Husbands, Wives, and Concubines: Marriage, Family, and Social Order in Sixteenth-Century Verona 9780271090894

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Husbands, Wives, and Concubines

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SIXTEENTH CENTURY ESSAYS & STUDIES SERIES GENERAL EDITOR Raymond A. Mentzer University of Iowa EDITORIAL BOARD OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY ESSAYS & STUDIES ELAINE BEILIN Framingham State College MIRIAM U. CHRISMAN University of Massachusetts, Emerita BARBARA B. DIEFENDORF Boston University PAULA FINDLEN Stanford University SCOTT H. HENDRIX Princeton Theological Seminary JANE CAMPBELL HUTCHISON University of Wisconsin–Madison RALPH KEEN University of Iowa ROBERT M. KINGDON University of Wisconsin, Emeritus MARY B. MCKINLEY University of Virginia

HELEN NADER University of Arizona CHARLES G. NAUERT University of Missouri, Emeritus THEODORE K. RABB Princeton University MAX REINHART University of Georgia SHERYL E. REISS Cornell University JOHN D. ROTH Goshen College ROBERT V. SCHNUCKER Truman State University, Emeritus NICHOLAS TERPSTRA University of Toronto MARGO TODD University of Pennsylvania

MERRY WIESNER-HANKS University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

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Copyright © 2004 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu Cover art: Bordone, Paris (1500–71); “The Venetian Lovers,” Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy; Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York Cover designer: Shaun Hoffeditz Type: Adobe Centaur and Trajan, P22 Victorian Ornaments Printed by: Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan, USA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eisenach, Emlyn, 1967– Husbands, wives, and concubines : marriage, family, and social order in sixteenthcentury Verona / Emlyn Eisenach. p. cm. — (Sixteenth century essays & studies ; v. 69) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-931112-34-7 (casebound : alk. paper) - ISBN 1-931112-35-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Marriage—Italy—Verona—History—16th century. I. Title. II. Series. HQ630.15.V48E47 2004 306.81'0945'3409031—dc22 2004005271

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher.

∞ The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

For Eric, Nathaniel, and Jacob

CONTENTS

Abbreviations ......................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. ix Introduction Family Order and Patriarchal Order..................................................... xi 1

Patriarchal Ideology and the Domestication of Authority ........................................................................................ 1

2

Two Styles of Wedding Ritual

Brides With Fathers and Brides Without Fathers.............................39 3

Strategic Uses of Clandestine Marriage ............................87

4

Tenere a Sua Posta

Concubinage in Verona ....................................................................... 134 5

Marriage Dissolution and Honor ...................................... 178

6

Conclusions......................................................................................... 220

Bibliography ........................................................................................................ 223 Index ..................................................................................................................... 233

ABBREVIATIONS

ACVR

Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Verona

ASVR

Archivio di Stato di Verona

Atti

Atti del Tribunale Ecclesiastico, ACVR

Cause

Cause matrimoniali, ACVR

CON

Gian Matteo Giberti, Constitutiones editae per Jo. Matthaeum Gibertum episcopum veronensem, ac in civitate & diocesi veronensi legatum apostolicum, ex sanctorum patrum dictis & cononicis institutis, ac variis negotiis quotidie occurrentibus, & longo rerum usu collectae & in unum redactae; Augustini Valerii Cardinalis Aliorumque Episcoporum Veronensium notationibus illustratae; cum eiusdem Valerii Appendice, in OP

COP

Giuseppe Mascardi, Conclusiones Omnium Probationum, Quae in utroque Foro quotidie versantur. Iudicibus, Advocatis, Casudicis, Omnibus denique Iuris Pontificii, Quibus Canonicae, Civiles, Feudales, Criminales, caetaq’ue materiae contiuenetur... Augustae Tavrinorum, Apud HH. Io dominici Tarini, MDCXXIII. Vol. 1

OP

Gian Matteo Giberti, Io. Matthaei Giberti Episcopi Veronensis Ecclesiasticae Disciplinae ante Tridentinam Synodam instauratoris solertissimi Opera, edited and annotated by Pietro Ballerini and Girolamo Ballerini (Ostiglia: Augustinus Carattonius, 1740)

PCV

Podestaria e capitanato di Verona, ed. Amelio Tagliaferri (Milan: Giuffrè, 1977)

RPV

Riforma pretridentina della diocese di Verona. Visite pastorali del Vescovo G. M. Giberti, 1525– 1542, ed. Antonio Fasani, 3 vols. (Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989)

STV

Statuta magnificae civitatis Veronae. Additis eiusdem civitatis, Privilegiis, & Paribus, ac decretis quibusdam Illustriss. Dominii Venetiarum (Verona: Sebastianus à Donnis, 1582)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many institutions and individuals helped me to complete this book. A grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia enabled me to make an initial trip to Italy to survey possible dissertation sources. The Fulbright Foundation and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation provided financial support for my research in the archives and libraries of Verona and Venice. In Verona, Valeria Chilese helped me get my bearings in the ecclesiastical archives, while Paola Lanaro Sartori’s friendship and knowledge of Veronese archives, libraries, and historiographical literature were of tremendous help, as was Michael Knapton’s ready availability as a source of advice from the perspective of an “Anglo-Saxon” deeply immersed in the history of the Veneto. I am grateful as well to the staff of the Archivio di Stato di Verona, to don Franco Segala, the director of the Archivio della Curia Vescovile di Verona, and his assistant, don Mario. Adriano Prosperi generously supplied copies and transcriptions of hard-to-find sixteenth-century works; Tom Safley expressed enthusiasm for my project and commented on earlier drafts of chapter 4. Throughout the years of research and writing, Erik Midelfort and Anne Jacobson Schutte, originally as co-advisors for the dissertation, provided often very different but ultimately complementary styles of advice and support, neither of which I could have done without. Anne’s continuing help was essential to transforming the dissertation into a book, as were the careful comments of two anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff of Truman State University Press, who helped to guide the later stages of manuscript revision. I am grateful in addition to the numerous women whose wonderful care for my children over the years allowed me to think and to write. Finally, I thank my family and particularly my husband, Eric Posner, for their understanding and unflagging support and interest throughout the many years of this project.

INTRODUCTION

Family Order and Patriarchal Order

In 1528 or 1529 Caterina Mantuanella, the foster daughter of a small-scale merchant of Verona and sometime soldier named Sebastiano Tessar and his wife, Lucia, married a soldier called Mancin Napolitano, who as his last name suggests hailed from the south of Italy and was currently serving in a company in the Veneto. Court records from the diocese of Verona describe the multistep and notably male-dominated nuptials that began in Caterina’s parish church. There, before male witnesses and the parish priest, don Giacomo, but in the bride’s absence, the groom and Caterina’s foster father stated their consent to the marriage. After confirming the union, the male company moved from the church to the bride’s family’s house, where the bride, her foster mother, and other guests waited to watch Caterina and Mancin exchange words of consent and join hands. Later, recounting this process before the court as one of many witnesses questioned in an investigation of Caterina’s marital history, her foster father emphasized his own control of the proceedings, specifying that at the church he had “directed” don Giacomo to put the relevant questions to the groom and acted as Caterina’s “governor” himself in consenting to the union. At his instructions, he added, the priest accompanied him and the groom to the house for the second exchange of consent.1 The style of Caterina’s and Mancin’s wedding would appear to illustrate the common assertion that early modern Italian society, like European society more generally, was “patriarchal.” Historians use this term to mean not merely male domination, but the organization of society in an all-encompassing father-centric hierarchical structure. Looking at wedding ceremonies as an important way to discern such structures, historians of medieval and early modern Europe point to the ways in which the men in families and especially fathers controlled nuptial matters (as they did other important business), while the women were relegated to minor or nonexistent roles in deciding upon and effecting marriages, as well as practically all other matters. Such marital practices, historians argue, expressed the entrenchment of the patriarchal social-familial hierarchy, a mutually reinforcing 1

Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus.

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set of principles about male superiority articulated in law, theology, literature, and daily practice confirming the dominance of fathers over their children, husbands over their wives, and—by extension of the familial principles to the rest of society—masters and elites over childlike servants and social inferiors. The patriarchal orientation of these institutions and the larger culture that encompassed them interests scholars not only in their medieval and early modern setting, but also because such practices and everyday assumptions are still alive today. Was this patriarchal structure in fact so neat, clear, and firm as historians maintain? Examination of the variety of marriage rituals in sixteenth-century Verona revealed in the abundant records of marital disputes heard by the bishop’s court shows that the patriarchal style of Caterina and Mancin’s wedding was not the only one in use, and probably not even the most common one. Depending on their personal and familial circumstances, Veronese women and men could stage their nuptial rites in a variety of ways. This variety and the agency of participants in achieving it suggest that scholars should question assumptions about a patriarchal social-familial structure that was uncomplicated, consistent, and stable. Some women, like Caterina Mantuanella in wedding another man some years after her first marriage, substituted their mothers in the paternal role in their wedding ceremonies, necessitating certain changes of emphasis in the ritual. Others simply married on their own authority without any participation by father, mother, or parent substitute. Still others combined these methods. These alternative and significantly different styles of marriage ceremonies provoke a multitude of questions applicable to the understanding of the patriarchal order in family and society not only in Verona, the Veneto, or the Italian peninsula, but in western Europe in general. For instance, is the male dyad of bride’s father and groom really universal in marriage rituals? Might it not be better to look more closely at the triad of bride/bride’s father/groom? Were a woman’s father and husband natural allies as men, as currently presumed, or might they not also be adversaries with conflicting interests in the same woman? Did marriage necessarily separate women from their patriarchal-patrilineal natal families? And what happened to the neat order when male spheres of authority—a father’s and a husband’s, a lord’s and a father’s—overlapped and thus potentially conflicted? Addressing these queries and others like them that arise during the examination of other Veronese practices requires not assuming that the patriarchal social and familial order was a firm, settled, and essentially unchanging structure. It should instead be investigated as a frequently inconsistent, multivalent, and above all dynamic set of principles about the proper relationships between individuals inhabiting different types of roles.2 A broad conception of gender, incorporating 2

The various principles that the inhabitants of this particular time and place used to explain and

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not only the relatively well studied feminine but also the masculine, as well as the interplay between the two, is an essential dimension of this study. Also important is an appreciation of the nature and degree of female agency. Each social and familial role—father, mother, child, husband, wife, master, servant, concubine, patron—was theoretically in a fixed hierarchical relationship with the others, but in practice they overlapped. A mother, for example, was also a daughter and a wife and perhaps a servant or a concubine; a father, head of his own family, might also be a servant or the social inferior of another man—or woman. In fact, instead of one patriarchal hierarchy there were several—sexual, marital, parental, social, occupational, and governmental—that overlapped imperfectly. This overlap created the potential for inconsistency, conflict, and individual maneuvering as people exploited the inconsistencies they found. Indeed, the possibility of operating between the interstices may well have been the motor for historical change within the patriarchal social structure. This study will reconstruct marital practices in one Italian city and diocese of the Venetian mainland empire over a period of almost sixty-five years, from about 1530 to about 1593. It starts from the premise that the patriarchal order was not a construct imposed from on high or even a logical and consistent system of interlocking principles. It was instead the product of the choices of countless individuals, each with his or her own circumstances, constraints, and abilities, all seeking to end up in the best possible social, economic, and emotional position. 3 For most of them, marriage or some sort of less formal union like concubinage was central to their efforts. Therefore this study will examine not just “normal” marriage rituals, but also less common practices such as clandestine marriage, concubinage, and marriage dissolution, particularly among the common people, but also among the elite of this city and its contado (rural territory). While this investigation is specific in place and time, the implications of its findings—especially the questions raised about the nature of the patriarchal order—range much more widely. Potentially they apply to all of early modern western Europe, and even to social and familial structures in the present day. 3

justify their actions could not have been consistent, for otherwise they could not have fueled disputes. See Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 97. 3 The following notes cite only a few examples of the historiographical literature for each area mentioned. Fuller discussions with accompanying notes will generally be found in the chapters that follow. This emphasis on individual strategy is loosely inspired by the economic approach to the family, which is not convincing as a complete explanation for familial behavior and form. For an important example of this approach, see Gary S. Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

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Over the past several decades, historians of Renaissance and early modern Europe have posited an all-encompassing system of economic, social, familial, legal, and political order which they have labeled patriarchy. Some historians use this term generally to mean male dominance and female subordination, applicable for all periods except perhaps the distant, more matriarchal past. For the period under examination here it has a more precise meaning. “Patriarchy” applies to the formal legal, religious, and institutional structures progressively erected by secular and religious authorities in roughly the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. These structures, lasting well into the nineteenth century and even beyond, enhanced the power and authority of men, particularly in their role as head of household. 4 In a variety of ways, laws and institutions gave adult men, especially those of high status, a larger and larger share of formal control over the resources, both mobile and immobile, of their male and particularly female dependents. At the same time, they restricted the opportunities for these dependents, again especially the female ones, to exercise authority or influence over themselves or others. These formal institutional developments, associated with the growth of more sophisticated political units, were accompanied by the development of a secular and religious ideology that exalted the “housefather,” known in German as the Hausvater and in Italian as the padre di famiglia. Historians have argued that the patriarchal order had, increasingly, a class dimension. Particularly in the so-called century of iron (1550–1650) and the decades that immediately preceded it, the economy and social order of Europe, wracked by wars, religious strife, and changing global markets, was constricting and restructuring in ways that in many places reduced opportunities for economic and social advancement, while increasing poverty on the whole. In the German city of Augsburg, for example, it became much more difficult for men to attain the position of master in a trade and thus become full-fledged adult males. This resulted in a small group of men who exercised power and authority and a much larger group of males who could never hope to do so. In a rural region of Germany, another historian has shown a similar process at work among peasants, who he argues, became divided by the policies of the early modern territorial state into “classes” of those with and without access to social adulthood.5 These scholars and others contend 4

Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Sarah Hanley, “Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact,” in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World from 1500 to the Present, ed. M. J. Boxer and J. Quataert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Hanley, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies 16 (1980): 4–27. 5 Henry Kamen, The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe, 1550–1650 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971); Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: XXX

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that these social changes had their foundations within the family: fathers, granted ever greater powers over children and dependents by church and state, used their children strategically within the difficult economic and political climate to maintain the position of the family as a whole. Marriage was an essential part of these strategies. Fathers invested in some children, whom they allowed to marry, while sacrificing others, who were relegated to lives of celibacy and positions of perpetual dependency at the margins of the larger social order. Analogous processes were at work in sixteenth-century central and northern Italy. One, often referred to as “aristocratization,” was marked by an increasing hierarchization and crystallization of society. Historians have devoted much attention to the growth in importance, starting in the Middle Ages, of the aristocratic patriline, which formed the basis of the closed noble class of the early modern period. By the later sixteenth century, opportunities to advance into the noble ruling class of Italian cities had virtually disappeared as membership in the nobility became defined by blood and law rather than repute as it had in the past. At lower social levels (which have received less attention in Italy than in most of the rest of Europe) society became similarly fixed and stratified, in part as a consequence of aristocratization. In rural areas, local landowners were replaced by absentee landlords: urban citizens, often nobles, who leased the land back to the peasants on onerous terms, creating what some have called a peasant proletariat. In cities, poverty grew, exacerbated by war, famine, and high taxes, increasing the dependence of the many on the few.6 Many scholars have focused on a cultural dimension of these social, economic, and political changes, usually called “social disciplining,” which intertwined with the elevation of paternal authority. They have described the concerted efforts of secular and religious authorities to support the developing social and political order through the inculcation in the populace of “disciplined” behavior marked by self-control, regularity, industry, and above all obedience. The disciplined patriarchal ideology identified religious and secular authorities as well as social superiors with fathers, and subjects and dependents with children, and sought to instill obedience to a godly ordered hierarchy founded on an ideal of the patriarchal family. 7 6

Clarendon Press, 1989); Hermann Rebel, Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Relations under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511–1636 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). See also Thomas Robisheaux, Rural Society and the Search for Order in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 6 Angelo Ventura, Nobiltà e popolo nella società veneta del ’400 e ’500 (Bari: Laterza, 1964); and Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 7 Social disciplining, also known as “civilizing,” is closely related to another current paradigm, “confessionalization.” See, for example, Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott XXX

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Historians have asserted that the containment and even confinement of those marginalized by the economic, political, and social developments of the period— women and the lower classes and the poor particularly—were a primary focus of both ideological and practical efforts. The consideration of gender has become an essential element in the reconstruction of this larger structure, focused largely, however, on women to the virtual exclusion of men until quite recently. Many have seen the fate of women in these circumstances as emblematic of the larger changes. Historians have associated the articulation of this patriarchal order in early modern Europe with women’s progressive enclosure, both physically and economically, in the private and domestic sphere of the house and their corresponding exclusion from the public sphere, which included law courts and markets. Legally, women suffered many disadvantages, many of them linked by historians to reducing female and increasing male control of economic resources. Women generally could not, for example, act legally in their own right, independent of a man. Between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, laws of inheritance progressively diminished the meaning of the matriline and with it women’s ability to inherit, while enhancing the weight of the patriline. Economically, women’s employment opportunities constricted: they were increasingly relegated to the worst-paying and least skilled jobs, like weaving, laundry, and cooking, which, even if performed outside the home, were associated with women’s domestic work inside it. Morally, women were increasingly deemed imperfect men: less rational, more frivolous, and prone to sin, and therefore in need of the close supervision of male guardians. This weakness also justified excluding them from the dangerous public sphere and keeping them safely enclosed.8 8

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); and R. Po Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550– 1750 (London: Routledge, 1989). On patriarchal ideology, see Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), esp. 151–59; Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), chap. 1; and Joel Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), esp. 38–47. 8 The work of Christiane Klapisch-Zuber on the role of women has been very influential. See especially her essays in Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). See also Merry E. Wiesner, “Nuns, Wives, and Mothers: Women and the Reformation in Germany,” in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Private and Public Worlds, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), esp. 23– 25; Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “The Women of the Saxon Silver Mines,” in Women, ed. Marshall, 29– 46; Olwen Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1500–1800 (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); and Mary Elizabeth Perry, Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980).

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In the last ten to fifteen years, however, a few scholars looking at all areas of Europe have been questioning the depiction of the patriarchal order as internally consistent and dedicated to subordinating women. They have sought to understand the legal and institutional order of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries as a living system, both looking at it in practice and also treating it as a system that, like all human creations that develop over time, contained contradictions and conflicts.9 Central to the work of these scholars is a broadening of their understanding of kinship beyond the patriline, so prominent in formal arenas such as the law, to include as well the functional importance of the matriline.10 Also essential is an expansion of the notion of gender to include men and the masculine and a greater appreciation of the degree to which women could sometimes shape their own lives. Several historians have looked carefully at the actual relationship between elite women and control of wealth. Stanley Chojnacki, for example, examining wills of Renaissance patrician Venetian women, finds that these female testators were better able to manipulate wealth than laws regarding women’s control of property would suggest. He shows that the financial resources they actually controlled could be considerable; the ways some of them bequeathed money suggest that they actively sought to use this money to give their descendants wider opportunities and choices in life than the patriarchal structures formally offered. Giulia Calvi’s work on the Tuscan aristocracy even more provocatively challenges the understanding of the close association between the patriline and control of wealth. She argues that in the seventeenth century, restrictions on their ability to inherit from their children freed aristocratic women from the taint of suspicion that they were their children’s rivals for wealth; this allowed aristocratic mothers to develop closer relationships with their children than could kin in the wealthdefined patriline.11 Both these authors thus suggest that principles different from 9

Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), though not critical of the dominant conception of patriarchy, indicates the growing desire among historians to move beyond a reconstruction of the “rules” of patriarchal organization and see it in action. See also Pavla Miller, Transformations of Patriarchy in the West, 1500–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), esp. chaps. 1 and 2. Miller contends that “the articulation between different levels of patriarchal authority was far more complex than smooth analogies suggested” (ibid., 41). 10 Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Family Culture, Renaissance Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 40, no. 4 (1987): 668. See also the historical-anthropological work of Jack Goody, esp. The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 11 Stanley Chojnacki, “‘The Most Serious Duty’: Motherhood, Gender, and Patrician Culture in Renaissance Venice,” in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 133–54; and Giulia Calvi, Il contratto morale. Madri e figli nella Toscana moderna (Rome: Laterza, 1994).

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and more complex than “men are better than women” drove people’s actions and that these principles could change over time. Examination of such records as ecclesiastical and secular court proceedings and tax records has enabled a number of historians of Venice in particular to moderate further the picture of women’s subordination within the patriarchal order by revealing ordinary women’s often broad abilities to exercise agency in everyday life. Monica Chojnacka’s reconstruction of the lives of working-class women in early modern Venice, for example, stresses the surprising breadth of common women’s options, showing them independently conducting business, regularly traveling outside their neighborhoods for personal and business reasons, and successfully living outside of marriage. Looking at Venetian marriage disputes, Joanne Ferraro illustrates women’s abilities to manipulate institutions and rules to arrange their personal lives by extricating themselves from undesirable marriages and gaining control of financial resources.12 Applying the critical lens of gender to men as well as women has been an important recent development contributing to a fuller understanding of the patriarchal order. It adds to the growing appreciation of the complexity of female subordination, a more nuanced conception of male domination and authority. Stanley Chojnacki’s body of work makes a particularly important contribution to this effort in Italy by examining such issues as how patrician men in Renaissance Venice achieved social and political adulthood—and what happened when they could not.13 In his work on the Florentine legal system, Thomas Kuehn is particularly successful in demonstrating how complex the patriarchal orientation of formal institutions and legal traditions was. He offers two particularly important insights. First, his study of law codes as invoked in actual disputes and in the often conflicting opinions of legal experts leads him to stress ambiguity and inconsistency in the norms and principles of the past. “Structures,” he writes, “were not necessarily and always fixed and certain”; the Renaissance city was “a dynamic social 12 Monica Chojnacka, Working Women of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); and Joanne M. Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 13 See, for example, the essays in Clare A. Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Many of Chojnacki’s articles have recently been collected in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); on men see esp. chaps. 9–12. A related interest in male honor informs several recent works on Renaissance and early modern Italy. See Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); and Donald Weinstein, The Captain’s Concubine: Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

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arena, marked by conflicts and accommodations, by ambiguities and attempts at precision, by strategies and manipulations.”14 Kuehn also illuminates the interconnection between women and men within families. He points out the absurdity of assuming that individuals were driven simply by the conviction that men ought to control all resources or by a deepseated feeling that the rights of men were opposed to the rights of women. He emphasizes connections between the financial and reputational interests of fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and their descendants. Married women were not excluded from the patriline, but stood in a more complicated relationship to it that scholars have yet to understand fully. Overall, Kuehn depicts a highly complex patriarchal order that was not internally consistent. A system that tended to favor men’s control and incorporated conflicts of interest among males might occasionally work to favor female rights. This study of marital practices and concubinage among the people of one city and its rural territory focuses on individuals and their desires and strategies. Larger structures—the family, the neighborhood, society, culture—are seen as the products of systems of values that acted on individuals, limiting their desires and behavior, but were also created by those individuals interacting with others while fulfilling their own desires. At the same time, the physical facts of environment (and thus agricultural demands), economic conditions (particularly poverty and fears of starvation), and biology (like pregnancy) imposed constraints on ordinary people’s needs, actions, and desires. The main source for this study is the records of nearly two hundred marriage disputes argued before the diocesan court of Verona between 1538 and 1593, which are used in conjunction with other types of records including tax reports, dowry contracts, and the writings of religious leaders who were trying to reform marriage practices in these years. Marriage court records provide an exceptionally wide view of early modern social and family life generally and marital practices more specifically in this city and its hinterland, which in these years formed part of the Venetian mainland empire. As a subject territory, Verona was arguably more typical of early modern Italy than Florence, Venice, and Rome, which have received the lion’s share of historical attention, and an investigation of this provincial location thus offers an important new perspective on such matters as marriage practices and gender, social, and familial relationships. Because of the relatively short period covered by the extant Veronese court records—approximately fiftyfive years—and the relationship of this time period to the 1563 Council of Trent 14 The essays collected in Kuehn, Law, Family, are for this study the most important of his work on the Florentine legal system; but see also Kuehn, Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982); Kuehn, Law, Family, 3. See also his observations on 6, 239, and 255.

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marriage decrees—roughly one half before and one half after—this cannot be a study of change in marriage and social practices, which develop very slowly. It is instead a reconstruction of these practices on the eve of the Council and shortly after it and to a lesser degree of the reaction of Catholic reformers in Verona to the challenges the existing practices posed to religious reform programs. Until recently, historians have used marriage court records primarily to study court activity and authorities’ efforts to control their subjects. In the past decade or so, however, scholars building on these earlier, technical studies have begun to use them to delve more deeply into questions about common people’s attitudes and ideas. The majority of such studies of diocesan court records concern England; most of the remainder have been concentrated in northern Europe. Of the handful of studies using Italian records, most are much smaller in scale than this one. A few monographs have appeared recently, however, including Ferraro’s and Daniela Hacke’s studies of marriage in early modern Venice, which trace some themes similar to those presented here, particularly regarding female agency and male honor.15 For a period of widespread illiteracy and before common use of diaries, this type of legal source offers an unusual opportunity to encounter the ideas (or some approximation thereof) of people outside the elite. These sources often contain the parties’ own words, although filtered by the court situation and the requirements of record keeping. Moreover, the topics about which witnesses, and occasionally litigants themselves, were questioned bear directly on the basic unit of society: the family, its formation, and occasionally, its dissolution. Using religious didactic literature produced in Verona, in conjunction with Venetian political reports on the city, chapter 1 serves as an introduction to contemporary ideas about the patriarchal order. The chapter brings into question the close fit many historians have assumed between ideas about the hierarchical order and the actual social and political organization of an early modern city. It focuses 15 Ferraro, Marriage Wars; and Daniela Alexandra Hacke, Women, Sex, and Marriage in Counter-Reformation Venice (Aldershot, Hamps. and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003). On Verona, see Valeria Chilese, “La coppia, la famiglia, l’onore nella documentazione di un tribunale ecclesiastico nel Cinquecento veneto,” Studi Storici Luigi Simeoni 48 (1998): 81–106. See also Daniela Lombardi, Matrimoni di antico regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001). The situation in Italy has begun to change in large part through the efforts of Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, who have organized a series of seminars devoted to exploring Italian marriage court records. The fruits of their efforts have been published in Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni, eds., Coniugi nemici: La separazione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000); and Seidel Menchi and Quaglioni, eds., Matrimoni in dubbio: Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001) with other volumes forthcoming. See also essays in Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi, eds., Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2001).

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in particular on the overlap that existed in practice between many social and political roles, and the conflicts that resulted. The chapters that follow turn to the marriage court records to examine how individuals interacted within the patriarchal family and the larger social structure. The second and third chapters stay within the family. Through an examination of wedding rituals, chapter 2 looks at nonelite women, their fathers, and their husbands. This chapter problematizes patriarchy by exploring the different, overlapping, and potentially conflicting relationships of authority and dependence the order encompassed, and particularly the conflicts between the authority a woman’s father and her husband had over her. Chapter 3 focuses on fathers and sons through the lens of clandestine marriage, investigating tensions inherent to the patriarchal order regarding the nature and extent of male independence. The final two chapters have a wider scope that encompasses interactions between individuals from different social groups. Looking in turn at relationships between elite men and their common concubines, and at failed marriages, both chapters ask how the domination of Veronese society by powerful elite men affected the rest of society—common men and women, as well as their own elite wives and children. These chapters show how the elite men’s domination influenced the family and marital lives of other individuals, helping to shape their life choices as well as the ideals—of masculinity, of femininity, and of family life more generally—to which they aspired.

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PATRIARCHAL IDEOLOGY DOMESTICATION OF AUTHORITY

In the middle decades of the sixteenth century, reforming churchmen in Verona developed a vision of the proper patriarchal social and familial order, the outlines of which are familiar from historians’ examinations of similar ideas across early modern Europe. Envisioning a social and political hierarchy both modeled and founded on a well-run patriarchal family, the Veronese reformers focused particularly on the figure of the God-fearing, industrious, and disciplined father, or padre di famiglia. They envisioned this father—whom they equated with secular and religious officials and the aristocracy—ruling with a firm but fair hand over his children and servants—whom the churchmen identified with subjects and social inferiors—and training them in Christian morality and disciplined comportment to bring peace, order, and virtue to the city and territory. Most historians understand this set of ideas to have harmonized with the actual social, economic, and political system developing in the early modern period, supporting the increasing authority of fathers and the nobility, as well as the centralization of political and ecclesiastical structures. An examination of the articulation of this ideology in its Veronese context, however, shows that the relationship between the ideas and the actual order could be more complex. As historians are also finding elsewhere in Italy and Europe, the Veronese political and social order in the sixteenth century was marked more by conflict among different claimants to authority than by centralization based on a clear hierarchy of authority, let alone dedicated to ensuring disciplined individual comportment or even simply public order. Those with power—fathers, masters, and noblemen—were often more interested in pursuing their own interests and pleasures than in ruling their inferiors in the disciplined manner religious reformers desired. The patriarchal ideology that the Veronese ecclesiastics developed thus emerges less as a support for or description of the actual male-, paternal-, and noble-dominated order than as a dream of the establishment of clear lines of authority in a complex and often problematic (though certainly patriarchal) reality.

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Placing the ideas within the economic, social, and political context of Verona in the second half of the sixteenth century, this chapter examines how reforming churchmen led by Bishops Gian Matteo Giberti and Agostino Valier developed their patriarchal model and tried to apply it to people at all levels of Veronese society. To illustrate the limitations of using such a model as normative, as well as to suggest how complex were the contemporary ideas and realities of authority, this examination focuses on the Veronese religious reformers’ attitudes toward the men who exercised the greatest social, economic, and political power in the city and contado—the aristocracy. The reformers’ vision of the ideal patriarchal order traces a divide between the sensibilities of the churchmen bent on reforming morality and religious practice, and those of the powerful Veronese nobility dedicated to increasing their own wealth and influence. While never questioning that the nobility properly dominated society and politics and that only (male) noble rule could enforce the right God-given order, the Veronese religious reformers believed that the nobility’s use of their power brought to Verona not right Christian order, but confusion, violence, and sin. The churchmen therefore used their image of the patriarchal social hierarchy as a tool to limit—or domesticate—the nobility’s improper exercise of power, envisioning the nobility as a father exercising his authority without selfinterest, only for the good of his dependents.

VERONA IN THE 1500S The city of Verona sits on a bend of the Adige River where cypress-covered hills meet fertile plains in the region known as the Veneto in the northern part of the Italian peninsula. Like the territories of other cities in the area, Verona’s contado was a combination of foothills and mountains in the north and fertile but marshy plains to the south, where the introduction of rice culture had recently begun to attract urban investment and development. The city itself lay at a significant crossroads, where the Adige River, one of the primary routes to the north for trade or for war, met the main route between the cities of Milan and Venice. Verona and its rural territory were among the largest and wealthiest in the region, a status evident in the imposing town houses and magnificent villas dotting the hills around the city and presiding over estates in the countryside. In the early part of the century however, significant decline in the city’s largest industry, textile manufacture, had brought with it serious urban poverty and its attendant problems. In most other ways as well Verona was a typical city for its region and time. Founded during the Roman Empire, it had at several times been a capital city, but by 1500 was, like most Italian cities, a subject city, in this case within the Terraferma (mainland) empire Venice had established in the early fifteenth century.

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Like the other cities of the Veneto, Verona and its territory were ruled under the supervision of Venice by a local hereditary nobility made up of a combination of ancient feudal families and more recent arrivals risen from the merchant class. The wealthy nobility’s consolidation of formal and informal control over most aspects of Veronese politics, society, and economy accompanied a more general crystallization of society into increasingly impermeable status groups, a process known to historians as “aristocratization” that formed the dominant theme of the sixteenth century across northern and central Italy.1 While typical in many ways, Verona was notable in the first half of the sixteenth century for being the site of the reforming efforts of Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti from about 1525 until his death in 1543. For his vigorously implemented program of extirpating abuses in the Veronese diocese, historians recognize Giberti as one of the earliest proponents of pre-Tridentine Catholic reform and a precursor of the larger movement that followed the Council of Trent. He is admired particularly for attempting to educate priests, reforming and reviving charitable activities, and in general triumphing over the local nobility in effectively consolidating centralized control over the running of the diocese in the hands of the bishop.2 Giberti’s reforming work in Verona became a model for Italian churchmen of the post-Tridentine generation, including his successor Agostino Valier, who (following several short tenures of essentially absentee bishops) served as bishop from 1565 until 1606. An important and influential church leader in the second half of the century, Valier was the member of a prominent Venetian family and a close associate of Archbishop Carlo Borromeo of Milan. He was an author of dozens of works in both Latin and Italian and a member of the Congregation of the Index. Made a cardinal in 1583, he was several times considered for elevation to the papal throne.3 1

Ventura, Nobiltà, remains the standard overview of the development of the oligarchic domination of the Veneto in this period, to which Paola Lanaro Sartori’s study of Verona in the sixteenth century, Un’oligarchia urbana nel Cinquecento veneto: Istituzioni, economia, società (Turin: G. Giappichelli, 1992), has made some modifications. 2 Adriano Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma. G. M. Giberti, 1495–1543 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1969), is the standard study of Giberti. As his title suggests, Prosperi sought to distinguish Giberti from the Counter-Reformation that later claimed him. Prosperi focuses primarily on Giberti’s institutional reforms to establish effective episcopal control of the Veronese diocese and particularly on his efforts to educate priests, rather than on his programs for reform of the laity. He argues that Giberti’s methods of reform—which were similar to later Counter-Reform ones— were means toward teaching an “evangelical” form of Christianity that was defeated at the Council of Trent and was therefore very different from that propounded to the laity thereafter. 3 Cyriac K. Pullapilly, “Agostino Valier and the Conceptual Basis of the Catholic Reformation,” Harvard Theological Review 85, no. 3 (1992): 307–33; Lorenzo Tacchella, San Carlo Borromeo ed il card. XXX

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Despite the decades that separated the two bishops, their basic aims and methods displayed notable continuity. Of particular interest is their shared interest in reforming the family to bring peace and order to the world more generally. To these ends, they sought among other things to institute reforms in marriage practices and to promote ideals of proper male and female comportment. 4 These bishops and their associates were troubled by the unsettled situation they found in the city and diocese of Verona. In this region as in many other areas of Europe, the deep economic shifts that marked the late medieval and early modern periods along with intensified social and political restructuring led to the concentration of resources of all kinds in the hands of a restricted group of people. The prime resource was land, but cash, guild membership, and simply stable employment paying a livable wage were also increasingly scarce and therefore valuable.5 The privileged group, primarily male, included noblemen as well as those fathers who had land or masterships. The subordinated groups included children, women, journeymen, day laborers, tenant farmers, and commoners in general. A consequent dramatic growth in poverty was attended by a rise in such social ills as hunger, violence, prostitution, and child abandonment. Looking at these changes in other areas, historians have focused on the progressive formation of an increasingly organized and hierarchical society. Looking at Verona, the bishops saw only lamentable sin, disorder, and suffering, and dreamed of how the proper implementation of the aristocratic-dominated hierarchy—through reforms in the family—would help to restore order. Verona was suffering in part from the results of broad European-wide structural economic shifts. Alterations in northern European patterns of commerce 4

Agostino Valier (Verona: Istituto per gli Studi Storici Veronesi, 1972); and Lorenzo Tacchella and Mary Madeline Tacchella, Il cardinale Agostino Valier e la riforma tridentina nella diocese di Trieste (Udine: Arti Grafiche Friulane, 1974). As the probable coauthor with Silvio Antoniano of Tre libri dell’educazione christiana dei figliuoli (Verona: Sebastiano dalle Donne e Girolamo Stringari, 1584), Valier and his ideas are discussed in Vittorio Frajese, Il popolo fanciullo. Silvio Antoniano e il sistema disciplinare della controriforma (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1987). 4 Valier, who inherited some personnel from Giberti, consciously claimed Giberti as his model, continued many of Giberti’s programs, and used much of the literature that Giberti and his associates had produced. See Pullapilly, “Agostino Valier,” 312, who cites Pietro Ballerini, “Appendix,” in OP, 153, for a letter from Valier specifically claiming imitation. There has been virtually nothing written on these reformers’ ideas about the family as a means to moral reform. Prosperi’s study of Giberti focuses on his institutional and educational reforms of the priesthood, not on Giberti’s ideas about the laity. Frajese, Popolo fanciullo, briefly discusses Valier’s and Antoniano’s ideas about the family as the site of the education of children and evaluates these ideas from a primarily intellectual standpoint; see esp. 44–56 and 109–12. 5 See especially Rebel, Peasant Classes; Robisheaux, Rural Society; and Roper, Holy Household, 35–36.

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that tended to bypass Italy, along with Venetian protectionist policies, contributed to the decline of trade and manufacturing in Verona, particularly of woolen cloth, which formerly had been important both to the urban and rural economies. The main engine driving these larger economic changes, however, was relentless population growth representing the long-term recovery from the fourteenth-century population drop caused by the Black Death. In the territory of Verona as in many other areas, the ratio between land (particularly its productive capacity) and people was becoming very tight. This combined with the decline of industry and trade to increase the relative importance of agricultural production needed to feed the increasing number of mouths and hence to prompt investment in land. This in turn increased the power of those who controlled this increasingly scarce resource. Although not as populous as Venice or Florence, Verona was a large city for the sixteenth century with a rapidly growing urban population fed by the increasing population of its rural territory. Between 1538 and 1577 the population of the territory grew from 145,298 to 177,946, reaching 196,160 in 1616. The population of the city saw its greatest growth a bit earlier, approximately doubling its population from the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to between 46,000 and 50,000 and finally reaching between 52,000 and 57,000 by the mid-sixteenth century. The growth in population brought with it a dramatic increase in the numbers of poor and struggling families in the city between the beginning and middle of the sixteenth century, and the situation improved only slightly as the economy became somewhat more lively after midcentury. 6 Overall, however, there was not enough land in the countryside and there were not enough jobs in the city. The growing land shortage had profound effects throughout northern and central Italian society. Some scholars have argued that it tended to increase the power of landowning parents, and particularly of fathers, over their children who wanted to inherit the land. This patriarchal power would likely have been further increased by the decline in other types of employment opportunities brought on by the economic constriction. Other historians have extended this vision of the increased rigidity of patriarchal structures further by pointing out that women’s employment opportunities appear to have declined more sharply than men’s, making them more dependent on men generally. While there has been little

6

Opinions differ on the exact rate of growth. See Pietro Donazzolo and Mario Saibante, “Lo sviluppo demografico di Verona e della sua provincia dalla fine del sec. XV ai giorni nostri,” Metron 6, nos. 3–4 (1926): esp. 71, 108; Amelio Tagliaferri, L’economia veronese secondo gli estimi dal 1409 al 1635 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1966), esp. 43–50, 72; and David Herlihy, “The Population of Verona in the First Century of Venetian Rule,” ed. J. R. Hale, Renaissance Venice (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 91– 120. See also Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, esp. 55–56.

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investigation into these phenomena in Veronese territory, it is likely that such developments took place here as well.7 Peasant landholdings (those held outright or leased on relatively light terms), which in the days of relatively low population had been more than sufficient to support families, had been subdivided over the generations according to the rules of partible inheritance. As many holdings became too small to support families reliably, more and more small landowners fell into debt. Debt not infrequently led to the loss of the land, often to members of the urban elite, many of them noble. The repeated crises of the period—droughts and floods, leading to crop losses and famine—further undermined the position of many peasant landholders. Some of the now landless peasants emigrated and sought work—or simply food—in the city; others became either tenants or salaried agricultural workers, often on the estates consolidated by the nobility.8 Like their counterparts in other parts of the peninsula, Veronese elites were in a position to profit from these developments. Shifting their investments away from manufacturing and trade to land, they sought to increase their incomes through more rational exploitation of their holdings.9 They introduced new crops, such as rice and mulberry trees to feed silkworms, and revised their relationships with their workers. The increases in long-term efficiency for the landowners, however, brought greater difficulty and misery to the peasants in the short term. Impoverished former landowners found themselves reduced to wage laborers with

7 On power of parents over children, see Miller, Transformations, 14–15, 25; Lucia Ferrante, “Il matrimonio disciplinato: Processi matrimoniali a Bologna nel Cinquecento,” in Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo et età moderna, ed. Paolo Prodi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994), esp. 925–26. This power, of course, depends on what traditional inheritance practices were and how much freedom fathers actually had to disinherit children. On restrictions on women’s employment, see Wiesner, “Nuns, Wives, and Mothers,” esp. 23–25; and Karant-Nunn, “The Women of the Saxon Silver Mines,” 29–46. On the low status of women’s work in Verona, see Paola Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia della soglia di povertà in una città della Terraferma veneta: Verona alla metà del XVI secolo,” Studi Veneziani, n.s. 6 (1982): 56–64. 8 On economic problems in the Veronese countryside, see for example, Gian Maria Varanini, “Problemi di storia economica e sociale della Valpolicella nel Cinquecento e primo Seicento,” in La Valpolicella nella prima età moderna (1500 c.–1630), ed. Gian Maria Varanini (Verona: Centro di Documentazione per la Storia della Valpolicella, 1987), 155–73. This is discussed in greater detail in chap. 3 below. On landless peasants, see Paola Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino nel Cinquecento: Ceti e famiglie nelle campagne veronesi,” in Uomini e civiltà agraria in territorio veronese, ed. Giorgio Borelli (Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1982), esp. 330; and Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia,” 45–85. 9 Ventura, Nobiltà, chap. 6; Georgio Borelli, Un patriziato della Terraferma veneta tra XVII e XVIII secolo. Ricerche sulla nobiltà veronese (Milan: Giuffrè, 1974); Borelli, “Terra e patrizi nel sedicesimo secolo: Marcantonio Serego,” Studi storici veronesi Luigi Simeoni 26–27 (1976–77); and Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 225–56.

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little job security or to tenants, often bound by contracts with much more onerous terms than in the past that increased the control of the landowner over the tenant. Churchmen especially were quick to denounce agrarian contract innovations, blaming the elite landowners’ greed for the rising indebtedness, poverty, and misery of a growing segment of the population.10 Many of the landless impoverished came to the city. The urban economy could not, however, provide sufficient jobs. Urban industry, particularly the wool industry, which had been Verona’s largest employer and had employed the lowestskilled labor, was in a steep decline. Over the course of the sixteenth century, it went from employing over 30 percent of urban workers to employing just 15 percent, and those at much diminished wages. The urban silk and hat-making industries, while growing, could not compensate for the decline in wool production. Thus work, particularly for unskilled immigrants from the countryside, was generally sporadic and the pay low because of the oversupply of labor.11 Veronese tax records show dramatic growth of the poorest groups of workers between 1502 and 1545 and little improvement between 1545 and 1605. In 1558 almost 60 percent of the population of the city of Verona probably needed at least occasional charitable aid and many needed it regularly.12 With the immigrants and their poverty came family instability, begging, theft, prostitution, violence, and fears of starvation and riot. Troubled Veronese religious leaders and resident Venetian officials ardently desired peace and order to help them establish greater control over the Veronese populace. The Venetians focused on such matters as ensuring a reliable food supply and reducing violence in order to make it easier to govern and extract resources from this subject territory. The bishops looked to improve such things as charitable aid and pastoral and household discipline in order to remove the need, desire, and opportunity to transgress church laws and Christian morality. Both groups of officials found their efforts impeded by the lack of reliable structures of authority, and particularly by the actions of the increasingly powerful nobility of Verona. The rampant corruption of local noble officials combined with incessant conflicts within the nobility and between nobles and other groups for predominance (including the Venetians and bishops) made it nearly impossible for the Venetian overlords and the local church leaders to implement the

10

Gian Matteo Giberti, Per li padri predicatori (Verona: Antonio Da Portese, 1540), Cr–Cv. Valier, for his part, devoted half of a 1574 proclamation to addressing sins of commerce. Agostino Valier, Agostino Valerio per la gratia di Dio et della Santa Sede Apostolico vescovo di Verona et co. etc. alli fratelli nostri, li padri confessori (Verona: 1574). 11 PCV, 167; Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 230–32; and Tagliaferri, Economia, 14–15, 140–46. 12 Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia,” 55.

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reforms that they thought necessary. The Venetian officials responded with piecemeal efforts to limit the scope of action of the Veronese noblemen. The bishops similarly responded with ecclesiastical institutional reforms, but also saw the need for more wide-ranging reforms of the structure and culture of secular authority in the city and contado. They saw the repercussions of the repeated failures of the noblemen to lead society echoing in the failures of fathers and masters properly to guide their children and dependents in Christian behavior. To understand the ecclesiastical criticism of noble authority in Verona, it is necessary to understand how the nobility actually exercised power and the repercussions of their rule. Most power—both formal and informal—resided in the hands of a small number of aristocratic Veronese families. By the time Verona became subject to Venice in 1405, its local political order had already been well on its way to becoming an oligarchy like those in the other cities of the Veneto, ruled by a mixture of ancient families like the Della Torre and Maffei, whose dominance went back to the period of the rule of the Della Scala family, and newer families like the Verità, who had more recent origins in the merchant class.13 Over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, some cities like Brescia (and Venice itself) formally closed their ruling councils, by law limiting membership to designated noble families. Verona reached the same ends through a mixture of formal and informal means. After several centuries and the rule of the Della Scala, the governing institutions of the communal period had become simply tools of a family-based oligarchic political order. This new order was formalized in the early fifteenth century with the replacement of the widely representative communal Council of 500 with three smaller councils containing a total of 122 men, who now exclusively ran the day-to-day governing operations of the city and rural territory with responsibility for such matters as appointing rural administrators, tax assessment and collection officials, poor relief magistrates, and local secular court judges. Mid-fifteenth-century statutes further helped to consolidate power in the hands of a few families by establishing that outgoing councilors choose their successors and that several members of the same family could hold office simultaneously. Slowly, over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the councils excluded men who exercised professions and became more and more restricted to members of the nobility, who were defined not just by their wealth, but by the origin of their income in investments, not labor, and ultimately by their blood line.14 13

Marino Berengo, “Patriziato e nobiltà: Il caso veronese,” Rivista Storica Italiana, 87 (1975): 493– 517; and Borelli, Un patriziato, present competing views of the social origins of the Veronese ruling class. On the Verità, see Alison Smith, “Il successo sociale e culturale di una famiglia veronese del ’500,” in Dentro lo ‘stado italico.’ Venezia e la Terraferma fra Quattro e Seicento, “Civis” Studi e testi, 7 (1984): 139–57. 14 Ventura, Nobiltà, 92–106. Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 37–56, has shown that the exclusion of XXX

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The power of the early modern Veronese ruling elite, the ceto dirigente, rested on a combination of wealth and public and private authority, in which office-holding was the key to obtaining and maintaining wealth and status.15 This authority, combined with resources derived from public and private—including ecclesiastical— sources allowed the noble families to increase their own wealth and to maintain networks of private patronage that organized the Veronese political, economic, and social structures. Noblemen held or appointed the holders of most administrative posts. Not only were members of the nobility judges in the city; they were most of the lawyers and notaries who ran the justice system. The smallest and most powerful of the three councils, the Cinquanta, furthermore, appointed tax assessors and collectors for both city and countryside. Council members ran the poor relief system, made up of many individual institutions, which, with the help of Bishop Giberti, were rationalized and organized under the control of the Council in 1530. The vast increase in poverty in this century, along with the dedicated support of the local religious establishment, meant that these institutions were increasingly large enterprises, managing significant endowments.16 Charitable organizations directly affected the lives of a large proportion of the population—by one estimate, at times 60 percent of the inhabitants of the city—and the noble control of these institutions symbolized the developing social hierarchy that they headed. These local ruling families also owned increasing amounts of the land in the countryside. Their private and public powers complemented each other and spread their influence into every corner of the territory and into every aspect of life. This overlap is evident, for example, in the matter of rural administration. Of the eighty-eight rural administrative districts known as vicariati, individual feudal lords appointed forty-six vicars; many of the same people (or families) as members of the Cinquanta appointed a further twenty-three.17 14

men involved in commerce was more gradual and somewhat later than Ventura had claimed. 15 As Lanaro Sartori succinctly put it, “Sedere nel Consiglio cittadino permetteva ai patrizi di seguire da vicino quelle decisioni che potevano coinvolgere direttamente o indirettamente la propria casata o il gruppo clientelare di cui erano esponenti.” Oligarchia, 81. 16 On Giberti, see Prosperi, Evangelismo, 260–89; and Giuseppe Franco Viviani, L’assistenza agli “esposti” nella provincia di Verona (1426–1969) (Verona: Amministrazione provinciale di Verona, 1969), esp. 17–19. On Giberti and Valier, see Paola Lanaro Sartori, “Patrizi e poveri. Assistenza, controllo sociale e carità nella Verona rinascimentale,” in I ceti dirigenti in Italia in età moderna e contemporanea: Atti del convegno Cividale del Friuli 10–12 settembre 1983, ed. Amelio Tagliaferri (n.p.: Del Bianco, 1984), esp. 138–44. On the size of charitable endowments, see Paola Lanaro Sartori, “L’attività di prestito dei monti di pietà in Terraferma veneta: Legalità e illeciti tra quattrocento e primo seicento,” Studi storici Luigi Simeoni 33 (1983): esp. 166–67. 17 Figures from the anonymous Informazione delle cose di Verona e del Veronese compiuta il primo giorno di marzo MDC (Verona: Giuseppe Civelli, 1862), 45–49. See also PCV, 68, 112.

