, 187, 198, 200, 250, 274, 279, 285 worthy rich, 62, 64, 74, 76, 79, 85, 152, 160, 187, 200, 229, 250, 274, 279

Zambeccari, Dorothea Marescalca, 271, 344n45 Zani, Bartolomea, 49 Zani, Bartolomeo, 188, 325n90 Zavagli, Alessandro, 187