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Despite the trend toward consolidation of power in the hands of the nobility, however, lines of authority remained confused in many areas for much of the century, leading to some conflict over the distribution of power in the Verona and its contado. Challenges to noble dominance come from above and from below. The Veronese nobility, first of all, were subject to Venice. Two Venetian rettori, magistrates who were appointed from among the Venetian nobility for terms of sixteen months, exercised oversight over the local system: a podestà had administrative authority in the city and judicial powers, and a capitano oversaw Venetian military and fiscal matters as well as administration in the countryside.18 Moreover, as the century opened, wealthy Veronese merchants, feudal lords, rural communes, and on the religious side abbots, bishop, and cathedral chapter also contended with each other or with the noble-controlled city council to maintain or extend their own spheres of authority. Overlordship and the presence of officials still left Venetian hegemony fairly weak in Verona, particularly at its beginning, and the Republic’s control over its Terraferma empire was neither highly centralized nor uniform in structure. 19 As Venice had established its dominance over the mainland, the ruling groups of the various cities had negotiated different terms of subjugation to their new master. Verona was among the cities that retained the most autonomy over the local matters left to subject cities, such as city administration, some administration of their rural territory, administration of justice, and tax assessment and collection. Venice had difficulty enforcing direct control because of lack of manpower, inconsistent effort, and local—primarily aristocratic—resistance, so the Republic often sought to exercise control by participating in local disputes, siding with one or the other depending on which it felt suited its interests in maintaining a balance of power and/or public order. A good example of this dynamic was the rivalry between Veronese noblemen and merchants. In efforts recently reconstructed by a Veronese historian, the still wealthy and powerful but nonnoble merchant class staged ardent opposition to the nobility’s efforts to exclude them and to gather all the reins of power into noble hands. Two clashes stand out and exemplify the struggle.20 Throughout the 18

Giorgio Borelli, “Introduzione alle relazioni dei podestà e capitani di Verona,” in PCV, xviii. Alfredo Viggiano, Fra governanti e governati. Legittimità del potere ed esercizione dell’autorità sovrana nello Stato Veneto della prima età moderna (Treviso: Canova, 1994), 3–50; and Michael Knapton, “Le istituzioni centrali per l’amministrazione ed il controllo della Terraferma,” in Venezia e le Istituzioni di Terraferma (Bergamo: Assessorato alla Cultura, 1988), 35–56. 20 Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 43–56, 81–99. The rettori were well aware of the problem. In 1575 Domenico Priuli reported, for example, “vi è fra essi nobili et li cittadini over merchanti, con li qual è anco per il più il populo, malissima sodisfattione di’animo per cause delli officii et Conseglio, alli XXX 19

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century the merchants challenged their exclusion from the ruling council, appealing to Venice where their pleas found many sympathetic ears but ultimately no success. The Casa dei Mercanti, the merchants’ powerful governing body, became the site of another dispute over boundaries of authority and control of institutions. By midcentury, the nobility had begun illegally filling the offices of this body with noblemen rather than merchants, thereby attempting to seize control over regulation of trade, the settlement of disputes between merchants, and such crucial instruments as the official weights and measures of the city. Throughout these struggles, the Venetians tried to limit, but by no means overturn, noble control, choosing sometimes to support the merchants and other times the nobility. The nobility habitually overstepped the bounds of their legitimate authority, making it more difficult for the Venetians to keep order and provide justice and worsening daily life for the common people. Treating the public offices they held as part of their private patrimonies, aristocrats used their official powers primarily to enhance their own wealth and position. Corruption plagued the distribution of positions of authority, such as administration of public institutions. The nobles routinely ignored rules intended to control how much power one family could accumulate by limiting the number of offices one line could hold, and a few families illegally monopolized the most highly profitable offices. The college of notaries, for example, the rettori complained, was “full of babies and empty of knowledge.”21 Because office-holding was the only key to great wealth and high status, fierce competition for preeminence within the group and for access from without frequently resulted in violence and fraud. In 1566, podestà Alvise Grimani reported that to avoid the fraud and factional violence that usually accompanied the annual elections, it was necessary for him to oversee the process closely. But “it still could not be avoided that there were a thousand weapons in the piazza and in the streets, carried by servants come to accompany their masters home [after the voting].” 22 Two of the areas of particular concern to the rettori were provisioning the city and maintaining public order—above all limiting the violence that pervaded early modern life. In both these areas they needed the cooperation of the Veronese nobility, who, engrossed in the project of bettering their own fortunes and those

21

qual non vogliono in modo alcuno admetterli con tutto che habbino alcuni di loro gravissimi facultade così d’entrade come di denari.” PCV, 108, see also 96. 21 Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 81–99; “et pien de puti et vacui de scientia.” PCV, 62. 22 Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 69–73. See also, Luciano Pezzolo, “Podestà e capitani nella terraferma veneta (secoli XV–XVIII),” in Venezia e le istituzioni di terraferma (Bergamo: Assessorato alla Cultura, 1988), 60–61. “non si puotè però fuggir che non vi fussero milla arma di hasta su la piazza et per le strade, portate da servitori venuti per accompagnar i patroni a casa.” PCV, 40, see also 18.

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of the hereditary nobility as a class, not only generally failed to help, but frequently made the problems worse. Local noble control of the justice system exacerbated problems of violence and disorder. Verona was notable among the subject cities of the Terraferma for having maintained effective local control over criminal jurisdiction by having more judges on the panel that decided cases than did the podestà.23 The rettori complained that this control, coupled with the corruption of the noble judges, made the court virtually useless for punishing violent and criminal behavior not only of the nobility but also of those commoners whom the nobility favored. The podestà Alvise Grimani lamented in 1566 that “although our [i.e., the Venetian] judges propose a severe penalty, at times a milder one is made [by the Veronese judges]…[and] they are too moderate toward the powerful, and their dependents, kin, and fellow members of secret factions….” Another podestà summed up the violent results of the patricians’ lack of concern about legal punishment: “I am not surprised that so many murders take place, so that in this it can be said that it is happier to live under the Turk than under us, and from day to day it will become worse.”24 Veronese patricians’ growing investment in land gave them ever greater control over the urban food supply as both producers and distributors. This enabled them not only to become more wealthy, but to increase their informal bonds of patronage. A large proportion of the grain produced in the Veronese countryside was by law to be sent to the city to be sold, much of it at fixed prices, to the poor. The rettori, who were responsible for making sure there was adequate grain available in the city, reported that members of the elite frequently smuggled most of their grain out of the territory to sell it at a higher price elsewhere—which their control of the local court system and access to the ears of the powerful in Venice enabled them to do. They bribed boat captains on Lake Garda to take the grain to northern markets and used their influence in the courts to get the captains off if they were caught. The landowners themselves, naturally, never received any penalties.25 23

Unlike the other cities of the mainland, where the podestà and his men had the final word in criminal matters, in the body that decided criminal cases in Verona, the eight Veronese judges had a clear majority over the five Venetians, the podestà and his four judges. PCV, 41, 62; and Claudio Povolo, “Aspetti e problemi dell’amministrazione della giustizia penale nella Repubblica di Venezia. Secoli XVI–XVII,” in Stato, società e giustizia nella Repubblica veneta (sec. XV–XVIII), ed. Gaetano Cozzi (Rome: Jouvence, 1981), 1:161. 24 “sebene i nostri giudici proponeno pene severe, vien alle volte presa una più mite [...] alle volte siano troppo temperati verso i potenti e per le dependentie, parentelle et fattioni secret.” PCV, 41; and “non mi maraveglio se seguitano tanti homicidij, che in questo si puol dir esser più felice viver sotto il Turco, che sotto di noi, et de dì in dì sarà peggio.” PCV, 63. 25 For example, PCV, 33, 122. See also Ventura, Nobiltà, 389–91.

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The nobility, who also ran the subsidized grain market, routinely illegally cut the wheat they did sell in the city with lower-quality grains, which caused much discontent among the masses. These noble families kept most of the rest of their grain for their own use, but also shared with their dependents. That is, they distributed high-quality food to their own clients as a way to maintain their informal network of support among the common people while withholding it from the majority of the population, inviting discontent and suffering. Podestà Alvise Grimani, writing in 1566 about problems of fraud and low-quality grain in the market caused largely by the nobility’s deceit, warned that “from this is born public dissatisfaction among the poor, seeing themselves so badly treated in both bread and grain that, may God forbid, should a period of want come, there will certainly be very great danger.”26 The rettori attempted to increase Venetian authority and lessen that of the Veronese nobility, especially in the area of criminal justice because of its direct effect on public order. Several podestà circumvented Veronese control of jurisdiction over violent offenses and applied harsh penalties to the criminals by using the Venetian claim to authority over the carrying of weapons. Officials took a similar tack in seeking to extend their authority in other areas. Various rettori attempted to implement institutional changes to end fraudulent practices in the distribution of grain in the city. Podestà Alvise Grimani, for example, reported to the Venetian Senate how he introduced a Fontico di farina, overseen by the Venetians, to guarantee the honest distribution and grinding of grain for the common people of Verona. 27

RELIGIOUS AUTHORITIES The bishops, also important and powerful players on the local scene, were, like the rettori, deeply disturbed by what they perceived to be dangerous social disorder, for which the churchmen blamed a larger failure of authority.28 The bishops were certainly no social radicals. Noblemen themselves, they both accepted and endorsed 26 See PCV, 56. “De qui nasce una publica et mala satisfattione della povertà, vedendosi così mala trattata et nel pane et nelle biave, che Dio guardi, che venisse qualche occasione di bisogno, che certo saria di grandissimo pericolo.” PCV, 38. 27 Alvise Grimani, for example, used his authority to regulate the carrying of arms to make unsheathing a weapon illegal. This enabled him to banish or send to the galleys men who unsheathed their weapons in the course of committing violent acts over which he had no actual jurisdiction. PCV, 42–43, see also 180. On problems with the measures used for grain, see PCV, 38–39, and weights and measures generally, 58. See also, Antoniano, Tre libri, 96 r. The administrators of charitable institutions also found many ways to profit from their rich endowments. Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 90–99; and PCV, 193. This did not go unnoticed by ecclesiastical authorities. See Antoniano, Tre libri, 95 v. 28 On this attitude among religious reformers more generally, see Adriano Prosperi, “La figura XXX

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the idea that the nobility was innately superior to the rest of the population whom they dominated by a God-given right. At the same time, however, like the Venetian governors, the bishops were quite critical of the unrestrained, corrupt, and violent manner in which the nobility dominated the rest of the population. These religious authorities believed that noble superiority manifested in a restrained and law-abiding form of rule would translate into greater peace and order for all. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Venice augmented its control over its mainland territories by gaining effective control over the appointment of their bishops. Throughout this period, the vast majority of bishops of the mainland cities were members of the Venetian nobility. Verona was something of an exception to this pattern in that its most important sixteenth-century bishop, Gian Matteo Giberti, the illegitimate son of a member of the Genoese nobility and his concubine, while not Veronese was also not Venetian.29 The remaining bishops of Verona in this period all came from leading Venetian families. While this did not by any means guarantee identity of interest between the church and Venice— indeed there is copious evidence to the contrary—on the matters of reining in the nobility and establishing public order, the two powers were effectively allies. Religious offices and institutions formed a governing structure in the city and territory parallel in many respects to the secular, one which faced similar problems caused by conflicting claims of jurisdiction and the local nobility’s use of its powerful and wealthy institutions—particularly the cathedral chapter and the monasteries—to increase their own influence. Bishop Giberti famously wrested control of the ecclesiastical system from the nobility, rationalizing it and establishing centralized episcopal rule.30 A central component of this revised system was the bishop’s court, which was essential to their attempts to enforce their vision of the family, as well as being the source of the marriage suits discussed in the chapters that follow. While this internal consolidation of control was important, Giberti and other churchmen realized that it was not enough to guarantee the success of their more wide-ranging moral and religious reform plans. The bishops were still not so powerful that they could implement initiatives in the diocese without obtaining the cooperation of the laity and particularly of the nobility who dominated the 29

del vescovo fra Quattro e Cinquecento: Persistenza, disagi e novità,” in Storia d’Italia, Annali 9: La Chiesa e il potere politico (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), 257–58. 29 Paolo Prodi, “The Structure and Organization of the Church in Renaissance Venice: Suggestions for Research,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 417–18. Giberti was legitimated to facilitate his ecclesiastical career. On Venetian suspicions of Giberti linked to his status as a foreigner, see Prosperi, Evangelismo,149–50. 30 Prosperi, Evangelismo, esp. 149–79.

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city and territory. A good example of the conflict of interests inherent in such cooperation is the joint city council and episcopal effort to confine public prostitutes to one section of the city. Initially the noble councilors put their weight behind Giberti’s desire to try to limit prostitution—not so much, however, because they shared the bishop’s larger goal of enforcing Christian morality, but because many of the Veronese nobility in this period desired to cleanse the central ancient, and therefore more “noble,” portions of the city. The success of the joint effort was short lived, undermined by disagreement over the choice of site and by the desire of many noblemen to preserve easy access to prostitutes. 31 Surveying the city and diocese, the religious reformers were struck not only by the growing poverty and the hunger, criminality, prostitution, and discontent that came with it, but by what they perceived to be the disease at the root of all the problems: undisciplined “carnality,” or excessive concern for the world and the needs of the body, which they opposed to reason, discipline, and Christian virtue. As the cause of the uncontrolled carnality, they diagnosed the failure of the family to protect and educate its members, but at a higher level they perceived a failure in authority that extended broadly from familial (paternal) to household, political, cultural, or even moral governance. They distributed blame widely among fathers and mothers, masters and mistresses, and even human nature itself, which they recognized was naturally given to passions, particularly lasciviousness, pride, and anger.32 But, on account of their rightful leading role in Veronese society, the churchmen believed that the nobility ultimately bore the lion’s share of the responsibility. The Veronese reformers recognized that certain situations and behaviors could either encourage or discourage people’s innate propensities toward carnality. The churchmen drew a direct line from particular manifestations of carnality—

31

Ennio Concina, “Verona veneziana e rinascimentale,” in Ritratto di Verona. Lineamenti di una storia urbanistica, ed. Lionello Puppi (Verona: Banca Popolare di Verona, 1978), 320–25. 32 Bishop Valier, for example, began a book of prescriptions to guide the laity to a Christian way of life, with the assertion: “La natura nostra gia guasta per il peccato, da se è tanto inchinata al male, che facilmente lasciamo, & ci smetichiamo di far bene. Però habbiamo di bisogno di aiuti, & incitamenti al vivere bene,” Agostino Valier, Ricordi del reverendo monsignor Agostino Valerio vescovo al popolo della Citta & Diocese di Verona (Venice: Gli Heredi di Francesco Rampazetto, 1579), 5. A few decades earlier in a similar work, Tullio Crispoldi explained to his readers that “havendo a stare li huomini insieme in tanta moltitudine, come si usa, & per li vestimenti & letti, & altre delitie (oltre alla naturale inclinatione, & a quella, che il peccato originale ci had data) essendo per diventar le persone molle, & lascive,” Istruttione de’ sacerdoti di M. Tullio Crispoldi Da Riete. Utilissima ad ogni Christiano, e massimamente a quelli che esercitando la dignità sacerdotale, dove s’ammaestrano, no meni i sudditi, che i sacerdoti c’hanno haver cura di loro (Venice: Gabriel Giolito De’ Ferrari, 1568), 484. On this attitude more generally among bishops, see Prosperi, “Figura del vescovo,” 257.

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such as the improper mixing of the sexes; singing lascivious songs or reading lascivious books; marrying for reasons of property; eating good food and wearing fine fabrics; prostitution; and the institution of concubinage33—to the high level of violence and misery that they saw plaguing the territory. In their eyes, the problem had an essential institutional dimension: the failure of those in authority to limit people’s exposure to these situations. Bishop Giberti’s language testifies to his fixation on the lack of adequate supervision of inferiors by their superiors, particularly in cases where young people of both sexes were together. He instructed parish priests to preach against a variety of such transgressions including “the little care people have in allowing young people to visit together, which should not be permitted even to male kin with female kin”; mistresses who go to festivals and “leave their serving boys and maids all day, who go back and forth without any oversight”; and the unsupervised “gatherings in barns that [young] people have in the winter, which are vulgarly called filò, with so much license to do and say evil things…which are the ruin of many souls.”34 Lack of supervision and control of women’s fragile and “bodily” nature posed a particular problem, partly because it made them more vulnerable to corruption than men. Giberti, for example, scolded both male and female patricians for sending young female servants around in public on errands, thus putting them “in great danger,” particularly from men who work in shops, who “with gestures and words (if not with other things) try to violate their minds.”35 Reformers wrote even more vehemently about the dangers women posed to men, and hence to the order men were supposed to uphold. Women’s presence, which tempted men, constituted a primary cause of men’s passionate and violent behavior. Giberti complained about women who wear “ornaments that provoke wickedness.” Worse, some women went about dressed “like prostitutes,” by which he presumably meant provocatively, and “learn to sing worldly songs,” which

33

See, for example, Giberti, Per li padri, Bii v; and Crispoldi, Istruttione, 499. “poco rispetto che si ha a lassar praticar la gioventu insieme, che non doverebbe esser permesso etiam a parenti con parente”; “lassano tutto il di famegli et massare, che vanno avanti et indietro senza custodia alcuna”; “le conventicule che si fanno la invernata nelle stalle in le ville, le quali volgarmente si chiamano filo, con tanta licentia di far & dir male [...] che sono la ruina di molte anime.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii r–v (emphasis added). See similar objections in Giberti, Monitiones generales, in OP, chap. 44, 227. See also Crispoldi’s warnings about the mixing of the sexes at home, including serving maids and sons, Istruttione, 489. 35 “con pericolo massime,” “con gesti & parole (se non con altro) cercano di violar la mente.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii v. Valier similarly told male workers “nelle botteghe, ò lavorerij non si faccino, ne diano cose dishoneste, tanto meno in occasione di donne, o altri che vi vengano, o passano per la strada.” Ricordi al popolo, 40. Women slipping into prostitution was one of the reformers’ particular worries. 34

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unleashed carnality and led to violence and murder.36 Giberti urged mothers to dissuade their daughters from these activities. Three decades later, Bishop Valier favored the ultimate in supervision: removing women from public life entirely, instructing that women go out veiled, married women and widows with their hair shielded, unmarried women with their faces almost completely covered with opaque material. Best of all, in his estimation, was for them to stay quietly at home, away from the windows and doors, where they were protected and could not be seen.37 In the eyes of reformers, however, men were ultimately responsible for most of the problems. Adult men’s, particularly noblemen’s, greater command of reason than women, children, and social inferiors gave them the responsibility to oversee their own behavior and passions as well as that of their dependents. The reformers found most men’s failures to do so very troubling.38 Over the course of the century, these Veronese churchmen became increasingly convinced that poor men’s lack of control of their passions led to their own misery and to that of their families and ultimately harmed society as a whole. Many poor fathers, according to Bishop Giberti, “consume all they have earned during the week for their children and their wife [sic], [in] gambling, carousing, and whoring on Sundays.” Moreover, he added indignantly, “then [these men] complain that the Lord God sends famines, and they say he is unfair.” Poor men’s failures were troubling because the resulting suffering of their wives and children created a cycle of misery that forced women and children into dishonest, carnal lives, the women often as prostitutes. The availability of prostitutes, in turn, induced more men into carnality, and the cycle continued in other families. 39 36 “ornamenti provocativi a male.” Giberti, Per li padri, B. See similarly his condemnation of “la brutta usanza: et da non esser tolerata, di molti maestri di botega: massime dellarte delle berette, quali tengono insieme tanta moltitudine di gioveni et giovine, et li si cantano canzone vane et damore.” ibid., Bii r–v. 37 Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 28–29. See also the series of four treatises Valier wrote for elite women, in which women’s modesty and seclusion is a particular theme, contained in Institutione d’ogni stato lodevole delle donne cristiane (Venice: Gli Heredi di Francesco Rampazetto, 1577). 38 For similar ideas, see Roper, “Drinking,” in her Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 1994), 152–56. One of the themes of Roper, Holy Household, esp. chap. 5, is the failures of many men of Augsburg to live up to the Reformation ideal of manhood authorities advocated. 39 “la festa giocando, sgoleggiando, & meritricando si consumano tutto quello che haria fatto per soi figlioli, & per la mogliere tutta la settimana, & poi si lamentano che il Signor Dio manda le carestie, & dicono che è partiale.” Giberti, Per li padri, B r–v. The repercussions of the failures of poor men are a major theme of Alessandro Canobbio, Discorso del sig. Alessandro Canobbio, ai magnifici s. presidenti della Carità di Verona; nel quale si mostra l’importanza del provedere a’ poveri mendicanti (Padua: Lorenzo Pasquati, 1572; repr. Verona: Discepolo, 1590), esp. 18–19.

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Noblemen’s lack of control troubled the reformers even more. As city councilors, poor relief and food distribution officials, patrons, employers, and lords, the Veronese nobility, and with them their values and culture, exercised significant influence on the tenor of Veronese daily life and on individual behavior. The churchmen, however, found little to admire in noble culture, which they viewed as ruled by worldly desires: for wealth, for power, for sex, for ornament, for honor. In theory, the naturally superior and highly reasonable noblemen, through their example and public authority, should have stimulated the rest of society to begin moral renewal.40 In practice, however, the elite of Verona used their public authority to increase their private wealth and power and to indulge their carnal desires, neglecting their public duties such as supervising poor relief, while tolerating and even encouraging the immoral behavior of others. Churchmen complained that noblemen placed higher value on private display and vanity than on charity and the public good. In times of want, they ostentatiously spent on dressing their wives ornately and buying additional horses. Aristocrats openly lived lives shaped by their passions, frequenting prostitutes and commonly keeping concubines either instead of marrying or in addition to their wives. Giberti complained about “scoundrel gentlemen and merchants” who rented out houses in which to carouse, gamble, feast, and whore, to the ruin of “so many poor girls.”41 Another of his complaints echoed and extended this vision of wealthy elite men: those who gamble…, blaspheme, threaten their enemies, say bad things about them, praise making vendetta…and incite [young boys] to have an evil spirit, or at least a spirit of the world…, and persuade them that doing good is the stuff of a man of little account, and promote a certain life which some call… ‘[living] as a gentleman.…’ 42

40 Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 15–16. See Agostino Valier’s Lettera dell’illustrissimo et reverendissimo monsignor Agostino Valerio cardinale, & vescovo di Verona. Alli magnifici proveditori, e Consiglio della sopradetta magnifica Città (Verona: Francesco dalle Donne, 1599) on the subject of controlling pomp, chiding the elite of the city for failing in their duty, and “dando mall’essempio a quelli, che si trovano in mediocre stato.” 41 Luigi Lippomano, Confirmatione e stabilimento di tutti li dogmi catholici con la superversione di tutti i fondamenti, motivi & ragioni delli modern heretici fino al numbero 482 (Venice: Nella contra di santa Maria formosa, al segno de la speranza, 1553), 393r. “gentilhomini & mercanti [...] ribaldi”; “quante poverine.” Giberti, Per li padri, Cii+1 v. 42 “quelli che giocano [...]: minacciano a soi nimici: dicono mal di loro: laudano il far le vendette et altri peccati: [...] et li incitano a preder malo animo: o almeno animo del mondo [...] et li persuadono che e cosa da homini da poco il far tanto bene, et li mettono avanti una certa vita la quale alcuni chiamano [...] da gentilhomo.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii v–Bii+1 r. See also, Antoniano, Tre libri, 87v–88r.XXX

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Giberti’s associate Tullio Crispoldi similarly complained that “every house is full of whores and of lascivious young men, and of lascivious suggestions; everyone talks about it, and laughs about it, and celebrates it…, the laws are forgotten, the officials are often involved in the same sin, and are worse than the others ….” Alluding to the influence of a noble code over these men’s behavior, he noted that “anyone who is not involved in this is held to be a rube (rustico) and a misfit and a melancholy man”—all characteristics that the proud noblemen who served as officials would not want attributed to themselves.43 In the minds of churchmen, sexual passions and violent passions were closely linked, if not identical. Giberti wrote in one work that the unsupervised mixing of the young men and women led to “so many evil things, [including] clandestine marriages, from which follow the greatest hatreds…,” which were the source of vendettas. And in another he lamented about “how many frauds, how many [destructions], how many scandals, and murders” arose from such situations. 44 Giberti’s associate Crispoldi also focused on the connection between disordered sexuality and violence. In a discourse against adultery, he scolded men who commit adultery or fornication “for vendetta.”45 Furthermore he linked all bodily appetites together as manifestations of the carnality that led in a nearly unstoppable progression to social disorder: …[H]ow easy it is to fall into that vice [of carnality] and to fall in love and to wrap oneself up…; and how virulent it is, so that often one’s whole soul is quickly ruined; and it does not spare someone on account of his age, or his condition, or the great guard that he has had in the past, if he does not live in perpetual watchfulness; and here it is necessary to show how essential it is to flee all occasions…of lascivious songs and histories and books, by which things it seems wood is added to the fire and to the natural flame; and that it is necessary to flee laziness, good eating, dancing, music, and songs, and frequenting [ornamented] people. But the world already goes in such a way that it seems one is commanded to do the worst one can; and although carnal desire may sleep, everything possible excites it and gathers it up, 43 “ogni casa e piena di meretrici, & di lascivi giovani, & lascivi inviti; di cio si parla, si ride, si festeggia di cio [...], le leggi sono dimenticate, li officiali sono alle volte nella colpa medesima: & peggiori che gli altri. E tenuto rustico, & male acconcio, & huomo malanconico, che non si impaccia di cio.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 494 (emphasis added). 44 “tanti mali, matrimonii clandestini, dalli quali seguono inimicitie capitali.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii. “quot fraudes, quot ruinae, quot scandala, & homicidia.” Gian Matteo Giberti, Monitiones generales in OP, 225; and also CON, bk. 4, chap. 17. 45 “per vendetta,” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 497.

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q Chapter 1 from which then are born the other sins, and murders, and thefts, and other evil acts.46

By modern standards, violence permeated daily life in the region. Capitano Gabriele Morosini, for example, reported at midcentury with some pride that only eighty-four murders had been committed during his sixteen months in office, eight of them in the city and the remaining seventy-six in the countryside, this in a total population of approximately two hundred thousand. The rettori and the bishops blamed the nobility and their indiscipline for much of the disorder, although certainly part of it was outside the control of anyone. Without a strong central authority and with little hope of finding protection from Veronese or Venetian public officials or courts, recourse to arms was an essential part of protecting one’s person, property, and honor.47 Men at all social levels routinely went about armed, common men with daggers, the elite with swords or, increasingly, firearms. All quickly turned to force to redress slights. In the eyes of the religious reformers, undisciplined passions, disordered exercise of authority, and violence met in a combustible mixture in the code of behavior that organized Veronese noble life and exercised a profound influence on the rest of society. In support of their growing domination of the economy and society, and to justify their increasing claims of authority against competing groups as well as against the Venetian state and the bishops, the nobility of Verona, like their counterparts facing similar challenges in other Italian cities, had developed an ideology of noble superiority. Articulated in various literary forms, as well as in the organization and physical fabric of the city itself, this ideology was based on the notion of the aristocracy’s natural superiority by blood.48 It described their separation 46

“quanto sia facile a cascar in tal vitio, & ad innamorarsi, & ad invilupparsi [...]; & come e contagioso, & che spesso ad un quardo si guasta tutta l’anima: & che non perdona ad eta, ne a conditione di persona, ne a grande quardia, che si sia havuta per lo passato, sh non si sta inperpetua custodia, & qui bisogna dimostrare, come bisogna fuggire tutte le occasioni [...] di lascivie canzone, & historie, & libri; per li quali per che si aggiunga legna al fuoco, & all’incendio naturale, & che bisogna fuggir l’ocio, il ben mangiare, bali, & suoni, & canti, & frequentie di persone ornate; peroche gia il mondova in tal modo, che pare gli sia commandato dia fare il peggio che puo; & se ben la concupiscentia carnale dorme, si va con tutti modi possibili escitandla, & raccogliendola, dalla qual poi nascono alco de gli altri peccati, & homicidii, & furti, & altri mali.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 485–86; see also 487. Antoniano similarly wrote that lack of control of carnal passions let to “risse [...] e [...] mortali inimicite,” Tre libri, 87v. See also 88r–88v. 47 PCV, 19. On violence in this period in the Veneto, see Claudio Povolo, “Crimine e giustizia a Vicenza. Secoli XVI–XVII. Fonti e problematiche per l’approfondimento di una ricerca sui rapporti politico-giudiziari tra Venezia e la terraferma,” in Venezia e la terraferma attraverso le relazioni dei rettori (Milan: Giuffrè, 1981), 411–25; and Povolo, “Aspetti.” On the place of violence in a society without central authorities with control over violence, see Elias, The Civilizing Process, 447–49, esp. 449. 48 Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 43–56. On this ethos generally, especially in the Veneto, see Ventura, XXX

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from the mass of commoners and encompassed a conception of noblemen’s nearly limitless right to dominate the nonnoble by whatever means available. Rejecting the earlier humanist idea that nobility was derived from a person’s virtue, which other groups still advocated, the new definition of nobility coalesced around the opposite notion that nobility was conferred by blood, and that honor, virtue, wealth, and power naturally followed the blessings of birth. The literature that elaborated these ideas thus articulated the belief that the current leading families had the power and position they did, and always had and always would (and should), because they were naturally superior to the rest of the population. These works assumed that right order, by which they primarily meant order congenial to the nobility’s needs for wealth and power and not public peace, rested simply on the maintenance of their dominance.49 The Veronese nobility increasingly came to see the city itself as noble and therefore as theirs alone, to be shaped in their image and for their purposes. 50 This idea found expression in efforts to improve and restore the city physically, particularly to emphasize its illustrious origins in the Roman Empire, to which the leading families also traced their roots in elaborate (if unlikely) family trees. A project emblematic of this conception of the city and nobility was the city council’s midcentury efforts to restore the Arena, the remarkably well preserved Roman amphitheater in the center of the city, which they conceived of as the product of their noble Roman ancestors. The noble councilors not only sought to restore the building physically by clearing out the centuries of refuse that had been dumped in it, but also to protect its—and therefore their own—honor and dignity by clearing out the prostitutes who clustered in a neighborhood near its west side.51 In the vision that joined the nobility and honor of the city to that of the ruling families, the city was theirs and the needs of the rest of the population

49

Nobiltà, 275–374. Claudio Donati, L’idea di Nobiltà in Italia, Secoli XIV–XVIII (Rome: Laterza, 1988), is a general treatment of the subject. See also Daniela Frigo, Il padre di famiglia. Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’“economica” tra cinque e seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985); and Romano, Housecraft, 3–42. 49 This set of ideas ran into problems as time went on and some “noble” families became poor—the natural connection between external superiority and internal superiority was violated. This periodically sent the ideology into a minicrisis. See Donati, L’idea, chap. 6. 50 They expressed these ideas in various works, including Girolamo Dalla Corte, Dell’istoria di Verona (Verona: G. Discepolo, 1596); Torello Sarayna, De Origine et Amplitudine Civitatis Veronae (Verona: Ex officina Antonii Putelleti, 1540); Giovanni Francesco Tinto, La nobiltà di Verona nella quale tutte le attioni, et qualità di quella città si descrivono (Verona: G. Discepolo, 1592). More generally, see Concina, “Verona veneziana,” 316–36. 51 Concina, “Verona veneziana,” 325, 335.

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were at best unimportant and at worst an impediment. As much as possible, the nobility sought to separate themselves and the most ancient and noble parts of the city from the common people. Among their motivations for improving poor relief in the middle of the century, cleansing the city appears to have been at least as important as mitigating suffering. Similar efforts included confining lepers outside the city walls. Indeed, one historian has shown how the central and most ancient and prestigious neighborhoods of the city became significantly more socially and economically homogeneous over the course of the sixteenth century. Whereas at the start of the century there had been clusters of workshops and all occupations in this zone, by the latter half of the century the only lower-status inhabitants were those exercising occupations that directly served the wealthy. 52 Their sense of noble mission and separation contributed to an exaggerated conception of their own right to power. The central concept of noble honor and the need for its defense justified in their minds their claim to operate within their own system of law, exempt from rules imposed by others. A highly influential midcentury work on the duel defined the noble code thus: [T]he opinion of knights is that no law, neither of patria, or of prince, or any material interest, or concern for life, may be placed before honor; and that notwithstanding any constitution or risk of loss, knights must obey the law of honor….53 Possession of honor, noblemen believed, separated them from the ignoble, and therefore the rich and powerful from the poor and weak. Contemporary authors spilled much ink on the subject, agreeing that honor was not equivalent to virtue but lay more in reputation, amounting to recognition of a person’s or family’s innate superiority and unquestionable virtue. And since honor rested largely in the estimation of the world, that reputation required vigilant maintenance and violent

52 Concina, “Verona veneziana,” 320–25; Lanaro Sartori, “Patrizi e poveri,” 134–49; and ibid., “Radiografia,” 71–79. 53 “la opinione de’ cavalieri è, che legge alcuna né di patria, né di principe, né interesse di haver, né di vita all’honore non debbia essere anteposta; e che non ostante alcuna constituzione, né pericolo di perdita, i cavalieri alla legge dell’honore debbiano obedire.” G. Muzio, Il duello, in Le risposte cavalleresche (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1550), cc. 202 v–203 r, cited in Donati, L’idea, 96. This rather elevated conception of the effects of noble honor might be contrasted with the derisive Venetian picture of Veronese nobles as self-important men engaged in petty squabbles: “Hanno in costume i veronesi per ogni picciol cosa accendersi allo sdegno et infiammarsi nelle alterationi, nè sì tosto nasce un picciol sospetto di un mottivo o un sguardo che subito si retirano alle conventicole et alle sette, facendone adunanze con una pomposa ostentatione di aderenti e seguaci, intorno al che pare esser ogni loro maggior studio, stimandosi più o meno honorati quanto di questi possino metter insieme maggior seguito.” PCV, 186.

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defense against any insult.54 Defense of honor ruled supreme, placing the nobility—in their view—above the rule of law. The ecclesiastical officials saw the violence that the noble defense of honor provoked as emblematic of the harm the noble code and its disordered notion of authority caused to Verona. Male Veronese of all social classes, not just noblemen, frequently fought, provoked to bloody brawls or wider-reaching vendettas by slights to their reputations. But the reformers realized that aristocratic violence, justified and fanned by the noble code of honor, frequently spread beyond this group. Most of the worst violence appears to have resulted from elite vendettas aggravated by factional conflict.55 In pursuit of their ends, the nobility sometimes encouraged common people to violence. Many noblemen kept bands of armed retainers, known and feared as bravi, drawn from the ranks of commoners, who participated in the noble conflicts. In addition, to further their own schemes, the elite sometimes intentionally provoked violence among the lower orders. Bishop Giberti condemned “those who sow enmities, and particularly…some citizens, for the favor and by the instigation of whom so many poor peasants brawl, even draw blood, and persevere in these [quarrels] to the ruin of soul and body.”56 The Veronese reformers, especially Valier and Silvio Antoniano, identified the notion of honor that organized Veronese aristocratic culture as a dangerous code of carnality, which encouraged people to be proud, drove them to seek the esteem of the world, separating them from God and propelling them toward sin and violence. In the reformers’ view, honor drove competition, which encouraged people’s love of display, luxury, wealth, and sexual misbehavior and thus their propensity toward anger and ultimately vendetta. Because of their exalted and powerful position, the churchmen realized, male members of the elite were particularly susceptible to the sins of pride, love of luxury, and of display, which were fostered in them 54

On the concept of honor, see Julius Kirshner, Pursuing Honor While Avoiding Sin: The Monte delle Doti of Florence (Milan: Giuffrè, 1978), 5–6. The literature on dueling that arose in midcentury attests to this: Donati, L’idea, 170. See also, Muir, Mad Blood, 255–56, on honor as a fiction that must be maintained. 55 See PCV, 8. Bishop Giberti’s visitation mentions that several times he helped to settle disputes between families in the contado. See also Giberti’s complaint about “quelli che potendo sono cosi negligenti ad intromettersi per far pace tra quelli che sono in discordia.” Per li padri, Bii+4. Bishop Agostino Valier frequently admonished the laity not to get involved in disputes and even vendettas over small matters. See, for example, his proclamations: Agostino Valerio vescovo di Verona a tutti i fedeli della città e diocese nostra salute nel signore (Verona: Bastiano et Giovanni dalle Donne fratelli, Impressore Episcopale, 1574); and Agostino Valerio vescovo di Verona a tutti li arcipreti, rettori, et altri sacerdoti curati della diocese nostra salute nel Signore (Verona, 1576). 56 “di quelli che seminano inimicitie, & delli cittadini in particulare per favore & instigatione de quali tanti poveri contadini fanno risse etiam di sangue, & durano in quelle, & si ruinano dellanima & del corpo.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii+4 (emphasis added).

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from childhood.57 This led them to exercise their rightful authority improperly, engaging in political corruption, fraud, and sexual indulgence—comportment that hurt others, particularly the poor, and increased the likelihood that the poor would engage in sinful behavior. The cycle of carnality needed to be broken. The bishops and their associates wanted to reform the moral disorder they saw in the city and countryside, to discourage the situations that gave rein to people’s passions, both sexual and violent, and to teach people disciplined behavior that would help them to control these impulses in themselves and in others, bringing them closer to God. To these ends, the churchmen sought to establish greater discipline through firm and responsible exercise of authority over all areas of life, starting at the basic social and political unit, the family, and its natural head, the father. They extended their vision upward and outward from the family to the larger social and political structures, likening noble social superiors and officials to fathers and their inferiors to children. Essential to this vision of joint family, social, and political order was a particular and restricted notion of paternal authority that the churchmen opposed to the noble style of life, system of values, and particularly the conception of authority that so influenced the lives of all Veronese. Through its inculcation, they sought to turn not just fathers but also local noblemen into leaders who would bring Verona away from carnality to the true Christian life.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL PATRIARCHAL IDEOLOGY Ideas about the patriarchal organization of family and society were obviously not unique to sixteenth-century Veronese churchmen; laymen and churchmen throughout Europe had long been developing these concepts. Many historians of the Renaissance and early modern periods have traced the development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the notion that the well-ordered patriarchal family provided the basis of the well-ordered state and society.58 Originating in the classical period, the idea was revived in Italy by late medieval humanists. The sixteenth century, however, saw the much fuller development of household imagery and some of the early interest of churchmen in these ideas. In Italy and elsewhere, books on the governance of the family (written from both secular and religious perspectives), sermons, proclamations, and other didactic literature on the subject proliferated and the image of a joint household and sociopolitical order became commonplace. The ideal of the well-ordered household headed by an authoritative father ruling 57

Antoniano, Tre libri, 77v–82v; and Giberti, Per li padri, Bii v. For example, Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World: From the Black Death to the Industrial Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 234–39; Harrington, Reordering Marriage, 39–49; Frigo, Padre di famiglia, esp. 38–42; and Romano, Housecraft, 21–23. 58

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over obedient children was equated with paternal magistrates, princes, and priests ruling over their subjects and it permeated discussions of authority and of social and political order through the eighteenth century. Historians have primarily treated the concept of the patriarchal order as an ideology promoting the subordination of the lower orders, arguing that early modern authors used it to legitimate the actual consolidation of power and resources (such as land, tax revenue, rent, and others’ labor) in the hands of certain people and institutions. Pointing to the classical and legal roots of the strong connotations of authority in the concept of paterfamilias and citing the use of patriarchal family imagery like that of the sixteenth-century French political theorist Jean Bodin to justify absolutist rule, they argue that the image of the father’s God-given authority over his children and the unquestioning obedience they owed him in particular59 “naturalized” and made acceptable the increasing claims of authority over populations made variously by states and their officials, aristocracies, city councils and their magistrates, and even by landowners over tenants, and masters over workers. Scholars therefore generally accept that the early modern ideology of patriarchal hierarchy reflected and supported the actual familial and social orders developing in this period. Albano Biondi, for example, analyzes Italian churchmen’s extension of the fourth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” to include all authorities as a justification for the emerging aristocratic-dominated order. He argues that the post-Tridentine identification of the father’s natural authority over his children with the authority of social and political superiors over the rest of the population became “the fundamental ideology of an authoritarianhierarchical-privileged social order ‘for the greater glory of God,’ ” demanding the absolute obedience of the common and especially poor majority to the noble minority on the basis of noblemen’s natural “paternal” superiority to their childlike inferiors.60 Subordination, however, provides only one part of the meaning of early modern patriarchal imagery in Verona. More important here are the ideas about authority it contained. The churchmen certainly wanted children to obey their fathers, servants their masters, and the lower orders the nobility. But the Veronese 59 See, for example, Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, x–xi; Miller, Transformations, chap. 1, esp. 31– 35; and Frigo, Padre di famiglia, chap. 4. Romano, Housecraft, xv–xvi, argues that the relevant relationship was that between masters and servants. 60 “l’ideologia fondante di un ordine sociale di tipo autoritario-gerarchico-privilegiato ‘ad maiorem Dei gloriam.’ ”Albano Biondi, “Aspetti della cultura cattolica post-tridentina. Religione e controllo sociale,” in Storia d’Italia. Annali 4: Intellettuali e potere (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), 257, see also 277– 86. He discusses Silvio Antoniano on 268–77. For similar claims, see Frigo, Padre di famiglia, 41, and chap. 6.

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reformers also had important ideas about the nature of the authority they were promoting—the ideal father and noble official—in the face of what was a difficult situation in Verona: authority needed to be strong and clear, yet also strictly circumscribed. At odds with the way Veronese aristocrats actually exercised power, the churchmen’s vision of highly disciplined paternal, patriarchal, male, and noble authority—and style of life—was embedded in a vision of the well-ordered Christian family, which they saw as the remedy to the “carnality,” and hence to the violence, disorder, and sin of Verona specifically and of the world more generally. Their vision did not emerge fully formed, but, judging by the Veronese evidence, developed over the course of the period from the mid-1530s through the 1570s. Modern scholars have identified a growing interest in the family at the end of the medieval period, first among Italian humanists and somewhat later among the greater churchmen, which they explain in several ways. Most concentrate on humanist interest in the classical literature of oeconomia, governance of the family, which harmonized with and supported the humanists’ conviction that the active life was superior to the contemplative life. David Herlihy has identified other, broader developments which he suggests contributed to greater interest in the family and in the education of children more specifically: first, the depopulation of Europe following the Black Death, which led prescriptive writers to promote marriage to encourage procreation; second, the greater economic complexity of medieval civilization, which required “heavy investment in the training of the young.”61 Churchmen’s interest in the family lagged behind that of laymen. For centuries, the family had represented, to most in the church, the entanglements of the world and its sin, an obstacle to the life lived for God. It was the site of sex, of wealth accumulation, and, throughout the Middle Ages, accompanying the fragmentation of public power that followed the disintegration of the Roman Empire, often of great power. As larger and more successful state organizations arose in the fifteenth and particularly the sixteenth century, however, they began to replace the preceding family-based order, taking over many public functions from families and thus diminishing the power of the few fathers who headed them. 62

61 David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985), 116– 17, 125; Romano, Housecraft, 4–16; and Frigo, Padre di famiglia, 17–26. 62 On marriage as a remedy to more sinful fornication, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 89, 138, 140, 271– 73, 280–81; Georges Duby, “Private Power, Public Power,” in A History of Private Life, vol. 2: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1988); and Paolo Prodi, “Il matrimonio tridentino e il problema dei figli illegittimi,” in Per Giuseppe Sebesta. Scritti e nota bio-bibliografica per il settantesimo compleanno (Trento: n.p., 1989), 408.

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As the elite family structure became less central to governing structures, churchmen could begin to see families—and with them the fathers who headed them—as separable from worldly values and thus as potential allies in reform. The sixteenth century saw a new interest in the family on the part of religious leaders intent on reforming the morals and life of the laity. In the 1530s, Bishop Giberti and his most prolific associate, Tullio Crispoldi, slowly left behind the suspicion of the family that had served as a guiding idea of mainstream medieval religious thought to embrace the family—and more specifically the father who headed it—as an ally in Christian reform and education. Giberti and Crispoldi, reformers dedicated to bringing the world back to proper Christian practice and belief, believed that the right living of a few, by their example and teaching, would bring about the internal spiritual changes in others that they desired. In this process, the education of the laity was the key. To this end, Giberti and Crispoldi focused not only on educating priests in their duties to their flock and especially teaching them to preach, but also on establishing schools and reorganizing charitable institutions that would provide proper guidance to the poor, but also on removing the material obstacles that kept people from obtaining the proper education and living an honest life guided by Christian morality. Concomitantly, they set about reforming the family.63 These two reformers were well aware of the family’s dangerous potential to separate people from God and his laws, an attitude that was particularly evident in their earlier writings. Shortly before 1530, for example, Crispoldi (or another associate of Giberti’s) wrote a sermon on the commandment “Honor thy father and thy mother,” organized around the theme of love of family competing with the love of God. Warning the laity not to honor their parents above God, the author described the many ways that excessive love of family brought people into opposition to God’s laws, which he illustrated with the example of vendetta. 64 For Giberti in particular, an essential part of moral reform was reforming marriage, the foundation of the family. Marriage, he recognized, as the primary means of making family alliances and transmitting property as well as the primary site of sexuality, was frequently and easily turned to carnal purposes, interfering with its function as the site of the Christian education of children. Marriage 63 Crispoldi, Alcune pratiche del viver christiano (Venice: Stefano da Sabio, 1536), aiii+3r, 4r; Crispoldi, Istruttione, 414, 443; Crispoldi, Alcune interrogazione delle cose delle fede & del stato overo vivere de’ christiani (Verona: Antonio da Portese, 1540), Gii r; Prosperì, Evangelismo, 150, 205, 215–16, 250, 260, 261–87; and CON, bk. 4, chaps. 18 and 19. 64 Tullio Crispoldi, Sommario de messer Tullio Chrispoldo de le prediche fatte ne la visita di Verona del MDXXX qual faccìa quel santo vescovo di Verona monsignor Giammattheo Giberti, di molta laude degno, 412v–20v; on vendetta, 419r. I would like to thank Adriano Prosperi for generously sending me a transcription of this work.

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formed in the interests of property, the reformers believed, would produce families governed by the same worldly values, not by the desire to raise good Christians. Crispoldi, for example, complained “that fathers take care to leave their children rich rather than with good habits….”65 Equally bad were marriages formed by people in the throes of lust, which is how Bishop Giberti characterized clandestine marriages. Prior to the Council of Trent, canon law recognized as valid marriages that had been performed “clandestinely,” that is, without normal publicity and often without witnesses. After the Council of Trent, European churchmen generally condemned these for a variety of reasons, particularly for the confusion and deceit about who was actually married, although they continued to occur.66 For Giberti, the root of the problem with these marriages was that they were formed by unsupervised young people, impelled by carnal passions. They could not be stable foundations for families dedicated to educating Christian children, but could only lead to confusion, dispute, violence, and misery. Throughout his term as bishop, Giberti therefore focused on the need to teach the laity the canonical rules for the formation of valid marriages, which, he argued, were essential to providing a godly and ordered family environment. Giberti devoted nearly one quarter of his 1530 Breve ricordo to instructing the parish priests in matters relating to marriage and particularly the forms to be observed at its creation, including publicity and attention to ensure there were no legal impediments to the marriage, prefacing the section by emphasizing that the purpose of marriage was having children and educating them to be good Christians.67 Giberti and Crispoldi came to see Christian marriage as the source of Christian values and thus the source of good order in the world. Displaying an even more emphatic concern than before that marriages be formed with the proper intent as well as the proper form, in a 1540 guide for priests, Giberti told them to emphasize to the laity how important it was to marry in the proper spirit, not for “carnality” (carnalità) or “property” (robba). For Crispoldi, adultery became a metaphor for all disorder and disobedience to God.68 65 “che li padri hanno cura di lasciare i figliuoli ricchi piutosto che bene accostumati...” Grispoldi, Istruttione, 445. 66 For an extensive discussion of clandestine marriages, see chap. 3. 67 Giberti, Breve ricordo di quello hanno da fare i chierici, massimamente curati (Verona: Mastro Stephano Nicolini, et li frateli da Sabio, 1530), 8r–10v. Giberti’s discussion of marriage in this work repeats word for word the canons on marriage of the Florentine provincial council of 1517. Adriano Prosperi, “Note in margine a un opuscolo di. Gian Matteo Giberti,” Critica storica 4 (1965): 375. Chaps. 2 and 3 below discuss in great detail these rules along with Giberti’s and Valier’s ideas about what constituted proper marriage formation. 68 Giberti insisted “questa cosa e da esser distintamente trattato con dichiarare quanto importi a maritarsi da Cristiano, & quanto dipende di qui la bonta, & la malitia de figlioli, quando da una cattiva pianta, no XXX

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The early works of these Veronese churchmen gave only sporadic advice to parents about raising their children as good Christians. Giberti’s, for example, contained only scattered admonitions to parents on such matters as not keeping babies in bed with them and making sure that children attend mass. Both men’s later works, however, treated the conduct of the family and particularly the role of the father within the family more systematically and in greater detail. In a work not published until 1568 but probably written in the 1540s, Crispoldi devoted several pages to the general and specific duties of fathers and mothers to teach their children such basics as the Ten Commandments, faith in God, humility, and obedience. He warned that parents, and fathers in particular, who failed in this would be punished both in this world and the next.69 In his later writing, following his decade of experience in institutional reform of the ecclesiastical structure of the diocese, Giberti began explicitly to treat the family as an institution and to focus on the father’s role in guiding it. In his Constitutiones, a systematic outline of the governance of the diocese published in 1541, he included a lengthy section entitled “Instruction of the Parishioner about the Running of His Family.” This passage combined many of his earlier specific admonitions to fathers, but synthesized them in a new and important way: his emphasis shifted significantly from the duty of educating children in how to be Christians to the necessity that parents, and especially fathers, exercise oversight over every aspect of the lives of their dependents, including not just wife and children, but also servants, “lest something shameful be practiced by them.” Such oversight was necessary to guide the dependents’ behavior and provide the proper environment in which they could more easily learn Christian morality while also, in a sense, protecting the household from defilement by the outside world. He advised, for example, “Let [fathers] discover…those [servants] who are blasphemers, or are engaged in other vices, or who are disobedient to the rule of the Holy Mother Church, and let them by no means permit [the servants] to remain in the house.”70 Bishop Agostino Valier’s tenure began two decades after Giberti’s death and less than a decade after the closing of the Council of Trent, which had reaffirmed the importance of educating children while also confirming as church law the 69

si produce se non cattivo frutto.” Per li padri, Dii+1r (emphasis added); and Crispoldi, Istruttione, 484. 69 Giberti, Breve ricordo, 4r–v; Giberti, Monitiones generales, 224, 227–28; Crispoldi, Istruttione, 437– 40; and Crispoldi, Alcune pratiche, aiiii+3v 70 “Ut moneant parochiano super institutione propriae familiae”; “ne quid turpitudines per eos exerceatur”; and “Eos…quos blasphemos, vel alio vitio laborantes, vel sanctae matris Ecclesiae praeceptis non obtemperantes invenerint, nequaquam domi suae manere permittant.” CON, bk. 4, chap. 17.

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necessity of marrying publicly with witnesses, as Giberti had desired. From the beginning, Valier and his associates focused more keenly and systematically on the family than Giberti and Crispoldi had. Their vision of a familial hierarchy extended to organize the larger society, at least in Verona, reached its clearest expression in the 1570s and 1580s in Valier’s own writings directed to the laity and especially in the highly influential Tre libri dell’educazione dei figliuoli, credited to his associate Silvio Antoniano but probably written in close collaboration with Valier.71 In this image of the well-ordered family and society, they concentrated closely on the disciplined father, the padre di famiglia, who was charged with upholding it. For Valier and his associates, as for their counterparts throughout Italy, concern with the education of children became subsumed in a larger concern for the properly ordered family, which they saw as essential for creating disciplined individuals who would form a well-ordered state and society. Impelled by a conviction that the laity had to learn at a tender age what historians have come to call discipline in order to control their carnal natures, these reformers set out in numerous didactic works, in sermons, through parish priests, and in proclamations to teach parents, particularly fathers, how to fulfill their educational duties toward their children. Of particular interest is Antoniano’s Tre libri dell’educazione dei figliuoli, a guide for elite fathers in raising their children, particularly sons, and three short works for the laity of the middle and lower orders which Bishop Valier aimed particularly at padri di famiglia to guide them in overseeing their families.72 Both Valier and Antoniano systematically explained how fathers at all social levels were to teach their children to be obedient and virtuous Christians. Mothers, too, had a role, but were subject to their husbands, who had ultimate responsibility. They outlined a program to instill discipline in the laity starting from the time they were children. Church shared with state authorities the aim to create peaceful subjects who had established the rule of reason over the passions of the body—particularly anger, pride, and lust—and who were obedient to their superiors as to God. Through proper habituating from birth and through observing 71

It was originally published in 1584 in Verona. Bishop Valier made this book assigned reading for all the teachers in the schools of Christian doctrine, and it was reprinted numerous times into the nineteenth century. Frajese, Popolo fanciullo, 44–45. On the secular traditions of writings on the family, see Frigo, Padre di famiglia. 72 These three short works were printed together in Valier, Ricordi al popolo. The individual titles are as follows: Ricordi di Monsignor Agostino Valerio vescovo di Verona. Per il vivere Christiano a ogni stato di persona; Ricordi per li padri, & madri di famiglia, & tutti li capi di Casa; and Ricordi per li mastri et capi di botteghi, & loro ministri & Garzoni. On this theme see also Regole per la Congregatione della Dottrina Christiana nella città, & diocese di Verona; approvate da Monsig. Ilustriss. & Reverendiss. Cardinale Agostino Valerio vescovo di detta città (Verona: Girolamo Discepolo stampatore episcopale, 1590).

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the good habits of those around them, children would learn how to establish the discipline of the mind over the body. An important part of this was controlling one’s bodily movements and gestures, which were to be “modest and composed.” People were to control or deny such strong emotions as anger and sexual passion and to regulate their days, as in a monastery, by cycles of prayers, which served both to remind them of their dependence upon God and to help them discipline and order their lives in a holy manner.73 Valier and Antoniano believed that the household could and should serve as a haven of peace, prayer, discipline, and order set apart from the lasciviousness and tribulation of the world. Maintenance of this ideal required the exercise of firm paternal authority regulating everyone’s behavior. Valier’s first piece of advice to fathers in the Ricordi al popolo was to protect their households, and thus their children, from contamination from without by being careful in the choice of servants, “so that blasphemers, people living in concubinage, men given to dissoluteness, or other people who are filled with vice or suspect in their lives do not enter there.” Second, he recommended vigilance in observing “what everyone does…and all their goings and comings and conversations and practices.” 74 In a proclamation of 1576, Bishop Valier presented the family as an alternative to the troubling practice of filò, unsupervised gatherings of groups of young people of both sexes in barns in the evenings to socialize while the women spun, which churchmen feared as an occasion for lasciviousness and sin in all its forms that frequently led to violence. Giberti had simply told people to stay away. Valier, in contrast, additionally presented the household as the alternative to this dangerous practice. He ordered that men leave the women to spin…and the men do some other activity at home, never leaving in the evening without first having knelt with their families saying three Our Fathers and three Ave Marias…praying to that giver of all good, that he keep sin far from the house.75 73 They believed good Christians were automatically good citizens. Antoniano, Tre libri, esp. 3r, 5v–7r, 27r–28v, 30v–31r; Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 10, 18–21; and Valier, Istruttione delle donne maritate (Venice: Bolognino Zaltiero, 1575). 74 “acciò non vi entri biestematori, concubinarii, huomini datti alle dissolutioni, ne altre persone vitiose ne suspetti della vita loro” and “quel che fa ogni uno... tutti i loro andamenti, conversationi, & pratiche.” Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 27. Antoniano gave nearly the exact advice noting, however, that noble houses, with their many servants, were particularly vulnerable to sin, warning fathers in such houses to be particularly careful. Tre libri, 91v. 75 “devono lasciar [...], et gli huomini far qualche altro esercitio in casa loro, non lasciando mai sera, che ingenocciati con la lor famiglia non dicano tre Pater, & tre Ave [...] pregando quel dator di tutti i beni, che tenga lontano dalle case loro il peccato [...]” Agostino Valerio Vescovo di Verona a tutti li arcipreti, rettori, et altri sacerdoti curati della diocese nostra salute nel Signore (emphasis added).

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The keystone of the vision of the family as the source of order and discipline was the Christian father. Many historians have emphasized the ways in which the patriarchal ideology of this period exalted the authority of the father over his children and servants. The Veronese reformers did indeed highlight the power of the padre di famiglia to control the lives of his dependents and the dependents’ duty to obey without question.76 They also, however, promoted the notion that paternal authority— both within families and in society at large—had to be exercised in a highly restrained and structured manner—especially when compared with the way the nobility exercised power in Verona. The Veronese churchmen made it clear that a father’s responsibilities for his children’s well-being, and particularly for their proper education, strictly limited his authority. In part their need for the padre di famiglia to serve as a subordinate, answerable not to the dependents themselves, but to his superiors—priests and secular authorities—and to God, required this limitation of authority; but in part it also probably derived from some contemporary perceptions of fatherhood. There was some variety in how early modern people understood fatherhood. Some people—probably including many patricians of sixteenth-century Verona—conceived of fathers as having near absolute powers over the members of their households.77 Other people, however, while staunchly insisting on the necessity of obedience to paternal authority, also understood fathers to have a highly burdened form of authority. A few historians, for example, have explored the ambivalence of Venetian patricians during the Renaissance toward the heavy political and domestic burdens of fatherhood.78 Moving outside of Italy, another has shown that in the political imagery of sixteenth-century Regensburg, paternal authority carried with it the notion that it was justified by the care that fathers exercised for their children. And even in absolutist France, over the course of the early modern period, in tandem with the growing emphasis on paternal authority, people changed from seeing fatherhood as defined by rule to understanding it as characterized by benevolent care and onerous responsibilities to raise, support,

76

For example, Giberti, Per li padri, Bv; Crispoldi, Istruttione, 405, 409, 410; and Antoniano, Tre libri, 71r–77r. On Antoniano’s conceptions of authority and the family in Tre libri, see Frajese, Popolo fanciullo, 44–59. Frajese criticizes Antoniano’s understanding of paternal authority, arguing, for example, that in likening fathers to magistrates Antoniano deforms the family by making the relationship of child to father like that of servant to master (53). 77 Frigo, Padre di famiglia, esp. 81–85. See ibid., 80 on Counter-Reformation authors’ more limited notions of paternal authority. 78 Margaret L. King, “Caldiera and the Barbaros on Marriage and the Family,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 6 (1976): 19–50, esp. 35–44; and Stanley Chojnacki, “Subaltern Patriarchs: Patrician Bachelors in Renaissance Venice,” in Medieval Masculinities, ed. Lees, 73–90.

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and educate children.79 As one scholar concluded, “the dialectic of privilege and burden [was] an institutional feature of men’s lives.” 80 The Veronese religious reformers similarly emphasized the duties that burdened good fathers and limited their legitimate scope of action. In the view of the churchmen, to serve as the proper guide and example to his dependents, the ideal father had to be thoroughly disciplined. As a man in but not of the world, his passions were under the firm control of his reason, as well as bound in holy matrimony and faithfulness to his wife. He was humble, peaceful, and industrious, obedient to his superiors and to the law, and faithful in his religious observances. Above all, he turned all his energies toward teaching his dependents to be as disciplined as he. As the discussion of the Veronese environment above suggests, however, the reformers’ model was not likely to appeal to many men, either common or noble—at least as far as their own behavior was concerned.81 The reformers realized that few Veronese men actually fulfilled this ideal. They saw the primary failings of poor men to be laziness coupled with selfish regard only for their own pleasure. Valier was particularly adamant about the necessity that poor men have the self-discipline necessary to earn enough to support their families, and to be good examples and teachers to them. He and his associates sought to teach such men proper behavior. They employed the stick as well as the carrot, instructing masters of shops not to hire men who “squander their wages in taverns, making their families suffer.”82 The failures of poor fathers, they insisted, led to all manner of problems including desperate daughters and wives forced to turn to prostitution, theft, violence, and sons who imitated their fathers and continued the cycle.

79 Kristin Zapalac, “In His Image and Likeness”: Political Iconography and Religious Change in Regensburg, 1500-1600 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). Compare Steven Ozment’s discussion of husbands’ roles and responsibilities in When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), esp. 50–63. See also Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), chap. 3. 80 Susan Mosher Stuard, “Burdens of Matrimony: Husbands and Gender in Medieval Italy,” in Medieval Masculinities, ed. Lees, 69. See also Lees, “Introduction,” xxii–xxiii. 81 Antoniano, Tre libri, 85v. Veronese social and economic organization was quite different from that which Lyndal Roper describes in Holy Household for sixteenth-century Augsburg, where she argues that this model was attractive to some because it reinforced existing patriarchal structures in the family-based workshop. 82 Giberti, for example, lamented the lack of reverence for parents and superiors, but then complained about how they fail in their duties to their dependents, Per li padri, Bv–Bii r. On these sorts of complaints by authorities more generally, see Roper, “Drinking,” in Oedipus and the Devil. “consumar nelle taverne il suo guadagno, facendo patire la propria famiglia,” Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 37.

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Elite fathers posed a more complex problem because the Veronese reformers saw their lack of control of their appetites coupled with their great wealth and power as posing a much greater threat to the public good than the failings of common men. The reformers’ indictment of such fathers focused on the elite men’s pride, which led them to have an inflated view of their own power and authority: to see themselves as the leaders of families that were a law unto themselves, exempt from the rule of law, of which, as public officials, they were also the nominal guardians. Antoniano’s Tre libri dell’educazione dei figliuoli was a guide to the proper raising of children and especially sons to be peaceful, disciplined Christian citizens, an endeavor, it impressed upon the reader, that forms a father’s primary responsibility. Giving greater precision to this vision of the father’s responsibilities were the major themes of this work, which included the duty of elite fathers to tame their sons’ pride and arrogance and the necessity that noblemen subject themselves to public authority. With such ideas the churchmen tried to “domesticate” the power of Veronese and northern Italian noblemen by clearly separating private familial authority from public official authority, while holding both forms to the reformers’ model of paternal authority, that is, power legitimately exercised only to ensure a certain type of Christian well-being for their dependents. In Tre libri, Antoniano frequently referred to improperly educated and undisciplined noblemen as “wild beasts,” arrogant and undomesticated creatures outside the community of civilized men, who were driven by their appetites—for food, for wealth, for pleasure, but especially for power. Encouraged by the deference and ease that wealth and power gave them, their pride led them to “cover themselves in the mantle of public good” in order to further their desires to “dominate, and to be subject neither to law, nor to any legitimate power.” Such men, who failed to recognize any separation between public and private authority and exercised neither kind properly, turned the world into a “forest of wild beasts,” as opposed to a community of men ruled by reason.83 Antoniano addressed throughout the work elite fathers’ duty to tame their sons’ natural pride and arrogance and to teach them to obey public authority, but most clearly developed this idea in his discussion of the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Antoniano turned the commandment into an indictment of vendetta and of the noble code of honor that was held to justify it, asserting that killing someone in vendetta was unjustifiable murder. Murder made a man a wild beast, who must be evicted from the civilization and company of men in the city. 84 83

Antoniano, Tre libri, 3r, 6r. On taming noble pride see, for example, Antoniano, Tre libri, 78v–79v. See also Giberti, Per li padri, 493v. For animal imagery, Antoniano, Tre libri, 77r–78v; and Muir, Mad Blood, 222–38, 253. XXX 84

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Striking at the heart of noble culture, he denied that the code of honor put noblemen outside of public law. Antoniano sought to impress upon the reader that a noble father’s jurisdiction extended only to his own household and that he could not legitimately reach beyond these confines to castigate others even under the guise of protecting family honor. Calling the code of honor to which Veronese noblemen adhered false honor introduced by the devil, he instructed that instead of an overweening pride and thirst for vengeance passed from one generation to the next, they must demonstrate in their own lives and teach to their sons the Christian virtues of humility, obedience, and forgiveness.85 Seeking to restrict the nobility’s sense of the scope of their power and authority, Antoniano insisted that they let go of their claims to exercise justice privately in vendetta and accept the rule of public justice. He told fathers to teach their sons that “one does grave injuries to the patria when he wants himself to be the judge of the injuries he has received, and in disdain of the laws and of public authority takes in his hand the rod and the power to castigate criminals over whom he has no jurisdiction at all….”86 After delineating the limits of a father’s private authority, Antoniano moved into a discussion of public authority. A well-run society required a disciplined noble family to produce responsible public officials; the traits of obedience and humility that characterize the good Christian father and that he teaches to his son, Antoniano asserted, are identical to those that make noble officials good “in councils, in courts, in governing, and in every sort of deliberation.” 87 Scholars have frequently discussed sixteenth-century authors’ interpretation of the fourth commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” as a justification for the growing authority of newly powerful political forces, extending their demand for the obedience of children to fathers to that of social inferiors to social superiors, and of subjects to states. Equally important, however, is understanding the concept of political authority embodied in their precepts. The religious reformers’ paternal conception of authority stood in sharp contrast to the corrupt 85

Antoniano’s frequent use of this imagery may also have been related to the earlier humanist association of servants—the lowest of the low—with animals. Romano, Housecraft, 36. 85 Antoniano, Tre libri, 77r–84r, 95v–96r. Bishop Valier exhorted laymen of all social levels “a perdonare a chi gli offende, o fa ingiuria in parole, ò in fatti, & non fare vendeta, ne stare su gli pontigli del honore mondano.” Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 31. See also Giberti, Per li padri, 488v. 86 “grave ingiurie si fa alla patria, quando altrui vuole esser giudice egli stesso delle ingiurie receivute, et in disprezzo delle leggi, et dell’autorità publica, prende in mano la bacchetta et la potestà di castigare i rei, sopra de i quali non ha giurisdicione alcuna.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 81r. See also 78r and 81v. On the theme of injustice, see 95v–96v. 87 “ne i consigli, ne i giuditij, nel governo, e in ogni deliberatione.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 79v. See also, 95v–96v.

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and self-interested way the reformers saw the Veronese nobility exercising their public authority—a way the nobility apparently felt justified in acting. The Veronese religious reformers saw the only hope of religious reform and social harmony to lie in a joint social-familial-political hierarchy. Likening fathers to authorities more generally and children to subjects, they extended the demands of the fourth commandment to include all superiors, including social superiors and public officials. Crispoldi, for example, declared that whether parents or other authorities “are evil or good, noble or ignoble, we must honor them out of respect for God’s commandment and for respect of the power they have from God.” 88 All order rested on respecting this hierarchy: Our superiors are like special instruments through whom God speaks to us and governs us, and on this commandment depends the peace and concord of the whole city and every family; so that if this precept is obeyed, everything will be in peace.89 But in order for this hierarchy to bring the peace and harmony it promised, those at the top had to exercise their authority properly, as the Veronese nobility did not. In using their public positions to improve only the position of their own families or class, noblemen contributed to the extreme poverty, misery, and violence that characterized Veronese society and intensified the authorities’ fears that the subordinates would cease to respect the hierarchy. The Veronese churchmen did not identify the father solely with the supreme figure of a prince or more abstract state, but also with “the patria and the officials and all those who are in the place of fathers to us…,” or simply with all those who “exercise paternal office toward us.”90 They thus expressed their dream that the centralizing powers of church and state on the one hand and the local nobility on the other could be joined in unity of purpose—a dream not yet even close to a reality. In likening secular officials to fathers, the reformers limited the officials’ legitimate authority to those actions that were directed toward the well-being of 88 “Sotto questo vocabolo, padre & madre, si contiene & la patria, & li officiali, & tutti quelli, che ci sono in loco di padre & li ministri delle cose spirituali.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 413; “sotto nome di padre [...] si intendono molti altri anchora, che [...] fanno verso di noi offitio paterno.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 71v; “lo honore, che si fa a padre & madre, si fa a Dio, perche si fa per amore di dio, & per vigor del precetto suo.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 404; and “Onde o buoni o cattivi, che siano o nobili o ignobili, li havemo ad honorare per rispetto del commandamento di dio, & per rispetto della potesta, che hanno da dio.” Ibid., 405. 89 “Questi nostri superiori sono come certi instrumenti per li quali Dio ci parla: & ci governa; & da questo commandamento pende la pace, & la concordia di tutta la Città, & di ogni famiglia; peroche se si serva questo precetto, ogni cosa e in pace.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 443. 90 “le patria, & li officiali, & tutti quelli, che ci sono in loco di padre.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 413; and “fanno verso di noi offitio paterno.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 71v.

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the governed. Crispoldi, for example, explained that “Fathers and mothers nourish us and raise us and teach us; and masters and priests and officials do the same.” Antoniano’s more precise formulation implicated the specific misbehavior of the Veronese nobility while also evoking a fuller picture of the desired “civil” and “communal” order. He stated that a temporal authority is “like a father” and due the same reverence because of the good he does for his subjects, “administer[ing] justice, conserving to each person his own, and defending us from injuries, and from violent acts, procuring us peace, and plenty, and in sum every good of this communal and civil life….”91 In the sixteenth century, Giberti and Valier and their associates used the image of the patriarchal social and familial order to try to shape the noblemen’s influence on the behavior of the rest of the populace. They sought to domesticate the noblemen, taking them from “wild beasts” driven by their need to satiate their appetites to kill, to exploit, to impoverish, and to defraud those below them to not simply men, but to fathers focused on the good of their households and rulers looking after the well-being of their subjects. The image of the sociopolitical system as a well-ordered family led by a disciplined father was a vastly simplified and idealized version of the existing order that offered these churchmen hope of greater peace and more disciplined morality through not just the inculcation of obedience but also of a model of disciplined and responsible (domesticated) masculine authority—a vision not shared by the Veronese nobility or by many of the common men who sought to emulate them.

NM NM NM Examining the Veronese reformers’ ideology of patriarchal hierarchy within the often chaotic social and political context in which they lived, their yearning to establish system and order is palpable. As the church began to establish a small measure of actual centralized control in this region, the ecclesiastical authorities could envision a simpler, more rational order based on the pyramid-shaped cell of father and dependents, extending outward and upward, which promised them all 91

“I padri e madri ci nutriscono, e solevano, & insegnano: il medesimo poi fanni i maestri, & i sacerdoti, & li officiali.” Crispoldi, Istruttione, 443; and “come padre” and “administra la giustitia, conservando à ciascuno il suo, & difendendo ci dalle ingiurie & dalle violenze, procurendo ci pace & abondanza, & in somma ogni bene di questa vita commune & civile.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 75v. It is essential to remember, however, that they did not conceive of a contract between the ruled and the ruler. Subjects were to obey their superiors absolutely; punishment of authorities was to come only from their secular superiors or religious authorities—ultimately from God.

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good things: obedience, peace, and above all stability. In many ways like the centralizing political authorities of the day, the Veronese churchmen were trying to impose a hierarchical structure with clearly delineated relationships of authority and subordination as well as scopes of responsibilities on a situation in which such matters were often unclear. Despite increases in the effectiveness of ecclesiastical authority, however, the Veronese reformers’ ability to impose their ideals on the populace remained limited. Reforming efforts met resistance on many fronts, perhaps most importantly from the laity, both common and noble, who were reluctant to accept the bishops’ increasing claims of authority over so many aspects of their lives. In the chapters that follow, the ecclesiastical authorities become just a few actors among many, and their ideas about marriage, fathers, husbands, children, mothers, wives, and authority appear primarily as more or less attractive options for lay actors. This was particularly true of marital matters, which most people continued to settle informally without recourse to church authorities except as they deemed necessary to their own strategic purposes. Any success in the imposition of the reformers’ ideas would depend therefore on the cooperation of the laity (or groups within it) founded on their conviction that the ideas offered them something desirable. Through examination of various types of records that reveal popular practices and ideals, primarily records of marriage disputes before the ecclesiastical court but also episcopal visitation records and dowry contracts, these chapters seek to understand the complexity of the patriarchal familial, social, and (to a very limited extent) political systems. The everyday dramas preserved in these records—as people sought mates, stability, wealth, and happiness—demonstrate that the social order and even (and perhaps particularly) the family were replete with a variety of notions of authority and principles of organization that were inconsistent and frequently conflicted. While this complexity and conflict impeded the religious authorities’ efforts to impose their model of a well-ordered Christian society, it gave the lay actors scope to negotiate and maneuver as they pursued their desires.

M2N TWO STYLES

OF

WEDDING RITUAL

Brides With Fathers and Brides Without Fathers

One of the striking features of marriage as it is revealed in the records of matrimonial court cases from Verona between about 1535 and 1565 is the wide variety of ways people arranged and celebrated their unions.1 More surprising is how common and accepted it apparently was for some people to marry without the consent or involvement of their fathers. This is especially notable in the case of women, whom historians have generally understood to have had little freedom in marital matters. This chapter divides Veronese wedding practices into two basic styles according to the role of the bride’s father. One set of rituals, here called “paternal,” centered on the consent of the bride’s father to the union; the other, here called “nonpaternal,” had no role for a father and focused instead on the bride’s and groom’s consent to the union. Both styles of weddings were normal, public, and common, not irregular or clandestine. A comparison of these two ritual styles contributes to the understanding of the marriages of common people, while also focusing attention on women in Verona (at least those who married)2 and their relationship with paternal authority as a way of understanding their place in the larger social structures and ideologies that organized sixteenth-century Veronese society. A question central to understanding marriage in the past is to what degree people treated marriage formation as the business of families versus to what degree they treated it as the prerogative of the individual. Whose consent to a marriage mattered: that of the couple marrying or of their parents? Conflict over the control of marriage took many forms between the Middle Ages and the 1 At the time of my research, the records of these suits were housed in ACVR in two collections. Many matrimonial disputes were contained in the indexed collection Atti del Tribunale Ecclesiastico (henceforth, Atti). Others were unindexed, but consolidated in buste labeled “Cause matrimoniali” (henceforth, Cause). 2 There has been no investigation of the rate of marriage of women in sixteenth-century Verona.

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modern period, and historians have shown the sixteenth century as a period of heightened strife during which secular and religious authorities across Europe sought to reinforce parental—and particularly paternal—control of marriage against principles—established in theology and canon law as well as tradition— that enabled children to defy their parents’ wishes. According to the medieval church, the consent of the bride and groom created a marriage. No witnesses, no official presence, no publicity, and no parental consent were required for a valid union. Nonetheless, historians have long argued that the laity never fully accepted the ecclesiastical consensual definition of marriage in practice and the lay tendency was effectively to ignore this notion of marriage because it was incompatible with the social needs marriage served. Most scholars have emphasized instead the predominance of parental control in medieval and early modern marriage, seeing it to harmonize with and support the growing emphasis on paternal authority in most other areas of life. Looking primarily at elite families, historians have depicted the marriage regime as one in which families, and especially fathers, arranged their childrens’ marriages in order to further the financial and social fortunes of the family as a whole. In these arrangements the desires of the children were subordinated and the unions are held to have been generally loveless. Deviations from the pattern of parental control of marriage—when children made marriage decisions on their own and married by their own consent, as in clandestine marriage—although supported by church law, have been dismissed as aberrations that were motivated by love.3 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s influential studies of marriage practices among the elite in fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century Florence has directed attention to women in particular. Klapisch-Zuber argues that women’s irrelevance in marriage rituals and practices mirrored their marginality in the patrilineal structures of elite Florentine society, including their own families. Dowering, for example, in her view marked a bride’s expulsion from her natal family. In the elaborate multistage Florentine wedding rituals, women were simply pawns in male-directed rituals, transferred by their families with property to seal masculine bargains. 4 Investigations into the marriage practices of common people, as opposed to those of the elite, however, have begun to complicate the picture of marriage depicted by Klapisch-Zuber and others. There is a growing recognition that the

3

The literature is vast. See, for example, Stone, Family; Harrington, Reordering Marriage; Gaetano Cozzi, “Padri, figli e matrimoni clandestini (metà sec. XVI–metà sec. XVIII),” La cultura 14 (1976): 169–213; and Cozzi, “La donna, l’amore, e Tiziano,” in Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno internazionale di studi, Venezia, 1976 (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1980), 47–63. 4 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother’: Maternity, Widowhood, and Dowry in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in her Women, Family, esp. 118; Klapisch-Zuber, XXX

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different economic and social circumstances of the common people made their marriage practices different from those of the elite. In contrast to elite marriages, which were shaped almost exclusively by economic and familial and patrilineal imperatives, common marriages simultaneously incorporated in varying measures parental control, the couple’s—including the bride’s—consent, economic considerations, and affective motives.5 Looking at elements of marriage similar to those examined by KlapischZuber—including dowry and wedding rituals closely resembling those she describes—and focusing on women, this chapter explores the meaning of and relationship between love and money, individual will and parental control in marriage in Verona. Finding among the nonelite inhabitants of Verona the active involvement of women in their marriages and durable and complex family relationships—including that between father and daughter—it offers a vision of the family and of the patriarchal order that incorporated rather than excluded women and their interests.

ORDINARY PEOPLE’S MARRIAGES IN VERONA One of the problems with studying the marital practices of so-called ordinary people is that this group, encompassing the vast majority of the population, was a much less homogeneous group than “the elite.” In the diocese of Verona, ordinary people lived in a wide variety of circumstances, in the city itself or in towns or villages in the contado. They ranged from middling merchants and comfortable artisans through small and medium landowners, to peasants engaged in various kinds of more or less advantageous leases, to day laborers on farms or in the wool or silk industries, and finally to the destitute. Given the different pressures and opportunities affecting the different segments of the population, one would expect to find variety in their marital practices. Understanding differences within marriage rituals according to the social levels of common people must, however, await more research on social stratification within the group. 5

“The Griselda Complex: Dowry and Marriage Gifts in the Quattrocento,” ibid., esp. 224–25, 233– 41; and Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias, or the Ousted Father: Nuptial Rites in Tuscany between Giotto and the Council of Trent,” ibid., 178–212. 5 For example, see Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450–1700 (London: Longman, 1984), 69–73, 77–78, 102–5; Jeffrey R. Watt, The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neuchâtel, 1550–1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), esp. 74–87; Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction 1300–1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), chap. 9; Raul Merzario, Il paese stretto: Strategie matrimoniali nella diocesi di Como secoli XVI–XVIII (Turin: Einaudi, 1981); and Gottlieb, Family, esp. 54.

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Another way of dividing people, which is also relevant to understanding marriage practices in Verona, is into those actually under parental control of and those not under parental control. Historians have recognized that on average the poor and even the middling sort had less close ties to their parents than did children of the elite and were thus better able to marry whom they wished. Yet “on average” masks distinct differences in the ways people married both in the circumstances of the marriage—that is, the degree of parental control versus the input of the child marrying—and in the nature of the ritual, which reflected the circumstances. In the city and diocese of Verona, parental control over children and their marriages existed on a spectrum. At one end, through circumstances or inclination, some parents were completely uninvolved with their children’s marriage choices. At the other end, parents used physical force to compel their children into arranged marriages. In between, parents and children came to a mutual agreement about the children’s marriage partners. Economic circumstances tended to give parents in the lower strata of society less control over their children than elite parents had. Common parents had less wealth to leave to their children than did elite parents, and children at lower social levels usually earned their own living from a young age. For most young people, this meant spending a period in service with another family. In the villages of the Veronese diocese in the sixteenth century, girls almost always went into service for a period with rich families in the city to lighten the burden on their families back home as well as to earn a dowry. Rural boys would sometimes follow, and when they did, they stayed in service with patrician families longer than girls tended to. But boys more often stayed in the countryside, serving what amounted to apprenticeships in farming with local families.6 Tax records show that in 1545, 31.6 percent of households in the city of Verona had at least one servant and a total of 2,642 people in Verona, or 14 percent of the population, were recorded as servants.7 Young men and women of the lower social strata were thus likely to be physically out of their parents’ control at certain points in their lives and to move in and out of the sphere of their parents’ influence. Some probably tended to stay more closely connected to their parents despite physical distance, while others probably cut ties more quickly. The well-known mobility of the poor also probably weakened familial ties, particularly among the urban poor. Parents’ deaths more permanently cut ties between parents and children, and people in the lower social strata were probably less likely than those in the upper strata to have more distant kin step in to take responsibility for their marriage choices. 6 Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino,” 314; and James Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 96. 7 Maurizio Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto:Mutamenti della famiglia in Italia dal XI al XX secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 216–17, 220, table 4.28.

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At the same time, other children were within their parents’ or other guardians’ control when the time came to marry, either by choice or necessity, and many of these people had incentives to use the children’s marriages strategically. In some circumstances, poverty could bring people freedom from marital constraints, but in others, it could increase the need to make marriage choices with economic considerations in mind. Although common people did not have as much wealth as the elite, they still, at a lower level, might try to accumulate goods and to improve their position. In this endeavor, strategic marriages arranged by fathers or other male kin could be an important tool. Records of Veronese marriage disputes contain many instances of parents’ arranging and even forcing their often quite young children into marriages for purely economic gains. For example, according to a witness in one case, an impoverished father married his young son to a girl only slightly older, “because she had a little house.”8 In another case, Chatherina Bachina testified to the court that her father, the servant-caretaker of a noble’s house in the countryside, had obtained her consent to marry her off to a certain man, but when the groom arrived for the wedding, it was not the man she had expected, but his brother, whom her father then forced her to marry.9 Her father had evidently wanted an alliance with a particular family and did not care through whom it was achieved. Parental involvement in marriage did not, however, always, or probably even usually, mean a forced marriage, nor the absence of affection between the spouses. More common were situations like that of Pasqua Brazoni’s marriage to Paolo de Fioravanti, which was arranged in the sense that the couple knew each other only by sight, but both of the potential spouses had decisive input on the arrangement.10 In another case, according to the testimony of many neighbors, Isabetta di Bernardino and Natalino Pelliparo, members of comfortable artisan families, had long flirted across their balconies.11 Eventually, Natalino approached Isabetta’s brother to request her hand and conducted all further negotiations with him; Isabetta herself was not directly involved. Her brother 8 “perche lhaveva una caseta.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Pietro Antonio di Illasi v. Domenica di Battista Bellenzoni. Giovanni Levy, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), shows how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century peasants amassed landholdings using strategic marriages; and Merzario, Il paese stretto, similarly demonstrates how the very poor in the mountains of early modern Como also arranged their children’s marriages, but in this case not so much for the sake of property as to create networks of mutual aid based on kinship. See also Ferrante, “Matrimonio disciplinato.” 9 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Chatherina Bachina v. Jacobus Pilatus De Roncolevato. For a similar situation, see Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1547 Leonarda de Madice v. Hieronimo Francesci. 10 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Pasqua f.q. Nicolai de Brazonis v. Paulus q. Dominici de fioravantis. 11 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1549 Isabetta di Bernardino formagerius v. Natalino pelliparius.

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agreed to the union, presumably because the families were neighbors of similar economic circumstances and Isabetta and Natalino wanted to marry each other. An examination of Veronese marriage practices suggests that from the point of view of the woman marrying, parental—and particularly paternal—involvement, consent, and control, although they had restrictive aspects, also meant protection, which could be quite desirable. During this century, law and tradition increasingly made women subordinate to their husbands, who exercised wideranging authority over their wives and their wives’ property. While people found this authority desirable for maintaining order, they also knew that it was all too possible for husbands to overstep their legitimate authority. When a woman’s parents had control over her marriage choice, while it meant that the parents could refuse permission, it also meant that her family, and especially her father, was not just giving consent, but pledging its own interest in the marriage and thus offering a measure of protection of the daughter’s interests. Should the husband mistreat his wife or misuse her dowry, for example, situations that the Veronese marriage suits frequently describe, the wife’s family, and particularly her father, would be likely to protect its and its daughter’s joint interests. A woman who was outside the control of her parents because she was away from home in service, or she was an orphan, or her father simply was not interested in her marriage, did in some senses have more freedom to choose whom to marry than a woman under the control of her father. But this was not likely to mean an improvement in her position: freedom from parental control carried a price. There is no reason to assume that freedom of choice meant that she would choose, or be able, to marry for love. It may have been harder to find a suitable spouse because lack of paternal interest might translate into a smaller dowry. A woman who married without paternal involvement—and the control that went with it—also married without the promise of paternal protection. Some women substituted the protection of a patron, who acted in some respects like a father, but many did not, and should something go wrong in their marriages, they were thus without the promise of paternal aid. The two types of marriage rituals—“paternal” and “nonpaternal”—roughly corresponded to the circumstances of the bride. Brides who had living fathers or other kinsmen involved in their lives married using the first style, as did some women who as servants or concubines were in relationships of dependence to a master or patron. In many respects resembling the multistage rites that KlapischZuber has described for Florence, this paternal-style complex of rituals focused on the authority of the bride’s father—or the man acting as her father—to make the marriage.12 In Verona, however, in contrast to Klapisch-Zuber’s picture of Florence, 12

Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family, 189–96.

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these rituals expressed the father’s continuing interests in his daughter and commitment to protecting her, even against her husband if need be. The rituals emphasized the strength of this man and his consequent ability to protect their joint interests. Brides without fathers or father substitutes (although some of them did have mothers) used an alternate “nonpaternal” style of marriage, which treated the consent of the bride and groom as the basis of the marriage. While people associate emphasis on the couple’s consent with the couple’s free choice of spouse, relying solely on consent also meant that these brides were without the support of father, male kin, or patron. The way in which these women adapted the marriage rituals, however, indicates they could try to mitigate their vulnerability in two ways: first, by appealing to a model of marriage that called for buona compagnia, or good companionship, and, second, by finding allies among nonfamily members. Several types of records provide information about these and related marriage rituals and practices: dowry contracts, ecclesiastical prescriptions, episcopal visitation records, and, especially, records of marital disputes heard before the episcopal court. Because each type of record existed not to give a full description of weddings but for a particular legal or didactic purpose, their intended purpose shaped the descriptions of marriage rituals that they contain. Each type of source therefore has limitations for the study of actual marriage practice. The law of marriage and other aspects of the legal background affected the nature and usefulness of these sources. The church shared jurisdiction over marriage with secular powers, canon law determining the validity of the contract itself, while secular legal systems regulated the property and inheritance issues that were an intimate part of these unions. Prior to the Council of Trent’s decrees on marriage in 1563, the canon law requirements for a valid marriage were minimal, allowing the development of local marriage traditions. According to the reigning consensual definition of marriage, only the free exchange of consent in the present tense by a man and a woman legally able to marry—that is, not blocked by any of a number of legal impediments—was necessary for them to wed each other. There were no prescribed words or other forms; parental consent was not necessary, nor was the presence of a priest or any witnesses. The Tridentine decrees in 1563 established a more precise and detailed form for marriage ceremonies, requiring that the couple exchange consent before a priest and two or three witnesses and directing that the priest record the marriage in writing. 13 13 Adhemar Esmein, Le mariage en droit canonique (Paris: Larose et Forcel, 1891), esp. 1:95–202; Gabriel Le Bras, “La doctrine du mariage,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1927); Jean Gaudemet, Le mariage en occident: Les moeurs et le droit (Paris, CERF, 1987), chaps. 6 and 7; Brundage, Law, Sex, 260–78; and Hubert Jedin, Il Concilio di Trento (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1981), XXX

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46

The laity, however, seldom married as simply as canon law entitled them to. For Veronese at all social levels, as for inhabitants of the rest of Europe, marriage was not a single event, but a series of ritual steps beginning with the courtship of the couple and/or the negotiations between their families, and extending through more formal agreements about the dowry, exchanges of gifts, and celebrations, all of which took place usually over several months. Understanding this larger marriage process and the often elaborate accompanying elements, such as rings, garlands, handclasps, kisses, and other gestures, as well as exchanges of gifts, and feasts, enables one to comprehend past ideas about men and women, fathers and mothers, and marriage. All of the marriage-related sources available for Verona accepted ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the marriage contract and hence had reason to emphasize the aspects of a given wedding that conformed to canonical definition of what made a valid marriage, that is, the couple’s exchange of consent, rather than these other elements. Nonetheless, these sources also incorporate other types of information and details. Local marriage traditions, for example, had probative value when people sought to establish that a valid marriage had taken place under canon and secular law, and so were often included in legal documents.14 Dowry contracts, or declarations, which for the sixteenth century survive primarily from some of the rural portions of the Veronese diocese, were intended to establish the circumstances of the exchange of property that accompanied a marriage: the amount and nature of the dowry, any assets the groom allotted the bride as donatio propter nuptias or contrados, and the fact that a valid marriage had taken place, without which there could be no dowry. These documents also go into considerable detail about the various rights and obligations of the parties—the bride, the groom, and their families—regarding the dowry, which throws light on the relationships among these people.15 The nature of the dowry document did not require as detailed a description of marriage rituals as a historian might like, but instead aimed simply to certify the events that would prove to a court the validity of a marriage, and thus of the dowry, should a dispute arise. The document accordingly focused on the moment 14

v. 4, t. 2, 139–73. For a discussion of canonical impediments, see Richard H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 76–100. 14 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 46, 127–34. See also COP, 193r–202v. 15 A devastating fire in 1723 destroyed most of the sixteenth-century notarial records for the city. What survives is collected in ASVR, Antico Archivio Notarile di Verona. Notarial records from rural portions of the diocese can be found in ASVR, Antico Ufficio del Registro di Cologna Veneta and ASVR, Archivio Notarile Distrettuale di Verona. I looked at examples of sixty-seven dowry declarations in all, selected from all three collections.

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of the couple’s exchange of consent. The notary either recorded that the couple had exchanged consent prior to the time of the dowry declaration or else that at the time of the declaration the couple exchanged consent along with the gift of the ring in the desponsatio ritual performed before the notary. Notaries also often made note of other ritual steps that the parties considered proper and that could help to prove the marriage had taken place if there were a dispute; the descriptions, however, are seldom full or consistent enough to be used to judge the relative weight people placed on various elements. The instrument of 23 December 1554, recording the dowry of Maria di Mareti, is in many ways typical of those of common people in and around Verona. This document declared that the groom, Francesco di Loncrino, at the time of the redaction received as dowry from Maria’s father “movable goods”—as was normal for this level of dowry, made up primarily of furniture, household items, and clothing—that had been valued at 200 lire 5 soldi. Less typically, Francesco also received an amount in cash, in this case 45 lire. The document also stated that Francesco “augmented” Maria’s dowry with a contrados of a further 32 lire 15 soldi. Several conventional clauses followed, declaring such essentials as the bride’s renunciation of any further claim on the property of her natal family, the groom’s and his heirs’ agreement to conserve Maria’s dowry intact, and the traditional conditions for the dowry’s eventual disposition. Finally, “since without a marriage a dowry cannot exist,” the document recorded that the notary asked Maria and Francesco if they accepted each other as husband and wife in words of the present tense, to which they both responded yes. Francesco then “married” (desponsavit) Maria with a gold ring.16 Documents and records generated by Veronese ecclesiastical authorities, who had a strong interest in as well as jurisdiction over marriage formation, form another important set of sources. Bishop Gian MatteoGiberti intended the several visitations to the rural portions of the diocese made during his term to acquaint him and his vicars with the state of his flock and to bring the behavior of both clergy and laity into conformity with church teachings.17 Since marriage was an area of particular concern to the bishop, the religious authorities sought out and attempted to correct and settle instances of marital irregularity and dispute. 16 “quia dos sine matrimonio star non potest.” The document also reports that as Francesco put the ring on Maria’s hand she was holding in her arms “Jacobam filiam unicam,” suggesting that this ceremony and dowry merely set the seal on an already well-established relationship. ASVR, Antico Archivio Notarile di Verona, b. 10, n. 501. On the law governing dowries, see STV, bk. 2, chaps. 93–100. Compare Grubb, Provincial Families, 15–20, on dowries of the elite of Vicenza in the fifteenth century. 17 These records have been transcribed and edited in RPV. I was not able to make a complete evaluation of Bishop Agostino Valier’s visitations housed in the ACVR, which remain unpublished.

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Much of this interest in marriage focused on righting and preventing violations of the canonical rules of consanguinity, which did not involve examinations of marriage rituals. Sometimes, however, the visitors attempted to settle disputes over marriages that had not been completed, generally because of the nonpayment of a dowry, or clandestine unions that one party claimed had taken place and the other denied. The former type, the uncompleted union, is particularly helpful in determining typical marriage practices because it is an ordinary, undisputed marriage, which simply lacked the final steps. In conjunction with their desires to reform the conduct of the laity, Bishops Giberti, Lippomano, and Valier all produced instructions for marriage practices. Such prescriptive literature can be useful in determining actual practice when the prescriptions were the result of observation or information about local practices. This appears to have been the case with Bishop Giberti, who produced various sets of instructions for parish priests throughout his tenure, including prescriptions about marriage practices that appear to respond directly to Giberti’s and his vicar’s own experiences with the laity.18 Such writing is of much more limited usefulness, however, when it was generated by purely theological concerns or by a program of reform directed by the church at large rather than by an individual bishop. Such was the case with two of the Veronese bishops that followed. During the period of the Council of Trent, Bishop Alvise Lippomano wrote a theological work on marriage intended for an elite audience.19 Bishop Valier, whose tenure began just after the promulgation of the Tridentine decrees on marriage, reprinted Giberti’s works and simply annotated them to bring them into conformity with the Council of Trent. Unlike Valier’s ideas about the family, which were examined in the previous chapter, his regulations regarding marriage were derived less from his own confrontation with local practice than from the rules laid down at Trent. The final type of source, marriage disputes argued before the Veronese episcopal court between 1538 and 1593, provides the most complete descriptions of marriage practices and rituals in both the city and diocese of Verona. From this sixty-five-year period, 193 suits have survived completely or in part. As an introduction to this source, it will be useful to describe the entire body of matrimonial litigation. Scholars looking at such disputes in other regions have done this in several more and less formal ways. Most scholars, conducting inquiries into law and court activity, have distinguished suits by formal cause. A few scholars, interested 18 Giberti treated marriage at some length in several works. See CON, bk. 7, and Giberti, Monitiones Generales, chap. 5, secs. 19, 27, 36, and 37, both in OP; Giberti, Breve ricordo, 8v–10r; and Giberti, Per li padri,11r–12r, 14v–15r. 19 Lippomano, Confirmatione.

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in popular practices, have instead categorized them according to other less formal types derived from patterns of practice.20 None of these methods is perfect; each reveals some data and obscures others. Formal categorization, for example, may obscure patterns of practice. Assigning to types based on practice may be too subjective and lack clarity, as well as make comparisons among different courts difficult.21 It may also cause author and reader to lose sight of the fact that these are legal records in which legal formalities conditioned litigants’ claims and witnesses’ testimony. In most of the analyses of marriage practices that follow, groups of records are separated on the basis of the practices they reveal: styles of marriage rituals, clandestine marriage, concubinage, and informal marriage dissolution. At the same time, it is necessary to remain aware of the formal causes involved and thus of the constraints that shaped the information in them. Litigants in Verona, as elsewhere, used five basic formal matrimonial causes: 22 (1) enforcement of a marriage one party claimed to have contracted with the other; (2) annulment of a marriage contract on the basis of one or more legal impediments; (3) restitution of conjugal rights, which the Veronese records termed requests that one spouse “adhere,” or return to cohabit, with the other spouse; (4) legal separation; and (5) defamation, that is, a request that the defendant stop claiming to have contracted marriage with the plaintiff. Occasionally, a suit would combine two causes, such as enforcement and annulment. This occurred when the plaintiff brought a suit to enforce a marriage contract to one defendant and to annul the defendant’s later marriage to another. The cause that the plaintiff brought was not always, however, the cause that the parties argued before the court, because the defendant might respond to the original cause with a claim that carried the burden of proof. For example, defendants often answered suits for restitution of conjugal rights with suits for separations; more often they replied with annulment suits, frequently claiming that the 20 See, for example, Thomas Max Safley, Let No Man Put Asunder. The Control of Marriage in the German Southwest: A Comparative Study, 1550–1600 (Kirksville, Mo.: The Sixteenth Century Journal, 1984), 51–79, 140–42; Monique Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek, “Aspects du lien matrimonial dans le Liber Sententiarum de Bruxelles (1448–1459),” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschidenis 53 (1985): 43– 97; and Beatrice Gottlieb, “The Meaning of Clandestine Marriage,” in Family and Sexuality in French History, ed. Robert Wheator and Tamara K. Hareven (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980). 21 This is one frustrating aspect of Ferrante, “Matrimonio disciplinato,” a study of sixteenthcentury marriage litigation in Bologna. Her informal categorization of matrimonial records (see her pp. 903–5) distinguishes among four types of situations—“mancata promessa,” “annulamento,” “divorzio,” and “bigamia”—but is not clear on what types of either situations or suits she assigned to each category. 22 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, chaps. 2 and 3.

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marriage was invalid because of a prior contract of one of the spouses. Both of these counterclaims shifted the burden of proof to the original defendant. A suit to enforce a marriage contract, similarly, might remain an enforcement suit, or it might, as the result of the defendant’s counterclaim, become a suit to annul a marriage. Understanding in what situations people would go to the trouble of initiating a suit can be very important to understanding marriage. Imperfect preservation of the Veronese trial records, however, means that for over one quarter of the cases the entire history of the suit has not survived, making it impossible to know which party initiated the suit and what the original cause was. What can be determined with some certainty in many more of the Veronese records is what cause was ultimately argued in a given suit. For example, if a plaintiff brought a suit to enforce a marriage contract, and the defendant responded with a suit to annul the contract (in effect, admitting that the contract had taken place, but that it was invalid), the suit would be argued as an annulment suit. The surviving Veronese court records have therefore been analyzed in two ways: according to cause brought (when known) and according to cause argued (see tables 2.1 and 2.2). Table 2.1 includes only those suits for which the cause brought can be determined and it therefore has a lower total number of cases than table 2.2, which counts the complete set of surviving cases. Because the changes in marriage law at the Council of Trent affected primarily enforcement suits, the suits have been further broken down into pre- and post-Trent figures (table 2.3). Annulment suits and enforcement suits, both disputes over the validity of a marriage contract, are the most likely to contain detailed descriptions of marriage practices and rituals. Enforcement suits often, although not always, turned on “he said/she said” situations, in which a woman (who might be pregnant) claimed that she had married a man by exchanging consent in a very private ceremony with few or no witnesses, while the man denied that any such exchange had taken place. After 1563, the suits were technically to enforce a marriage promise rather than a marriage contract. Such weddings were known as clandestine marriages and were a particular type of marriage that has generated much debate starting in the sixteenth century and continuing today. The Veronese rates of suits to enforce marriage contracts are low when compared to those found by other authors, some of whom have found in the range of 80 percent of matrimonial litigation to have involved such disputes in other locations.23 Annulment suits are more likely than enforcement suits to contain information on “normal,” or nonclandestine, marriage practices. Particularly useful are those suits that arose when one spouse was suspected of having contracted his or 23

See, for example, Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 25.

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Table 2.1: Suits heard by the diocesan court of Verona by cause brought and sex of plaintiff, 1538–1593 PLAINTIFFS TOTAL

FEMALE

MALE

(NO.)

(%)

(NO.)

% TOTAL / % CAUSE

(NO.)

% TOTAL / % CAUSE

Enforce contract

56

41

50

54 / 89

6

13 / 11

Annul

28

20

19

21 / 68

9

19 / 32

Enforce and annul

3

2

2

2 / 67

1

2 / 33

Adhere

24

17

4

4 / 17

20

43 / 83

Adhere and annul

3

2

1

1 / 33

2

4 / 67

Separation

17

12

13

14 / 77

4

9 / 24

Defamation

7

5

3

3 / 43

4

9 / 57

138

99*

92

99*/ 67

46

99*/ 33

CAUSE BROUGHT

Total

*Total does not add up to 100 because of rounding.

Table 2.2: Suits heard by the diocesan court of Verona by cause argued, 1538–1593 TOTAL CASES CAUSE ARGUED

(NO.)

(%)

Enforce contract

54

28

Annul

63

33

Enforce and annul

6

3

Adhere and annul

3

2

Separation

43

22

Defamation

3

2

Unknown

17

9

Total

193

99*

*Total does not add up to 100 because of rounding.

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q Chapter 2 Table 2.3: Suits argued as contract enforcement suits* before the diocesan court of Verona before and after the Council of Trent CONTRACT ENFORCEMENT SUITS TOTAL SUITS (NO.)

(NO.)

(%)

1538–1563

124

47

38

1564–1593

69

13

19

193

60*

31

DATES

Total

*These include “enforce and annul” suits. After 1563, they were technically to enforce promises rather than contracts.

her present marriage while still having a living spouse from a prior marriage. This situation should probably not be called bigamy—and indeed contemporaries seldom did—because the spouse did not maintain both marriages at the same time, but informally separated from his or her first spouse before marrying the second. Various reasons drove a husband or wife to seek a formal annulment when, as the existence of these situations themselves makes clear, informal separation was easily obtainable. Frequently it was because a spouse had already left the marriage and was seeking to defend him- or herself against the other spouse’s demand that he or she return, or “adhere.” It was, in effect, the result of an attempt at informal divorce. This was also a situation of particular concern to the ecclesiastical authorities, who deplored the practice of informal separation and subsequent remarriage for in the eyes of the church a validly contracted marriage was indissoluble except by death, making these sinful sexual unions masquerading as holy matrimony. A few of the surviving cases were, therefore, the result of officials’ bringing ex officio suits to investigate rumors of such prior marriages and to annul any invalid second marriages. This chapter relies primarily on the records of twenty-two such suits, that together describe thirty weddings because suits seeking to enforce one marriage and annul others necessitated investigation of several wedding processes. The records of these suits are more properly known as cause papers: the collection of records of the appearances of the parties before the court and the various other documents that they submitted to the court or that the court notaries redacted on their behalf, including the points they claimed, the questions they wanted asked of the witnesses, the witnesses’ depositions, and sometimes the court’s decision. Some of the Veronese cause papers are incomplete because of

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destruction or loss of some parts, or because the parties abandoned the case before its conclusion. The most useful information about marriage rituals and practices appears in the questions asked of witnesses and the witnesses’ depositions. Under the legal procedure of the time, a notary read to the witnesses part or all of a series of statements, or points to be proven, known as either positiones or capitula, and asked what they knew about the matter. Cross-examination was then conducted according to questions prepared in advance by the other side in the interrogatoria. The notary recorded the witnesses’ responses and then submitted them, along with the other cause papers, to the judge who decided the case solely on the basis of what he read.24 In the annulment suits used in this chapter, the purpose of the legal action was to ascertain the validity and existence of the one or more marriages involved. The questions asked of witnesses therefore tended to focus on one particular moment in the often long marriage process, the exchange of consent itself, which was alone necessary to prove the validity of a marriage in canon law prior to the Council of Trent. But these questions also touched on many other aspects of the marriage in order to provide additional proof of the existence of the marriage, as well as probably to test consistency, and thus ideally the veracity, of witnesses’ testimony.25 Questions included, but were not limited to, details about the courtship, who was present at the couple’s exchange of consent, whether there was a ring, who performed the ceremony, who put the bride’s hand in the groom’s, what sort of celebrations followed, and how the couple behaved after the marriage. Better yet, witnesses, who might include the spouses themselves, were sometimes asked simply to describe a marriage and only asked at the end about specific details. In these instances witnesses provided quite nuanced and relatively free narratives. Their accounts were, of course, shaped for the court, and the witness presumably made sure to mention the couple’s exchange of consent, but above all they were being asked to show that they recognized a marriage had taken place. To that end they included information on many other aspects of the marriage in their own voices and with their own emphases. The changes in law and perhaps also in enforcement following the Council of Trent decree on marriage in 1563 altered the suits that came before the diocesan court and reduced the quality of the information available on marriage practices. For this reason, this chapter concentrates on marriages that took place before the marriage decrees. There were two sorts of relevant changes. First, the Council 24 See Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, chap. 4, on legal procedure in ecclesiastical marriage disputes. On the technical distinction between capitula and positiones, and the tendency to conflate them, ibid., 14–18. 25 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 17–19, 127–34; and Antonio Pertile, Storia del diritto italiano dalla caduta dell’Impero romano alla codificazione (Turin: UTET, 1892–1902), 4:374–401.

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required that in order to be valid all marriages after the promulgation of the decree (1563 in Verona) had to be performed in the presence of the couple’s parish priest, who was to record the marriage in a register.26 This change meant that proving a marriage became simply a matter of finding the written record in a book; recourse to the testimony of witnesses was generally no longer necessary, except sometimes in the case of secret marriages, which some people still managed to contract finding new legal loopholes.27 Second, because of this change, as well as a new requirement that the parish priest investigate the marital status of anyone unknown to him who wished to marry one of his parishioners,28 it appears that the informal separations and remarriages declined significantly, and with them ceased the annulment suits so useful to us in the study of marriage practices. From the twenty-four-year period prior to the Council of Trent, 1538–62, eighteen suits survive from the Veronese episcopal court that involve the question of a prior and still valid marriage. From the twenty-five-year period after the close of the Council, 1563–85, only six survive, all of which, moreover, refer to marriages that had taken place before or just after 1563. Examination of two of the richer cases provides further introduction to the episcopal marriage suits and to the marriage practices of sixteenth-century Verona. In each of the these cases, a subject—one a man and one a woman—married twice, once in the more elaborate paternal style and once in the simpler, nonpaternal manner. Both suits were investigations conducted in the 1540s to determine whether an individual who had recently contracted marriage with one person had in fact already validly married another. At the simplest level the marriage processes these suits reveal consisted of three steps: an agreement that a given couple would marry at some point in the future, the couple’s exchange of consent in the present tense agreeing to marry, and the beginning of their cohabitation. These steps, however, could be effected in quite different ways. The first case is an ex officio suit brought in 1542 against Zuane “el Moreto” Maragon, a woodworker who lived in Verona. The bishop’s court was investigating rumors that Zuane, who had just contracted marriage with a woman named Angela Cristiani, in fact already had a wife named Caterina Mantuanella. In his defense Zuane claimed that, while he had indeed contracted marriage with Caterina some years earlier and they had lived together as husband and wife for a short time, their marriage had not been valid because Caterina was already married to 26

H. J. Schroeder, trans., Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1978), chap. 1, “Decree concerning the Reform of Matrimony,” 184–85. 27 See Cozzi, “Padri, figli,” 191–92. See also Gabriele Martini, “La donna veneziana del ’600 tra sessualità legittima ed illegittima: Alcune riflessioni sul concubinato,” Atti dell’Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti 145 (1986–87): 301–39. 28 Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, “Decree concerning the Reform of Matrimony,” chap. 7, 188.

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someone else. The focus of the investigation thus became Caterina’s rather complicated marital history.29 Although she was presumably alive or her marriage to Zuane would not have been an issue, the court did not question Caterina, and the surviving record nowhere mentions her whereabouts at the time of the case. The main witnesses were Caterina’s family, or rather her foster family. Perhaps the daughter of a prostitute who had been left at a foundling home, she had been taken and reared by the childless Lucia Mantuana and her husband, Sebastiano Tessaro. 30 Caterina and her foster parents lived within an extended family that included Sebastiano’s brother, Francesco Tessaro, his wife, Nicolina, their two daughters, and later the daughters’ husbands.31 The two brothers were soldiers who engaged in some other sort of unspecified business activities that they conducted while at their various postings around the Veneto. The focus of the family, however, remained Francesco’s house in the contrada of Santo Stefano, where the two brothers and their families lived when they were in Verona. The investigation quickly revealed that Caterina had married not one but two other men before she married Zuane. Caterina’s first husband had been Mancin Napolitano, a soldier presumably from Naples stationed in Verona, whom she married in 1528 or 1529. Her second marriage a few years later had been to another soldier identified only by his nickname, Dandan. Although by the time of this trial, Mancin had apparently died on the battlefield, witnesses agreed that he had still been alive when Caterina made her two subsequent marriages to Dandan and Zuane. While in the eyes of the church this made her second and third marriages invalid, it does not appear to have done so in the eyes of her family, friends, and neighbors, who found each of her marriages acceptable, despite knowing that her earlier husbands were still living. Because the purpose of the suit was to determine Caterina’s marital status at the time of her marriage to Zuane, his lawyer had the witnesses, who were drawn from Caterina’s foster family and neighbors, questioned not simply about whether Mancin and Dandan were still living, but about the nature of the marriage ceremonies. They did this to ensure both that the spouses had freely given the proper consent and that the witnesses’ accounts were consistent with each other and therefore, the hope was, likely to be truthful. Although the texts of the points to be proven have not survived for this case, judging by the answers and by surviving documents from similar cases, they simply stated that Caterina had contracted marriage first with Mancin and later with Dandan, who were still living when she 29

Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus. Cause, B. 1540-1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Donna Helysabeth uxor Bartholomei q. Petri dicti Pericini de Clericis. 31 ASVR, Comune di Verona, Cancelleria dell’estimo, Anagrafi, S. Stefano 1541. 30

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and Zuane married. The cross-questioning sought more details, however, such as whether rings had been involved in the first two marriages. The very detailed descriptions witnesses gave of Caterina’s two weddings reveal striking differences in the ways Caterina married Mancin and then Dandan two years later. In both cases, witnesses said that Caterina was already maridada before the ceremonies they described took place. This preliminary state was something like a strong engagement, meaning that the couple in a sense considered themselves to be already husband and wife and may have begun to have sexual relations, although they recognized that further celebration was proper before they publicly took up their lives together. The portion of Caterina’s marriage to Mancin that witnesses described to the court was termed by her foster uncle, Francesco, the nozze, or wedding celebration. It was a multistep process that took place over the course of one day. Caterina’s formal role in it was minimal, that of other women nonexistent. Men were the main actors. On the morning of the wedding, the groom, Mancin, and Caterina’s foster father, Sebastiano, met at Caterina’s family’s parish church of Santo Stefano to agree publicly to the alliance, while Caterina and the other women stayed at home. This might well be equated with the Florentine giure described by KlapischZuber. Questioned by a priest whether he agreed to “take and accept Caterina Mantuanella for your esteemed bride and wife as the Holy Mother Church commands,” Mancin replied he did. In his own words, “as Caterina’s governor,” Sebastiano similarly questioned by the priest, agreed to give her to Mancin. 32 Sebastiano, Mancin, the priest, and some of the witnesses from the church then went to Caterina’s family’s house, where she and other guests waited. Here the couple declared their consent to the union. The priest first asked Caterina if she was willing to take Mancin as her husband and then, again, asked Mancin if he was willing to take Caterina as his wife; both said yes. Following this exchange, the couple clasped hands, Mancin put a ring on Caterina’s finger, they kissed, and later that evening they slept together. Within a year, the marriage had fallen apart and Mancin had left. Shortly after that Caterina married another soldier, known as Dandan, in a wedding strikingly different from her first. It was not organized as an exchange between men, but instead focused on the bride and groom as the actors. This time, Caterina’s foster father was not present, although he was still living; instead, her foster mother, Lucia, oversaw and directed the affair, which took place not at the parish church, but in the privacy of Caterina’s family’s house, before the women of the 32 “Mancin, vi piase de tor & accetar Catherina Mantoanella per vostra stima sposa e moglier secundo che comanda la sancta madre chiesa...” and “come gubernator di ditta Catherina.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Sebastianus q. Bernardini [illegible].

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family and some neighbors. Lucia gave Caterina away and directed the couple’s exchange of consent, playing the role usually reserved for the bride’s father or other male kin. According to one witness, the wording Lucia chose emphasized Caterina’s participation and consent as Lucia was bestowing her on Dandan. She first spoke to Caterina saying, “Now, are you content that I marry you off ?” Caterina demurely replied “What pleases you also pleases me.” Similarly questioned, Dandan also expressed his agreement. The couple then declared they accepted each other as husband and wife, clasped hands, and kissed, whereupon Dandan placed a traditional bridal wreath on Caterina’s head.33 After some celebration, the couple that same day exchanged consent again. Several days later, in another location, before different witnesses, they did so once more, at which point Dandan put the ring on her finger and Lucia gave him a small dowry of a little money and a ring. The origins of the next case are unclear. It was heard in 1547 between Isepo Pelacar, a pelt worker, and his alleged wife, Zuana del Zumela, but papers survive only from Isepo’s side. The issues involved, however, are straightforward. Isepo was defending his recent marriage to Zuana against the charge that it was invalid due to his prior marriage to a woman named Orsola, identified only as the niece of Grazia. Isepo argued that his marriage to Zuana was indeed valid, for his prior marriage to Orsola had been invalid because she was already married to a man named Facio Chiavegati. Facio had been in service with a noble family in the city when he married Orsola, but had left her shortly after their marriage to return to his village in the contado. Orsola claimed that Facio was already dead by the time she married Isepo, which Isepo denied. Notaries questioned witnesses not only about Facio’s death, but also about the nature of the marriage ceremonies in order to determine whether the marriage had been validly performed.34 Like Caterina Mantuanella, Isepo Pelacar had two strikingly different styles of weddings, each apparently determined primarily by the circumstances of the bride. In 1545, Isepo’s first marriage, to the orphan Orsola, took the nonpaternal form, occurring before friends without the participation of the couple’s kin. Isepo married Orsola twice, in two nearly identical ceremonies, but in different locations and with slightly different witnesses. The first took place during Lent in Orsola’s home. This ceremony had several steps or elements: First the couple “contracted” marriage, that is, they exchanged the words of consent; then Isepo sposeto Orsola, or put the ring on her finger. This took place in the presence of several men, presumably 33 “Orsu era contenta chio ti marida?” “Quello che vi piace a voi me piace anche a me.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Bartolomeo q. Petri dicti Perini de Clericis. 34 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia.

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friends of the couple, one of whom, according to a witness “was the one who gave her away”35 by putting her hand in Isepo’s, although there is no indication that the man who did this actually had any authority over Orsola. The couple then essentially repeated this ceremony four or five months later in a different location. To have two marriage ceremonies was unusual, but not unheard of. Indeed, Caterina and Dandan in the previous example had three ceremonies. Dowry contracts suggest that it was also apparently common for couples to repeat their consent in different contexts. A bride and groom might, for instance, exchange consent before their parents, kin, and friends on one occasion, and later, when the notary redacted the dowry contract, exchange consent again before him while exchanging the ring. For example, the 1558 document recording the dowry of Toscana di Aura reported that her marriage to Giacomo Brundi had been “solemnly and legitimately contracted” three years earlier in 1555. Nonetheless, the document also records that at the time of the document’s redaction Toscana and Giacomo were questioned in the normal way and gave their consent, after which Giacomo “married” Toscana with a ring.36 Although Isepo and Orsola lived together as husband and wife for several months, they quickly separated, and within a year Isepo had arranged to marry Zuana, whose father was dead, but whose uncle, a wood merchant, acted as her guardian. The greater formality and more elaborate ritual of Isepo’s second marriage are striking when compared to his first. In typical paternal-wedding style, the participants treated this marriage as an agreement between the groom and the bride’s male kin. Informal negotiations presumably having been completed, the witnesses’ stories pick up as Isepo prepared to go ask for Zuana’s hand publicly from her uncle. Accompanied by his father and two friends, Isepo went to the place of business of Zuana’s uncle, Francesco. There, in the street before the shop, Isepo said formally and publicly before the uncle’s fellow wood merchants, “I understand you have a girl. If you want to give her to me as a wife I will take her.” To this the uncle replied cautiously, “When I have seen that you have come as a respectable man, I will give her to you.”37 The group of men then went to Zuana’s 35

“fu quello ge la dete.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia,Testimony of Ambrosius fq. Floramontis provisionarius ad porta Santi Maximi Veronae. 36 “sollemniter et legitimum contractum fuit” and “desponsavit.” ASVR, Antico Archivio Notarile di Verona, b. 13, n. 513. For a similar example, see ASVR, Notarile Distrettuale, b. 12, Protocollo n. 15, 36r–v, describing Julia fq. Benedicti Fornaroli as “sponsae iam traductae.” 37 “Ho inteso che havesse una putta. Se me la voleste dar per moglie io la toria” and “Doppoi che vedo che sei venuto d’homo da bene io te la daro.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia, Testimony of Silvester q. Galli bracenti biretarius.

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mother’s house, where the bride and about twenty other people waited. Here the couple exchanged the requisite words of consent to the marriage. After Isepo had thus shown that his intentions were good, Zuana’s uncle fulfilled his promise by giving her to Isepo by the hand. Afterwards, everyone ate and drank.

PATERNAL MARRIAGE RITUALS In his 1541 Constitutiones for the Veronese diocese, Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti outlined the basic criteria for a proper wedding, features not necessary for the marriage to be valid in the eyes of the church, but for it to be legitimate. Of the wedding rituals themselves, he wrote simply that marriages must be celebrated in church, or public places, or homes of relatives and with the presence of the parish priest and fathers and mothers of the parties, if they have them, and if not, with the presence of near kinsmen if they want to be present, and of other worthy witnesses who can testify to the clear consent of both parties.38 Giberti was primarily concerned to avoid the “hate and contention” too often engendered by problems in marriage formation.39 In his many years as judge and reforming bishop (traversing his diocese twice to see to the state of his flock), Giberti had witnessed and tried to correct many incestuous, disruptive, and confused marital situations. He thus sought in this work from the latter part of his tenure to ensure that marital matters were without ambiguity that could lead to problems in this world and the next. He treated the three elements he considered important—the location, the presence of families of the bride and groom, and the presence of other witnesses—as means to maximize the publicity and openness of the wedding in order to avoid the disorder and sin occasioned by incestuous, clandestine, or bigamous unions. It was a matter of indifference to the bishop exactly where the wedding was held—church, private house, or piazza—so long as the location was not hidden.40 In contrast, he judged ensuring parental consent, or the consent of other kin who cared, to be of the utmost importance because marriages contracted without such support often resulted in irregularities. The most worrying situation

38

“in ecclesia, vel locis publicis, aut domibus parentum, & cum praesentia sacerdotis proprii, & patris, & matris, contrahentium, si habuerint, aut, si non habuerint, cum praesentia proximorum proprinquiorum utriusque partis, si adesse voluerint, & aliorum testium fide dignorum, qui de utriusque partis consensu clare testificari ubique possint, & valeant.” CON, bk. 7, chap. 1. 39 “odia, & contentiones.” CON, bk. 7, chap. 1. See also, Giberti, Monitiones Generales, chap. 19. 40 CON, bk. 7, chaps. 1 and 3.

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occurred when one or both spouses, faced with parental pressure, repudiated a union that was valid in the eyes of the church and then contracted new marriages that were invalid and bigamous under canon law.41 Similarly, the bishop considered necessary the presence of witnesses who were not kin, including a priest, a representative of the church, who was ideally knowledgeable about the canon law of marriage. This would ensure that both parties had given, in his words, “clear consent,” that is, that they had laid no conditions to the union, nor were they coerced, both of which would have created legal impediments to the formation of a valid union, as well as been reasons for a spouse to deny the union. 42 To help ensure the publicity of the union, the bishop further taught that the union should be blessed in church by a priest before consummation.43 The Veronese who made use of paternal-style marriage rituals had purposes that were somewhat different from those of the bishop. Most of these weddings conformed to only some of the specific requirements outlined in Giberti’s Constitutiones. The ways in which their practices resembled and differed from the bishop’s requirements indicate what the Veronese laity judged the greatest risks of marriage: the vulnerability it gave a woman, and hence her natal family, in a system that demanded the subordination of wives to their husbands. The main rationale of the paternal-style wedding was not ensuring publicity (although that was a concern), but emphasizing the strength and influence of the bride’s father (or other male kin) and his continuing interest in his daughter, particularly with regard to her dowry and their shared reputation, despite her union to another man as his wife. Hence not the desire for publicity but the need to allow the bride’s father to demonstrate his strength determined the location of the marriage rituals: it was always his territory. Similarly, the guests were not just witnesses to testify to the event: they were primarily friends and neighbors of the bride’s family. Moreover, only the parents of the bride, not those of the groom, were consistently present. Thus, in contrast to Klapisch-Zuber’s evaluation of wedding rituals used by the elite of Florence, these paternal-style Veronese marriages did not mark the exclusion of the bride from her natal family as much as they emphasized her continuing connection to her family of origin. In early modern marriage, as is well recognized, a husband’s authority extended over his wife’s finances, her possessions, and her person. This husbandly authority, however, had the potential to injure the wife’s father and the father’s interests in this woman as a daughter, as well as to conflict with the residual 41

CON, bk. 7, chap. 2. Giberti went to great lengths in all his works to teach parish priests about the canonical impediments to marriage. For example, CON, bk. 7, chap. 10. See also Prosperi, Evangelismo, chap. 6 and 144–46. 43 CON, bk. 7, chap. 2, 120; chapter 13; and Giberti, Breve ricordo, 8v. 42

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authority a father might have over his daughter. The form of these “paternal” weddings, therefore, symbolically warned the groom of the father’s strength and continuing oversight over his daughter and his interests which she represented. The bride’s family continued to have interests in a married daughter on several levels: economically they still had an interest in her dowry and her inheritance rights were still potentially meaningful;44 reputationally, she was still considered part of their family and her honor affected the honor of her natal family, with which in many cases she presumably also had a strong and continuing emotional link. Typically, a wife physically left her family, ultimately moving in with her husband’s family or at least to his neighborhood. The wedding rituals sought to show the strength that the bride had behind her as she entered a new family, one headed either by her husband or her husband’s father. If many ritual gestures described the bride’s passivity, the context in which these gestures took place in Verona emphasized to the groom and other viewers that despite her passivity, she was not alone: her interests were protected by her family, at least insofar as those interests coincided with her family’s. The paternal-style marriage rituals typically began with a formal agreement to the marriage between the bride’s father and the groom that was the equivalent of the Florentine giure, although no one in Veronese records gave this step a name.45 On one level, these ceremonies marginalized the role of women in their own marriages, treating the marriage as an agreement between men rather than between a bride and groom. The example of the agreement between Natalino Pelliparo, a pelterer, and Giacomo, the brother of Isabetta, daughter of the late Bernardino, a cheese monger, makes this subordination particularly clear. 46 The bride’s brother not only spoke for himself in promising to give Isabetta to Natalino; he also spoke for his sister, giving consent in her name. Other details from these agreements, however, show that it is insufficient to treat these sorts of agreements mainly as examples of how the marriage ceremony marginalized women, for they contain additional meaning relevant to more fully understanding women’s positions in society and in marriage. In pledging his daughter (or, in this case, sister) to the groom, the bride’s father (or brother) was also declaring that his interests, not just hers, were involved in the union. The setting of the Veronese wedding rituals likewise highlighted the strength of the bride and her family. All the rituals of the marriage process, from the giure through the couple’s exchange of consent and the gift of the ring to the bride, generally took place in a short period of time, usually one day but sometimes a week 44

Kuehn, Law, Family, 13, 200. Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family, 183–85. 46 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1549 Isabetta di Bernardino formagerius v. Natalino pelliparius. 45

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or two. They all took place, moreover, on the bride’s family’s territory, to which the groom had to come in the manner of a supplicant and therefore at something of a disadvantage. The promissory ceremony, or giure, took place in a public location, usually a church, but also, as in Isepo Pelacar’s case, a street. This was not a neutral public site, however, but one where the bride’s family had the advantage. If it was a church, as in the cases of Mancin Napolitano and Natalino Pelliparo, it was the bride’s parish church, full of the bride’s family’s friends and neighbors transacting similar business. In the case of Isepo Pelacar, he went to the bride’s uncle’s place of business, the place where the uncle was master, and asked for Zuana before all of the uncle’s fellow merchants. Although in most other parts of Europe, during the period prior to the Council of Trent couples properly exchanged consent in or before the parish church, this exchange on the Italian peninsula was notable for being private and domestic. An Italian couple normally exchanged consent in a private house. While, as other scholars have noted, this is significant from the point of view of determining the influence of the church on marriage in Italy, it is equally significant for determining the rationale of the rituals themselves.47 In the Veronese examples, the house was always that of the bride. Here the site was dominated by demonstrations of the strength of the bride’s family and associates. As hosts, the bride’s family provided food and drink for the guests, demonstrating not just their generosity but also their investment in the bride, their willingness to expend resources on her. Among the guests, moreover, the kin, friends, and neighbors of the bride’s family predominated. For example, at both Caterina Mantuanella’s marriages, the clear impression that we receive is that the guests were all Caterina’s family and their friends and neighbors. Similarly, when asked who was present at her marriage to Benedetto Rotari, Bernardina, daughter of the late Lorenzo del Fattor, described them as many people from her contrada, that is, her neighbors, not those of the groom, who lived in a different neighborhood.48 Into this territory full of the family and friends of the bride came the groom, accompanied by only a few kin or friends. While the weddings were obviously arranged in advance, the actual performance of them had a rather spur-of-themoment quality. This may have been an attempt to avoid enemies’ finding out about the marriage in advance and cursing the couple, especially rendering the groom impotent.49 Grooms would find friends to come along with them only 47

Gaudemet, Mariage, 229–30; Francesco Brandileone, Saggi sulla storia della celebrazione del matrimonio in Italia (Milan: Hoepli, 1906), esp. “L’intervento dello Stato nella celebrazione del matrimonio in Italia prima del Concilio di Trento,” and “Oratori matrimoniali.” See also Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family. 48 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Benedicto di Domenico Rotarii v. Bernardina di Lorenzo del fattor. 49 Gottlieb, Family, 82.

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days or even hours in advance. Isepo Pelacar approached two friends the day before he went to marry Zuana del Zumela, asking them if they would come with him “to see if he could have a girl.”50 Isepo asked for Zuana accompanied only by his father and these two friends, and these four alone then went to complete the marriage at Zuana’s mother’s house, where at least twenty kin and friends of Zuana’s family waited. Mancin, Caterina Mantuanella’s first husband, apparently had no friends of his own with him at his marriage, while Natalino Pelliparo brought one friend to his. In contrast to the brides, in the ceremonies described in the Veronese trials, grooms acted for themselves and on their own authority, even if their fathers were present. In Verona, where, unlike Florence, there was no formal emancipation of sons from patria potestas, marriage appears to have served that purpose in many cases.51 In this sense we might see the wedding celebration as a kind of test for a young man to prove his independence. The wedding itself encompassed three acts. First came the contratto di matrimonio, the marriage contract, which meant not a written document but the couple’s verbal exchange of consent in words of the present tense. The second was the groom’s placing the ring on the bride’s finger, by which he was said to sposar, or marry, her. In the third act, the bride’s father or guardian placed her hand in that of the groom, formally giving her to him. Within this trio of ritual acts, certain elements emphasized the influence of the bride’s father. An outsider presided over the contratto, the couple’s exchange of consent, asking first the bride and then the groom if she or he was, as the phrase commonly went, “content to accept [the other] by words of present consent as the Holy Mother Church commands.” This person, known in Verona as the one who “said the beautiful words (belle parolle),” was usually just a friend or neighbor, not a notary as appears to have been the case in Florence.52 Francesco Brandileone argued that this figure, known in Venetian elite circles as the oratore, represented the larger community’s participation in the marriage and helped to make the marriage 50 “mi dimando che dovesse andare con lui chel voleva andar a veder se el potea haver una puta.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia, Testimony of Marcus Antonius dictus Tonollo q. Jacobi pellacaris de Sancto Vitale. 51 Grubb, Provincial Families, 1; but on the limits of this freedom prior to a father’s death, 89–90. 52 In the Veronese dowry records, the notary usually records that he asked the bride and groom if they consented to marry “by words of the present” (verba di presenti) to ensure that a marriage existed to validate the dowry agreement; however, in most cases other information in the document makes clear that this act was a formality and a repetition of the marriage proper, which had usually occurred earlier. This suggests that Samuel Cohn’s contention, based solely on notarial documents, that ordinary people in Florence married before notaries may be incomplete. The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 19–24. See also Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family, 195–96.

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publicly recognized.53 In Verona, however, this was not his entire significance, for while it is true that this person was as a rule kin to neither party, he was not a generic “community” figure either. He was often explicitly said to have a connection to the bride and may not ever have met the groom before.54 In two suits in which a priest performed this role, the contract was still done at the bride’s house, not at church, and the priest had a connection to the bride. In one he was her parish priest and in the other her brother’s teacher.55 The inhabitants of the diocese of Verona held the couple’s expression of consent to the marriage in words of the present tense to be an essential element of any wedding. At a basic level, expressing consent indicated that the couple did not detest each other and were willing to try to make their partnership a success. 56 Neither parent, kin, nor guardian could express that consent for a spouse, and, paradoxically, some did not hesitate to beat or starve an unwilling bride prior to the wedding in order to convince her to express that consent before the witnesses at the wedding. Yet in the body of rituals of the paternal-style wedding as a whole, the couple’s expression of consent, and even the groom’s gift of the ring to the bride, tended to be overshadowed by the actions of the bride’s father. The final act of the trio, in which the bride’s father placed her hand in the groom’s, was not an unambiguous renunciation of a daughter to her new husband, particularly when viewed in the context of the rest of the rites, which emphasized the strength and influence of the father. Rather, it can also be interpreted as a declaration of his connection to and interest in his daughter. It is, furthermore, significant that this was always the final act, following both the couple’s mutual exchange of consent and the groom’s placing the ring on the bride’s finger, as if to say that it was the bride’s father’s will that sealed the marriage—and he might not yet have had his final word. Taken by itself, the focus on the bride’s family in the location and rituals of the wedding ceremony could simply mark the close of the chapter of the involvement of the bride with her family. Placed within the context of other elements of Veronese marriage practice, however, it is clear that these rituals signaled the continuing 53

Brandileone, “Oratori,” in his Saggi, 124–38, esp. 134–35. For example, the landlord of Orsola, niece of Grazia, who “said the beautiful words” in Orsola’s marriage to Facio Chiavegati, told the court that he did not otherwise know Facio. Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia. 55 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Sebastianus q. Bernardini [illegible]; and Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Benedicto di Domenico Rotarii v. Bernardina di Lorenzo del fattor, Testimony of Bernardina f.q. Laurentii del fattor. 56 André Burguière and François Lebrun, “Priest, Prince, and Family,” in A History of the Family, ed. André Burguière et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 119. 54

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interest of a woman’s father and kin in her and her fortunes. Following her marriage, a woman’s family did not eject her, sending her alone to her new husband’s house. Instead, traditions of temporary residence with the bride’s family after the wedding, dowry practices, and the eagerness of parents (especially fathers) and siblings to come to their daughter/sister’s physical aid all testify to the continuing reality of the connection of a wife and her natal family. Discussions of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern marriage across Europe make much of the last stage in the marriage process, when the bride was “led” to the groom’s house and the couple finally took up cohabitation. This noisy ritual procession through the streets of the bride’s village or neighborhood, which in Italy was variously called menare, ducere, or traducere, many agree, marked the bride’s exit, and even exclusion, from her natal family and her entry into that of her husband. Because in Italian regions, weddings themselves, that is, the actual exchanges of consent, were domestic and private, scholars focus on the traductio in elite weddings as the prime means of making the union publicly known and recognized. In the view of some, therefore, the traductio was the moment at which the marriage was truly established and became irrevocable.57 Given the amount of attention historians pay to this ritual stage, it is surprising that it is not prominent in the descriptions of marriages contained in the Veronese marriage court records. It is possible that some aspect of the way canon law shaped the questions witnesses were asked directed their attention away from such processions, but this seems unlikely given that many of the descriptions are so full. In fact, witnesses in only one suit describe any sort of procession, and that was for the marriage of a concubine of one of the leading noblemen of the city. 58 The words ducere, traducere, and traductio do appear regularly in both court papers and in the episcopal visitation records from Giberti’s tenure as bishop, as well as in some dowry records. In the cause papers, a plaintiff ’s claims to have married the defendant routinely used formulas containing the term, as Caterina de Hostilia’s did, asserting she had “contracted legitimate marriage with Vincenzo…and consummated it…but Vincenzo refuses to lead (traducere) her and adhere to her and to fulfill his marital obligations.” Similarly, in marriage 57 Grubb, Provincial Families, 10–11; and Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family, 186– 89. Brandileone, “Oratori,” in his Saggi, 121–24, describes a slightly different process of publication among the elite of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Venice. See also Lyndal Roper, “Going to Church and Street: Weddings in Reformation Augsburg,” Past and Present, 106 (1985): 62–101; Gottlieb, Family, 79; and Nicole Belmont, “The Symbolic Function of the Wedding Procession in the Popular Rituals of Marriage,” in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred, ed. Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 1–7. On medieval legal opinion that the traditio made a marriage, see Brundage, Law, Sex, 266–68. 58 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino.

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disputes that the visitors heard in the villages of the diocese, the bishop or his representative might order that a man traducere or ducere a woman who claimed to have exchanged consent with him. But what behavior these words denoted is by no means obvious.59 It appears that the ordinary people of Verona did not consider the formal transfer of the bride to the groom’s house an important element of a marriage. In none of his discussions of proper marriage performance did Bishop Giberti refer to such processions and abuses connected with them, suggesting either that they were not problematic, or, more likely, that they were not common. Moreover, when he discussed the abuse of couples beginning to have sexual relations too early in the marriage process, Giberti did not tell them to wait until after the traductio, but until the marriage was publicly confirmed and the couple blessed.60 It is likely that these words, always in Latin or in a formulaic context, were used because they were part of the established formal legal understanding of marriage, which did not necessarily correspond clearly with changes that had occurred in practice over time. As a practical matter, by the mid-sixteenth century in Verona, ducere and related words had come to mean more generally making the marriage public, that is, living publicly as recognized husband and wife. The beginning of cohabitation was crucial for the inhabitants of the city and diocese of Verona. It clearly demonstrated the bride’s, the groom’s, and the bride’s family’s consent to the marriage. A marriage in Verona was publicized at many points and in many ways over the course of the marriage process. The promissory ceremony, if any, began the process, for it was frequently performed in public. The couple’s expressions of consent and the bride’s father or guardian’s final bestowal of her on the groom, however, took place in relative privacy, with only a few witnesses. Certainly these witnesses would tell others what they had seen, but the key step was behaving in ways recognized as the ways husbands and wives behaved: regularly eating and drinking and spending the night together, which could also serve as 59 “contraxisse legitimum matrimonium cum Vincento…illudque…consumasse et tamen ipsum Vincentum recusare illam traducere et eidem adherere et obsequia matrimonialia prestare.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Hostilia v. Vincenzo Scarduan de Hostilia. See also, for example, RPV, 345, reporting that a certain Hieronymus contracted marriage with a Lucretia whom he duxit in eius domum. Yet the report continues stating that afterwards the couple lived together both in the groom’s house and in the house of the bride’s father. 60 Giberti, Monitiones Generales, chap. 5, n. 27, 225; CON, bk. 7, chap. 2. For contemporary legal opinion, see Marino Socino, Consiliorum seu potius responsorum Marini Socini ac Bartholomaei filii senensium, iuris cum civilis, tum pontificii consultissimorum, advocatorumque consistorialium dignissmorum (Venice, Guerreos fratres, & socios, 1571), vol. 2, Consilium 223, 80v. In other areas of Europe, unlike Verona, historians have found frequent ecclesiastical condemnation of these processions. See, for example, Belmont, “Symbolic Function.”

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important proof in court that a marriage had taken place. Common in the cases is testimony like that of one witness that he saw “Zuan Donato many, many times come to Pasqua’s and eat, drink, and chat familiarly with her as if she were his wife.” In the absence of such publicly witnessed behavior, a marriage could simply fade away.61 For the common people of the city and diocese of Verona, cohabitation and the consequent public recognition of the union began not at the home of the groom, as scholars have found in other areas, but at the home of the bride, where the couple might live for up to a year before moving either to the groom’s family’s house or to their own lodgings. In other words, for a short period at the beginning of a marriage, the couple’s residence tended to be matrilocal, before becoming neolocal or occasionally patrilocal.62 When asked about a couple’s marriage, witnesses and parties to the suits frequently mentioned this stage of cohabitation in the bride’s family’s house. Caterina Mantuanella and her first husband, Mancin Napolitano, lived with her family for several months before finding lodgings of their own. Similarly, Isabetta Paganini and Domenico Bianchini lived together in the bride’s mother’s house for a year after their marriage, Domenico “living entirely with Isabetta, as grooms (sponsi) should,” according to one witness.63 Alternatively, sometimes a new husband would eat most of his meals with his bride and her family and sleep with her for several weeks, and then the cohabitation would be less regular for a time. As Bernardina di Lorenzo del Fattor described the period after her marriage to Benedetto Rotari, “he stayed in my house for about two months and after that he came and went as he pleased for about a year.”64 While there may have been financial reasons for newlyweds to put off finding their own lodgings, this practice could have had other purposes as well. A Veronese bride was not plunged

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“il Zan Dona piu e piu volte venir li dalla ditta Pasqua et manzar, bever, et rasonar familiarmente con le come se la fosse stat sua moglie.” Atti, b. 7a, 1542 Giovanni di Domenico Gira di Illasi v. Pasqua q. Francesco Andreotti della Rota, Testimony of Dionysius Scartezinus q. alterius Dionysii. On behavior, and cohabitation specifically, as proof of marriage, see Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 46; and COP, Conclusio 1025, 195v–196r, and Conclusio 1029, 197r–v. For an example of a marriage that faded away, see Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina e Bartolomeo. 62 For practices and examples similar to Verona, compare Anna Lisa Sannino Cuomo, “Matrimonialità, famiglie estese e normativa ecclesiastica a Potenza tra XVI e XVII secolo,” Ricerche di storia sociale e religiosa 8:264–65; and Chojnacka, Working Women, 11–13. 63 “degendo omnino cum eadem Hisabeta prout solent facere sponsi.” Testimony of Sebastianus filius Benevenuti Racii de Lonato, RPV, 32. See also RPV, 345; and Atti, b. 9, 1553 Matteo Antonio di Pagnago v. Bartolomea f.q. Carlini molendinari. 64 “el ge stete fermo circa dui mesi in casa mia et dippoi andava et tornava come ge pareva et questo fu per forsi circa un anno.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Benedicto di Domenico Rotarii v. Bernardina di Lorenzo del fattor, Testimony of Bernardina f.q. Laurentiis del fattor.

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immediately into an alien family culture or left on her own alone with her new husband.65 As the couple settled into married life, they generally did so within the context of the culture of the bride’s family, which, while it would have been an occasion for tensions to arise, probably often also served to create strong, continuing links between the couple and this family.66 Another aspect of marriage in the diocese of Verona that shows the continuing interest that fathers and natal families more generally had in their married daughters was the practice of dowry. Dowry in Verona is more properly known as “direct dowry,” which designates money, goods, and/or property assigned to a woman at her marriage by her natal family, as opposed to “indirect dowry,” in which the bride’s resources come from the groom’s family. Although at the simplest level the collection of household goods and perhaps small sum of money that typically made up the dowries of the ordinary women of Verona was the bride’s allotment from her parents’ estate, in actuality, numerous parties had interests in these resources, which placed a dowry at the center of a web of relationships among a wife, a husband, their respective families, more distant kin, and occasionally outsiders. The focus here is on the relationship between the wife, the husband, and the wife’s natal family.67 Long legal and social historical traditions have treated direct dowry as an institution which effectively ended a woman’s relationship to her family of origin at her marriage. Unlike a son, who generally waited to receive his inheritance from his parents at their death, a daughter generally received what she was going to get from her parents when she married. Historians typically understand this to mean that at the conclusion of the marriage ceremony, and perhaps following consummation of the marriage, the groom received the dowry from the bride’s father in a “brusque transfer” of woman and property together.68 In this view, dowering 65

Some suits, however, suggest that in some cases brides, particularly when both bride and groom were quite young, went directly to live with their new husband’s family without spending time with her family first. See, for example, Cause, b. Processi matrimoniali 1540–1560, 1552 Vincenzo di Domenico detto bisega v. Anna di Cristinano Nicolo Pietro; and Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Giuseppe Contini di S. Agnese extra v. Leonara Cisi. 66 Barbagli argues, in contrast, for a long tradition of patrilateral kinship, particularly in the Veneto. See his “Family and Kinship in Italy,” in Family and Kinship in Europe, ed. Marianne Gullestad and Martine Segalen (London: Pinter, 1997), 42–47. 67 For recent research suggesting the complexity of dowry, of the relationships it established and could express, and of the ways people could use it, see Grubb, Provincial Families, 19–20, 26–29; Chojnacki, “‘The Most Serious Duty’”; and Alison Smith, “Locating Power and Influence within the Provincial Elite of Verona: Aristocratic Wives and Widows,” Renaissance Studies 8 , no. 4 (1994): 439–48. 68 The phrase is Grubb’s (Provincial Families, 17), critical of Klapisch-Zuber’s characterization of marriage and dowry.

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completed a family’s transfer of property to a daughter, thereby ending its obligations to her. In the view of some, moreover, the composition of the dowry and the way it was held underscored the wife’s exclusion from her natal family. The practice of restricting dowries to cash and moveable goods while excluding real estate kept a woman from true membership in her natal patriline (not to mention its real wealth), which based its identity on real property. Furthermore, her husband, not she, actually had legal control of dowry resources.69 An examination of the practice of dowry among the common people of Verona, however, indicates that far from cutting ties between the bride and her family of origin, the transfer of goods in connection to marriage created and prolonged links between them. At least one scholar has suggested that such a link was a characteristic of direct dowry, as opposed to indirect dowry.70 Part of the link was material. A typical dowry among the common people of the diocese of Verona included both household goods and a quantity of money. The household goods that composed the dowry were usually a mix of new and old, that is, pieces directly taken from bride’s family’s household. Thus the nucleus of the new household was made up of material from the bride’s original home. Furthermore, probably unlike elite dowries, the goods that made up the common dowry were things the bride/wife would use every day, a constant reminder of her connection to her parents. A husband might have control in law, but his wife had use in fact of the cooking pots, linens, and the like that made up most of her dowry.71 Dowry instruments, or declarations, sometimes contain descriptions of the ritual stages of the marriage in question that give a sense of how the transfer of the dowry fit into the larger marriage process. Veronese dowry instruments were largely formulaic declarations of the amount and sort of dowry that established the relationships of the bride and her family, and the groom and his family to these resources. The document focused on showing that the groom (and sometimes his father) declared that he had received the dowry of a given amount, that he added to it a certain amount, known as a contrados, and that he agreed on behalf of his heirs to give the dowry and contrados back to his wife and/or her family on his death. A dowry instrument thus typically began with a description of the rituals the couple

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See Klapisch-Zuber, “The Griselda Complex,” in her Women, Family, esp. 213–17. Goody, Development, 258. See also Diane Owen Hughes, “From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe,” Journal of Family History 3:262–95. 71 See, for example, RPV, 657, for a dowry dispute settled by agreeing to have the bride’s father give the couple the domestic goods necessary to set up their household. Compare Roper, Holy Household, 145, for the connection of dowry with the creation of “feminine territory”; and for similar contentions about elite dowries in Verona, see Alison Smith, “Gender, Ownership and Domestic Space: Inventories and Family Archives in Renaissance Verona,” Renaissance Studies 12, no. 3 (1998): 375–91. 70

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had completed and then went on to record the groom’s (and, if living, his father’s) receipt of the dowry. In many cases the circumstances of the transfer of the dowry in Verona also serve to emphasize the continuity of the relationship between the bride’s natal family and the new family created by her marriage. There was no firmly established moment in the marriage process at which the bride’s father paid the dowry to the groom, and the interval between the couple’s exchange of consent and the groom’s receipt of the dowry varied. Dowry instruments along with a few of the court and visitation records indicate that commonly, soon if not directly after the exchange of consent, two mutually chosen men “estimated” the dowry, that is, they generated a list of items with a description and the estimated value next to each item. Sometimes the transfer of the dowry to the groom was immediate; other times it was not. The period following the marriage during which the couple tended to live with the bride’s family provides the context necessary to understanding the payment of the dowry. Some Veronese dowry instruments, for example, record that a marriage had been contracted between the couple “with the promise of dowry,” which dowry was only now being paid on the occasion of the drawing up of the instrument, usually some months or even a year after the marriage. 72 This interval matches the typical interval during which the newly married couple lived with the bride’s family, suggesting that the payment of the dowry often corresponded to the couple’s leaving to set up their own household. Indeed, some grooms refused to do this until they received the dowry.73 Dowry payments that apparently followed directly on the couple’s exchange of consent must also be viewed in this context. While the groom may have nominally received the goods, since the couple was still living with the bride’s family, the household items were probably still in the bride’s family’s house and many were probably not yet in use by the couple, or at least not in independent use. The significance of this slow transfer of the dowry to the new couple is that, in contrast to the way dowry has been portrayed as part of a quick and sharp break between the bride and her family, dowry in Verona marked a slower and probably less complete division. Furthermore, a father’s delaying the payment of the dowry to a groom may not have been due solely to the difficulty of raising liquid cash, but may also have increased the father’s influence over the groom’s behavior while the groom was awaiting the money.74 72

For example, dowries recorded in ASVR, Notarile Distrettuale, b. 712, 22r, 24v–25r. RPV, 457, 641, 657. Antonius f. Zenonis de Abenatis sent away his wife, Bella, because her dowry had not been paid to him (RPV, 473). 74 Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother’” and “The Griselda Complex,” in her Women, Family; and Goody, Development, 259–61. 73

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An examination of the law of dowry further supports the contention that the practice of direct dowry expressed the continuing interest of a bride’s family, and especially her father or male guardian, in a woman after her marriage. The numerous rules governing dowry in Verona highlight two things about married women in Verona: first, the interests a woman’s family still had in her after her marriage, and second, the vulnerability of a wife to her husband in a marriage that was fundamentally unequal. Because dotal resources had multiple uses and stood at the center of a complex web of interests, many laws attempted to govern them. A dowry was a woman’s main share of her inheritance from her parents, intended primarily, in the common phrase, “to support the burdens of matrimony,” and as such her husband controlled it during his lifetime. But a dowry also had other purposes, which involved other people’s interests in it and therefore required protection from a husband who might mismanage it. It was at once a woman’s own property and not completely hers, for she only gained full control of it when she became a widow, or less frequently if she won a legal suit alleging her husband’s mismanagement of it. A wife needed her dowry to support her in widowhood should she outlive her husband. A wife’s natal family retained an interest in her dowry, for on her death part of it might return to them. On her husband’s death, the widow’s family would need to use her dowry again to find her a new husband. As in all other Italian cities including Florence, in Verona the principles of patrilineal inheritance that formally organized the statutes governing succession in the absense of a testament excluded females from inheriting if they had already been dowered by the principle of exclusio propter dotem. If a woman had not been dowered, her share of inheritance was, however, not equal to that of her male kin, but set at a fixed lower rate. Nonetheless, a bride’s family continued to have an interest in goods and money they gave to their daughters, whom they still considered part of the family.75 Many of the laws governing dowry in the Veronese statutes were intended to guard against a husband’s misuse of his wife’s dowry, that is, to conserve it for the later use of her, her family, or, perhaps, her children. As already seen, much of the dowry instrument was taken up with the husband’s pledges to return the dowry. Husbands controlled their wives’ dowries during the life of the marriage, but this control was limited to use and receipt of the “fruits,” or income, from these resources. He could not put it at risk or sell it or give it away.76 Many of the Veronese marriage suits, particularly those in which wives ask for separations, 75 STV, bk. 2, chap. 82; chaps. 84–87. Women’s rights to inherit in Verona were slightly broader than in Florence. See Kuehn, Law, Family, 241–42. On a woman’s natal family’s continuing interests in her, or at least the continuing congruence of many of their interests as represented in dowry, see ibid., esp. chaps. 8 and 10. 76 STV, bk. 2, chaps. 94 and 96–99.

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record instances of such misuse, which ranged from an impecunious lord beating his wife to get her to agree to sell some of her property to common men who pawned their wives’ dowry goods, along with almost everything else the couple owned.77 One chapter in particular of the Veronese statutes demonstrates an appreciation of the strength of the interests a wife’s natal family had in her dowry and the potential threat a husband’s great powers over his wife and her property posed to the wife’s and her family’s interests. The fear was that a husband would compel his wife to sell or otherwise dispose of goods in a way that was injurious to her and by extension to her family. No woman can, nor may, during her marriage, make a donatio inter vivos of her goods to any person without the presence of three of her closest male agnates over the age of twenty-five, or if there are none living, then in the presence of three closest male cognates over the age of twenty-five, as above.… And if she violates [this]…the donatio is not valid, and does not hold…and does not jeopardize the rights of any heirs of the said woman.… The same is understood for a sale and for any other alienation.78 While this did have the effect of limiting women’s and married couples’ independent ability to manage their own property, it should be understood as an effort to protect the interests of wives, all of whose property was in the hands of their husbands, along with those of their natal families, which were at risk because they were exercised through a woman who was under the authority of her husband in so many ways. Veronese law provided various other means for wives to protect their dowries from their husbands’ misuse, the existence of which testifies to the concern about this situation. Wives in Verona commonly registered dowries of all amounts with the podestà to protect the dowries from being seized to pay their husbands’ debts. Such registration, of course, could also benefit the husbands, because it protected assets of which they had use.79 Less ambiguous were the mechanisms whereby 77 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella di domino Joannes Mona v. Stephano di prudens Josephus de Stefanis. For an example of pawning, see ibid., 1582 Clara di Bartolomeo Fasoli v. Gaspare Tridentino. 78 “nulla Mulier possi, nec debeat constante matrimonio facere donationem inter vivos alicui personae de suis bonis, absque praesentia trium eius Agnatorum proximorum masculorum maiorum xxv annis, vel ipsis, aut aliquibus eorum non extantibus, tunc in praesentia trium eius Cognatorum Proximorum masculorum maiorum ut supra…Et si contrafecerit…non valeat donatio, nec teneat,…nec praeiudicet alicui succedenti dictae Mulieri…Idem intelligatur in venditione, & in quacunque alia alienatione…,” STV, bk. 2, chap. 99. 79 STV, bk. 2, chaps. 97 and 98.

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women who feared their husband’s misuse of their dowries could seek stronger formal limitations on the husband’s use of the dowries. A wife could ask the secular or ecclesiastical court to require her husband to deposit a surety that would be forfeited if he pawned or sold her dowry. As a stronger measure, under circumstances of extreme misuse, she could seek to have her dowry restored to her own control. The actual use of these measures in Verona has not been studied, but there is evidence that women used them frequently and it is likely that wives often acted with their natal families, and particularly with their fathers or brothers, to protect their dowries in this way. The multitude of rules devoted to protecting dowries from husbands demonstrates that the people who made and were living under these laws recognized a fundamental division of interests between husbands and wives, as well as the vulnerability of the wife—and thus of her natal family—to her husband. On the Italian peninsula, as in other areas governed by Roman law, while both spouses were alive one spouse had only the use of the other’s property. In a sense, therefore, each spouse had a legally defined sphere of interest, which was reinforced by such supplementary protections as the ability to register a dowry with the podestà or to force a husband to give up control of it. Within a wife’s sphere, her natal family, and particularly her father and brothers, remained closely connected to her through their common interest in her dowry. Thus dowry practice also traces a division within the patriarchal order, describing the conflict between the interests of two types of patriarchal authorities: fathers and husbands. Parents’ active involvement in a daughter’s life did not end in Verona when the daughter received her dowry and moved away, particularly if the daughter had problems with her husband. Law and custom weakened women in sixteenth-century Verona, and particularly wives. Within the hierarchy of the family, they were formally subordinated to men, their fathers, and particularly their husbands, who controlled all money and property, as well as having extensive authority over their wives’ activities. A wife could thus be quite vulnerable to her husband’s mismanagement of her property or misuse of his authority. He could confine her to the house, withhold money from her, beat her, spend all their money, and pawn their goods, including her dowry, although this was not allowed by law. When any of these things happened, the intervention of a wife’s family to protect her interests—and by extension their own—could be essential to correcting the situation. In the paternal marriage rituals fathers impressed grooms with their commitment to protecting their daughters, and the interests they shared, as well as with the father’s strength and influence, which the father would later demonstrate again if there was trouble in the marriage.80 80

Compare Sandra Cavallo and Simona Cerutti, “Female Honor and the Social Control of

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Marriage suits before the episcopal court record many instances of wives’ families—and especially their fathers—stepping in to protect their daughters and their and their daughters’ joint interests against a husband’s mistreatment. For example, when Laura dei Soci’s husband, Cesare dei Gatti, refused to work at his occupation of weaver and the resulting financial strains led him to sell the couple’s furniture, Laura’s father tried to protect his daughter by offering to teach Cesare his own trade of sword maker. Similarly, when Chiara’s husband, Gasparo Tridentino, began beating her regularly and threatening to pimp her, Chiara’s father and brother stepped in to preserve the honor of what they considered their own blood, first beating up her husband and later physically taking Chiara away from her husband back into their house. In an example drawn from the elite, Caterina de Caliari told the diocesan court that as long as her father had been alive, he had protected her from her husband, Lord Giovanni Genovese. Indeed, before her father’s death, the couple had moved in with her parents. Now that her father was dead, she told the court, her husband’s “tyranny” had become too great and she needed to escape from him by obtaining a legal separation.81 These marriages could also illuminate deeper associations of the paternal with the patriarchal more broadly conceived, when the role of the father was played not by the bride’s father or even kinsman, but by an unrelated, socially superior male who was in a position of patron to the bride. It is likely that maidservants’ masters might sometimes have taken this responsibility and there is indeed one example of this in the Veronese marriage suits. Another example is that of Tarsia Morandi, a former concubine of the knight Alessandro Troiano, who found her a husband, provided her with a dowry, had the wedding at his house, gave her away, and sent her off to her new husband in his coach, accompanied by his own sister. When Tarsia’s husband, Giacomo Comello, treated her badly, her former patron intervened. He took Tarsia temporarily back into his household, and, through his agents, effected a reconciliation between the spouses which involved adding fifty ducats to Tarsia’s dowry.82 Use of the paternal style of wedding ritual did not necessarily mean that a father exercised complete control over his daughter’s marriage choice, nor that he 81

Reproduction in Piedmont between 1600 and 1800,” trans. Mary M. Gallucci, in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 81–82. 81 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci; Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Clara di Bartolomeo Fasoli v. Gaspare Tridentino; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina f. q. Domini Bartholomei de Caliariis v. domino Joannes f.q. Domini Simeonis Januensis dictus Camaratus. See also Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1563 Magdalena di Bartholomeo di Laurenzi v. Ventura di Omnibono di Omniboni. 82 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Helisabeth f.q. Gotardi de Tanellis della Custoza; and Cause, b. 1580– 1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino.

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was using the marriage to promote his own interests without reference to his daughter’s well-being. Some fathers involved in this style of marriage did force their daughters to marry men of their own choosing and to make alliance with certain families. Others clearly did not, but sought to take their daughters’ desires into account. What the paternal style of wedding does show, however, is how important people felt it was for a father—or other kinsman or patron—to demonstrate his strength and his interest in his daughter as she was marrying as well as after she was married. In the Veronese examples, fathers were never simply witnesses to their daughters’ weddings. Women who had fathers involved in their lives married with the paternal style of ceremony. Use of this type of ritual signaled the existence of a strong relationship between a bride and her family of origin, most likely based upon affection as well as their commonality of interests. Such a relationship between daughter and father would have shaped the relationship between wife and husband, probably placing limits on a husband’s treatment of his wife. It also suggests that some women could move between considering (or presenting) themselves as wives or as daughters, and in so doing might improve their position in dealing with the men in their lives.

WEDDING RITUALS WITHOUT FATHERS Marrying in a paternal-style wedding indicated that the bride had a close relationship with an adult male, usually her father or another kinsman, but occasionally a nonkin patron. Not all women, however, had this type of relationship, and, significantly, women in this position did not necessarily try to create a paternal-style wedding by simply substituting another man to act as a fictive father. Rather, some women looked to other principles on which to base their weddings. In their nonpaternal weddings, the bride’s mother sometimes presided, but in all the cases the couple themselves, and particularly the bride, had a much more prominent role than in the paternal-style weddings and the consent of the couple, rather than the bride’s guardian, formed the primary basis of the union. To compensate for the lack of a male kin ally, brides looked to nonkin, whom they incorporated into the rituals in a limited way, and appealed to a notion of marriage based on affection. At the time they began to consider marriage, people outside of the elite, women as well as men, were frequently already on their own, effectively outside the control of their parents. Some were orphans with no kin or no kin interested in overseeing their marriages. Others were from the countryside and in service in the city, many miles from their families. Some masters and mistresses may have acted in the place of parents and closely supervised the marriages of those in their service, but one woman’s comment suggests that it was not uncommon for even young servants to

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make marital decisions on their own. When a serving maid from the contado asked her advice on a marital matter, the mistress (according to the mistress’s son’s testimony) responded, “You know him. You can do it yourself. If you want him, take him. But I’m happy to talk to your mother to see if she agrees.” 83 Some people did not want those in their service to marry, which makes it unlikely that they would act in a parental manner in this matter.84 Some brides were both orphans and servants, others were widows, while a few women represented in these cases who married without their parents were concubines of rich men.85 Brides in Verona without parents or other kin could and did marry on their own authority, which was embodied in the expression of consent to the union that was the central and often only act of these weddings. These women, however, also incorporated elements from paternal-style marriages in their weddings in order to indicate that they, too, had others to help protect their interests when they differed from their husbands’. These brides thus emphasized that although they may not have had families or other male protectors, they were not friendless. These were the simplest of all the weddings described in the Veronese marriage suits, probably because they directly involved the interests of the fewest people: the bride and the groom. The outlines of this type of marriage process contained in parties’ capitula and positiones, as well as in witnesses’ descriptions of these marriages do not mention formal preliminaries to the weddings proper, such as formal negotiations or a promissory ceremony like the giure. While this is no guarantee that these did not occur, it would be surprising if they did, for their intent was to formalize the agreement between the groom and the bride’s father. These couples probably arranged the marriages between themselves, as Alvisio di Volpe and Paola di Danti did. His capitula claimed that Alvisio had wanted Paola to be his wife and so one day he asked her and she accepted.86 Although these were simple ceremonies, they were not devoid of ritual elements that had meaning for the bride, the groom, and their guests. One meaning the rituals conveyed was that, although the bride was entering into a position of subordination to her husband, she was not doing so without allies and resources. 83

“tu lo conosci fa per ti se tul voi torelo che per mi sono contenta parlarne con tua madre et vedi se le sia contenta.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Helisabeth f.q. Gotardi de Tanellis della Custoza, Testimony of egregius Petrus filius messeri Alexandri de Zedoldis. Compare Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 155–67. 84 See, for example, Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1550 Andrea de Violis filatorio v. Florio de S. Maria in Stellis e Angela de prella, Testimony of Nob. D. Margarita uxor q. sp. D. Philippi Vergeris. 85 For examples, see Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia; Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino; and Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Magdalena di Pietro Lapicide v. Egregius Agostino a Portello. 86 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Aloysio de Vulpis v. Paula q. Rochi.

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In these simple weddings, the main and often only ritual act was the couple’s exchange of mutual consent to the union, usually followed by the groom’s gift of the ring to the bride. Sometimes the couple did not even have a third party ask them for their consent, but the groom himself conducted the ceremony, as Alvisio di Volpe did in the case just mentioned. According to the witnesses, Alvisio first asked Paola if she was content to accept him as her husband “by words of the present tense as the Holy Mother Church commands.” When she said she was, Alvisio said he accepted her as his wife and put a ring on her finger. 87 Making a marriage solely on her own authority highlighted the bride’s independence from family and kin, but it also suggested her vulnerability and her lack of others who had an interest in her. These brides could, however, use other ritual elements connected to the marriage contract to express the connections they had to people other than their new husbands. In a pattern familiar from paternal weddings, an associate of the bride might preside over the couple’s exchange of consent. Gian Francesco Mantuano, a neighbor of Angela di Calmasino, who was a servant in Verona far from her native village, “did the contract” for her marriage to Florio, that is, he interrogated the bride and groom about whether they consented to the union. Similarly, when Orsola, niece of Grazia, married Facio at the house of her landlord in the presence of many of her friends, her landlord was not simply present, but he said the belle parole for the marriage contract. And when the same Orsola later married Isepo with the apparent presence of fewer of her own associates, one witness reported the inclusion of another meaningful element: Menegri della Calosa, presumably a friend of Orsola, ritually gave Orsola to the groom. This gesture, echoing that of a father giving his daughter, reinforced the giver’s connection to the bride.88 Weddings of those brides who married without any parental presence tended, in the familiar pattern, to take place on the bride’s territory, usually the house where she lived. In about 1538, for example, Angela di Calmasino married in the house of the noble Vergerio family with whom she was in service. The groom, Florio, came from a different neighborhood. Angela’s second marriage, in 1544, to Andrea di Violi, a spinner, similarly took place in the house of a member of the noble Corfino family, where she presumably was in service at the time, and again in a neighborhood different from that of the groom.89 Her noble masters, however,

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“per parola de presente come comanda la santa Madre Chiesa.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Aloysio de Vulpis v. Paula q. Rochi, Testimony of Bartolomeo de Tomba q. Bernardini. 88 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1550 Andrea de Violis filatorio v. Florio de S. Maria in Stellis e Angela de prella; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia. 89 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1550 Andrea de Violis filatorio v. Florio de S. Maria in Stellis e Angela de prella.

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did not participate in the rituals as patrons. Instead, the couple’s consent sufficed, and one of her neighbors said the belle parole for her. At these weddings, associates of the bride also appear to have predominated among the guests, although not as strongly or consistently as at the paternal-style weddings. This suggests that these brides had weaker ties to others to whom they could turn for support than did brides with parents involved. In 1543, when Orsola, an orphan known as the niece of Grazia, married Facio di Zuane Chiaregato from the village of Cerea, who was living in Verona as a servant to the noble Pintemonte family, the wedding took place at her lodgings, with the presence of her landlord and of many other guests who appear to have known her well. In contrast, when she married Isepo Pelacar a few years later, her position appeared weaker. While this wedding, like the first, took place where she lodged, she now lived in a different location, no landlord was involved, and many of the witnesses apparently did not know her well, for they told the court that they did not know her last name. In May of 1537, when Paola di Danti from the village of Marcellise, in Verona as a servant, married Alvisio di Volpe, whose occupation is not given, the wedding took place in the house where Paola was in service, but the identities of the guests are not clear from the witnesses’ testimony. The guests are known to have included some of her associates, in fact, her family—her sister, the sister’s husband, and her brother all attended the wedding (although they apparently played no other role in the marriage)—but no one remembered the names of the others present.90 The women who used this style of marriage ceremony, primarily servants and orphans, would have had dowries of household items and/or small amounts of cash. These dowries, however, would probably not have formed a link between them and their kin, because the source of their dowries was likely not their kin. Women in this position usually worked to earn their own dowries, which might also be supplemented or even paid entirely by charitable foundations or other individuals. To what degree providing a dowry in this way established an enduring bond between the giver and recipient, which probably varied, needs further investigation.91

90 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Aloysio de Vulpis v. Paula q. Rochi. 91 On the quasi-familial relationship between orphan girls and the foundling homes where they were raised, which included providing dowries and other types of aid to them as adults, see Daniela Lombardi, Povertà maschile, povertà femminile. L’ospedale dei mendicanti nella Fierenza dei Medici (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), chap. 4. See also a seventeenth-century marriage suit in Verona, Cause, b. 1614, 1614 Martha dicta la Martanella v. Jo. Battista Patino eius viro, in which the wife sought aid as a “daughter” from the foundling home where she had been raised when she had problems with her husband.

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In a version of the nonpaternal-style wedding, a few mothers were quite active in arranging their daughters’ marriages and the mothers’ involvement could in some circumstances extend to playing an important role in the rituals celebrating the union. This notable involvement sometimes occurred because the bride’s father was dead and his widow was left the acting head of the family. Being a widow, however, was no guarantee that a mother would take charge and some widows left marriage matters for their brothers, sons, or brothers-in-law to oversee.92 But even mothers whose husbands were alive still might play very active roles in their daughters’ marriages when the fathers were not interested in being involved. In the three Veronese court cases that describe marriages in which the bride’s mother took an openly active role, the mothers did not merely substitute for a father or male guardian, but they contributed to the marriage rituals in significant ways. These mothers openly took responsibility for arranging and conducting their daughters’ marriages and fulfilled many of the functions that fathers or male guardians normally did: they negotiated with the groom and/or his family, gave consent for the union, gave the bride by the hand to the groom, and handed over the dowry. Overall, however, in the hands of these mothers, the emphasis of the rituals shifted to give greater prominence to the consent of the couple than to maternal consent to the union, and the notion of affection between spouses came to greater prominence than in other marriages. Some scholars have recently criticized the long-standing assumption that marriages in the past were not formed on the basis of affection. Scores of examples of affectionate marriages and of statements valuing affection in marriage, however, still leave in question the meaning of affection in marriages in the past. None of the Veronese marriage rituals heretofore examined focused on the relationship between the couple in any detail. These three involving the mothers of the brides, however, focus on the consent of the couple, on their relationship to each other, and in two of the cases, on affection. While love may well have been valued for its own sake within marriage, the way mothers and other participants in these cases tied the brides’ and the grooms’ consent to affection suggests that in the absence of the oversight of the bride’s father, they relied on the groom’s affection for the bride to form the basis of a solid and successful marriage. The couple’s consent played a much more prominent role in Caterina Mantuanella’s second wedding, that to Dandan, than it had in her first, paternal-style wedding to Mancin. In contrast to her first wedding, in which men were the only

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See, for example, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Agnetis de Ferro v. Joannes Baptista filius Turrelle; Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Joseph filius Blanchini Pelacanis v. Joanna filia q. Bartolomei del Zumela e Ursula nezza di Gratia; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1544 Flora f.q. Zaneti v. Franciscus filius magistri Stephani Trentini.

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ritual actors, at this wedding Caterina’s foster father was not present and her foster mother, Lucia, directed the proceedings. Lucia followed a basic outline familiar from the paternal-style wedding, but she altered significant details to change it from an alliance negotiated and affirmed between the groom and the bride’s male guardian to one mutually and clearly agreed between the bride and the groom with the agreement of the bride’s mother. The setting was once again the garden of Caterina’s foster family’s house, in the presence of the female members of Caterina’s family along with other friends and neighbors. This time there was no separate public giure at the parish church. Lucia instead fused that promissory stage to the wedding proper. Lucia began the proceedings by giving her own consent to the union, but at the same time soliciting Caterina’s consent as well. She asked Caterina, “Now, are you content that I marry you off ?” “What pleases you, pleases me also,” Caterina replied. Lucia then solicited Dandan’s assent: “Come here. Are you content to take Caterina as the Holy Mother Church commands?” To this Dandan responded, “Yes, ma’am.” After this promissory stage came the contratto di matrimonio, at which point the focus moved to the bride and groom alone. Without the involvement of any third party, Caterina and Dandan joined right hands and exchanged consent in an unusually personal and unformulaic way that emphasized their commitment to each other, if not explicitly their affection for each other. “Do you want me, and do you not have trouble with going here today and [there] tomorrow as I do?” Dandan asked his bride, presumably referring to the frequent movement his occupation as soldier required. She replied, “Yes, sir, I am content and I promise you to act well and to speak well.…” A few days later, at the house of another neighbor in the presence of more guests the couple reaffirmed their marriage: “both confessed they had taken each other as husband and wife” and Dandan put a ring on Caterina’s finger. Then Lucia confirmed her agreement to the union by giving Dandan Caterina’s dowry of some money and a ring. Dandan then kissed Lucia.93

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“La stessa Donna Lucia disse verso la prefata Catherina Mantoanella orsu era contenta chio ti marida et la ditta catherina rispose quello che vi piace a voi me piace anche a mi et al’hora la stessa Donna Lucia disse verso il stesso Dandan vegni qua siete contento di tuor Catherina qui presente per vostra stima sposa come comanda la sancta madre chiesa et lui rispose madonna si.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Bartolomeo q. Petri dicti Perini de Clericis. “Dandanum qui dixit erga prefactam Caterninam hec vel similia verba se me voli e non haveri briga di andar hozi giù e doman [illegible] cosi lhabito [...] La qual Catherina rispose messer si che sum contenta et vi promitto di far ben et dir ben” and “alhora confessati tutti dui havessi tolto per marido e moglie...” Ibid., Testimony of domina Helysabeth uxor Bartholomei q. Petri dicti Perini de Clericis de Nigrario ad presens habitatrix Veronae in contrata sancti Stephani.

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Affection appeared prominently in two other marriages arranged by mothers. In one arranged marriage, the bride’s mother worked hard to establish that the groom understood that the marriage to her daughter was to be based on his affection and companionship and that he was not to enter into it purely to please his kin. This suit, brought in 1542, describes the first steps toward a marriage between Paolo di Domenico di Fioravanti and Pasqua di Niccolo di Brazoni during the previous summer in the village of Povegliano.94 Paolo, deciding it was time for him to marry, consulted his sister, who suggested Pasqua, whom Paolo knew only by sight. Paolo agreed. His sister then approached Pasqua to see if she would be receptive to the idea and Pasqua told her to consult her widowed mother, Fior. In the negotiations and formal promissory ceremony that followed, Fior sought above all to establish that Paolo and her daughter were entering into this marriage of their own free will, not simply to please their kin, and that the groom intended to give her daughter buona compagnia, or good company. This phrase occurs frequently in the Veronese trial records, usually in the breach, to describe a good husband’s respectful, just, and caring treatment of his wife. Pasqua did not have a father or other male guardian to protect her interests in her marriage, although she did have a brother who, probably because of his youth, had little involvement in the proceedings; instead, her widowed mother looked out for her. Unlike wives, widows were not under the authority of a husband, could control their own property, and might have notable authority as heads of families. But they were still not men and their authority, and thus their ability to protect their dependents, was not as certain.95 Fior relied on the groom’s affection for Pasqua to safeguard her daughter as his wife. Early on in the negotiations Fior had told Paolo’s sister explicitly that Paolo had to promise to give Pasqua buona compagnia in the marriage. During the formal promissory ceremony, rather than simply expressing her consent to the union, Fior sought to confirm that Paolo was entering the marriage freely and to bind him to treating her daughter well, conditioning her own consent to the union on his promise. She asked Paolo “if he was taking her daughter to please [his sister] or someone else.” He replied “that he was taking her because he loved her and that he did not have any sister for his boss.” Hearing his affirmation of affection, Fior declared, “I am content to give her to you as your wife.” After this promise, 94 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Pasqua f.q. Nicolai de Brazonis v. Paulus q. Dominici de fioravantis. 95 Evaluations of widowhood have varied from seeing it as a time of freedom from male dominance to, more recently, seeing it as a time of vulnerability and poverty. See Grubb, Provincial Families, 31–33.

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however, according to both sides the matter went no further and the couple decided not to complete the marriage. Soon thereafter, Pasqua married someone else, significantly, “for love” (per amore), according to Pasqua’s brother. 96 Witnesses’ discussions of the 1526 marriage of Angela Sorio to Agostino Montana incorporated a similar notion of affection and consent as guarantors of a successful marriage in the face of irregularities. According to the testimony Angela and her father, Francesco, gave in a 1543 suit investigating the validity of Angela’s later marriage, Agostino, a tax collector at one of the gates to the city, had ardently courted Angela, the daughter of a hatmaker, and thus his social inferior. Because Angela’s father was not very involved with his daughter and wife, overseeing the relationship was left to Angela’s mother, who was dead by the time of this trial. Angela’s mother, unhappy about the social inequality of the couple, reportedly initially refused Agostino’s request for her daughter’s hand on her own authority without consulting her husband. She justified her refusal to Agostino by telling him “we are not your sort.”97 Social inequality put a woman like Angela along with her family at greater disadvantage to a husband than she would have been to a husband who was her social equal. His social superiority compounded the authority he had over her as a man and lessened the ability her family would have to help her. A more powerful man with more powerful friends and greater financial resources would be more likely to have the authorities on his side than would her family. For example, her family’s first worry would be that he would refuse to honor his promises of marriage. If the matter came to court, the social inferiority of a woman in such a suit created a legal presumption against any evidence her family might give in her favor; it was assumed that they would lie to prove her marriage to a higher status man.98 In addition to this social inequality, Angela was in a weaker position because her father evinced little interest in his daughter’s affairs. It is unclear, for example, whether he ever actually met Agostino before the marriage. All of Agostino’s negotiations took place with Angela’s mother, who sometimes consulted with Angela’s father. According to Angela’s father, her mother sought ways to ensure 96 “se el toleva sua figliola a complacia mia o d’alcun altro et havendo esso Polo risposo chel la toleva perche el ge voleva ben et chel non havea alcun sora capo la disse son contenta de dartela per moglie.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Pasqua f.q. Nicolai de Brazonis v. Paulus q. Dominici de fioravantis, Testimony of Pasqua uxor Bartolomei q. Jacobi Perecolis de Poveiano [sister of Paolo]; and ibid., Testimony of Bartholomeus q. Nicolai brazo de dicta villa francha habitator Poveiani. 97 “nui non siem del vostro esser.” Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Angela di Francesco sorio di Verona contrada ferraboi e Agostino Montogna daziario di S. Zeno contra Giacomo Simonato, Testimony of Franciscus f.q. Evangeliste q. Sorii biretarius de Santo Silvestro. 98 COP, Conclusio 1023, 193r–195v, esp. 195r; and Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 132.

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that Agostino would treat Angela well: she looked for signs of Agostino’s affection for Angela and respect for Angela’s family and took Agostino’s persistence to be an indication of his affection. After her initial refusal of consent, Agostino continued visiting Angela until he was “so enamored of her” that he asked again.99 This time, Angela’s mother gave her consent, but on the condition that he prove his commitment to the union to a greater degree than usually required before being allowed to sleep with Angela. It was not enough for him to exchange consent with her; he had also to give her the ring and the marriage had to be publicly recognized before she would allow them to spend the night together. Angela’s father did not attend the wedding, but her mother was present and gave her away. The ceremony, however, focused on Angela and Agostino’s exchange of consent, which they performed without anyone else presiding. Even once Agostino had fulfilled her requirements as to ritual, Angela’s mother balked at actually letting her daughter go and did so only when her husband finally stepped in and made her. Even then, Angela’s mother made sure the marriage was well publicized by making her daughter dress like a bride for a full four months. As these women’s actions show, mothers had the authority to arrange their daughters’ marriages. At the same time, however, that authority was not as secure as that of a father or other male. Despite the openness with which these mothers took control of the proceedings, isolated comments in each case hint at feelings that a mother’s ability to make a marriage was imperfect because of her sex. In Caterina Mantuanella’s case, on the one hand, her mother Lucia’s status as the bride’s mother was enough in the eyes of some to give her authority to conduct the ceremony. One witness told the court that the groom, Dandan, dealt with Lucia as the one who “raised Caterina and whom Caterina called mother.” On the other hand, Lucia’s husband, Sebastiano (many of whose other comments demonstrate that he was particularly enamored of his own position as head of household), several times emphasized to the court that everything Lucia did was after “having asked my permission.”100 In the case of Pasqua’s mother, Fior, a later hand, presumably that of Pasqua’s lawyer, made changes to Pasqua’s capitula that undermined Fior’s independent authority to arrange her daughter’s marriage. In several cases where the document originally stated that Fior alone had done something, the later hand inserted the phrase, “and the said Pasqua’s brother, Bartolomeo,” although no witnesses’ testimony, including the brother’s own, described 99

“el se inamorete tanto in la Agnola.” Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Angela di Francesco sorio di Verona contrada ferraboi e Agostino Montogna daziario di S. Zeno contra Giacomo Simonato, Testimony of Franciscus f.q. Evengeliete q. Sorii biretarius de Santo Silvestro. 100 “educavit... Catherinam et quam ipsa Catherina pro matre vocabat.” Testimony of Domina Helysabeth uxor Bartholomei q. Petri dicti Perini de Clericis; “havendomi dimandato licentia.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus, Testimony of Sebastianus q. Bernardini.

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him playing any active role in the matter. Finally, in the suit regarding Angela’s marriage to Agostino, Angela played down her mother’s role in her marriage to Agostino and emphasized that of her father, claiming, for instance, that her father had presided over her marriage to Agostino. In contrast, Angela’s father, in accord with the testimony of other witnesses, made it clear that he had never been directly involved in either the marriage arrangements or the ceremony. 101 Women who married with nonpaternal marriage rituals did so because they had no pater, other male kin, or other male willing to act as father upon whom to rely, either because the fathers were deceased, like Pasqua’s, or were not interested. In the absence of those connections, in both their marriages and their later lives these women had to look beyond male kin to find support for their interests. When Angela Sorio married Agostino Montana, her father’s involvement was peripheral at best and responsibility for arranging matters fell largely to her mother. And when Angela had problems with her husband, her father did not step in to help her, but her maternal uncle took her in along with her mother, who had fallen ill.102 Women without close ties to their families or without families could also try to construct networks of friends upon whom they could count for help. The case of Maddalena, daughter of the late Pero, a stonecutter, illustrates a fairly successful use of this strategy.103 Maddalena, whose mother kept a vegetable stall, had been a servant of a noblewoman in Verona, where she had met a member of the minor Veronese elite, the honorable (egregius) Agostino a Portello, and became his concubine. According to Maddalena, at a certain point and largely to save his soul Agostino decided to marry her, but would only do so secretly. There was one witness to their contract, however, a neighboring noblewoman, Lady Cecilia, widow of the late Lord Pietro Marandino. Cecilia said the belle parole for the couple as they exchanged consent. Maddalena’s connection with Cecilia continued; the noblewoman later became godmother to Maddalena’s and Agostino’s son, Giacomo. When Agostino denied the marriage, Cecilia helped protect Maddalena’s interests: her testimony convinced the ecclesiastical judge to recognize Maddalena and Agostino’s marriage.

101 He did, however, like Caterina’s foster father, Sebastiano, tell the court that his wife acted in some instances “with my license.” Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Angela di Francesco sorio di Verona contrada ferraboi e Agostino Montogna daziario di S. Zeno contra Giacomo Simonato, Testimony of Franciscus f.q. Evangeliste q. Sorii biretarius de Santo Silvestro. 102 Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Angela di Francesco sorio di Verona contrada ferraboi e Agostino Montogna daziario di S. Zeno contra Giacomo Simonato. 103 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Magdalena di Pietro Lapicide v. Egregius Agostino a Portello. See also Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor.

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NM NM NM In the patriarchal social and familial order of sixteenth-century Verona, which was partly ideal and partly actual, all women were supposed to be in close relationships with men, preferably fathers (or other male kin) or husbands, who managed the women themselves and their property. It was a system that probably could be quite comfortable for a woman with a father and a husband who exercised their authority with care and moderation. The paternal style of marriage rituals represented the ideal of the reproduction of the patriarchal system, the passage of women and property from the oversight of a father to that of a husband. But this style of wedding rituals also pointed out some of the potential areas of conflict born of the residual interests a father had in his married daughter and her dowry. One man’s sphere of authority, like that of a husband, was not necessarily discrete, but could overlap with that of other men, like a father-in-law. In that area of overlap men’s interests could potentially come into conflict, diminishing their authority. There may also have been room for a woman to lessen the effect of each man’s authority over her. This order was not a monolith. As nonpaternal-style weddings show, women without such relationships to a man were not excluded from the social order, but could act, in some circumstances quite well, outside of the protection of a kinsman (or perhaps other man acting as a fictive father). A woman could marry on her own authority, although at the price of greater vulnerability to her husband, and perhaps to the world at large. The social hierarchy further complicates the picture of a social order built on a sexual and familial hierarchy. Some women, such as servants, and, particularly in the Veronese examples, concubines, might come under the oversight of nonkin masters or patrons who would act as fictive fathers. These men might well be of higher status than the women’s real kin or their husbands, which might allow them to interfere with the workings of the family hierarchy. One of the most important changes in marriage and the family that historians have suggested for this period is a progressive isolation of the nuclear family—and hence women—from the influences and oversight of outsiders, friends, neighbors, servants, and more distant kin. In contrast to this, the picture of sixteenth-century Veronese society drawn here incorporates a quite permeable nuclear family. Since most of the information on marriage rituals available for Verona comes from annulment suits before the episcopal court in the forty years prior to the 1563 Tridentine decree establishing new rules on wedding celebrations, it is difficult to evaluate the changes these decrees may have brought about. In a formal sense, after 1563, the parish priest took over several of the functions once served by the bride’s father and neighbors, by himself saying the belle parole and making a record of the

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union, and perhaps placing the bride’s hand in that of the groom.104 But it is likely that people found ways to adapt the wedding rituals to reincorporate fathers and neighbors. Information on the conduct of marriages available in suits for legal separations suggests that there was little change in the permeability of family life, at least through the 1580s. Fathers and brothers continued to involve themselves in the marriages of their female kin; women without male kin continued to look to friends and neighbors to protect their interests.

104

See Klapisch-Zuber, “Zacharias,” in her Women, Family.

M3N

OF

STRATEGIC USES CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE

Across Europe in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, some women and men chose to marry each other without normal publicity or ritual, in secret ceremonies, and often in opposition to their families. These unions, recognized as valid in canon law, were known as clandestine marriages. In sixteenth-century Verona, the court of the bishop, like similar courts across Europe, was filled with plaintiffs—mostly female, many of them pregnant—seeking recognition of marriages that they claimed had been performed without publicity, and that the—usually male—defendants denied had taken place at all. Of the 176 surviving Veronese matrimonial suits for which the cause can be determined, fifty-one, or 29 percent, involved clandestine marriages.1 Most of these were suits to enforce marriage contracts that one party denied had taken place, although by no means all enforcement suits turned on a clandestine contract. The legal ability to marry clandestinely derived from the church’s consensual definition of marriage. Seeking to separate marriage from sexual consummation as part of his efforts to sacramentalize marriage, the twelfth-century theologian Peter Lombard had modified the Roman law of marriage to define marriage as created by the consent of the couple alone. Pope Alexander III adapted Lombard’s conception to form the basis of the medieval doctrine of marriage that prevailed until the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century, whereby a valid marriage required only either the consent of the bride and groom expressed in words of the present tense (verba de presenti), or their consent in words of the future tense (verba de futuro) followed by sexual consummation.2 No permission from any parent or official, no religious blessing, no witnesses, no public recognition, nor record of any kind were needed to make the union valid in the eyes of the church. 1 The proportion of Veronese suits may have been on the low end when compared to courts elsewhere. See, for example, Brundage, Law, Sex, 501; Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 28; and Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek, “Aspects du lien,” 43, 50, 55, 61. 2 Brundage, Law, Sex, 262–64, 268–70; and Jedin, Il Concilio di Trento, vol. 4, t. 2, 141–73.

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One important result of this definition was that people could marry secretly in opposition to their families’ plans for them and have the marriage upheld by the church court. At the same time, however, religious and secular legal sanctions for marrying irregularly proliferated and over time became more harsh, reaching their apogee in the sixteenth century. Joining them in this century were pointed condemnations of the practice and its theoretical and legal underpinings along with increasing calls for reforms to end it, all fueled by the growing emphasis on paternal authority. The 1563 Council of Trent decrees reforming Catholic marriage law sought to end clandestine marriage by establishing that a valid marriage required the presence of a priest and two or three witnesses at the couple’s exchange of consent.3 This situation has led historians—most looking at the law and few examining actual practice—to depict clandestine marriage as a problematic expression of individual will that was driven by the desperate longings of love and upheld by the impractical and abstract consensual definition of marriage. As such, they see the practice existing outside of and in opposition to the rational family-based medieval and early modern marriage system, which treated marriage as a part of family financial and social strategies rather than as an interior individual matter. By extension, clandestine marriage and the consensual definition that underlay it are also seen to be foreign to and in conflict with the patriarchal order more generally. 4 A fuller, more nuanced picture of clandestine marriage emerges, however, from an examination of matrimonial court cases and other related records involving the practice in the city and particularly the rural portions of the diocese of Verona between about 1530 and 1585. These show that while clandestine marriage certainly produced problems, the notions of marriage that this practice expressed were not foreign to the Veronese marriage system properly understood, nor were the motives of the participants exclusively love, although that certainly formed an important element. Clandestine marriage enabled some Veronese men and women—particularly those from outside the elite—to try to improve their 3 See, for example, Harrington, Reordering Marriage; Trevor Dean, “Fathers and Daughters: Marriage Laws and Marriage Disputes in Bologna and Italy, 1200–1500,” in Marriage in Italy, 1300– 1650, ed. Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 89–99; Cozzi, “Padri, figli”; Gaudemet, Mariage, esp. 232–33; Anne Lefebvre-Teillard, Les officialités à la veille du Concile de Trente (Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1973), esp. 174–76; and JulietteTurlan, “Recherches sur le mariage dans la pratique coutumière (XIIe-XVIes),” Revue historique de droit français et etranger 35 (1957): esp. 503. 4 See, for example, Harrington, Reordering Marriage, esp. 169–214; Le Bras, “Doctrine,” 2195; Michael Sheehan, “The Formation and Stability of Marriage in the Fourteenth Century: Evidence of an Ely Register,” Medieval Studies 33 (1971): esp. 229; Ferrante, “Matrimonio disciplinato,” esp. 901–2; Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Cozzi, “Padri, figli”; and Cozzi, “Donna.”

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social and economic status. Unraveling their strategic use of this practice exposes the inner workings of the marriage and social systems in this region and places clandestine marriage at the heart of social and generational tensions that were inherent to Veronese society, not outside of it.

CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE IN THE VERONESE DIOCESE The primary source of information on the practice of clandestine marriage in the diocese of Verona is the cause papers of suits heard before the diocesan court between 1538 and 1593. Women brought most of the fifty-one suits known to involve clandestine marriage in order to enforce marriage contracts they claimed had taken place in secret, and which the men now denied. Technically, the plaintiffs in most suits claimed that they had contracted a marriage promise by verba de futuro, which the couple then transformed into a canonically valid marriage by subsequent consummation. A few suits claimed that the couple had contracted a full-fledged marriage by verba de presenti, but since these, too, almost invariably noted that carnal knowledge had followed the contract, it is clear that the distinction between the two types of contract in canon law had little meaning in popular practice. These plaintiffs all wanted the defendants to affirm the secret marriages publicly. Other alleged clandestine marriages, however, come to light in the course of different kinds of suits, primarily those brought by men to annul marriages they claimed they were forced to contract by families of women who alleged that there had been clandestine marriage promises or contracts. The records of the episcopal visitations conducted during Bishop Giberti’s tenure provide a small amount of additional information about clandestine marriage, as do this bishop’s prescriptions about the laity’s marriage practices. A few accounts in the earliest visitations contain a level of detail, including witnesses’ testimony, that make them comparable to the court cases; but as time went on and the visitors’ procedures became more streamlined, the entries become frustratingly sketchy and formulaic. In most cases there is so little detail that it is impossible to tell if the marriage was clandestine, making what would look to be a good foil for the court cases actually of little use. People from all levels of society appear to have participated in clandestine marriages. Of the fifty-one suits involving clandestine marriage, eleven involved members of the Veronese and/or Venetian elite. They will not be considered in detail here because the circumstances, and thus the incentives and risks for the participants, were very different from those of common people. Of the forty suits involving couples from outside the elite, thirty (75 percent) originated in the Veronese contado and ten (25 percent) in the city itself (table 3.1). This proportion is closely in line with the distribution of population between the urban and

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rural portions of the diocese: roughly 50,000 (25 percent) urban and 150,000 (75 percent) rural. Given the great social and environmental differences between the city and countryside, urban and rural inhabitants probably used clandestine marriage differently. This chapter therefore focuses on the largest group of cases, the thirty nonelite suits of rural origin. Table 3.1: Social Status of Parties to Suits Involving Clandestine Marriage Heard Before the Ecclesiastical Court of the Diocese of Verona by Origin of Suit, 1538–1593 SUITS ORIGIN

TOTAL (NO.)

VERONA (NO.)

COUNTRYSIDE (NO.)

OUTSIDE VERONESE DIOCESE (NO.)

Elite

11

8

0

3

Common

40

10

30

0

Total

51

18

30

3

SOCIAL STATUS

The cause papers of these suits, and particularly the testimony of the parties and of their witnesses, give a fairly detailed picture of the practice of clandestine marriage in the rural portion of the Veronese diocese, showing the types of people who participated in it and their motivations. At least one clear pattern emerges: relatively wealthy peasant men used clandestine marriage to marry somewhat poorer peasant women. Both the men and the women were gambling that marrying in this irregular fashion would help to improve their positions. A woman usually did not use clandestine marriage to marry against the will of her family, but with their consent, as part of a family strategy to better their joint social and economic position. 5 The richer man, in contrast, married clandestinely to try to carve out some autonomy from a superior, usually a father, but sometimes an uncle or a lord. Historians using litigation records in order to understand everyday life need to do so with caution, however, and consider the reliability of the descriptions of the practice the parties and their witnesses gave to the court.6 Litigants, who were 5

Compare Alison Wall, “For Love, Money, or Politics? A Clandestine Marriage and the Elizabethan Court of Arches,” The Historical Journal 38 (3) (1995): 511–33; and A. J. Finch, “Parental Authority and the Problem of Clandestine Marriage in the Later Middle Ages,” Law and History Review 8 (1990): 189–205. 6 For approaches to this problem, see Thomas Kuehn, “Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna,” Journal of Modern History 61 (1989): esp. 518, 532–33; and Natalie Zemon XXXX

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often helped by lawyers who specialized in marriage litigation, would have shaped their claims according to the legal requirements of their particular case. Moreover, lying was, by all accounts, a serious and persistent problem in sixteenth-century legal suits. Finally, legal suits may distort the picture of who was likely to participate in clandestine marriages, for not all types of participants may have been equally likely to bring litigation, or have suit brought against them. In these suits, the two versions of the truth are rarely reconcilable. On the question of whether or not a couple had married, one side was lying and the other was not—although to confuse matters, each story might contain elements of truth. In at least one suit, the defendant convinced the judge that the plaintiff ’s quite reliable-seeming witnesses were the defendant’s enemies, who had been paid to lie.7 A woman who had become pregnant outside of marriage—as had some of these plaintiffs—had a great incentive to claim falsely that she had married someone clandestinely, particularly if he were well-off and thus likely able to come up with a dowry for her. For a man who had actually married a woman clandestinely and then changed his mind for some reason, the incentive to lie could be equally strong, particularly if he thought he could buy the woman off with a dowry. These two examples also demonstrate how certain types of people, and thus certain clandestine marriage scenarios, may have been more likely than others to emerge in the court suits. On one level, however, all the stories told, whether strictly speaking true or not and despite their legal context, can be relied upon for understanding some aspects of the practice of clandestine marriage. The way some clandestine marriage suits were brought resulted in unusually unmediated descriptions of the practice. Some cases used a less expensive, expedited procedure that omitted the formal documents such as the positiones and capitula (and perhaps also the lawyers), relying instead on the notary’s direct questioning of the parties. Other cases originated in authorities’ suspicions about a couple’s relationship and so began with the questioning of the parties, usually by their parish priest, which was included in the full court record. As a result, a significant proportion of the descriptions of clandestine marriages in the Veronese records comes from the direct testimony of the female plaintiffs without the intervention of a lawyer.8 A notable consistency 7

Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987). See also, Ferraro, introduction to Marriage Wars, for an application of Davis’s methodology to marriage court cases. 7 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi. 8 See, for example, Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Benedetto Rottari v. Bernardina del fattor; Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Pasqua de Brazonis v. Paolo Fioravanti; and two suits between the same couple, Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta XXX

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also unites the stories about clandestine marriage, some of which were very likely largely true, and others of which were essentially true because the groom ultimately admitted it.9 Additionally, witnesses who did not claim either to have witnessed the wedding or to have heard the alleged groom admit to the marriage testified that they found the woman’s claim convincing, and that common opinion (publica vox et fama) did as well. In short, even those stories that were not true, could have been, and so for purposes of understanding the outlines of the practice, they will be treated as such. If these suits do not present a complete picture of the practice of clandestine marriage, they do depict important aspects of it. At the most basic level, a clandestine marriage was a marriage performed without normal publicity, which could later result in confusion and deception. Over the centuries, church councils, bishops, and canon law experts produced more specific definitions in order to determine which marriages were clandestine and therefore punishable. They variously argued that lack of banns, lack of sufficient numbers of witnesses, or an improper location made a marriage clandestine.10 None of these legal definitions, based on the lack of adequate publicity, however, fully captures what distinguished clandestine from “normal” marriages in the diocese of Verona. Here as in the rest of the Italian peninsula, marriages normally took place out of the public eye, in private houses with few witnesses, and, at least among the common folk, the announcement of banns was apparently not common prior to the Council of Trent. Because of this high degree of privacy, disputes could even arise over the existence of marriages conducted according to the normal process. Three Veronese suits, for example, resulted from the grooms’ attempts simply to deny having contracted marriages that had been arranged and attended by their own parents as well as those of the bride at the bride’s house. 11 These have not been counted among the clandestine marriages discussed here. This general legal definition, moreover, was applicable across Europe, and thus does not capture the specific nature of clandestine marriage in the sixteenthcentury Veronese diocese. Above all, it does not take into account the motives of those who chose to participate in such marriages. These motives gave clandestine 9

Ferrari v. Battista della Spada. On summary procedure, see O. F. Robinson, “Canon Law and Marriage,” The Juridical Review (1984): esp. 28. 9 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli. 10 Gottlieb, “Meaning,” 52, 67; Sheehan, “Marriage Theory”; Michael M. Sheehan, “The Formation and Stability of Marriage in the Fourteenth Century: Evidene of an Ely Registerm” Medieval Studies 33 (1971): 228-33; and Brundage, Law, Sex, 499. 11 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Domenica Lavezarii v. Andrea de Andriolis; Atti, b. 7a, 1542 Pasqua Andreotti v. Gian Donato Gira; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Peregrina de Cociis v. Giuseppe de Bettinis.

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marriage its meaning in this specific place and time and distinguish it from marriages contracted without publicity in other regions and periods. In the clandestine unions described in the Veronese suits, the couples took a risk by committing themselves quite far in the relationship—primarily, beginning to have sexual relations—without first making sure that the marriage was publicly recognized. This omission enabled the groom later to deny the union. Some of the participants took these risks out of carelessness, resulting in what might be called “accidental” clandestine marriages. Others, intentionally, and even with deliberation, risked making such a commitment without public recognition. To understand how these “intentional” clandestine marriages worked in Verona, and ultimately why people chose to engage in them, however, it is necessary first to look more closely at the “normal” marriage process already examined in the previous chapter. Even normal, nonclandestine weddings in Verona were marked by such privacy and ambiguity that Bishop Giberti was troubled, not just by the incidence of clandestine marriage, but also by the possibility for confusion and deception generated in nonclandestine practice. Although in the sixteenth century ordinary people, like canon lawyers, did sometimes try to pinpoint the event that made a marriage, marriage in practice was not a juridically definable moment, but a process. The key to marrying was the often long process of publicizing a marriage, that is, establishing it in the knowledge of the community. There could be quite an extended period in which the existence of a marriage was ambiguous, and before a marriage was fully publicized, couples could and did dissolve their marriages by mutual agreement without (much) scandal. The common people of Verona did not have a conception of what is today considered an engagement—what the medieval and early modern church considered a contract made by verba de futuro, that is, a promise to marry, as distinct from marriage proper, made by verba de presenti.12 In reports of clandestine and normal marriages alike, at this first stage couples used words in various forms that were effectively interchangeable in the minds of the participants. Many couples used the present tense, reportedly saying, “I accept you as my wife/husband,” while others referred to the future, saying, “I promise to take you as my wife/husband,” or even “I will never take any other woman/man than you as my wife/husband.” 13 Everyone treated all these phrases as equally binding, although for the purposes of the 12 Compare similar practices described in Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Percorsi variegati, percorsi obbligati: Elogio del matrimonio pre-tridentino,” in Matrimoni in dubbio. Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), esp. 35–38; and Henry Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 281–94. 13 For examples, see Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Maria Cobelli v. Angelo Felici (especially significant as a post-Tridentine suit that testifies to the continuity of earlier marriage practices); Cause, b. XXX

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cause papers, the words in the present tense constituted a binding marriage by themselves, while those in the future tense had to be followed by sexual relations in order to be considered a marriage. This distinction, however, was almost always irrelevant in practice, as we saw above, because almost all of the contracts in whatever tense were followed by sexual relations as a matter of course. With just this agreement, and prior to the public celebration of the couple’s exchange of consent and the gift of the ring (desponsatio) of the nozze, popular practice held a couple to be husband and wife. The agreement was usually quite private. It might take place first just between the couple, but relatively quickly the groom generally came to an agreement with the bride’s family, which again usually took place at home, without many or any witnesses.14 In common parlance, the agreement was the maridazzo; the woman was maridata, the man, maridato. One might be tempted to translate these as “engagement” and “engaged,” but they were actually closer —although not identical—to “marriage” and “married.”15 The way people used words with the same root indicates the significance of this state. An unmarried person asked about his or her marital status would reply that he or she was “da maridar,” or available to be married, not “da sposar.” Following the maridazzo, a couple’s kin and neighbors would begin to call them husband and wife. For example, when the court asked Caterina Remondina why she called Gallo Pelato her husband if he had not given her a ring, she replied, “because he promised me.”16 Similarly, this conception of marriage could lead a man to say, as Bartolomeo Giuliani allegedly did, “Whether [my father] is content or not, I want to marry (sposar) [Olivia] because she is my wife.”17 Although a marriage promise did make a man and woman husband and wife, it was not enough to make the union irrevocable. A private agreement between two 14

1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini; Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada. 14 Recall, for example, Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Pasqua de Brazonis v. Paolo Fioravanti, discussed in chapter 2 above. 15 For examples, see Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane; and Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini. 16 “[Inquista] si ipse Gallus eam desponsavit respondit quod non. [Inquista quod] ergo est ipse Gallus maritus respondit perche il mi ha promesso.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina remondina v. Gallo Pelato. For similar formulations, see also Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1552 Domenica Forti v. Franco Vincenti; and Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi, in which Anastasia testified, “Nicolo [...] è mio marito e mi ha promesso gia anni sei.” 17 “O contento o non contento, io la voglio sposar perche e mia moglie” (emphasis added). Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Olivia Faustini v. Bartolomeo Giuliani. Compare Seidel Menchi, “Percorsi variegati,” 40–41.

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individuals, or between two families, became established as a marriage—and in an important sense real—through the publication of the agreement. This occurred in two ways. One was by formal ceremonies such as the nozze discussed in the previous chapter. Even these, however, could take place in a private setting. Of great importance, therefore, was the other common means of publication: the everyday behavior of the couple and their families. Following the maridazzo, a couple would begin to act like husband and wife. The new husband would come to visit his wife regularly to have meals, staying the night and sleeping with her.18 By themselves, however, sexual relations did not make the relationship more firm. It is important to distinguish between this notion and the canon law understanding of the same situation. Under canon law, a marriage promise followed by sexual relations made a valid marriage. According to the popular Veronese conception, in contrast, the commitment itself made the couple into husband and wife, so long as the couple continued the marriage process by demonstrating their commitment to the union and thus making the marriage increasingly public. Conducting a sexual relationship was one of the most important ways that a couple indicated to the community that they had agreed to marry. In this way, the man in regularly and openly coming to the woman’s house, and the woman and her family in allowing him to come, signaled to the rest of the community that a marriage had taken place. Witnesses in the suits frequently referred to the practice of a man’s visiting a respectable woman in this way as a sign to friends and neighbors that the couple had agreed to marry, for the assumption was that her family would not have consented to such behavior without marriage.19 Prior to full public recognition of the marriage, a couple could choose to go their separate ways with a minimum of scandal. Several Veronese suits illustrate this phenomenon. Maria de Albertis and Giovanni Bersanti, a courting couple from the village of S. Giovanni Lupatoto, for example, testified that at a certain point they began to discuss marriage, came to some sort of agreement, and then had sex together a few times. For an unspecified reason Maria and Giovanni then decided not to continue with the relationship. No one knew of their commitment to each other, and each went on to marry another person. Another suit that began in 1546 18 On similarities in sixteenth-century Feltre, compare Anna Maria Lazzeri and Silvana Seidel Menchi, “‘Evidentemente gravida,’ ‘Fides oculata,’ voce pubblica e matrimonio controverso in Valsugana (1539-1544),” in Matrimoni in dubbio: Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001), esp. 322–25; for Catalonia, see Kamen, Phoenix, 281–84. 19 See, for example, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Zeno q. Antonii de Zananis de Marano; and Caterina’s capitula in Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Bredis v. Vincenzo Scarduan.

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but dealt with events from more than twenty years earlier illustrates further how a marriage contracted but not publicized could effectively cease to exist. In about 1524, according to Caterina di Matteo, her father had arranged for her to marry Bartolomeo Tinto, whom she did not want to marry. After the couple exchanged consent in the normal way before their families, Caterina refused to continue with the union and the marriage effectively dissolved. Both Caterina and Bartolomeo eventually married others.20 Disputes could arise relatively easily at the point of the maridazzo, when a man and a woman were acting like a married couple but their marriage was still not firmly established in public perception. Such a commitment made in private could accidentally become a “clandestine marriage” if one party—usually the man— decided not to continue with the union, and the other party—usually the woman—did not want to release him from his commitment. Some men might have taken advantage of the period of ambiguity to deceive women with promises they never meant to keep, but it is more likely that often the conflict was the result of carelessness, pregnancy, and changed minds. The example of Stefano di Giovanni Barlotti illustrates a potential problem. Stefano had been courting two women, one of whom was Caterina di Giovanni Paiarini. He apparently got carried away and committed himself to both of them at roughly the same time. According to Caterina’s mother, Stefano had made his intentions clear to her, and on the strength of his promise she allowed her daughter to have sexual relations with him. She did not, however, adequately ensure that Stefano’s intentions were established clearly in the minds of the larger community. When it became clear that Stefano was going to honor his commitment to the other woman, Caterina could not afford simply to let the matter of the marriage drop because she had become pregnant. Other women were like Domenica de Francescini, who was even less cautious than Caterina, became pregnant, and was deserted, she claimed, after agreeing to have sexual relations with a man on the strength of his promise made to her in complete privacy, without first consulting her parents.21 Some clandestine marriages were thus the result of behavior that was probably not unusual. Many Veronese couples married “clandestinely” by following what was actually a normal procedure in this region: they made private promises to each other, which they and their community considered highly binding, and which only slowly lost their secret—in the sense of very private—character to 20 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Maria de Albertis v. Giovanni Bersanti (in the court papers the couple disagreed, however, over whether it was an explicit promise to marry). Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Ufficio vescovile v. Caterina di Matteo tinctor e Bartolomeo tinctor. 21 Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Caterina Paiarini v. Stefano Barlotti; and Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1561 Domenica de Francescini v. Lorenzo Busele.

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become publicly recognized. A combination of bad luck and imprudence, primarily having sexual relations very quickly after an initial commitment, could lead to disputes in which these relationships were treated as clandestine marriages in ecclesiastical court. Some couples, however, not out of carelessness but intentionally kept their marriage secret for a longer period than was normal. They would deliberately make marriage commitments to each other, generally without any witnesses, as was usual. They would then seek the approval of the bride’s family, might repeat their contract before the family, and even sometimes go through the ring ceremony in private. They would, however, try to keep the fact of the marriage secret for a time because the groom’s family opposed the union and the groom needed time to win them over. Bishop Giberti found highly troubling the ambiguity that the Veronese routinely tolerated (and perhaps sought) in their marital practices. He wanted to bring all marriage arrangements into the light of day in order to enforce publicity and give clarity to definitions. The bishop devoted an entire book of his Constitutiones outlining the running of the diocese to the subject of marriages and betrothals. One of the main themes of the thirteen chapters of the book was ensuring that marriages were arranged with sufficient publicity to prevent confusion about whether a couple had actually married and thus to avoid disputes and conflicts as well as sin. Chapter 2, entitled “The forms to be observed in contracts of engagement and marriage, and how detested clandestine marriages are,” begins by citing the problems lack of publicity caused with all marriages, not just clandestine ones: “We often see that…whence friendship and affinity are sought, hate and contention begin.” The remedy he proposed was greater publicity in all marriages: Let no one afterwards presume that engagements or marriages were contracted unless they were done in churches or public places or homes of relatives, and in the presence of their parish priest and the fathers and mothers of the contracting parties, if they have them, or if they do not have them, in the presence of near kinsmen of both parties, if they want to be present, and of other worthy witnesses who can and are allowed to testify to the clear consent of both parties. 22 22

“De forma servanda in contactibus sponsalium, & matrimonii, & quam detestenda sint clandestina matrimonia…saepissime…vidimus; ut unde amicitia, & affinitas quaeritur, odia, & contentiones oriantur…ne deinceps quisquam praesumat sponsalia per verba de futuro, vel de presenti, ac etiam sub annuli subarratione matrimonium contrahere, nisi in ecclesia, vel locis publicis, aut domibus parentum, & cum praesentia sacerdotis proprii, & patris, & matris, contrahentium, si habuerint, aut, si non habuerint, cum praesentia proximorum proprinquiorum utriusque partis, si adesse voluerint, & aliorum testium fide dignorum, qui de utriusque partis consensu clare testificari ubique possint, & valeant.” CON, bk. 7, chap. 1.

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Giberti intended these requirements not only to end marriages intentionally contracted in secret, but also to lessen the privacy normal in Veronese marriages. It was not normal Veronese practice to call in a priest, nor was it considered necessary to have nonfamily members present, particularly at the promissory stage, although some people did. Bishop Giberti and his successors wanted to replace the flexible but ambiguous notion of marriage as a process containing several important events with a conception of marriage as one event that brought about an irrevocable transformation.23 He thus sought to enforce on his subjects a firm distinction between engagement (sponsalia di futuro) and marriage (sponsalia di presenti or matrimonio sub annuli subarratione). The first, provisional state did not authorize couples to have sex or otherwise act as husband and wife, but was revocable; the second, which made them husband and wife, was irrevocable. Entitling chapter 2 of the Constitutions “Grooms should not visit the homes of brides before the gift of the ring,” he devoted it to the distinction between the two states: And because some brides and grooms, unmindful of the health of their immortal souls, long after the engagement (sponsalia di futuro) has been contracted will both change their minds, and in many cases seek loosening, sometimes even once sexual intercourse has been performed, we forbid the aforesaid [i.e., loosening] [done] secretly or otherwise, [and] the contracting parties ought to have dealings with each other, and meet, but never visit the house of the other party, as if grooms and brides; and they should not be called grooms and brides until the marriage (sponsalia) is publicly confirmed and thus brought to light.…24 While Bishop Giberti was concerned with teaching the laity to arrange all marriages more cautiously and with greater publicity, the somewhat different phenomenon, in which secrecy was intentional, also deeply disturbed him as it did other authorities. The bishop’s 1541 prescriptions and a somewhat later secular 23

On the distinction between marriage as a juridical moment and as a process, see John L. Comaroff and Simon Roberts, Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute in an African Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), esp. Intro. and chap. 5. For efforts similar to Giberti’s but in Catalonia, see Kamen, Phoenix, 284–85. 24 Et quoniam nonnulli sponsi animarum suarum salutis immemores facti, postquam per multum temporis post sponsalia de futuro contracta simul fuerint conversati, solutionem quaerunt multis occasionibus, nonnumquam etiam secuta copula carnali, inhibemus ne secrete, aut aliter, quam praedictum est, contrahentes debeant ad invicem conversari, aut commisceri, sed neque domos alterius partis, quasi sponsi vel sponsae frequentare omnino: neque sponsi, neque sponsae appellari, donec talia sponsalia publice, sicut praefertur, fuerint confirmata…,” CON, bk. 7, chap. 2.

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law Venice applied to all the cities of the Veneto display strikingly similar conceptions of the problems with this practice. Surprisingly, unlike similar writings in Germany and France, neither Italian rule referred to the issue of disobedience to parents.25 Rather, both treated clandestine marriage as the consequence of men marrying women in secret intending to “despoil them of their virginity,” and of “credulous” (credulae) women who believed their promises. These men could then desert the naive women, leaving them with no way to hold the men to their promises. Bishop Giberti’s prescription concluded with a dire assessment of the fate of such women: “afterward they are compelled to go begging and to be held contemptible by all.”26 The Veronese suits show that men’s deception was indeed the deepest fear of the women and their families who intentionally risked participating in clandestine marriages, which is probably why the prescriptions seeking to discourage such marriages focused on this aspect of it. Explaining the practice by men’s desires to deceive, coupled with women’s naiveté, is insufficient, however. Some men bent on seduction certainly used such a ruse.27 However, if deception were the exclusive or even a common outcome, few women would have continued to participate in the practice. The ability of a few men to deceive a few women in this way instead rested on a well-established and complex practice in which men often did secretly contract marriage with women in (more or less) good faith. It is this side of the practice that will be examined. At the other extreme from deception, modern commentators have often suggested, or simply assumed, that love alone explains why couples faced with parental opposition decided to marry clandestinely. While affection certainly played a part in motivating these Veronese, it was just one of multiple motivating forces. For men and women alike, choosing to marry clandestinely was a strategic as well as an emotional decision. People took the risks associated with marrying clandestinely not just to marry those they loved, but in hope of more general improvement in their 25 See Harrington, Reordering Marriage, 91–92, 187–89, 197–203. The issue of parental consent was not absent from Veronese writings and elsewhere both Giberti and Tullio Crispoldi did urge children to obtain such consent. 26 “postea mendicare coguntur, & omnibus contemptibiles haberi,” CON, bk. 7, chap. 1. The Venetian law sought to punish the “scelerati che ardiscono sotto pretesto di matrimonio pigliar donne con la parola sola de presenti... senza osservar la solennità ordinaria della Chiesa e che dipoi violate & godute per qualche tempo le lassano... esser tal matrimonio contra gli ordini del Sacro Concilio di Trento onde le povere donne restano ingannate...” ASVR, Lettere Ducali, v. 25 (25 May 1574–21 July 1580), c. 216v. 27 See for examples, Lazzeri and Seidel Menchi, “‘Evidentemente gravida’”; and Lucia Ferrante, “Gli sposi contesi. Una vicenda bolognese de metà Cinquecento,” in Matrimoni in dubbio: Unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001).

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overall status. For the men, succeeding in marrying for love was itself probably a sign of having reached the desired status. The specific goals of each sex differed. The early modern patriarchal social and legal systems placed young men in an ambiguous position between a theoretical extreme dependence during the lives of their fathers and actual limited, but officially unrecognized, independence. For some men, therefore, clandestine marriage offered a way to improve their personal status and increase their honor by establishing themselves as actors independent of their fathers—as adults who chose their own wives (and thus directed their own lives)—rather than letting their fathers determine it for them. For Veronese women, however, the strategy of clandestine marriage did not involve independence. It was instead a joint endeavor between a woman and her family, who together risked their reputation in hope of improving the family’s social status through the daughter’s good marriage. Two examples of Veronese couples who intentionally contracted clandestine marriages in response to the groom’s family’s opposition to their match are especially reliable because in both cases the groom eventually admitted that the marriage had in fact taken place as the bride said it had. These accounts show that the important events in a clandestine marriage took place at the stage of the maridazzo. The aim of the participants was to gain the support of the groom’s family by slowly making the marriage fully public, behaving as husband and wife and eventually celebrating the nozze. Notable in both cases are the bride and her family’s awareness of the risks they were undertaking and the way both grooms tried to show that they were independent actors worthy of trust. In April of 1547, Santa Tombolin, an inhabitant of the village of Cerea in the fertile plains in the southern portion of the diocese, brought a suit claiming that she had contracted marriage at the previous Christmas season with Francesco Sevarolli, the son of a wealthy member of the local peasant elite. 28 Francesco initially denied her claims. According to Santa’s witnesses, however, it had long been clear to their neighbors that Francesco wanted to marry Santa despite his father’s opposition to the match. Francesco reportedly told many people of his plans to defy his father and marry Santa anyway. According to Santa and her witness, he eventually did do so, but in secret. Having come to an understanding with Santa, Francesco settled matters with her father informally and then later came back with a friend to perform the marriage contract with Santa and her father at their house. A witness’s description of this ceremony makes clear the risks and consequent tensions inherent in marrying secretly, in opposition to the groom’s family’s wishes.

28

Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli.

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The bride and her family feared that the secrecy would only give Francesco an opportunity to take advantage of them. When Francesco arrived and announced his intention to take Santa as his wife, her father was cautious and wanted more witnesses: he told Francesco they had to wait until his son Bartolomeo, who was out on an errand, returned. While they waited, Santa’s father warned Francesco, “You’d better look out if you’ve come here to make a fool of me.” Here as well as at several other points Francesco sought to reassure Santa’s father that he was worthy of trust, reiterating that his intentions were honorable, and even pointing to his own self-interest: “I am [here] to do myself honor,” he said.29 Notwithstanding Francesco’s pleas for secrecy, word of the union spread quickly via Santa and her family, whose interests lay in getting public knowledge of the marriage established as soon as possible. At first, Francesco also admitted the union, confidently predicting success to one witness.30 Later, however, the continued paternal opposition began to have its effect. Francesco began to deny the marriage, claiming, at least to the court, that he had been forced into marrying Santa. In late August, four months after the start of the trial, however, for reasons that are unclear, Francesco told the court he would after all accept Santa publicly as his wife. The court heard a similar tale the following year, in which Maria de Giacomelli recounted how she contracted marriage with Graciadeo Ceraini, an account which Graciadeo’s testimony confirmed.31 Both their accounts highlighted his persistence and ardor and her own prudence and caution, as well as the centrality of the issue of his family’s consent. Maria and Graciadeo both told the court how he had pleaded with Maria for years to marry him and she had always refused. Finally, convinced by his persistence, Maria consented to take him as her husband, but insisted that she would go no further—that is, not go away with him or have sex— until her mother and brother gave their consent. Following their agreement, Graciadeo went repeatedly to ask her mother and brother for Maria’s hand, but they always put him off. Graciadeo tried to convince them of his sincerity, despite his family’s opposition to the match. After several tries, they finally agreed to the union and performed a private ceremony, giving her to him by the hand then and there. Graciadeo admitted to the court, “I touched her right hand, accepting her as my wife.” Even then, so great were their fears of

29

“guarda che tu non sia venuto per assogiarmi” and “sum per farmi honor.” Cause, b. 1544– 1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Bonaventura q. Sebastiani de Paganinis dictus della mecha. 30 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Joannes f. Christophor Forati. 31 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini.

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betrayal that they refused to let Maria sleep with Graciadeo until he had “sposato” her, or married her with a ring. Graciadeo, insulted by their refusal to trust and keep their promise to him, fulfilled their fears by publicly denying that the union had taken place. When brought before the ecclesiastical notary, however, Graciadeo quickly admitted all that had taken place and merely asked that “if this is a marriage, then I want it to be, and I want her for my wife; and if it is not marriage I want it not to be.”32 A search for independence is an underlying theme of many of the Veronese clandestine marriage suits. While some men probably did contract marriage in secret with no intention of ever admitting the union publicly, for many men the process of contracting a clandestine marriage was a test of their ability to act on their own authority. In nearly all the alleged clandestine marriages for which a possible reason for secrecy can be determined (a total of fifteen), plaintiffs or their witnesses claimed that the groom had married clandestinely to avoid his family’s opposition to his choice of wife. In a further three cases they claimed that his noble employer opposed the marriage. A groom’s goal was apparently to try to establish a measure of independence with respect to his family, but not to go through with the marriage at the cost of rupture with them. When a man failed to convince his family to accept his marriage—and with it his bid for self-determination—he would deny the union, setting the stage for a dispute over a clandestine marriage, particularly when the woman was pregnant. A man of the age to consider marriage in this diocese was in an ambiguous position. He was likely still legally and economically dependent upon his father or grandfather, or if they were not living, economically dependent upon another male kinsman or on his mother. But he was also maturing and getting closer to achieving the status of the independent head of his own household. For some men, this was probably only a potential conflict. Some fathers probably did not exert their full theoretical authority and gave their sons significant autonomy in choosing their own wives. Stefano di Giovanni Barlotti, for example, whose father was living, apparently had such freedom that he managed to contract marriage with two women at the same time.33 Many sons from among the common folk of the countryside, whose families owned little if any land and who earned their own living by their labor, were likely in a position of enough economic independence from their fathers to make paternal legal authority meaningless. They could marry any woman who would have them. Other sons, however, were caught in this ambiguity, 32 “io li tocai la mano dreta accettandola per moglier” and “se questo e matrimonio io voglio chel sia, et la voglio per moglier, se anche e non e matrimonio io voglio che non sia.” Cause, b. 1540– 1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini, Testimony of Graciadeo Ceraini. 33 Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Caterina Paiarini v. Stefano Barlotti.

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particularly men from the upper tiers of the peasantry, like most of the men involved in the clandestine marriage disputes. For such a man, marrying a woman of his own choosing—a woman he loved—rather than one his family selected became tied up with issues of dependence and autonomy. Sons were bound to their families by interlocking legal, economic, and cultural factors which dictated near absolute paternal control of the individuals who made up a family. In theory, the status of a man with a living father or paternal grandfather was clear. Under the ius comune, which provided the interpretive framework for all Italian local statutory laws, a son, a filiusfamilias, was under the authority, the patria potestas, of the paterfamilias, his father or grandfather, so long as the paterfamilias lived. To be under patria potestas meant that the son and father were considered one flesh, which the father’s will ruled. A filiusfamilias, who did not have a legal identity separate from that of the paterfamilias, was thus severely restricted in the ways he could act independently in the world. He could not write a will, sue in court, own property directly, or enter any type of legal contract. Other than by the death of the paterfamilias, the only way for the son to escape this control was to be emancipated, at which point he obtained his own separate legal identity. Emancipation, usually effected in a formal ceremony before a legal official, was also recorded in writing. 34 Despite this theoretically clear demarcation of dependence and independence, some factors could complicate the relationship of the two states and render a man’s status effectively ambiguous, as independence and dependence mingled in unclear and potentially tension-provoking ways. Men formally under patria potestas still matured chronologically, socially, and even legally, to the point where their fathers’ legal authority could become unbearably restrictive.35 The law, which in principle declared sons subject to their fathers, also recognized some chronological markers of maturity. In Verona, for example, as in many Italian cities, a man reached economic maturity at age twenty, when he could control his own property, and legal maturity at age twenty-five.36 These statutes interacted with the principle of patria potestas in complex ways that are still not well understood, but the fact remains that they represented a different, and potentially conflicting, notion of maturity. The legal notion of tacit emancipation, as opposed to the formal emancipation described above, recognized that men matured and that there were ways a man could effectively become independent from his father over time without 34

Kuehn, Emancipation, chap. 1 and p. 156. On these tensions in other regions of Italy, see Cozzi, “Padri, figli”; Chojnacki, “Subaltern patriarchs”; and Kuehn, Emancipation. But compare Grubb’s denial of their importance, Provincial Families, 91. 36 STV, bk. 2, chap. 100, 105. But see Grubb, Provincial Families, 90, arguing that these statutes were effectively meaningless because of actual paternal control of all wealth until the father’s death. 35

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being formally emancipated. Of the two main methods of tacit emancipation, one has left traces in the Veronese statutes of 1450: a son who lived separately from his father was presumed emancipated.37 Under the second method, a son who engaged in a business separate from his father, as if he were emancipated, was held to be emancipated. How exactly this sort of emancipation was effected in practice is not clear, but some influential legal authorities held that the state of separation and/or separate activity had to endure for ten years, with the father’s knowledge and (tacit) acceptance of the situation. This notion of tacit emancipation thus points to a slow process of growing independence, during which independence and dependence coexisted, as distinct from the clear moment of transformation from filiusfamilias to paterfamilias embodied in formal emancipation.38 Historians attribute the existence of tacit emancipation in local law codes to the perseverance of some features of Lombard law, which had a conception of paternal authority that differed from the Roman law’s patria potestas.39 Despite the growing influence of the ius comune’s notion of patria potestas, the persistence of the Lombard elements in these law codes and indeed their incorporation into the ius comune suggest the continued existence of practices and ideas at odds with the strict Roman law conception of paternal control. Some sons very likely in fact gained a measure of independence from their fathers through a process of negotiation over time, particularly among the common folk, who seldom had recourse to formal emancipation.40 But at the same time, a father’s exercise of his patria potestas would have remained a possibility. Determining how far the authority extended and when it ended could be difficult and undoubtedly provoked tensions. Economic factors also complicated these issues of dependence and independence. During a father’s lifetime, his complete control of all family money and property, combined with his power to determine how they would be distributed after his death, helped to enforce his patria potestas over his sons. Even emancipation did not necessarily cut all ties between father and son, but instead only gave the son the ability to act independently in law. In late medieval Florence, for example, formally emancipated sons might still live with their fathers, and the fathers might 37

“quod nulla Emancipatio facta preiudicet communi Veronae, nec singularibus personis, nisi Filii, vel Nepotes seorsum a Patre, vel Avo habitent.” STV, bk. 2, chap. 78. The Veronese law suggests that sons who lived separately from their fathers or grandfathers might be presumed emancipated. On this type of tacit emancipation, see also Enrico Besta, La famiglia nella storia del diritto italiano (Milan: Giuffrè, 1968), 198; and Pertile, Storia, 3: 381–82. 38 Kuehn, Emancipation, 10–11, 15, 33–34. See also Stanley Chojnacki, “Measuring Adulthood: Adolescence and Gender in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Family History 17, no. 4 (1992): 371-95. 39 Kuehn, Emancipation, 10; Antonio Marongiu, “Patria potestà ed emancipazione per scapigliatura in alcuni documenti medievali,” in Byzantine, Norman, Swabian and Later Institutions in Southern Italy: Collected Studies (London: Variorum Reprints, 1972), 721–29. 40 Kuehn, Emancipation, 99; and Grubb, Provincial Families, 89.

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continue to exercise effective control over property the son now owned directly. 41 Even when a man’s father had died, rendering the son legally a homo sui iuris with the legal status of a paterfamilias, his mother, or in some circumstances uncle, might have lifetime control of the family wealth. Or, as was common in the rural portions of the Veronese diocese, a man might live in a fraternal union in which the sons of a deceased (or retired) father maintained a community of goods for years, working the land together with their fortunes united. Marriage was a natural point at which potential tensions and contradictions regarding an adult man’s status might flare up. Marriage did not affect the legal status of a dependent son, but at the same time it had great social and cultural significance. James Grubb found that among the fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century elite of the Veneto “assertion of personal identity within the memory of the lineage began with matrimonium,” further noting that “marriage was given centrality because the region lacked other rites to mark a transition into adulthood” (although he is careful to distinguish between “coming of age” and “independence” or “liberation,” which he argues marriage did not confer, at least for the elite).42 Historians studying marriage have frequently noted the freedom that men, particularly those outside the elite, enjoyed in arranging their own marriages, especially when compared to women, a situation borne out in the Veronese marriage court records. Veronese males over the age of twelve or thirteen, that is, after puberty, were apparently not frequently forced into marriages against their will by their parents, unlike adult women who brought suits in the ecclesiastical court to annul such unions. Men’s relative autonomy is also evident in the way they went from house to house in the evenings visiting in a practice known as filò, when they courted whom they wished and even arranged marriages, often subject to little overt control by their families. Women, in contrast, waited at home to be courted and relied heavily on family support when contracting marriage. Thus determining one’s own marital destiny appears to have been associated with male maturity among Veronese commoners. Many of the men involved in the Veronese clandestine marriage suits, however, appear to have come from a special subset of common men, the peasant elite, whose wealth, instead of increasing their autonomy, circumscribed their ability to act—particularly with regard to marriage—when compared to their poorer peers. One third of the rural suits (ten of thirty), all of them allegedly contracted against the will of the groom’s family or lord, contain detailed information about the wealth of the alleged bride and groom. In all of these suits, witnesses agreed that the alleged grooms’ families owned dozens of good fields, as well as animals and 41

Kuehn, Emancipation, 100–15. Grubb, Provincial Families, 1–2.

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other property, while all but one of the brides came from the majority of rural dwellers who owned or rented little or no land, living primarily off their daily labor.43 Battista della Spada, son of the late Bartolomeo Guglielmi, for example, was in a fraternal union with one brother, which witnesses estimated was worth 3,000 ducats; he had also been one of the massar di comune, or elected councilors, for the village of Marano. One witness described Battista’s family as “honorable people who can be godfathers to the whole world,” which assessment another illustrated more prosaically: “many of his kin go to eat at his house and in his house they live plentifully.”44 Similarly, Nicolo di Battista Becardo of the village of Vangadizza, witnesses agreed, was firmly at the top of the village hierarchy. Along with his three brothers and father, Nicolo had goods and land valued at about 2,000 ducats, which included between 20 and 30 fields and three yoke of oxen.45 In a final example, witnesses put the value of Angelo Felici’s father’s property between 1,000 and 1,500 ducats, an eventual inheritance which Angelo would divide with two brothers.46 Care needs to be taken in evaluating the likelihood of such men to engage in clandestine marriage based on their being cited in litigation. Their apparent frequent participation may be an artifact of using this kind of source. Women—particularly poorer women as many of these plaintiffs were—probably had greater incentives to go to the trouble and expense of bringing suits to enforce marriage contracts against richer men than against poorer men. Moreover, such women, especially when pregnant as many of them were, also might bring false suits in hope of getting a financial settlement from richer men who had only slept with them, and had not, in fact, agreed to marry them. Some plaintiffs may have been willing to settle for a dowry that would enable them to marry other men even with their now questionable reputations. The option of dowering rather than marrying a woman whose viriginity a man had taken came up explicitly or by implication in several suits.47 Certain legal rules that applied to marriage litigation may also increase awareness of wealthier men who were involved in suits. It was to a defendant’s advantage 43

On the social hierarchy in the Veronese contado, see Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino,” 309–44. 44 “Son persone honorevole che pon comparer per tutto il mondo.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Augustus f. Joannis Andrae de riziis. “molti suoi parenti li vanno a mangiar a casa et in casa sua si vive abondantamente...” Ibid., Testimony of Baptista f.q. Fazoli de Fazolis. See also Varanini, “Problemi,” 138, 147. 45 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi. 46 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Maria Cobelli v. Angelo Felici. 47 For example, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli; Cause, b. 1549– 1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi; Atti, b. 9, 1550 Cecilia Ferraria v. Gaspare “Carerius” di Cerea; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada.

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to bring up any social disparity between himself and the plaintiff, for it affected how the court evaluated the plaintiff ’s evidence of a marriage. Under normal rules of evidence, family members of parties to a suit were assumed to be biased and were thus unacceptable witnesses, but an exception for marriage suits allowed family members to give evidence. When a notable social difference existed between the alleged spouses, however, this exception was effectively revoked, it being presumed that a plaintiff ’s family would lie to further their child’s, and hence their own, fortunes.48 Most of the information available about the wealth and status of the parties in these Veronese suits comes from defendants’ attempts to impeach the reliability of the plaintiff ’s family’s testimony in this way. Thus, when there was such a difference or the possibility of claiming such a difference, it is likely to be brought up in the suits, while if it is not, there may have been no disparity. In at least one case in which the defendant did not claim such disparity, however, independent information shows that he was indeed from one of the leading families of the village and the bride was almost certainly not. Giacomo Melchiori was almost certainly a member of the leading peasant family of the village of Fumane, whose wealth and power rested on many members’ holding the office of notary. There is no outside information available about the family of the plaintiff, Bartolomea di Paolo, who did not even have a family name.49 There is still a good case to be made, however, that men who got themselves involved in clandestine marriages were indeed likely to have been from relatively wealthy families. First, women were probably more likely to risk clandestine marriages to richer men than to poorer men because of the greater potential gains. Second, sons from poor families would not need to marry clandestinely. Parents’ actual control of their sons—fathers’ ability to put their patria potestas into action— was tied to their ability to exercise financial control. The poorer a man’s family, the more independent he probably was, and less control his family could exercise over such things as his marriage choice. So primarily sons of wealthy peasant families— 48 COP, Conclusio 1023, 193r–195v, esp. nn. 23–32. See also Giovanni de Imola, Consilia clarissimi ac veridici in utraque censura doctoris D. Ioannis de Imola. In quibus habentur multorum cononici iuris titulorum materiae nedum fusius, sed & clarius enodate quam hactenus uspiam. (Venice: Philippum et Iacobum Iumtam, & fratres, 1581), Consilium 135, 78r–v. Defendants claimed this explicitly in Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Helisabeth Baptiste del Signor v. Ceruto de Polidaris; and Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi. 49 Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane. On this family, and the status of notaries more generally, see Varanini, “Problemi,” 138, 147, 158–60; and Luciano Pezzolo, “Istituzioni e amministrazione in Valpolicella nel Cinquecento e primo Seicento,” in La Valpolicella nella prima età moderna (1500 c.–1630), ed. Gian Maria Varaniui (Verona: Centro di Documentazione per la Storia della Valpolicella, 1987), 277. See also the later trial, Cause, b. 1580– 1585, 1582 Giacomo Melchiori v. Magdalena q. Giovanni de Panzanis, which almost certainly involved the same man.

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whose parents could threaten disinheritance—would have needed to resort to clandestine marriages to choose their own brides. Maintaining or increasing a peasant family’s wealth required that its sons’ autonomy be reduced. Economic success in this period was closely tied to family unity and with it control of individual family members. The repeated division of a family’s possessions led to members of successive generations having smaller and smaller holdings. Therefore, the longer a generation could keep its holdings intact and reap such benefits as common use of farm animals and maintaining only one house, the better off they all were financially. Such economic unity, however, brought with it restrictions on the behavior of individuals, particularly with regard to marriage, which was an important part of maintaining family wealth. Fathers orchestrated son’s marriages usually to bring in the best dowry possible, but also sometimes forbade a sons’ marriage entirely in order to restrict the number of heirs. Marriage, however, as a key sign of adulthood that made a son into a father was a point at which tensions and conflicts over a son’s autonomy or lack of it could emerge. By taking their destinies in their hands in marrying a woman of their own choosing—or in some cases simply marrying—some wealthy peasant men expressed their desires for social maturity and the greater freedom of action that went with it. All the Veronese men for whom there is wealth information appear to have been in just this sort of financially advantageous but potentially tension-filled situation, either as dependent sons living with their fathers and several brothers or, in one case, in a fraternal union. Many of these men, moreover, had also tasted some independence, on the slow and fitful route to eventual autonomy. Francesco Sevarolli, for example, had been in service away from his father’s house, as was common for rural youths. Vincenzo Scarduan, whose father still lived, had his own shop, an aromateria, in the town of Ostiglia. The point of marrying clandestinely that emerges from these legal suits was not—as some commentators have asserted—to present disapproving parents with a fait accompli in an abrupt seizure of independence. Such a marriage was instead part of a process whereby the son attempted to negotiate recognition of his social maturity and his ability to determine how and when he began his own family. The secrecy of the union was essential to this process. Marrying out of the public eye avoided directly confronting the parents with their son’s defiance and ideally lessened the parents’ humiliation (and increased resistance). Trying to gather support from friends and neighbors for his assertion of independence, via subtle signs and gossip the groom presented himself to the community—and to his parents—as a mature and honorable man justified in his unconventional actions. Ideally, the growing support of friends and neighbors would help to convince the groom’s family to recognize his independence; if not, because the marriage was not publicly

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recognized, the groom could still deny the union and preserve his relationship with his family. With the exception of the cases of Francesco Sevarolli and perhaps Graciadeo Ceraini, many of the marriage suits apparently arose from situations in which the groom failed to convince his family to accept his independent choice of wife and so denied the unions, setting the stage for a court battle. The trial records, however, retain traces of the men’s actions prior to their denials, from which some of the meanings of clandestine marriage can be reconstructed, in particular how people associated choosing one’s own wife with maturity and independence. Some men made this association explicitly. Francesco Sevarolli of the village of Cerea in the southern portion of the diocese was the son of a man who merited the respectful title ser, which suggests he was a member of the upper social tier of the village.50 The fact that Francesco had recently been living away from home in service with another family suggests he had experienced some autonomy. The way witnesses report that he discussed marrying Santa Tombolin clandestinely against the will of his father shows how Francesco identified choosing his own wife with having a measure of independence from his father, and indeed, in important respects being like his father.51 Two of Francesco’s comments are of particular interest. Witnesses reported that for a time, before he began to deny the union, Francesco had openly and frequently discussed with friends and neighbors his plans to marry Santa despite his father’s opposition to the match. He, like some other grooms, appears to have been engaged in a public relations campaign of sorts, justifying his decision before the community by presenting himself as a man seeking to act honorably. On at least two occasions Francesco likened his own behavior to that of his father in a way that suggested choosing one’s own wife was a highly respectable and admirable thing to do. He did this by declaring that “he wanted to take [Santa] as his wife, as had his father, who had married himself off and taken the [woman] he liked.”52 After marrying Santa, Francesco made a comment to another witness indicating that he saw his clandestine marriage as something which expressed his individual desires and gave him a separate identity from his father but did not cause a complete rupture. He also apparently expected his father to accept his decision. Francesco explained to the friend, “my father was not content that I took this daughter of Tombolin, 50

Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli. See also Kuehn’s discussion of emancipation as increasing the honor and “symbolic capital” of sons, Emancipation, 30–32, 46, 61, 162. 52 “che la voleva tor per moglier, come haveva fatto suo padre che se haveva maridato e tolto che li haveva piaciuto.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Antonius q. Petri de Nigris de Cerea. See also the attribution of similar words to Francesco in a different context in ibid., Testimony of Bonaventura q. Sebastiani de paganinis dictus della mecha. 51

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but I wanted her, and if my father doesn’t want me to stay with him, he’ll give me a house and I’ll live there on my own.”53 The men intertwined the love that they felt for the women with the issue of autonomy, with some men depicting their ardor as justification for their independent and defiant courses of action as well as evidence of their reliability as independent actors. Not the irrational and lustful infatuation that some contemporaries decried as socially destructive, nor the more settled buona compagnia seen in the last chapter, the love that the grooms described was instead an ardent, yet sustained emotion—quite a romantic love—that upheld a man in his rightful course separate from his family. Suggesting that the two desires were closely united, some of the men associated their love with separation from their families. The strength of their emotion often served to explain the need to pursue their own way. In a society in which defense of honor was an essential component of masculinity, they frequently portrayed themselves not only as firm-minded, but also as daring and even violent individuals, who would risk all to achieve their goals. Gaspare Careri, for example, said to one witness, “In defiance of my mother and my uncle, I want to take her as my wife because I don’t see a more beautiful woman than her in Cerea.” 54 Rather more dramatically, Zuan Piero Masoti evoked the fury of his desire for Caterina dei Bissori, as well as for freedom from parental control, when he said he wanted her “even if he had to burn his father and his mother in their house.” In a similar vein, Graciadeo told his desired bride he wanted her “by the blood of God,” even in defiance of his parents; and if she would not have him, he would murder any other men she took.55 Backing up their ardor with persistence, the men sustained the emotion over months and even years of the woman’s refusals. To succeed in marrying clandestinely was to be judged an honorable man. Grooms’ protestations of their honor and good faith are commonplace in witnesses’ descriptions of clandestine marriages. The example of Franco Vincenti is typical. After having made a private agreement with Domenica Forti, Franco 53 “mio padre non era contento ch’io tolesse questa fiolla de Tombolin ma l’ho vogliuta, et se mio padre non vora che io stia cum lui el mi dara una casa et starò da per mi.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Joannes f. Chrisophori Fozati de Cerea. See similar words in another case: Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1549 Maria de Collis v. Giovanni Maria de Dossobono, Testimony of Mattheus q. Jacobi…de Vallegio. 54 “al dispetto di mia madre e di mio barba la voglio tuor per mogliere perche non vedo la piu bella donna in Cerea di lei.” Atti, b. 9, 1550 Cecilia Ferraria v. Gaspare “Carerius” di Cerea, Testimony of Bartolomeus de Avesinis f. Vincentis de Cereta. 55 “chel disse chel mi voleva se ben l’havisse dovuto brusar suo padre et sua madre in casa.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Caterina de Bissoris v. Giovan Pietro Masoti, Testimony of Caterina f. Bernardini de Bissoris de Grezzona. “al sangue de dio.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini, Testimony of Maria di Marco de Giacomelli.

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sought to get her mother’s approval for the marriage. To convince her, Franco emphasized how his own honor was tied up with being a husband and treating his wife properly: “Domenica…is my wife and I want to do her honor,” he said. 56 To do her honor was to show himself honorable. Similarly, Francesco Sevarolli sought to reassure Santa’s father that he was not going to make a fool of him by deserting Santa after marrying her. Francesco emphasized that his own honor was bound up in keeping the promise: “I am [here] to do myself honor,” he said.57 These issues of the man’s honorability and ability to act independently found further development in the negotiations that took place between the alleged grooms and brides (and the brides’ families) over sex. Sexual relations were a crucial matter in a clandestine marriage, an aspect of the relationship that made these marriages particularly risky for women. A woman who dared to marry clandestinely had to be sure that she could trust the groom to keep his word. Marrying clandestinely, thus, in a sense, allowed a man to demonstrate his maturity and independence by showing that he could first convince a respectable woman and her family to place their faith in him, and then, as importantly, fulfill their trust. Many men made initiating a sexual relationship a very important goal. Several women told the court that the alleged groom’s pleas to have sex led directly to the clandestine marriage. Caterina Remondina, for example, told the court that “Gallo and I courted for eight or ten years, and he constantly tormented me that he wanted to couple with me and I did not want to unless he promised to take me as his wife.”58 The men’s desire was not, however, necessarily a simple matter of wanting to have sex whatever the consequences for the women. Rather, having a regular and respectable sexual relationship was itself a sign that others had judged him worthy of trust in a dangerous situation. It was also an opportunity to show others he could act honorably toward a respectable woman. The 1548 testimony of Graciadeo de Ceraini demonstrates what weight Graciadeo placed on being allowed to have sex with Maria after marrying her clandestinely. He claimed that the insult he felt when Maria’s mother refused to let him do this without a ring ceremony, after he had spent years demonstrating his commitment to Maria and to her family, led him to renege on his promise. He connected 56 “domenica [...] e mia moglie, et li voglio far honor.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1552 Domenica Forti v. Franco Vincenti, Testimony of Caterina uxor q. Domenici Ioannis Forti [Domenica’s mother]. For another example, see Atti, b. 7a, 1543 Nicolosa di Antonio Basanelli v. Antonio q. Cosma Algarotti. 57 “Sum per farmi honor” (emphasis added). Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Bonaventura q. Sebastiani de paganinis dictus della mecha. 58 “le piu de otto in diesi anni che ho fatto l’amor cum questo Gallo et qual mi travagliava molto che volesse farle copia della mia persona et io non voleva se non me prometteva de pigliarmi per moglier.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina remondina v. Gallo Pelato. See similar claims by the plaintiff in Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada.

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this privilege with their recognition of his independence and maturity. It was to have been a sign that Maria and her family trusted his ability to keep his word, even without his father’s support. Portraying himself to the court as he had to Maria’s family, he repeated several times, “My intent was always to bring her honor, not shame.” His ultimatum to Maria hinged on the trust he thought he was due from Maria and her family: “If you want me to keep the promise I made to you, I want you to keep the promise you made to me.”59 Emphasizing their proper behavior with regard to sex and the woman's reputation was one way men involved in clandestine marriages sought to portray themselves to others in the community as honorable men. Francesco Sevarolli is again a good example. Prior to exchanging consent with Santa before her father, Francesco told a friend that he wanted to take her as his wife because “he who has cut the melon pays for it,” by which he intended to convey not only that he had already had sex with her, but importantly, that he had found Santa to be a virgin, that is, a reputable woman. Now, as an honorable man, he had to fulfill his obligations to her.60 Implicitly, this duty overrode his filial obligation of obedience. Witnesses also described the strong sense of duty Giacomo di Melchiore apparently felt toward Bartolomea di Paolo, whom he had allegedly clandestinely married against his father’s will and gotten pregnant. One witness, for example, testified that Giacomo told her, “I’ve gone so far with Bartolomea with words that I don’t know that I could ever go back.”61 He could not go back, that is, without violating his own sense of himself, and probably others’ sense of him as well, as an honorable man. Another witness’s testimony revealed Giacomo’s struggle to behave as the trustworthy, independent actor that he had presented himself as to Bartolomea, her family, and others in the community. When the witness told Giacomo that Bartolomea’s family wanted to take her away because she was pregnant and they did not believe that he would acknowledge her as his wife, Giacomo was adamant that the witness stop them: “[T]ell her that she shouldn’t have any crazy idea, and that she should keep good faith that he [sic] is not going to abandon her.… I want to keep the promise I made to them.”62 He was, however, apparently unable to do so. 59

“l’animo mio sempre fu di farli honor et non vergogna” and “Se tu voi che te attenda quanto ho promesso voglio che me attendi anche a mi questo ha promesso.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini, Testimony of Graciadeo Ceraini. 60 “che haveva tagliato el melon lo pagaria.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli, Testimony of Joannes f. Christophori Fozati de Cereta. 61 “mi fu tanto inanti con la dicta Bartolomea di parola che no scio se podero mai torna in dri.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane, Testimony of Maddalena [rest of name illegible]. 62 “disige che la non se toglia altra fantasia et che la staga di bona voglia che non l’e mai per XXX

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The risk of betrayal shaped women’s experience of clandestine marriage, a fact of which the authorities tried to take advantage. The 1576 Venetian law and Veronese Bishop Giberti’s 1541 Constitutiones both treated the problem of clandestine marriage not as the affront to parental authority the practice often entailed, but as an injury to women. Bishop Giberti emphasized this in directing his warning about clandestine marriage to the potential brides, not the aspiring grooms. He wrote, [G]irls…should not believe men who promise them clandestinely, for when the girls are despoiled of their virginity, the men are accustomed to deny anything promised to them, to the great damage and detriment of the said unhappy and miserable girls who were credulous, [and] who are afterward forced to go begging and to be held contemptible by all.… 63 Treating these women as simply imprudent and “credulous” is, however, too limited. Given the obvious and significant risks clandestine marriage involved for women, one wonders why so many women apparently decided to take those risks. Marrying clandestinely must be understood as a strategy for women, as well as for men. Some historians have suggested that women, like men, participated in clandestine marriages in order to evade their parents’ opposition to a marriage. One scholar has recently gone further to suggest that women’s use of clandestine marriage demonstrates that their separation from their families and their families’ interests was greater than was men’s.64 The behavior of the women involved in clandestine marriages in the Veronese diocese, however, suggests just the opposite of both these contentions: here clandestine marriage was often a joint strategy between a woman and her family to improve their collective position. At least part of the answer to why these Veronese women risked marrying clandestinely lies in their social circumstances. Most of the women and their families involved in the suits were relatively poor and probably struggling to keep from descending further down the social ladder. These women were almost always poorer than the men they claimed to have married. 63

abbandonarla... quel che li ho promesso li voglio attendere...” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane, Testimony of [name of witness missing]. 63 “puellas…non credant viris sibi clandestine pollicentibus, quum illi subtracto virginitatis spolio negare soleant, se quidquam promisisse in grave damnum, & detrimentum dictarum infelicium, & miserarum puellarum, quae fuerunt credulae; unde postea mendicare coguntur, & omnibus contemptibiles haberi,” CON, bk. 7, chap. 1. 64 Gottlieb, Family, 84–85; and Ferrante, “Matrimonio disciplinato,” 901–27, esp. 925–27.

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Using litigation as the primary source on clandestine marriage might distort the picture of what kinds of people tended to participate in this practice. Poor women who had contracted clandestine marriages and found themselves pregnant might have had stronger incentives than wealthier women in the same circumstances to go to the trouble and expense of litigation, and thus be overrepresented in the sources. With a smaller dowry than a wealthy woman, a poor woman may have needed to press whatever claim she had in the hope either of compelling the alleged groom to accept her publicly or else of compelling him to provide a compensatory dowry that would enable her to overcome the dishonor of the pregnancy and make a decent marriage. Other factors, however, suggest that poorer women may not have been overrepresented among plaintiffs and may indeed have been particularly attracted to clandestine marriage. First, the cost of litigation was probably dauntingly expensive for women with few resources, making it likely that the number of poorer women marrying clandestinely was higher than the legal sources indicate. Ecclesiastical authorities were aware of the problem of financial obstacles to litigation, and measures were taken at the Council of Trent to try to enable poorer people to engage in ecclesiastical litigation by requiring the wealthier party to pay the poorer party’s expenses in some circumstances. Notations in some of the Veronese suits suggest that court officials had been waiving some expenses as early as the 1540s.65 This would not, however, have provided their food and lodging expenses in Verona, nor compensated for lost labor. Second, poorer women were probably more likely to participate in clandestine marriages than wealthier women because poorer women were probably more willing to take the risks associated with clandestine marriage. Most of the women who brought these marriage suits and about whom there is financial information came from the growing ranks of peasants struggling to survive, in contrast to the male defendants whose families were among the few with dozens of fields.66 Anastasia di Crivellenti’s family, for example, witnesses believed, had a mill for which they owed rent, along with four fields, which were probably of low quality, for witnesses estimated their total value at twenty-five ducats. By way of contrast, her alleged groom reportedly had several fields worth fifty to sixty ducats each.67 Maddalena Galvani’s family lived in a straw shack in the village of Minerbe. They rented half of a field, but she, her brothers, and father

65

Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, “Decree,” chap. 9, 189. Lanaro Sartori, “Mondo contadino.” 67 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi, Testimony of Sanctus q. Petri caltrani. 66

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earned their living by their sweat as “poor day-laborers,” who went “to work for those by whom they are sought.”68 Despite these women’s poverty, in most cases most witnesses, even those for the opposing side, agreed that they were respectable. Virtually every woman’s set of capitula or positiones contained the claim that she was respectable (da bene) and that she would not have behaved as she had with the man unless they had contracted marriage. Bartolomea di Paolo’s formal claim is typical: “Bartolomea is a woman of good life, repute, condition, and reputation, who would not allow herself to be known carnally unless Giacomo had promised to take her as his wife.” 69 The defendants’ allegations similarly brought up the woman’s reputation, or that of her female kin, in an effort to discredit her or her family-member witnesses by claiming they were sexually loose. Nonetheless, witnesses generally responded to the allegations of both sides by stating that the alleged bride was respectable. 70 One gets the sense that some of these women’s families were actively struggling to maintain their claim to a status level they were on the verge of losing. Vincenzo Scarduan, the defendant in a suit brought by Caterina de Bredis, for example, alleged that Caterina’s father was a servant and that the family had to work continually to earn enough to survive. Caterina’s mother responded to these allegations volubly, setting out their position: “Caterina knows how to weave linen cloth and her father is a tanner and also sells carts. It is not true that my husband is a servant, but he works for himself as a butcher, as his father had done, and the girls earn something to help their father, but we have some land and two houses [to rent].”71 Another suit reveals a similar sort of dispute over the status of a female plaintiff ’s family. Nicolo delle Scarpe, who had a shoemaking shop with his father in the village of Soave, claimed that Margarita Trombetta and her family were “rustics and paupers” (rustici et pauperes) who exercised “the rustic art” (artem rusticanam) in contrast to himself and his father, who were wealthy “merchants” 68 “poveri lavoranti” and “a opera a quelli da chi sono condoti et ricercati.” Atti, b. 11, 1566 Magdalena De Galvanis v. Domenico De Pontibus di Manerbio. 69 “Bartolomea est mulier bone vite opinionis conditionis et famae quae non [permisset?] se carnaliter cognisci nisi Jacobo eam promisse ducere in coniugam.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane. 70 For example, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada; Cause, b. 1580– 1585, 1581 Maria Cobelli v. Angelo Felici; and Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena.” 71 “Caterina scit texere telas lini et eius pater est pulliparius ac etiam vendit carres. Non le il vero che mio marido sia famiglio ma fa la beccaria da sua posta del suo et cosi faceva etiam suo padre et le putte guadagano qualche cosa per aiutar suo padre ma havemo delle terre et due case.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Bredis v. Vincenzo Scarduan, Testimony of Matthea…uxor magisteri Baptiste de Bredis.

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(mercatores).72 The evaluation of the witnesses Nicolo called was more measured. While one witness agreed with Nicolo’s assessment, another said that he had seen Anastasia’s brother “hoe beans” (zapar fasoli) and “lead some cattle” (caver delle prede), but did not know that that made them rustic. Still another said that they were certainly poorer than Nicolo’s family, but that they lived “civilly” (civilmente), the generally held opposite of “rustically.”73 The composition of many women’s families similarly may have harmed their financial, and thus social, positions. Several of the female plaintiffs resided in families headed by widowed mothers with at most one brother. These families thus were without much or any adult male labor and earning capacity. Some of these women, the defendants pointed out, came from families burdened with a large number of daughters who needed dowries, and few or no sons whose marriages brought dowries. Caterina de Bredis’s family, for example, had seen better days. Her father merited the title ser, but in the estimation of witnesses had little money. Moreover, as the alleged groom was quick to point out, with no sons and five daughters, he could not hope to find husbands for his daughters because he could not provide adequate dowries.74 This stands in sharp contrast to an alleged groom in another suit, who witnesses noted had no sisters and four brothers, two of whom had wives who had brought good dowries. There is a pattern here. These women were all respectable enough for the wealthier men to consider them acceptable wives. At the same time, the women— and their families—involved in these suits were in a position to be willing to take risks to maintain or improve their positions. Choosing to marry in secret was, therefore, in a sense, a bargain. A man agreed to take a slightly poorer woman than he could otherwise hope to get in exchange for hard-to-quantify gains in status derived from his successful demonstration of autonomy. A woman and her family agreed to take the risks involved in the hope of securing a good marriage, one better from a financial and social angle than they could normally expect, and perhaps even to a man she loved. She did so, however, only with notable caution. She was, after all, trying to retain respectability. Unmarried peasant women in the Veronese countryside were not kept isolated from men, nor were they necessarily even closely watched by their families, although it was difficult for them not to be seen from time to time by neighbors and passersby. In part the demands labor placed on both the women and their 72

Atti, b. 8, 1554 Margarita f.q. Bernardino Trombetta v. Nicolo scarparum di Soave. Atti, b. 8, 1554 Margarita f.q. Bernardino Trombetta v. Nicolo scarparum di Soave, Testimony of prudens vir Christophorus f. Joanne Matthei de Pantaleonis, Testimony of Domenicus f.q. Antonii de cambiolis, and Testimony of Joannes Antonius del fiore frater Reverendi D. Archipresbyteri Suavii. 74 For another example, see Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi. Anastasia’s family had one son and four daughters who would have to divide four fields and a mill. 73

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elders precluded strict oversight, but it also appears that people did not think it necessary. Normal daily life offered young people occasions to spend time together alone. Women would go out to work in fields alone, hoeing or tending cows, where young men might come help them. Similarly, a woman might be home alone during the day while the rest of her family was out in the fields, giving a man the opportunity to visit and get to know her better without close supervision.75 In the evenings, while women would spin, men would come to women’s houses in the practice known as “coming in filò.” According to Bishop Giberti, who was very much against this and other mixing of the sexes, this visiting might take place in barns, away from adult oversight. One suit also mentions a party where a couple conducted a romance while dancing. 76 With such freedom, however, women did need to know how to protect their reputations. The theme of the brides’ prudence and respectability pervades their formal claims, as well as the testimony of the plaintiffs’ witnesses and particularly of the plaintiffs themselves. They emphasized the young women’s reluctance to deviate from the norms by marrying in secret and against the will of the groom’s family. Commonly the female plaintiff ’s side would emphasize the man’s insistence on the union and the woman’s reluctance. The positions of Isabetta Ferrari, for example, referred to the alleged groom, Battista Guglielmi, as “captured by love” (captus amore), conjuring up visions of a man in thrall to a powerful force. Caterina de Bredis's positions similarly evoked such passions by emphasizing her beauty. Directly following that, however, the sentence cited also Caterina’s “honest life, condition, and reputation,” the forces that stood against the man’s powerful passions and helped her to channel them properly into marriage.77 The women and their families described the women’s having to be convinced, and even worn down, by the man’s persistence. When the court questioned Isabetta Ferrari about her relationship with Battista Guglielmi, for instance, she related how Battista’s efforts compelled her to compromise in her own desires to act prudently. For eight years Battista de Bartolomeo [Guglielmi] della Spada da Marano showed that he loved me and many [times] asked to have to do with me carnally and I always replied that I did not want to satisfy 75

For example, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina Remondina v. Gallo Pelato. 76 Giberti, Per li padri, Bii r–v; and Monitiones generales, in OP, chap. 44, 227; RPV, 32. 77 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, positiones of Elisabetta. “Ipse Caterina de Bredis de Hostilia fuit et est formosa et pulchra ac morigerata et honeste vite, condicionis, et fame.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Bredis v. Vincenzo Scarduan, positiones of Caterina.

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q Chapter 3 his desires unless I first knew for certain that I was his wife and that I wanted him to promise me in the presence of witnesses. He kept saying that he did not want any other witnesses than God alone so that one day he found me alone in my house in Marano and said to me, “I promise you by the saints and holy gospel of God never to take any other woman than you and always to give you good company,” and I then replied to him that I accepted him as husband and after these words we came together carnally.78

Maria de Giacomelli similarly related to the court how Graciadeo Ceraini’s persistence in wanting to marry her had eventually overcome her reluctance and convinced her to trust him. When Graciadeo and I had been courting for about six years, he asked me many times to promise him that I would be his wife. I always refused until one day, it was the feast of Saint Mary Elizabeth just past, we were talking together in a field of ours making haystacks and he was helping me. He demanded with great insistence that I promise to take him as my husband. And I didn’t want to, because I knew that his family was not content, and I told him so, but he said that by the blood of God he wanted me even if his family was not content, and that if I took another he would kill him. And seeing his persistence I promised to take him as my husband, and we touched each other’s hands. And he promised to take me as his wife…and afterwards he was very insistent that I go away with him but I said that because I didn’t want to ruin myself, I did not want to go unless I asked my family.79 78 “Battista de Bathomeo dalla Spada da Marano già otto anni mostrava di volermi bene e piu [volte?] mi domando di voler haver con meco carnalmente et io sempre li rispondeva che non voleva compiacerli se prima non sapeva certo di esser sua moglie e che volveva chel mi promettesse in presentia di testimoni et ello diceva chel non voleva altri testimoni che un solo Dio di modo che un giorno el mi trovo in casa mia a Marano sola e mi disse io ti prometto per li santi e sacri evandlii ei Dio di non tuor mai altra donna che ti e sempre di fari bona compagnia et io allhora risposi a lui che lo accettava per marito e dapoi queste parolle havessemo da far insieme carnamente.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Isabetta Ferraro. 79 “Havendo za sei anni in circa fato l’amor insieme questio Gracideo et mi molte volte lui mi dimandete che li promettesse di esser sua moglier. Et io recusai sempre pur un zorno, et fu la festa di Santa Maria Helisabeth prossima passata ragionando insieme in un pra di nostri che facevmo muchii [illegible] et lui mi agiutava mi dimandete cum grande instantia che io li promettesse di tuorlo per marito. Et io non volevo perche sapevo che li sui non erano contenti dicendogelo anche a lui ma lui dicendo che al sangue de dio el mi volvea anche che li sui non fossino contenti. Et che se tollesse altri lui li amazaria. Ed vedendo la sua pertinacia ge promesse di tuorlo per marito tochandosi l’uno XXX

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Notably Maria’s trust in Graciadeo’s promises was limited, as it was for so many women, by her desire to get her family’s support for the union. Within the context of attempting to prove the existence of a marriage contract to an ecclesiastical court, such depictions of a woman’s behavior clearly had both rhetorical and legal intent. The women were pressing claims that were valid under canon law, but what they were claiming to have done—married clandestinely—was also something church officials opposed and even punished. 80 It is therefore to be expected that the women would downplay their own responsibility for the transgression and emphasize the man’s fault—which would also help to substantiate their claims that the man had indeed contracted marriage. Simply being involved in this situation, moreover, was probably enough to cast doubt on the women’s respectability. With such a suit a woman teetered between virtue and vice. If she lost her suit, the court was effectively declaring her a loose woman who had consented to sexual relations outside of marriage. In emphasizing their prudence and caution, therefore, these women were also attempting to emphasize their conformity to conventional expectations of respectable women. Defendants thus sought to show that the plaintiffs were indeed loose women, along with their kin. Such claims could also have very practical effects within the law because the testimony of women who were not respectable was worth little in court. 81 It is, nonetheless, still likely that women actually did proceed with great caution when considering whether to marry clandestinely, although not perhaps with quite as much prudence as they later wanted the judges to believe. The primary form their caution took was seeking the active support of their families for the union. The involvement of the bride’s family was an important element in most of the intentional clandestine marriages for which there is information. Of the fifteen women who claimed to have intentionally participated in clandestine marriages opposed by the groom’s family, twelve had the support of their families. Only three had no family support. The nature of the families’ involvement varied. Caterina Remondina’s family became involved when her brother came home one day and found her and her (alleged) husband Gallo alone together. Most of the women 80

l’altro la man. Et lui mi promisse di turomi per moglie... et dopoi el mi faceva grande instantia chio andesse via cum lui ma io dicendo nolere rovinarmi no li volsi andar se non mi dimandava alli mei.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini, Testimony of Maria f.q. Marci de Jacomariis de Cerna. See also Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina Remondina v. Gallo Pelato, Testimony of Caterina Remondina. 80 I have found no evidence of punishments meted out in the Veronese diocese, but I have not examined all the relevant records. 81 Pertile, Storia, 3:229; 6:379, 384; on the value of a prostitute’s testimony in court, see COP, Conclusio 1067, nn. 40–41, 226v–227v.

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(ten of the twelve), however, behaved more like Santa Tombolin, who promised herself to Francesco Sevarolli, after the promise began to have sex with him, but then insisted that he get her parents’ permission.82 And four of these twelve women, according to their claims, did not have sexual relations with the groom at all until after they received the support of their families for the union.83 Women occasionally contracted clandestine marriages against the will of their parents and then denied them against the claims of the grooms. An examination of this less common type of clandestine marriage situation suggests that here again women, and particularly women outside the elite, were quite cautious in deciding to contract clandestine marriage. The small number of suits involving this situation, coupled with information about the women’s behavior in these situations, suggests that Veronese women did not contract marriage against the will of their own parents nearly as often as men did, and that when they did they tended not to commit themselves very far in the union without their families’ support.84 Virtually all the alleged clandestine marriages for which we have information involved women as the wronged party. In the surviving suits from between 1538 and 1593, only five men alleged contracting clandestine marriages denied by the women, which is just under 10 percent of the fifty-one alleged clandestine marriages for which there is information in the court suits. All but one of these five involved members of the elite, who were probably trying to get the women’s inheritances. The records of the episcopal visitations to the diocese suggest a slightly higher rate. Of the eighteen possible cases of clandestine marriage recorded during the episcopal visitations, at least four involved women whose parents were opposed to the marriage.85 The paucity of men bringing suits alleging a clandestine marriage may be explained in part by men’s motivations to seek enforcement of marriage contracts. Many of the women who brought suits apparently did so because they had gotten pregnant. Men did not have this impetus. The five men who did bring suits appear instead to have been motivated by desires to enforce marriages to relatively wealthy women. The one nonelite man who brought such a suit, for example, was 82

Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina Remondina v. Gallo Pelato; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Santa Tombolin v. Francesco Sevarolli. 83 Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1548 Maria de Giacomelli v. Graciadeo Ceraini; Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Bredis v. Vincenzo Scarduan; Atti, b. 9, 1550 Cecilia Ferraria v. Gaspare “Carerius” di Cerea; and Cause, b. Cause Matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Domenica Farinella v. Bartolomeo Bellebonum. See also an additional case from the city: Atti, b. 9, 1553 Olivia di Melchiore v. Jacobo Brendani. 84 In contrast, studies of court activity in some other areas of Europe have found men and women bringing enforcement suits at roughly comparable rates. See, e.g., Roper, Holy Household, 160. 85 RPV, 6, 82, 842, 1421. There may have been more, but many descriptions are too sketchy to be able to tell.

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an apprentice in a wool shop who claimed to have married his master’s daughter, who was richer than he.86 The circumstances surrounding this sort of clandestine marriage suggest another possible reason that few men brought such suits. Women tended to behave so cautiously that any man who wanted to enforce a contract probably would not have had the evidence necessary to do so. Antonio di Tommaso, the apprentice mentioned above, had sufficient evidence only because he and his master’s daughter were both literate and had exchanged letters in which she called him her “spouse” (consorte). In another example recounted in the visitation record, the alleged groom had no evidence because, he claimed, he and the bride had exchanged consent and he had placed a ring on her hand while dancing at a party.87 The only three of the five women’s defenses to have survived share striking similarities. None of the women flatly denied having contracted the marriage, as men typically did. Instead, they claimed to have made their consent conditional upon the consent of their families and to have been tricked into thinking their parents or guardians approved of the union. Legally, this defense rested on the impediment of condition: Since the condition had not been met, they claimed, the marriage was invalid. But legal strategies aside, their explanations have the ring of truth. Ginevra Ottobello, for instance, claimed that she had only married her father’s apprentice, Antonio di Tommaso, because he told her that he was even wealthier than they were and that therefore her parents would approve their marriage. She told the court, “but now that I see that my father and mother are not content because he does not have goods, I am also not content to accept him, because I don’t want to do this if my father and mother don’t want it.” 88 Similarly, in the 1580s, Aquilina Moleri and Isabetta Brognoli, both apparently members of wealthy merchant or minor noble families, each claimed to have been tricked into thinking that their families or guardians had consented to their marriages. 89 This defense, virtually unused by men, reveals the assumption—and probably frequently the reality—that respectable women would be cautious in marital matters and not commit themselves without the support of their families.90 86

Atti, b. 8, 1548 Ginevra Ottobello v. Antonio Baiulo. RPV, 32. 88 “ma hora che vedo che mio padre et mia madre non sono contenti perche ello non ha robba ne anche io son contenta di accettarlo perche non voglio far se non questo volendo I ditti mio padre et madre.” Atti, b. 8, 1548 Ginevra Ottobello v. Antonio Baiulo. 89 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Aquilina Molerii v. Giorgio Farbesini; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Paolo Portaro v. Elisabeta Brognoli. Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, 45 n. 20, mentions a Lorenzo Brognolo among the merchants who served in public office listed by Sanuto in his Diarii. 90 It would be worth reconsidering the story of the Veronese lovers Romeo and Juliet in the light of these conclusions about women, their families, and clandestine marriage. The tale, famous as the source of Shakespeare’s later play, was composed in 1524 by Luigi Da Porto, a nobleman from XXXXX 87

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The Veronese marital suits also suggest that women were apparently less willing than were men to persist for long in a marriage to which they knew their parents were opposed. The fact of a man’s family’s opposition to a marriage would be openly discussed as he negotiated to marry a woman. The groom would generally then behave like a husband in ways outsiders could see: he would visit the woman’s house more frequently, particularly at night, eat meals there, and call her his wife to others. A female plaintiff could point to all these acts in seeking to prove the existence of the marriage. A male plaintiff, in contrast, could usually point only to one event, the exchange of consent, witnessed, fortuitously, by a friend he had thought to bring along. This suggests that, without their families’ support for the marriage, women would not “act like wives” in obvious ways. Moreover, women acting in opposition to their families could not act openly as wives, for acting like a wife almost by definition took place in a bride’s house, with the support of her parents. In the suits women brought, the alleged bride’s behavior during the process of marrying clandestinely demonstrates how they involved their families in order to reduce the risk of being deserted after marrying in this irregular way. As we saw earlier, they very frequently insisted that the groom get their families’ permission, and some put off having sexual relations until after that permission was received. The beginning of the sexual relationship was the biggest risk for a woman participating in a clandestine marriage. It was also, the thing the grooms wanted above all. The worst-case scenario was that the woman would find herself pregnant and the groom would deny both the marriage and having fathered the child. A large proportion of the women involved in the suits claimed that was exactly what happened to them, though some men would admit to the child, but not the marriage. Even women who did not become pregnant risked having their reputations destroyed if it became known only that they were having sexual relations and not that the man had promised to marry them. The involvement of the bride’s family helped to strengthen her position with regard to the groom, who did not have the same incentives—the risks of pregnancy neighboring Vicenza, and published in Venice after his death under the title of “La Giulietta.” See Luigi Da Porto, La Giulietta nelle due edizioni cinquecentesche, ed. Cesare Da Marchi (Florence: Giunti, 1994). Many of the elements of Da Porto’s tale, and particularly Giulietta’s behavior, are familiar from the discussion above. In his telling, moreover, a large part of the tragedy was the distortion of Giulietta’s relationship to her family as the result of the secret she must keep from them. Modern commentators have tended to interpret this and other similar tales as condemnations of clandestinemarriage, ignoring the sympathy that such stories also incorporate for the plight of the protagonists. See, for example, Harrington, Reordering Marriage, 29–30, but compare Thierry Pech, “Foy et secret: Le mariage clandestin entre droit et littérature dans les Histoires tragiques de Boaistuau à Camus,” DixSeptième Siècle 48 (4) (1996): 891–909, esp. 895.

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and damaged reputation—that she did to maintain the relationship. A bride’s family members were her allies in trying to ensure that the groom would not later deny the marriage had taken place. The process of a clandestine marriage usually looks like a tug of war between the bride’s relatives, who wanted the marriage process to move along as quickly as possible to full publication and the union’s establishment in public knowledge, and the groom, whose interests lay in keeping the marriage secret, and thus ambiguous, for as long as possible. By insisting on her family’s approval, a bride got additional and continuing proof of the groom’s commitment. Several suits show that a groom could have as much or more difficulty convincing the bride’s family to agree to the union as he had had convincing the bride herself. A witness in the 1569 suit between Domenica Farinella and Bartolomeo Bellebono told the court how Bartolomeo tried for months to get permission to marry Domenica, visiting Domenica’s mother every other night and “beating” (sbatendo) her with promises he would take Domenica publicly as his wife once his own sister was married off.91 As was seen above, after Graciadeo succeeded in convincing Maria to marry him, he had to make many more attempts to convince her suspicious mother and brother to give Maria to him. Even then her mother ultimately refused to allow Maria to go to him at night in the barn until he had demonstrated further his commitment by marrying her with a ring. The sources show fathers, mothers, uncles, and brothers trying to move the marriage process along if it stalled. If they became impatient or suspicious of the groom’s continuing commitment to the clandestine union, they would intervene in the relationship to insist on additional signs of good faith. The ring ceremony, to which people referred with the verb sposar, often figured prominently in families’ demands. For instance, Caterina Remondina’s mother insisted that Gallo di Bartolomeo, who had been having sex with Caterina for a year on the strength of a promise to take her as his wife, now go through a ring ceremony. Gallo agreed, but with the requirement that it remain secret so that his father would not know. 92 Alleged shotgun weddings frequently appear, on closer inspection, to have derived from earlier clandestine promises followed by sexual relations. As a priest involved in one such marriage had told the groom, the bride’s uncle was only trying to make the groom “restore” (restituire) the honor he had taken from her by bringing her reputation into question.93

91

Cause, b. Cause Matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Domenica Farinella v. Bartolomeo Bellebonum. Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Caterina Remondina v. Gallo Pelato. 93 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1569 Giacomo de Nigris v. Elisabeth Bolpati, Testimony of Joannes f.q. Zanonis de Tanis. Another example is Atti, b. 9, 1550 Cecilia Ferraria v. Gaspare “Carerius” di Cerea. 92

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A bride’s family also helped to protect her interests in a clandestine marriage by witnessing the events. This was important not so much in anticipation of the matter coming to court, which few people probably expected, as it was for the everyday establishment of the existence of a clandestine marriage in the eyes of the community. Brides did what they could on their own to establish the existence of a clandestine marriage, but it helped to have other allies. One of the family members’ main jobs was telling people that the marriage had taken place. Witnesses frequently testified that the origin of the rumors they heard about the existence of a clandestine marriage was the bride’s family.94 While in the formal setting of a court familial witnesses were suspect, in the day-to-day context of watching people’s behavior, parents’ open endorsement of a couple’s relationship helped to convince watching neighbors that it was a respectable and legitimate marriage, not out-of-wedlock fornication. Caterina de Bredis’s suit, for example, is full of illustrations of how her mother’s involvement helped to establish the existence of Caterina’s clandestine marriage to Vincenzo Scarduan. Her mother publicized the marriage not only by telling people about it, but also by taking Caterina to the parish church to be blessed as a bride, as was apparently customary in some villages.95 Following that, over a period of six months, Caterina’s court papers claimed, Vincenzo frequently came to her house “openly and publicly…as to the house of his wife.” When Vincenzo’s side questioned the propriety of his visits, Caterina’s mother underscored their legitimacy by citing her own sanction of them: “my daughter did what she did with this Vincenzo with my consent,” she told the court, adding, “and since I had consented, [Caterina] could not be anything but respectable.”96 Witnesses agreed that the community accepted the couple as married on the basis of such evidence and was scandalized by Vincenzo’s denials of the union and efforts to find another wife from a different village. The style of wedding that the alleged brides and their witnesses described once again underscores the bride’s connection to her family. Recalling the styles of nuptials discussed in the last chapter, these were usually paternal-style weddings with strong maternal elements included. This may have been because in the absence of the groom’s family’s consent, the participants felt that the marriage needed more than the usual amount of support. Even when the bride had a father or brother living, her mother’s involvement was notable. For example, according to Isabetta Ferrari's and her parents’ testimony, Battista Guglielmi first asked her 94

See, for example, Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Anastasia de Crivelentis v. Nicolo Bernardi. On this practice, see CON, bk. 7, chap. 13, 127–28. 96 “in eius domo publice et palam…tamque in domo eius uxoris.” Capitula of Caterina. “mia figliola ha fatto cioche lha fatto con questo vicenzo da consenso mio [...] et pero havendo consentito a questo modo lei non puo esser se non da bene.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Caterina de Bredis v. Vincenzo Scarduan, Testimony of Domina Matthea…uxor magesteri Baptistae de Bredis de Hostilia. 95

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father for her hand and, having received it, a few days later went to her mother to reassure her of his good faith.97 A striking element found in several descriptions of the ring ceremony was the groom’s use of a ring taken from the hand of the bride’s mother. This could have been merely the result of expediency: they needed a ring, and she had one. However, such a gesture may also have bound the groom closer to the bride’s family in the absence of his own family’s support. One example of a clandestine marriage alleged by the groom suggests that the use of the bride’s mother’s ring might have been traditional in clandestine marriages. The groom reportedly asked to borrow the bride’s mother’s ring in order to marry the woman in private with it.98 It is of course possible that the nature of the sources overrepresents clandestine marriages in which the bride’s family was closely involved. Legal factors determined which clandestine marriages made it far enough in court to produce the cause papers containing the rich detail that were used in this analysis. Specifically, women who tried to bring suits to enforce clandestine marriage contracts, but did not have any witnesses or other comparable proof—that is, no family involvement—would have had their suits dismissed on the oath of the defendant. This legal filter may have resulted in an overrepresentation in the suits of marriages in which families were involved. Some registers of the daily activity of the Veronese episcopal court contain examples of such dismissals, although the paucity of such records makes it impossible to tell how often this happened. There are, nonetheless, several reasons to think that family involvement was not overrepresented in the surviving suits. One needs first to consider the events that probably preceded a court case. They suggest that clandestine marriages in which the bride’s family supported her would have been likely to have been settled without ever coming to court. This would counterbalance the possibility of overrepresentation of marriages with family involvement in the court records. Before having recourse to bringing a court suit, a woman had first to have committed herself so far—usually by getting pregnant—that she could not afford to let the union fade away, and to have failed in compelling a man to acknowledge marrying her. Clandestine marriages contracted with the support of the bride’s family would probably have been less likely to run into trouble in the first place. Parents also had to trust the man, and often forced him to demonstrate his commitment to the union before allowing the bride to have sex. Moreover, those clandestine marriages contracted with the support and knowledge of the bride’s family would also probably have carried more weight in the forum of public opinion, which would have helped compel the wavering groom to keep his promises. 97

Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada. RPV, 32.

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GEOGRAPHY AND CLANDESTINE MARRIAGE The majority of clandestine marriages about which there is information originated outside the city of Verona itself, in the rural villages of the diocese. The small size of the sample of suits does not permit any conclusions about the actual geographical distribution of clandestine marriages in the diocese. Most of the surviving suits, however, and thus most of the information about clandestine marriage, come from two zones of the diocese. In these regions it appears that the broad social and economic changes occurring across the Italian peninsula (as well as the rest of Europe) shaped how people used clandestine marriage. Traditionally people have understood the territory of Verona—the boundaries of which did not exactly coincide with the diocese of Verona—to have been divided into several zones widely varying in topography and environment, and thus in agricultural practices (see map 3.1). The exact number of zones they have chosen has varied, but all rely on the basic division of mountains, hills and valleys, and plain. A division into five regions proves most useful for this analysis. From north to south, these zones are the high hills and mountains; the lakeshores; the foothills and valleys; the moraine; and the fertile low plains known as the bassa veronese.99 This work focuses on two of these zones, the high hills and mountains and the bassa veronese. The bassa and the mountain zone each produced a large number of the surviving disputes involving clandestine marriages and together they produced over two thirds of the total (see table 3.2). In the sixteenth century, two well-recognized, long-term historical processes influenced all the zones of the diocese: the proletarianization of the peasantry and the increasing investment and interest in land by the urban noble and merchant elite. As the European population rebounded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries following the Black Death, pressure on land in rural areas, including the Veronese diocese, increased. Emigration from rural to urban areas helped somewhat to lessen this pressure, but the fragmentation of peasant holdings, which in the absence of primogeniture were divided over the generations among descendants into ever smaller and scattered pieces, continued relentlessly. Along with other responses to the population pressure, like deforestation and the reclamation of other marginal lands, this resulted in the long-term shifting of resources within—and out of—rural society, and thus in changes in rural social organization. The most notable change was the impoverishment of small landowners, who 99 The divisions into geographical zones are based on the boundaries described in a number of sources, particularly Antonio Fasani, “Verona durante l’episcopato di G. M. Giberti,” in RPV, lxi– lxii; Michael Knapton, “La popolazione della Valpolicella fino alla peste del 1630,” in Gian Maria Varanini, ed., La Valpolicella nella prima eta moderna (1500 c.–1630) (Verona: Centro di Documentazione per la Storia della Valpolicella, 1987), 36–38; and Varanini, “Problemi.”

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Map 3.1: Geographical Origin of Rural Matrimonial Suits Involving Clandestine Marriage Heard before the Ecclesiastical Court of Verona, 1538–93

Based on the map of the diocese of Verona contained in Antonio Fasani, ed., Riforma pretridentina della diocese di Verona. Visite pastorali del Vescovo G. M. Giberti, 1525–1541 (Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989).

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Table 3.2: Rural Suits Involving Clandestine Marriage Heard before the Diocesan Court of Verona by Zone of Origin RURAL SUITS ZONE

(NO.)

(%)

10

33

Foothills and valleys

6

20

Moraine

2

7

Lakeshore

1

3

11

37

30

100

High hills and mountains

Bassa veronese Total

increasingly lost their land to urban investors and richer peasants and began to work for others, becoming what some have called an agricultural proletariat. At the same time as inheritance was dividing peasant landholdings to the point where they could no longer support a family, the Veronese (and Venetian) urban elite’s interest in investing in land increased. The elite had always invested to some degree in land, particularly in the foothills and valleys just to the north and east of the city, but investment in all areas of the diocese increased markedly starting in the late fifteenth century. Thus, as more and more small peasant landowners were facing economic problems, urban investors were waiting to buy their land and either rent it back to them or hire them as day laborers. Moreover, as investors’ interest in the land increased, they began to seek ways to exploit their holdings more efficiently. This usually meant either leasing land to cultivators with contracts that were more favorable to landowners than in the past, offering them more control over the process of cultivation, or farming the land directly and hiring peasant day laborers.100 The impact of these processes, while present everywhere in the Veronese diocese, varied from region to region, and with it varied the social composition of the villages in each region. Both of the regions under discussion, the bassa veronese and the zone of the high hills and mountains, had well-developed local elites made up of mid-sized peasant landowners, artisans, and especially notaries. By way of contrast, the zone of the foothills to the north and east of the city had a smaller and 100

See esp. Gian Maria Varanini, “Le campagne veronesi del ’400 fra tradizione e innovazione” in Uomini e civiltà agraria in territorio veronese (Verona: Banco popolare di Verona, 1982), ed. Giorgio Borelli, 185–262; Varanini, “Problemi”; Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia; and Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino.”

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less robust local elite, for centuries of urban investment had meant that urban control had deeply permeated local landholding and power structures. The villages in the Veronese above 300 meters have been classified as a distinct zone of high hills and mountains.101 This altitude is not a perfect dividing line, since towns below this level in the zone of the foothills might have significant suburbs at elevations over 300 meters. However, at least in the Valpolicella to the north and west of the city in the Middle Ages and early modern period, this line roughly designated an economically and socially unified zone. Inhabitants married within this region, and conducted similar economic activities, such as herding. There were also important landholding and social differences between the villages of the high hills and mountains and those of the foothills. Urban investment dropped off dramatically as altitude rose, and by 300 meters was minimal, leaving room for the development of a significant local elite. As Gian Maria Varanini has shown, in the communities at this elevation in the Valpolicella, a few families came to dominate economically and politically. Generally those with another occupation such as notary, these families had cash surpluses to invest in lending and in the land of the financially troubled majority of small landowners. Two of the men alleged to have married clandestinely in this region in the 1540s and ’50s, Battista Guglielmi and Lorenzo di Biagio Busella, were from these few leading local families of notaries. Isabetta Ferrari’s father, in contrast, came from the large ranks of those who worked the land of others.102 A further group of four suits came from the villages of Fumane, Negrar, and Pesina, right at the line where the foothills turn into the high hills. These villages, all at around 250 meters, probably shared many conditions with those of the high hills. In these border villages a small local elite may have developed, orienting itself toward the high hills and investments there. Indeed, the family of one of the alleged grooms, Battista Guglielmi, lived in Marano in the high hills, but was also influential in nearby Fumane in the foothills. Another, Giacomo Melchiori, from Fumane in the foothills, belonged to a family of notaries and landowners very similar to Battista’s a short distance away at the edge of the high hills. 103 While the lowlands of the bassa veronese were geographically very different from the high hills and mountains, the bassa experienced the same process of social stratification as the higher elevations. The fertile plains to the south of the 101

Varanini, “Problemi,” 154–73, esp. 154. Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada; and Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1561 Domenica de Francescini v. Lorenzo Busele. On the wealth and influence of the Busella and Melchiori families see Varanini, “Problemi,” 138, 147, 160. See Pezzolo, “Istituzioni,” 274, 316 n. 54, on Biagio and Lorenzo Busella. 103 Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Bartolomea figlia di Paolo q. Enrici di Fumane v. Giacomo Melchiori di Fumane. Varanini, “Problemi,” 138, 147, 157. 102

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city formed an ever more important part of the investment holdings of urban nobles and merchants. In something of a land rush in the sixteenth century, they bought up and reclaimed farmland, consolidating it into extensive estates run out of large villas. This process of outside investors’ buying up the land of struggling local landholders and rationalizing its exploitation is generally held to have contributed to the spiral of peasant impoverishment. The nature and history of the Veronese urban elite’s investment in the bassa, however, was such that their arrival did not necessarily mean a net loss for the local peasantry as a whole, at least in the short term. Until the early sixteenth century, much of this fertile region was marshy and unusable, and Venetian military interests led the government to forbid drainage that would destroy this natural system of fortifications. With the arrival of peace early in the sixteenth century, however, these restrictions were lifted, and urban investors rushed in to take advantage of the opportunities for development. These urban investors, therefore, did not just buy up the land of struggling peasant proprietors, but often joined with local communities in water projects to increase the amount of arable land available to locals and outsiders alike.104 The development of the region brought various sorts of social and economic changes. It appears that in a process similar to that in the high hills, a local elite of medium-sized peasant landowners, notaries, and artisans was developing alongside the imported urban elite.105 Some men from such peasant families appear in the clandestine marriage disputes, having been tempted to evade the increased paternal control that prosperity brought. Vincenzo Scarduan’s father was a notary, and Vincenzo himself kept a perfume shop in Ostiglia, a sign of the prosperity of the region. Nicolo Bersanti’s family had thirty fields and many beasts in the village of Vangadizza. In Cerea, Francesco Sevarolli’s father owned several houses, while Gaspare Careri’s family owned land and was probably involved in the ancillary industry of carting agricultural produce. The same forces that improved the fortunes of some dwellers of the bassa hurt those of others, primarily impoverished small landowners losing their land. In the marriage suits, one encounters women like Caterina de Bredis, whose father still had a little land, but was unable adequately to dower his five daughters, leading her and her family to take the risks associated with clandestine marriage. Anastasia Crivelenti, her three sisters, and one brother were in a similar position, waiting to divide four poor fields and a leased mill. Maddalena de Galvanis and her family leased one half of a field, but earned their living working for others. 104

Varanini, “Campagne,” 222–42, esp. 224–26. Varanini, “Problemi,” 155–73, describes this process for the high hills and mountains of the Valpolicella. See also his work on the bassa in “Campagne,” 219–41. These conclusions are, however, my own extrapolation. See also Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino,” 313. 105

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The increasing noble involvement in the bassa may also have encouraged the practice of clandestine marriage in additional ways. As these outsiders tried to increase their investments in the region, they also tried to increase their control over local society. Influence in marriage decisions was one aspect of this. Thus far this study has considered the situation of men whose families constrained their marital choices. An essential additional dimension of this patriarchal society was, however, the constraints members of the nobility imposed on those under their authority or influence. Five alleged clandestine marriages about which we have information reportedly involved a third party who was a member of the Veronese nobility. Unlike nobles in earlier periods and other areas of Europe, noblemen in sixteenth-century Verona did not have the legal right to control others’ marriages. 106 However, because of their dominance of Veronese society, some noblemen in Verona had the ability to determine their subordinates’ marital choices. They used this power to manage their patronage networks or sometimes to keep their retainers from marrying and thus dividing their loyalties. Although there is little information on this phenomenon, a nobleman’s control over his male subordinates would probably have created in them a conflict between dependence and independence similar to what some sons experienced. Indeed, in certain ways it might have been worse, because the power of a father was circumscribed by law and tradition, usually mitigated by love and common interest, and came eventually to an end; that of a lord was likely more capricious and long-lasting. Several instances of clandestine marriage involving noble interference come from villages in the bassa veronese. In Bonferraro, one woman claimed to have clandestinely married a man by arrangement of a nobleman, against the will of her family who had chosen her another husband. This noble involvement may thus have superimposed another level of patriarchal control over the young people— and the old—of this area. In another example, this one drawn from the episcopal visitation records, in 1532 Giacomo di Nicolo Cursi of the village of Minerbe told the bishop’s vicar how a nobleman’s influence had constrained his marital choices.107 Giacomo said that three years earlier he had taken Maria di Antonio ditto Tognoli as his wife in secret, in the presence of his mother and no one else. Following this, they had had sexual relations at his house for about a month. Then, coerced by the lord Giacomo Salerno, one of the nobles who had extensive landholding in the region, Giacomo had publicly married another woman named 106

Of course, under canon law, no secular power did. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, “Decree,” chap. 9, 189. 107 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Agnese de Ferro v. Giovanni Battista Turelle; and RPV, 931.

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Margarita. Now, however, he wanted the first marriage recognized and the second annulled. A similar situation arose in Fumane, in the Valpolicella to the northwest of the city. Witnesses in the 1567 suit alleged that the defendant, Bartolomeo Barberi, called “el Paltena,” had kept his marriage to the plaintiff, Chiara di Farini, a secret because he wanted to prevent Lord Giulio Gandia, for whom he worked as factor, from learning about it. Chiara’s mother told the court that Bartolomeo had said that “he did not want this [marriage] to be known for the love of messer Giulio Gandin, his patrone.” Chiara’s brother testified that Bartolomeo “took [the three children Chiara had by him] to give to a wet nurse because he did not want Chiara to raise the children because of messer Giulio Gandin.”108 The suit arose because Bartolomeo had recently publicly married another, richer, woman, presumably with the approval of his patron—and perhaps at the patron’s instigation.

NM NM NM In medieval and early modern Europe, as historical research is beginning to reveal, marrying in secret could take many different forms and serve many different purposes. The way that some people practiced clandestine marriage in the sixteenthcentury diocese of Verona was shaped generally by the traditional marriage practices of the region, which allowed contracting marriage in privacy, and more specifically by the dominant social and economic processes of the sixteenth century: proletarianization of the peasantry, hierarchization of peasant society, and increasing urban investment in land and involvement in rural society. The practice of clandestine marriage in Verona illuminates not only the workings of peasant classes, but also the complexity of the patriarchal order that organized Veronese society. This did not work as a clearly demarcated sexual and generational hierarchy within the family, but was replete with ambiguities and sometimes extended beyond the family. Similar to the findings in the last chapter, the analysis of these suits has shown the relationship between women and their natal families in arranging clandestine marriages to have been shaped not so much by obedience as by cooperation for mutual gain. 108 “non voleva che questo se sapesse per amor de messer Giulio Gandin suo patrone.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of Domina Lutia ux. q. Bartholomei Perini de Dionisiis de negarini. “li ha tolti tutti a dar a baila perche non volea che la chiara governasse li detti figli per messer Julio Gandin.” Ibid., Testimony of Zeno q. Bartholomei de dionisiis de Negarini.

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The situation for men was equally complex. Sons were in theory strictly subordinated to their fathers, so long as the fathers lived. At the same time, however, other factors, particularly their economic situation, determined the degree of paternal control in practice. Moreover, the fact that all sons, unlike daughters, were themselves future fathers potentially undermined the premises of the hierarchy and introduced some ambiguity about how far a father’s control extended, particularly in a matter as central to maturity as marriage. The practice of clandestine marriage also introduces the issue of patriarchal control from without the family, born of the social hierarchy. The interest of the powerful and wealthy urban elite in the marriages of their subordinates could interact with familial and individual control of marriage in complex ways. A member of the nobility might side with a child who wanted to marry against his parents’ will or impose a marriage partner that neither parent nor child wanted. This elite control over Veronese society, also patriarchal, will be explored in greater depth in the next chapter, concerning the practice of concubinage.

M4N TENERE A SUA POSTA Concubinage in Verona

In the mid-1570s Tarsia Morandi, a young Veronese woman of about eighteen, joined the household of the knight Alessandro Troiano as a maidservant to his wife; a short while later Tarsia became the concubine of the knight himself.1 As a high-status man and a low-status woman living in a semipermanent, nonmarital union, Tarsia and Alessandro followed a course well established in sixteenth-century Verona. For several years (during which his wife died) Alessandro kept Tarsia discreetly with him in his house and she bore him two children. When their relationship came to an end, as was customary Alessandro kept the children and, in order to enable Tarsia to reenter respectable society, found her a husband, Giulio Folignino, a reputable widower some years older than she and a tailor by trade. As was also customary, the knight provided Tarsia with a dowry and arranged the wedding. The course of a concubinage relationship did not always go smoothly, however, for it touched on the critical areas of marriage, power, sexuality, and reputation. When Tarsia tried to join her husband in their new home, her arrival in Lord Alessandro’s coach was greeted not by cries of welcome, but by screams of “dirty whore” (porcha puttana) and “Troiano’s cow” (la vacca del Trogiano) from her new sisters-in-law.2 Neighbors witnessing the event testified that violent resistance met Tarsia’s attempt to enter the house; the two sisters began to beat their brother, the groom, presumably fearing that allowing Tarsia to join their household would 1

Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino; and ibid., 1582 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino. Portions of this chapter appear as “‘Femine e zentilhomini’: Concubinato d’élite nella Verona del Cinquecento,” trans. Mario Zanucchi and Silvia Martelli, with the collaboration of Silvana Seidel Menchi, in Trasgressioni coniugali: Concubinaggio, adulterio, bigamia (secc. XIV–XVIII), Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds. (Bologna: Il Mulino, forthcoming). 2 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino, Testimony of [illegible]…uxor Stephani Bracenti de Sancto Stephano.

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damage their own reputations. Giulio, as a lower-status husband in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis a lord, had fears of his own. Even once he and Tarsia had their own lodgings, Giulio was convinced—and according to witnesses with good reason—that Lord Alessandro had not given up his sexual claim on Tarsia despite their marriage and had cuckolded him. The marriage appears to have ended in a formal separation. To the limited degree European historians consider concubinage between elite men and lower-status women, they typically focus on the needs of aristocratic men living under the harsh demands of the aristocratic marital system in the Middle Ages and early modern period. They tend to rely upon legal historians’ observation that medieval and early modern concubinage shared many features with other types of legally recognized inferior marriage, such as morganatic marriage and concubinage in ancient Rome, whose salient feature was that they limited the inheritance rights of children born of the union.3 Regarding concubinage as a type of inferior and nonpermanent marriage, they argue that it helped to uphold the aristocratic marriage system by unofficially providing some of the things that the system formally denied to many. Since aristocrats almost universally arranged marriages to create family alliances and to increase wealth rather than to unite people who loved each other, concubinage gave elite men the opportunity to establish one or more emotionally satisfying relationships; these could be either in addition to a legitimate wife, before settling down in legitimate marriage, or when aristocratic family strategy required that a man remain single in order to limit the number of legitimate heirs and thus demands on the family patrimony. Although people of the same (low) status sometimes formed nonmarital unions in Verona, this chapter focuses on concubinage involving elite men, which is here called “elite concubinage.” Concubinage between two people of low status— here called “nonelite concubinage”—has left less information in the records, but enough to show that it was shaped by the particular social circumstances of its participants and thus served somewhat different purposes than elite concubinage. This chapter’s reconstruction of elite concubinage relationships in Verona between about 3

Legal historical treatments include James A. Brundage, “Concubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law,” Journal of Medieval History 1 (1975): 1–17; Brundage, Law, Sex, esp. 40–41, 70–71, 98–103, 297–300, 444–47, 481–82, 514–17, 564; E. Jombart, “Concubinage,” in Dictonnaire de droit canonique, ed. R. Naz (Paris: Letouqey et Ané, 1942) 13:1513–24; Gaudemet, Mariage, 174–75, 348–50; Pertile, Storia 3: 370–72; and Besta, La famiglia. The more detailed treatments of the practice of concubinage include Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna; Martini, “La donna veneziana, 301–39; Helen S. Ettlinger, “Visibilis et Invisibilis: The Mistress in Italian Renaissance Court Society,” Renaissance Quarterly 47 (4) (1994): 770–92; and Ferraro, Marriage Wars, chap. 4. Also important are Herlihy, Medieval Households, 36–55, and Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

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1530 and 1585 shows that this practice, more than simply a pressure release valve for the aristocratic marriage system, highlights the complex relationships between people of different social class in a century marked by increasing and hardening class differences. Concubinage relationships between elite men and lower-status women in Verona both symbolized and implemented the growing dominance of elite men over the rest of society. Unlike marriage, which ideally joined people of equal status, elite concubinage brought together people of very different social classes. Nearly two dozen marriage suits heard by the Veronese episcopal court allow us not just to examine the economic and emotional needs of the elite, usually noble, men who kept concubines, but also to take into account the perspectives of the other people whom the relationships touched—the lower-status women who became concubines, but also their lower-status husbands and the elite wives of the men who kept concubines. These legal disputes show that the conflicting needs, desires, and fears of all the parties involved helped to shape how concubinage was practiced in this place and time. Elite concubinage in Verona was fraught with difficulties that arose primarily from the way elite men could use the practice to exercise their dominance over the rest of society. Customs that surrounded the practice kept conflicts to a minimum and thus helped to preserve it, but concubinage could still lead to bitter problems, especially for concubines, their husbands, and elite wives, whom the practice placed at a disadvantage.

CONCUBINAGE IN LAW AND PRACTICE Concubinage had a long history of acceptance on the Italian peninsula that only began to wane at the end of the sixteenth century. Through the Middle Ages and up until the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, secular and ecclesiastical law tolerated concubinage, particularly when both participants were unmarried, although in practice even technically adulterous relationships were widely known and often accepted. The Veronese legal code of 1276 protected a man’s right to his concubine (amasia) against kinsmen, and law codes as late as the sixteenth century from other Italian cities matter-of-factly included concubines in the list of people whom it was licit for a man to punish.4 As late as the fifteenth century, concubinage had been prevalent and accepted particularly at the higher reaches of society, as evidenced by 4

Gino Sandri, ed., Gli statuti veronesi del 1276 colle correzione e le aggiunte fino al 1323 (Venice: n.p., 1940), bk. 3, chap. 60, 429: “De eo quo propinquam vel affinem amasie sue disposaverit: Et qui scientur disposaverit propinquam vel affinem alicuius cum qua concuberit et postea cum ea ad divorcium venerit, ipsum in xxv. libris mulctabo.” On concubines in Italian statutes, see Pertile, Storia, 3:309 n. 38. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, 514–16. People also sometimes formalized concubinage relationships in contracts in fourteenth-century Italy. Brundage, Law, Sex, 446.

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the large number of prominent bastards active in the politics of the period, such as the many natural sons of the Della Scala rulers of Verona.5 For reasons that remain unclear, however, legal tolerance of all nonmarital relationships started to wane by the late fifteenth century. Secular governments across the Italian peninsula began to declare concubinage illegal, as early as 1387 in Cremona but generally in the fifteenth century. In Verona, while the 1450 revision of the law code (which remained in effect until the Napoleonic era) did not specifically forbid concubinage, it did omit the chapter that had recognized men’s rights to their concubines.6 With impulses for reform gaining momentum in the mid-sixteenth-century church, reformers’ desires for more general moral renewal of society through the promotion of a newly Christianized family led religious authorities, including those in Verona, to launch campaigns for couples living in concubinage to separate or to marry (if they were able). In 1563 the Council of Trent finally declared concubinage between two unmarried people illegal, while also singling out for special condemnation “married men [who] live in this state of damnation and have the boldness at times to maintain and keep [concubines] in their homes even with their own wives.”7 Nonetheless, for the period under examination here, the mid-sixteenth century, the official condemnation appears to have had as yet little effect on the wellentrenched and long-accepted practice in Verona. Marriage court records, sermons, episcopal proclamations, and didactic literature indicate that the onset of official condemnation initially did little to change either the habits of elite men or popular attitudes, with general tolerance lasting at least to the late sixteenth century. 8 Concubinage was a technical, usually legal, term and, at least in Verona, actually not one that was often used in everyday speech. In medieval and early modern law, concubinage was any nonmarital long-term sexual relationship between two unmarried people. A similar relationship in which one of the parties was married 5

Jacob Burckhardt’s contention that “Closely connected with the political illegitimacy of the dynasties of the fifteenth century was the public indifference to legitimate birth” is well known. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London: Penguin, 1990), 30. For the role of the natural sons of the Della Scala, see Pier Zagata, Cronica della città di Verona descritta da Pier Zagata; ampliata, e supplita da Giambattista Bianconlini (Verona: Dionisio Ramanzini, 1745), for example, part 2, v. 2, 74. See Ettlinger, “Visibilis,” for similar situations in Milan, Ferrara, and Rimini. On tolerance of informal unions more generally, see Brundage, Law, Sex, 98–103, 297–300, 369, 444–47. 6 Brundage, Law, Sex, 514–15; Pertile, Storia, 3: 372; and STV. 7 Brundage, “Concubinage”; Schroeder, Canons and Decrees, “Decree concerning the Reform of Matrimony,” chap. 8, 188; and Pertile, Storia, 3: esp. 371 n. 9. On efforts to end concubinage in Siena, see Oscar Di Simplicio, Peccato, penitenza, perdono, Siena 1575–1800: La formazione della coscienza nell’Italia moderna (Milan: Angeli, 1994), chap. 6. 8 On the decline in tolerance in Venice, see Martini, “La donna veneziana”; for Siena, Di Simplicio, Peccato, 183–241.

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was adultery. In theory, this distinction had important repercussions in the law, particularly regarding the children born of these unions: those born of true concubinato, that between unmarried people, were the naturali, who had greater rights than those born of adultery, the spurii. This distinction tended to be lost in practice, however, and the spurii were usually treated like natural children.9 Not even the Veronese church leaders, who made nonmarital unions one of the chief targets in their campaign for moral reform of the diocese, distinguished between concubinage and adultery in this way. Through the late 1520s and early 1530s, the visitation record used concubinarius and related terms in reference to any long-term relationship in which members of the couple were not married to each other, although one or both might be married to someone else. Indeed, the visitors (particularly prior to 1541) tended to be inconsistent in noting the marital states of a couple in a concubinage union beyond the fact that the two were not married to each other. For example, in 1526 the record noted that Zanino Pino kept a woman along with his wife, that is, in the house with them. When the visitors made note of Zanino again, however, in both 1529 and 1530, they neglected to mention that he was married at all.10 This tendency to ignore the technical distinction between concubinarii and adulterii suggests it did not capture the salient features of concubinage. The division relevant to understanding the social reality of concubinage in early modern Verona was not the marital statuses of the parties, but their social standing. Social status determined both how people practiced concubinage and the purposes that concubinage served. In Verona elite concubinage was a relationship between a high(er)-status man and a low(er)-status woman; nonelite concubinage involved people of roughly equal (low) status. Elite and nonelite concubinage arose from similar social, economic, legal, and cultural conditions, but the shape of each was ultimately determined by the facts of the social hierarchy.11 High status effectively 9

Brundage, Law, Sex, esp. 543–44. Pertile, Storia, 389–91, stresses the tendency for the secular law and practice to ignore the differences between the types of illegitimacy. See also Kuehn, “Reading between the Patrilines: Leon Battista Alberti’s Della Famiglia in Light of His Illegitimacy,” in Law, Family, 157–75; Kuehn, “‘As If Conceived within Legitimate Marriage’: A Dispute concerning Legitimation in Quattrocento Florence,” in Law, Family, 176–93; Ross, “Concubinage”; and Martini, “La donna veneziana,” 336–37. 10 RPV, 119, 277, 808. 11 There were actually probably more than two types, but these two appear most clearly in the records. Some nonelites in the city appear to have conducted concubinage relationships that were more like the elite than the nonelite type described here, which is drawn from only a few rural cases. The historical literature on concubinage itself reflects the status distinction, although it does not do so consciously. One of the indications that the investigation of concubinage is still at an early stage is the different ways authors use the word, and the apparent lack of awareness of how others are using it. Some authors, particularly those writing about the medieval period, apply the term concubinage XXX

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exempted elite men from many of the rules of sexual conduct that bound the nonelite. This gave the elites greater freedom to develop concubinage as a relationship clearly distinct from marriage. The result was an institution that had its own recognized customs and vocabulary: an elite man was said to “keep a woman at his posta,” or demand—the woman was called his femina. In contrast, the concubinage of nonelites—at least in the few cases about which there is any detailed information—was less clearly articulated and had an existence that was more closely tied to marriage and marital conventions. Such an egregious transgression of declared values could not exist openly, although people knew it went on. It needed a fiction and so hid in the shadow of legitimate marriage, in the ambiguous space left for clandestine marriages, or else in the realm of harlotry. There was no specialized vocabulary to describe this relationship; people borrowed words from prostitution or marriage. A man might say of a woman with whom he had had four children that he had gone to her as a whore; while the woman’s only option was to describe herself as (secretly) his wife. The record of the visitations Bishop Giberti or his vicars made to the rural parishes of the Veronese diocese between 1525 and 1542 contains 187 reports of couples conducting concubinage relationships.12 While this sort of record is a better source for determining the aims and attitudes of the visitors (for which it will be used below) than for investigating actual practice, it can still show a rough outline of the phenomenon. While the episcopal visitors were inconsistent in noting the social status of the concubinarii and concubinae, it is clear that people—and particularly men—of both high and low status participated in concubinage. Slightly more than a quarter of the men cited have titles or other indicators of high status. For the majority of the men, the visitors gave no indication of status, with the exception of a few for whom the visitors noted occupations and who are therefore known to be of low status. It is likely, however, that most of those without titles in the record were low status as well. The women’s status is even harder to ascertain, other than the fact that four of 12

to the phenomenon of nobles or princes keeping women, often their servants or tenants. See Herlihy, Medieval Households; and Ross, “Concubinage.” But compare Ettlinger, “Visibilis,” who discusses women she calls “mistresses” in Renaissance Italian courts. Others, particularly those investigating the seventeenth through ninetieth centuries, use it to refer to low-status people living together unmarried. See Di Simplicio, Peccato; Lynn Abrams, “Concubinage, Cohabitation and the Law: Class and Gender Relations in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Gender and History 5, no. 1 (1993): 81–100. 12 This number includes all relationships the visitors designated “concubinage” by labeling a man a concubinarius or a woman a concubina, and also includes those that used “concubinage terminology,” usually saying a man “keeps” a woman. The number excludes most relationships that were described with ambiguous terminology, such as “was involved carnally,” assuming that those were short-term affairs.

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them were specifically said to be servants, and therefore low status, and none of them had a title indicating high status.13 More notable, however, is the group the visitors designated as members of the nobility or else as Veronese citizens (which usually meant noble). At least fifty-seven of the men fell into this elite category, in most zones making up between one quarter and one third of the men reported as concubinarii, at a time when the nobility made up at most 15 percent of the urban population and an unknown but certainly lower proportion of the rural inhabitants.14 This suggests that noblemen were highly visible—and perhaps particularly troublesome—practioners of concubinage (see table 4.1). Table 4.1: Concubinage Relationships Reported during the Episcopal Visitations Conducted in the Diocese of Verona between 1525 and 1541 Compared by Geographical Zone KNOWN ELITE REPORTS REPORTS (NO.)

(NO.)

PERCENT OF ZONE (%)

PERCENT OF TOTAL (%)

High hills and mountains

12

4

33

6

Foothills

31

10

32

17

Lakeshore

17

7

41

9

Moraine

7

4

57

4

120

32

27

64

187

57

30

100

ZONE

Bassa veronese Total

Reports of concubinage came from every zone of the diocese, showing that concubinage was a rural phenomenon as well as the urban one indicated by most of the marriage court records (see map 4.1). While the sample size is too small to allow any precise conclusions about the relative incidence of the practice in the various zones of the diocese, the large number of reports (120 of 187) from the 13

RPV, 537, 669, 961, 974, and 997. Also, two women can be classified as low status by information on the men connected to them: Flora q. Jacobi sutoris (794) and Iacoba de Guxolegno (885), whose first husband was a shepherd. One case did involve the wife of a nobleman of the Bevilacqua family who had been “abducted” by a Mantuan and was now living with her abductor in the house of the noble family of the Pendagli (RPV, 1315). This is more complicated than concubinage or even than divorce and remarriage and was probably tied in with feud and vendetta. 14 This number for the year 1545 is based on wealth as reported in Tagliaferri, Economia, 69. I assume that the nobility made up a smaller proportion of the rural population since the nobility preferred to be taxed in the city because the smaller urban tax burden gave them a lower tax rate. Tagliaferri (ibid., 85 n. 9) also notes that in 1790, 2.99 percent of the population was officially designated noble and a further 4.55 percent were “cittadini,” non-noble, but still elite.

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Map 4.1: Location of Instances of Concubinage Reported during Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti’s Visitations to the Diocese of Verona, 1526–41

Based on the map of the diocese of Verona contained in Antonio Fasani, ed., Riforma pretridentina della diocese di Verona. Visite pastorali del Vescovo G. M. Giberti, 1525–1541 (Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989).

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bassa veronese is worthy of note. While it may not indicate that concubinage was more prevalent here than in the rest of the territory, it does suggest that it was particularly visible (and of concern) to the ecclesiastical visitors. In the sixteenth century, this zone, as discussed in the previous chapter, was the one Veronese noblemen most favored for investment. They not only bought land, but they consolidated their holdings into large estates often crowned with villas to which they would come from the city to escape summer heat and disease, as well as to oversee production. The visitors reported the highest absolute number of noble concubinarii here, suggesting that taking a peasant woman as a concubine may have been connected to the noble conquest of this territory; this topic will be discussed at the end of the chapter.

ELITE CONCUBINAGE The records of marital disputes heard by the bishop’s court expand on the sketchy outlines in the visitation record to investigate in more detail the actual practice of concubinage in early modern Italy, particularly that involving elite men. Among the 193 cases that survive in Verona from between 1538 and 1593, there are twenty-four that involve elite concubinage, seventeen of which turn on the issue and thus provide a great deal of detail about the practice. While most of the cases originated in the city, some of them also involve the countryside as the place where concubines lived or came from. While there may have been differences between rural and urban styles of concubinage, there is not enough information available to be sure and therefore they are treated the same for the purposes of this chapter. Most of these cases are suits for legal separations brought by wives against their husbands who kept concubines. A few cases, however, deal with a complementary situation: low-status husbands faced with wives who were living as the concubines of richer and more powerful men. These husbands either sought separations or sought to have the court compel their wives to return to “the holy and pacific state of matrimony.” The fact that over 12 percent of the surviving marital disputes in sixteenth-century Verona involved concubinage indicates that many people found this institution troublesome. The parties’ claims and witnesses’ depositions provide details about the conduct of the relationships which illustrate some of the social and economic features of concubinage and the problems and tensions endemic to it. Certainly not all high-status men in sixteenth-century Verona kept concubines, but people knew that this was a common practice among such men, both married and unmarried. Scholars have given two interrelated explanations for the existence of nonmarital unions among the elite, both of which derive from elite marital strategies: one was emotional, the other economic.

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One attraction of concubinage, historians argue, was the opportunity for love. Since aristocratic marriages were almost universally arranged to create family alliances and increase wealth rather than to unite people who loved each other, concubinage gave married men the opportunity to establish one (or more) emotionally satisfying relationships. Concubinage was similarly attractive to unmarried men, who might have a concubine prior to or instead of marrying legitimately, particularly if the woman was lower status and marriage to her would be inappropriate. The other explanation for concubinage is economic: as is well known, in the fifteenth and particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, aristocratic marital strategies and efforts to conserve the patrimony led elite families increasingly to forbid all but a few of their children to marry, relegating excess women to convents and men to the clergy or the military.15 These unmarried men could take concubines. This concubinage allowed elite men to have stable unions without endangering the family patrimony, for any children produced in a concubinage relationship would be illegitimate and have no legal claim on the fathers’ families’ wealth. These children could, however, also serve as “backup” heirs, who could be legitimated if no legitimate sons were born to the line.16 Concubinage allowed noble sons who could not marry (and who had not taken a vow of celibacy) to enjoy some of the benefits of family life without threatening the dissipation of the patrimony through division to a large number of heirs. Indeed, Bishop Giberti directed the attention of Veronese priests to precisely this problem, namely, “some brothers and kin, who not only do not correct, but very often even encourage their brothers and kin [who keep concubines] to lead a bad life, so that they do not marry and divide their possessions into more parts.” 17 In short, scholars have generally argued that elite concubinage helped maintain the aristocratic marriage system by unofficially giving it greater flexibility. One might conceive of concubinage as an impermanent kind of marriage that lacked a public and legal side, much like morganatic marriage, to which concubinage was closely related. This was a formal but second-class marriage used 15

Ettlinger, “Visibilis”; Duby, Knight, 39–43; Martini, “La donna veneziana”; Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna; and Volker Hunecke, “Matrimonio e demografia del patriziato veneziano (secc. XVII– XVIII), Studi Veneziani, n.s., 21 (1991): 294–308, which discusses marriage rates in the Venetian ruling class between 1491 and the end of the eighteenth century. 16 Kuehn, “‘As If Conceived,’ ” in his Law, Family; Duby, Knight, 41–43, 116–18; and Goody, Development, 39–45, 75–77. 17 “delli fratelli & parenti, li quali non solamente non correggono, anzi molte volte confortano li soi fratelli, & congiunti a tener mala vita, accio che non si maritano: & vada la roba in piu parte.” Giberti, Per li padri, f. 11v. This reasoning would of course also have been attractive to some nonelites, which will be considered below.

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throughout medieval Europe but also into the early modern period, in which a man, usually a widower, would marry, but the children of the union had no rights to his property.18 Such an understanding of elite concubinage would, however, be incomplete. Economic and emotional needs only partly explain the existence of concubinage; they do not wholly account for the more specific form these relationships took in sixteenth-century Verona. Far from simply supporting the marriage system, in Verona concubinage had the potential to threaten it. Marriage among the elite was between equals, for one of its purposes was to strengthen the ruling class; concubinage was between unequals and both symbolized and realized the dominance of elite men over the rest of society, including over elite women.19 Concubinage in sixteenth-century Verona and the Veronese was shaped by the conflicting needs of those affected by the relationship: those of the elite men who used the relationships to bolster or increase their status on the one hand and on the other those of the men’s wives (and by extension their natal families), the concubines themselves, and their families (including husbands), who sought to limit the elite men’s excesses of power. Indeed, one can imagine elite men themselves seeing the practice from two perspectives: as men who kept concubines and as the fathers of daughters married to men who kept concubines. Although the social hierarchy, and particularly the nobility, was crystallizing into a virtual caste system in the sixteenth century, some movement continued both within given groups and at the edges between status groups. Individuals and families continued to try to position themselves for the ascent to nobility by amassing land, leaving behind all suggestion of the taint of trade and the so-called “mechanical arts,” and trying to “live nobly,” as the saying went, in the hope that in a few generations their descendants could make the ascent, which some continued to do.20 For a man, keeping a concubine was part of “living nobly,” not simply 18

Duby, Knight, 43; and Ettlinger, “Visibilis,” esp. 786. Brundage, “Concubinage,” emphasizes the similarities between concubinage and marriage, pointing out, for example, that Gratian understood concubinage as a relationship equal to marriage but lacking standing in the law. The legal definition of morganatic marriage developed in feudal law from Justinian’s conception of concubinage as an inferior type of marriage. Jombart, “Concubinage,” 1513. On morganatic marriage in Italian law, see Pertile, Storia, 3:334–36. 19 The fact that contemporaries understood concubinage to take place between a high-status man and a low-status woman is highlighted by Giuseppe Mascardi’s consilia on concubinage. See, for example, COP, Conclusio 341, ff. 200r–v: “Concubinatus an praesumatur esistente disparitate personarum, & quomodo probetur.” 20 On the complex nature of and criteria for nobility with particular reference to the Veneto, see James Grubb, “Patriziato, nobiltà, legittimazione: Con particolare riguardo al Veneto,” in Istituzione, società e potere nelle Marca Trevigiana e Veronese (secoli XIII–XIV) sulle tracce di G. B. Verci, Gherardo Ortalli and Michael Knapton, eds. (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1988), 235–59; and Lanaro Sartori, Oligarchia, esp. 21–34.

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because noblemen did it, but because the process of keeping a concubine demonstrated important noble attributes: wealth, leisure, and the patron’s ability to establish and maintain dominance over the rest of society, particularly the lower orders. Most of the men identified in the marriage court cases as keeping concubines belonged to the Veronese elite, many of them to its most illustrious noble families: Count Ercole dei Giusti, Andrea Morandi, Francesco Cendrata, Bettino Draper di Morandi, and Cavaliere Alessandro Troiano. A further six men were elite, but not so firmly established in the nobility, for whom as a consequence it would have been particularly important to demonstrate that they “lived nobly.” The family of Agostino a Portello, for example, had gotten two members into the city council, one in 1427 and the other during Agostino’s lifetime, but made no other mark. Agostino nonetheless lived as a gentleman, not by a trade or profession, received the title egregius, had two live-in servants, and kept a former servant, Maddalena, as his concubine.21 Two other of these men on the margins are interesting because they were foreigners who were apparently trying to be accepted into the Veronese nobility which, like that of most cities, did not automatically accept the nobility of other cities into their ruling class. Venier Venier and Bartolomeo Averoldo were both probably members of noble families in nearby cities, the Venier in Venice, and the Averoldo in Brescia.22 Bartolomeo Averoldo, while not a member of a noble Veronese family, was called “signor” by many who knew him. He appears to have been well established in Verona: his friends were scions of some of Verona’s first families, with whom he also had business dealings; he owned real estate in the city and land in the contado where he raised silkworms. And he had a concubine named Leonora. Venier, the first of his family to appear in the Veronese tax records, was a procurator who probably owned land in the contado. He also kept several women as concubines in the 1540s, both inside and outside the city, whom he defended aggressively against the religious authorities. While opinion was divided on whether practicing law was a mechanical art, within one generation his family included a dottore, which was unequivocally equated with nobility. In the seventeenth century, entrance into 21

On the Portello family see Antonio Cartolari, Famiglie già ascritte al nobile consiglio di Verona con alcune notizie intorno parecchie case di lei a cui s’aggiungono il nome le dichiarazione ed un elenco di varie delle passate sue magistrature ed altre memorie risguardanti la stessa città (Verona, 1854), 1:218, 2:87. Other information in ASVR, Comune di Verona, Cancelleria dell’estimo, Anagrafi, nn. 20 (S. Andrea 1542), 21 (S. Andrea 1553), 22 (S. Andrea 1555), entries under “Augustin dal portello,” “Augustinus aportello,” and “Agustin portello f.q. De m. Francesco dal Portello.” Agostino, who was in his late 40s in the 1540s, also had a son, Giacomo, born in about 1538. 22 The other two were Matteo de Constantinis, who may have been a member of the Constanti family, which had one member in the council in the fifteenth century (Cartolari, Famiglie, 1:78), and prudens vir Francesco Bastonum, about whom I have no information except his admittedly low-level title.

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the city council finally crowned the family’s ascent. Venier left a remarkable trail in the ecclesiastical record: in addition to the divorce suit his wife brought against him in 1544, which alludes to several run-ins with priests, he was cited twice in the visitation record for keeping two different concubines, one in the city and one in the countryside.23 This further supports the assertion that Venier was on the margins of the elite: behaving like a nobleman, but without the power and protection that the nobility had, he therefore made a relatively easy target for authorities. Keeping a concubine signaled high status, wealth, and power. While ordinary men might visit prostitutes, have lovers, or carry on long-term relationships with women from their own milieu to whom they were not married, they did not keep concubines. Witnesses in the court cases reserved terms like concubina, and the more common femina for relationships of inequality between men of (relatively) high status and lower-status women.24 Because concubines did not bring dowries, only rich men could afford concubines and the children that they produced, especially if the men also had legitimate families to support. A man’s financial support of his concubine was an identifying feature of the relationship; in describing a woman as a concubine, witnesses often specified that the man paid for her rent, her food, and her clothing. Because this last item was a particularly important indicator of status, men made sure to dress their concubines well. Laws in one city, in fact, exempted serving women from clothing limitations when they were their masters’ concubines. Dress came up in a number of the Veronese cases as when a noble witness described in detail the cloth that Bartolomeo Averoldo had bought in Venice for his concubine Leonora and the clothing she had made from it.25 From the point of view of the man, it was important that the relationship be publicly known. A concubine was a luxury good, an article, one might say, of 23 On the Venier family see Cartolari, Famiglie, 1:264. See also Ventura, Nobiltà, 317–20; RPV, 1350, 1685; and Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio di Sommacampagna v. Venier Venier. 24 For example, in support of her request for a divorce from bed and board, the noblewoman Aurelia de Boschetis claimed that her husband, Count Ercole dei Giusti “de presenti tenet quandam Luciam mantuanam cum ea concubens”; witnesses confirmed that Lucia was indeed the count’s femina. Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti. In contrast, for a case brought to enforce an alleged marriage between two wool workers, when the defendant’s lawyer used the word “concubina” in his interrogatory as part of the man’s allegation that they had not married, none of the witnesses picked up on this terminology. The man himself, according to one witness, called the woman his “cosa,” or “thing,” a word I have not seen used anywhere else for concubine and by which he probably intended to denote an affair. Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1546 Antonia dicta la Rizzolina v. Tommaso Borella, Testimony of Petrus filius magistri Juliani de Baldis de S. Matheo. 25 Pertile, Storia, 3:372 n. 14. See also, Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Clemenza Zucharina v. Egregius Francesco Serenello, concluding that Clemenza’s clothing was nice for a concubine, but not as nice as a wife’s. Testimony of Nob. vir Agustinus Julianus f.q. Domini Jacobi comitis and Testimony of Nob. Hieronymus q. Augustini de Nichesollis.

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conspicuous consumption, like a coach. In a 1546 case, witnesses explained that they knew a woman was a concubine and not a wife because the man allowed her to be seen publicly by all, while a wife he would have kept secluded. In another case, in 1541, a witness reported that Count Ercole dei Giusti had insisted that his concubine, Lucia, along with his wife, Aurelia, prepare a feast he gave for the notables of the region.26 The count thus made the feast a display not only of his largesse and wealth, but also of his ability openly to ignore conventions of monogamy, and even conventions of concubinage. Keeping a concubine demonstrated power. A man exercised exclusive control over his concubine, which the most common phrase for keeping a concubine expressed, “tenere a sua posta,” or “to keep at his demand.” This exclusivity distinguished a concubine from a prostitute, and probably accounts for the somewhat lesser dishonor a concubine suffered. It also distinguished elite concubinage from the relationships ordinary men had with, on the one hand, prostitutes, who had many men, and, on the other, wives and lovers, who had a significant amount of freedom.27 Men might compete over concubines; thirteenth-century Veronese law fined a man who took another’s concubine in certain circumstances. Other law codes gave men similar rights over concubines as over their wives.28 Men also used concubines in their larger political and social strategies, incorporating them in patronage networks by marrying them (and perhaps their children) off to clients. 29 As will be seen below, these marriages gave elite men further opportunities to demonstrate their dominance over others. The inhabitants of Verona effectively tolerated the fact that these elite men ignored many of the social rules that regulated most people’s sexual and marital 26

Francesco “non... tenebat eamdem Clementiam occulte in domo, sed permittebat eam videri a quocumque...” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Clemenza Zucharina v. Egregius Francesco Serenello, Testimony of domina Maria uxor Petri de [illegible]. Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole dei Giusti, Testimony of Honesta domina Catherina uxor Baptistae sartoris de S. Joanne in valle. 27 One legal opinion distinguished between a concubine and a prostitute on the basis of the number of men she was involved with. Giovanni Pietro Bimio, Consiliorum seu responsorum clarissimi equitis, et comitis, Ioan. Petri Bimii, iurisconsulti Mediolanensis acutissimi (Venice: Officina Damiani Zenarii, 1588), bk. 1, 112v, consilium 40. 28 Such as allowing the men to beat them. The 1442 code of Adria states that “Patres possint impune verberare filios, et mariti suas uxores, et concubinarii suas concubinas quas tenerent in domo, dummodo eas non occidant vel trecias incidant, salvo quod si sanguinem fecerint cum manibus vel baculo, vel faciendo eas cadere in terram (III. 27). Ferrarese law of 1566 was similar. Pertile, Storia, 3:309 n. 38, 371. 29 Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). One Veronese marriage case involved the natural daughter of a nobleman who was married to a worker in the hat trade: Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1550 Paula f. naturalis q. Nob. Joannis Baptistae de Peregrinis v. Raphaeles de Fenetis biretarius. For other examples, see also Hunecke, “Matrimonio e demografia”; and Ettlinger, “Visibilis.”

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lives.30 The practice itself both symbolized and maintained their high status by giving these men significant power over other people’s lives, and particularly over these people’s honor, an early modern Italian’s most precious possession. Because it made so many people vulnerable, however, tensions surrounded concubinage. Conventions that restrained and guided the practice did seek to ameliorate these tensions, but could never entirely obliterate them. When a married man kept a concubine, his legitimate family—his wife, his children, and even his wife’s natal family—all risked injury to their financial position and to their honor. As a result, concubinage potentially threatened the smooth functioning of the elaborate system of marital alliances that supported the ruling class. Customs limiting the possibility of injury to legitimate families, and particularly to legitimate wives, therefore had to regulate the practice. To protect the legitimate wife’s, and by extension her natal family’s, position, honor, and financial resources, and probably to help secure her cooperation, convention dictated that a concubine be treated obviously less well than a wife. Observers did not confuse elite concubinage with marriage; it was another kind of relationship entirely. In only two of the seventeen cases dealing with elite concubinage was the issue whether a woman was the man’s wife (allegedly by a clandestine marriage) or his concubine, and in neither case could the women find witnesses who thought the relationship looked at all like marriage.31 They were clear that concubinage and marriage looked quite different. An interrogatory in the dispute between Clemenza Zucharina and Francesco Serenello asked witnesses to state how they knew the difference between a concubine and a wife. Both the question and the witnesses’ responses distinguished between the two on the basis of how much respect the man gave the woman. Two witnesses said that concubines were not dressed as well as wives; two others stated that a wife would have servants in attendance. Not only did the woman in question not have them, but one witness had seen her and her mother doing maids’ work. Still other witnesses seemed at a loss about how to describe the distinction, but they were sure it hinged on respect. “If she had been his wife,” one explained, “he would have given her companionship (compagnia) as a wife and he would have behaved with her as husbands do.” Another said more explicitly, “With legitimate wives one behaves with more respect…than one does with concubines.…”32 30 Whether such men were held to a different set of rules than ordinary people or were simply powerful enough to get away with breaking rules is an important question. Herlihy, Medieval Households, argues that there was a common standard developed in the early Middle Ages and the elite managed to misbehave (86, 157). 31 Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Clemenza Zucharina v. Egregius Francesco Serenello; and Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Magdalena di Pietro Lapicide v. Egregius Agostino a Portello. 32 “Se la fosse stata sua moglier el li haveria fatto compagnia da moglier et sari stato cum lei XXX

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A number of marriage court cases brought by wives seeking separations illustrate wives’ anger when their husbands did not keep the proper distance between concubine and wife—when they did not behave with more respect toward their wives than toward their concubines. In 1542, Caterina dei Cogni brought a case for separation from her husband the Egregius Gentile Calchasole, complaining “he treated [his wife] worse than a scullery maid on account of the concubines that…he kept at his requisition.”33 Unfortunately, this case bogged down in technical disputes before getting to the questioning of witnesses who would have expanded on her complaint. More complete is the case from the previous year between the noble Aurelia and her husband the count Ercole dei Giusti, mentioned above. “For fourteen years,” Aurelia’s documents complained, “the said Count Ercole has committed adultery many times with different women…and he presently keeps a certain Lucia Mantuana, living with her to the great shame and offense…of the Lady Aurelia his wife.”34 The witnesses illustrated this “great shame and offense” with examples of how the count treated his legitimate, highborn wife and his concubine equally, to the detriment of the honor of the wife whose status ought to have granted her precedence. A witness who had served the count as buyer (spenditor) for the household reported that the count sent half of the household provisions “to the whore” (alla putana). Part of the hurt to Aurelia was economic; and part of Ercole’s crime was that he did not care properly for his legitimate family. The witness recalled: As soon as it was [available] [the count] divided everything, bread, meat, money…and all that he, his wife, his children, and the household (famegia) had to live on; and he sent half to the concubine (femina) and made his wife and children and the household suffer.35

33

come fanno li mariti.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Clemenza Zucharina v. Egregius Francesco Serenello, Testimony of Manfinus q. Jacobi di Manfinis. “Con le muglier legitime si va con piu rispetto [...] che non se fa cum le concubine.” Ibid., Testimony of Egregius vir Petrus Joannes [remainder illegible]. 33 “la tratava pezo che se la fosse una sguatara et hos propter concubinas quas... tenebat ad eius postam.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Caterina de Cognis v. Egr. Gentile Cachasole. 34 “ab annis quatuordecum circa pluries et pluries comisit adulterium cum diversi mulieris… et de presenti tenet quandam Luciam mantuanam cum ea concubens in grave dedecus et offensa… ipsius Domina Aurelia eius uxoris.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti. 35 “Subito che l’era [illegible] el parteva ogni cosa pan carne pice [...] et tutto quel di che lui, sua mogier et figlioli sui et la famegia, dovevano viver et mandarla mitta alla femina et facea patir sua mogier i figlioli et la famiglia.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti, Testimony of Joannes q. Pauli de Sanguinero.

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According to another witness, Ercole also provided Lucia with a servant, which was a sign of honor to be reserved for a wife. Ercole gave his concubine the companionship that was properly given only to a wife and he did so openly. Aurelia’s court case singled out the fact that Ercole was living with his concubine as a cause of the shame the relationship brought to his wife. A witness reported that the count ate and drank with Lucia every day, behavior that was generally held to indicate that a couple was married.36 Moreover, as mentioned above, two years earlier the count had insisted that his wife and concubine together attend the feast he gave for the zentilhomini della terra. An elite man’s wife, like the rest of society, accepted the fact that he might well keep a concubine, but she expected, and convention prescribed, that he do so in ways that forestalled injury to her and his legitimate family. The lady Aurelia had refrained from seeking legal remedy for her husband’s adultery for over a dozen years, during which time he had had at least two other concubines; one of them had borne him a child, and the present concubine had borne him four. However, the fact that people around them did not censure men such as Ercole for keeping a concubine—or that what censure there was had little effect on such a powerful man—increased Ercole’s advantage over his wife. Ignoring the conventions, he could dishonor her and use her financial resources (perhaps even those from her dowry) for his concubine if he chose. Aurelia’s protests did no good. Witnesses reported that Ercole’s improperly respectful treatment of Lucia led to many violent disagreements between the husband and wife. On one occasion when Aurelia complained, the count took her into another room and “hit her so that she was heard to cry out,” and she returned with two black eyes. 37 On another occasion, her neighbor Caterina reported, when Aurelia complained that Lucia “had kept the meat for herself and sent them the bones,” Ercole took out his sword and began beating his wife with it.38 When these informal complaints did no good, the lady Aurelia turned to the ecclesiastical court, asking for a formal separation and the return of her dowry on the basis of her husband’s adultery and cruelty. Although this issue did not figure explicitly in any of the marriage court cases, it should also be considered that illegitimate children could pose a threat to those born of the legitimate union. Legal traditions on the Italian peninsula treated illegitimate children noticeably better than did those to the north, particularly in 36

Between two people of unequal status, however, this was held to create the presumption of concubinage. COP, Conclusio 341, 200r–v, esp. n. 22. 37 “le bate di sorte che le se sentia a criar.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti, Testimony of Joannes q. Pauli de Sanguinero. 38 “havesse retegado le carne per lei et li havesse mandato li ossi.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti, Testimony of Caterina uxor Baptiste sartoris.

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France, where such children were excluded by law from their natal families and could not marry. Italian fathers could and did legally recognize or even legitimate their offspring born of women to whom they were not married. No laws apparently barred men from leaving money or property to the children by testament.39 In Verona, some fathers included their illegitimate children as members of their households on their tax declarations and may have included them physically in the family.40 Canon law held that both parents were obliged to support all their children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, although it is unclear how well courts enforced this, at least on the continent. Some legal experts even argued that fathers had wider enforceable obligations to natural children, such as dowering daughters.41 A woman who publicly entered a sexual relationship outside of marriage took a fairly large risk, particularly considering that concubinage relationships were not permanent, and a woman’s honor and reputation was determined largely by her sexual conduct. Promiscuity was a certain route to infamy and exclusion from respectable society. Concubines in mid- and late-sixteenth-century Verona occupied an ambiguous position. A few witnesses described them with respect, as did a man who described his neighbor’s concubine as like “the lady of the house” (patrona).42 But the tendency to equate concubines with whores, who were completely without honor, was also common in the cases, and, one suspects, in daily life.43 39

Pertile, Storia, 3:387–93, 4:65–69; Kuehn, “‘As If Conceived,’” in his Law, Family; Brundage, “Concubinage,” 10; and Nino Tamassia, La famiglia italiana nei secoli decimoquinto e decimossto (Milan: Remo Sandron, 1910), 231–38. Men might also leave inheritances to the concubines themselves. For examples of both in fifteenth-century Rome, see Anna Esposito, “Convivenza e separazione a Roma nel primo Rinascimento,” in Conuigi nemici: La separazione in Italia dal XII al XVIII secolo, ed. Silvana Seiden Menchi and Diego Quaglioni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000), 503–4. See also Peter Laslett, Karla Costerveen, and Richard M. Smith, eds., Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, North America, Jamaica, and Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). 40 Ercole dei Giusti, for example, included six children, presumably including the four by Lucia, ranging in age from one to eight, in addition to his three children in their twenties whom he had had with Aurelia. ASVR, Comune di Verona, Cancelleria dell’estimo. Anagrafi, 1541, S. Giovanni in Valle, entry under “Hercule conte q.d. Zen novelo di Juisti.” 41 Brundage, Law, Sex, 480. Prospero Pasethi, Consilia seu responsa excellentissimi iurisconsulti, D. Prosperi Pasethi Ferrariensis, & in Gymnasio Ferrariensi iuris Pontificii primarii interpretis (Venice: Officinia Damiani Zenari, 1575), Consilium 216 n. 15, 195v; and compare Consilium 215 n. 6, 195r. Some Florentine fathers did in fact invest in dowry fund shares for their natural daughters. See Molho, Marriage Alliance. 42 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino, Testimony of prud. Cursius f.q. prud. Jacobi Cursiis fillatoris. 43 For example, see Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino, Testimony of Prudens Francescus f.q. Petri spophori [?].

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Despite the growing disapproval of concubinage in official circles in the sixteenth century, the practice continued to exist quite openly. Even though some authorities had declared the practice illegal, many areas of the law continued to recognize its existence, for concubinage was a social fact that people had to deal with in many circumstances. In particular, concubines were like wives in certain respects, but not in others, and lawmakers and legal experts had to decide when and to what degree to distinguish them from each other. Many legal sources tended to equate concubines with wives when it was a question of disabilities. For instance, some fifteenth- and sixteenth-century law codes gave men similar rights over their concubines as over wives: they could beat these women just as they could any other family member.44 Similarly, according to some legal experts, neither concubines nor wives could testify for the men to whom they were presumed to be joined in affection. Law did recognize the right of concubines to accept gifts and receive testamentary bequests from the men who had kept them. 45 Unlike a wife, however, a concubine had no other legal rights with regard to the man with whom she might live and whose children she might bear. Despite these disabilities, becoming a concubine had economic and social attractions for lower-status women, and perhaps for their families. A daughter’s concubinage might have been a way for a lower-status family to establish clientage ties with a powerful man. A concubinage relationship would also have been attractive to women who could not marry (or marry as well as they would like) because they had small or no dowries.46 Concubinage may even have been an element in the marital strategies of some poorer families trying to conserve their resources. Because a daughter who became a concubine did not need a dowry, more money would be available to the remaining siblings, giving them a better chance at making good marriages and, in the case of brothers, establishing themselves in occupations.47 While typically concubines appear to have been fairly low status, drawn from serving maids or tenants, the marriage court cases indicate that some women from more elevated circumstances may have also found it an attractive option. Tarsia, the longtime concubine of the knight Alessandro Troiano, discussed above, first came to his house as his wife’s servant, but her last name was that of one of Verona’s most illustrious families, Morandi.48 She may have belonged to a minor, impoverished branch, or she may have been an illegitimate child herself. 44

See n. 4 above. COP, f.199v, Conclusio 340; and Brundage, “Concubinage,” 120–21. 46 Brundage, Law, Sex, 446. 47 Ettlinger, “Visibilis,” also suggests this. 48 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino. 45

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The father of Bartolomeo Averoldo’s concubine, Leonora Maratolla, had the title prudens before his name, which indicated that he was a cut above the average peasant, laborer, or artisan.49 One final case suggests that even a noblewoman in reduced circumstances might consider concubinage. In 1546, the noblewoman Ginevra de Avogaro brought an unusual case against a Mantuan named Benedetto de Negeri claiming that he had made her a marriage promise that she did not want enforced. Instead she wanted a dowry in compensation for her virginity lost to him by deception and seduction, since he now refused to honor his (alleged) marriage promise. 50 While her story is plausible, their relationship as witnesses described it was more ambiguous. Their arrangement shared several characteristics with concubinage. First, Ginevra, her mother, and sisters were impoverished and cut off from their family in Verona. Second, they were all living at Benedetto’s expense in a house he rented for them, a common arrangement in concubinage relationships. 51 Third, the only support Ginevra had for her contention that Benedetto had promised to marry her was a friend who had heard Benedetto say to her that he would take her as his wife if she continued to behave as well as she had been. This suggests their sexual relationship existed prior to and without any marriage promise. If there was indeed a marriage arrangement between the couple, it was not made in a way that a respectable noble marriage would have been. Instead it seems likely that Ginevra had been gambling on getting a respectable marriage out of the relationship. When Benedetto would not marry her, she wanted a dowry so that she could make a respectable marriage, which was in fact a common arrangement following the end of a concubinage relationship.52 Because of the almost certain disabilities a concubine would suffer if simply abandoned once the relationship ended, it was common for the men who had kept them to seek to establish them in a secure social position, that is, “to help them to marry.” At the end of the relationship they would provide a dowry and marry off their former concubines to lower-status men. This offer of a legitimate marriage may indeed have been the main attraction of concubinage for many women. This practice also probably helped to alleviate tensions arising from the 49

Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola. Ettlinger, “Visibilis,” discusses numerous cases of noblewomen at the courts of Milan, Ferrara, and Rimini in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who openly became the concubines (what Ettlinger calls mistresses) of princes. Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1546 Ginevra de Avogaro v. Benedetto de Negeriis. 51 For similar arrangements, see Cause, b. 1554–1569/1577–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Clemenza Zucharina v. Egregius Francesco Serenello. 52 She claimed four hundred ducats, an amount which is suggestive in itself for being somewhat lower than a noble dowry. On typical dowry amounts, see Grubb, Provincial Families, 16. 50

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fact that by taking concubines, elite men denied lower-status men desirable marriage partners. Ideally, in marrying off his former concubine, a man confirmed that she was not dishonored and established her as a respectable member of society. A concubine’s social position was precarious and her respectability was largely dependent on the favor and goodwill of the man who kept her. Evidence in the court cases indicates that at least some concubines did make respectable marriages, but the support of their patrons in the process was essential.53 In giving her a generous dowry and a proper marriage ceremony and celebration, perhaps at his own house, the patron demonstrated that he considered her respectable. He covered her with the cloak of his status, providing her with virtual immunity from the censure and dishonor that usually followed flagrant sexual misconduct. For example, in a display of high regard, the knight Alessandro Troiano sent his former concubine, Tarsia Morandi, to her new husband’s house in a carriage flanked by attendants and accompanied by his own sister.54 The convention of dowering and marrying off former concubines probably also served to appease lower-status men, whose potential marriage partners elite men were taking as concubines. Particularly in rural areas of the Veronese district this could be a significant proportion of the available women.55 Historians have shown how young men, using such means as the charivari, protested widowers who “poached” on their territory by marrying younger women, as did the men of one village against “foreign” men who married their local women. Analogously, one can imagine that the practice of concubinage would have engendered similar anger and frustration against elite men, which returning the women to the marriage pool generously dowered and with their honor (more or less) intact would have helped appease.56 Many of the marital court cases arose from the abuse of the convention of marrying off a concubine. Misusing such an important part of the concubinage 53

For example, in the 1580s, Tarsia Morandi married a tailor (Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino), as did one of the concubines of Count Ercole dei Giusti in the 1530s (Atti, b. 7a, Nob. 1541 Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole dei Giusti). Venier Venier married off his concubine to a carter, whom Venier allegedly later had banished for blasphemy (Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio di Sommacampagna v. Venier Venier). 54 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino. 55 This would probably have been particularly true in the bassa veronese, whose parishes were notable for frequently reporting multiple instances of concubinage to ecclesiastical visitors. Over the course of the three visitations, Marega and Isola della Scala, for example, each reported a total of eight concubines; Engazza, Porto di Legnago, and Zevio each reported a total of six. 56 Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 100, 105. Herlihy, Medieval Households, argues that the medieval practice of aristocratic men “gathering” a hugely disproportionate share of women into XXX

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system potentially threatened the practice by making women less willing to become concubines, men less willing to marry former concubines, and people in general more resentful of the practice, which would in turn make women even less willing to become concubines. Rather than reduce the vulnerability of the former concubine and her new husband by establishing them as a part of respectable society as it was meant to do, dowering and marrying off concubines could increase the couples’ risk of being dishonored. The convention itself favored the high-status patron, for it confirmed his superiority to the parties in the marriage and gave him the opportunity to demonstrate it time and time again. He set the amount of the dowry, he determined the opulence of the celebration, and he had final say on the husband. The patron’s status and favor were indispensable to the marriage taking place, for they alone could overcome the concubine’s dishonor and allow her to rejoin respectable society. The couple’s honor rested on the favor of the patron. The power of these elite men did not end with the marriage celebration. A married concubine’s former patron might choose to retain sexual access to her, or to take her away from her new husband entirely. This power meant that lowerstatus men were particularly vulnerable to losing their wives and hence to disgrace. The powerful men’s ability to render meaningless other people’s marriages was also quite disturbing to others in the community, who understood the marriage unit as the foundation of the social and moral order, and a husband’s ability to control his wife as the cornerstone of his honor. The ability to maintain a claim on a concubine who had married demonstrated the superiority of the patron to the legitimate husband and confirmed the patron’s exemption from the rules that bound the rest of society. In the 1530s, Count Ercole dei Giusti continued to be sexually involved with a former concubine, even after he had married her off. His explanation to a servant reveals that the count believed it showed his superiority to the artisan she had married: “she loved him more than she loved her husband,” the count claimed.57 Venier Venier behaved even more crudely. He married off his concubine Caledonia to a man, who left the area shortly thereafter upon realizing he could not compete with Venier, who had continued his relationship with Caledonia even after the marriage. To confirm his dominance, Venier, a lawyer, then arranged to have the husband banished from Veronese territory for blasphemy.58 57

their control as servants and sexual partners left large numbers of young men without wives, which led to high levels of crimes such as kidnapping and of violence in general. 57 “la ge voleva [...] piu ben a lui che a suo marido.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Aurelia de Boschetis v. Ercole dei Giusti, Testimony of Bartholomeus q. Lazari. 58 Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio v. Venier Venier.

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Marrying off could itself be an aggressive act. Two of the court cases describe men forcing their unfaithful concubines to marry their lovers when the couples were found in flagrante delicto, thus turning the cuckolder into a husband with all the vulnerabilities that position entailed. One evening in 1542, Matteo dei Constantini, out carousing with several companions, went by the lodgings of Margarita, his concubine of ten years, and found her in bed with her landlord, Bartolomeo, a goldsmith.59 When Matteo, who was armed, became violent and started to beat Margarita, apparently to save herself, she blurted out, truthfully or not, that she and Bartolomeo were married, and Bartolomeo backed her up. But Matteo, wanting to be sure, insisted that Bartolomeo marry her again in his presence. In 1547, the court heard about a similar situation. Leonora dei Bonzani had found herself abandoned in Mantua in 1543 or 1544 by her husband of six years, a worker in the hat trade who had gone off to fight in the Levant. With no other family to help her—her father was probably already dead and her mother was a servant in Verona—Leonora decided to become the concubine of Onofrio Spoleto. Soon thereafter, by Leonora’s own account, “I fell in love with a young man named Marino, and we took our ease to enjoy each other sometimes” at the house where Leonora lived with Onofrio. One evening Onofrio along with several companions including two of his sons—all of them armed—arrived home unexpectedly and found the couple together. With the cry, “[A]h, ugly whore, I’ve really found you in trouble,”60 Onofrio attacked Marino and, in Leonora’s estimation, would have killed him had Onofrio’s companions not prevented it. Barred from attacking Marino’s person, Onofrio went for his honor: he declared that Marino had to marry Leonora or be killed. A priest was sent for, and the couple exchanged the words of the marriage contract.The marriage was not legal, not simply because it took place under force, but because Leonora was still married to her absent husband. She even told Onofrio this at the time; but the legal facts did not matter, the symbolism did. Leonora summed up the reasons for Onofrio’s behavior thus, “[H]e wanted to make me marry for his pride and for his own amusement.”61 Onofrio used this marriage to assert his superiority to 59

Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Margarita f.q. Bernardini de Villafranca v. Bartholomeus aurifix et pictor. 60 “mi inamorai in questo giovane Marino, et se pigliavemo comodo de godesse qualche volta.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Marino Brusch. Mantuani v. Leonora q. Francesci de Bonzanis, Testimony of Leonora de Bonzanis. “ah brutta putana te ho pur trovato in dolo.” Ibid., Testimony of Marino Brusch. Marino’s account is substantially the same as Leonora’s. Marino’s status was almost certainly low because he requested an exemption from court expenses because of poverty, and the procedure was itself summary, frequently a cost-saving measure. 61 “lui ma volse far mi sposar per superchiaria et per la sua borea [boresso].” Cause, b. 1544– 1549, 1547 Marino Brusch. Mantuani v. Leonora q. Francesci de Bonzanis, Testimony of Leonora de Bonzanis.

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Marino and also to Leonora. He, Onofrio, was not bound by the laws that ruled others. He did not have to offer Leonora the guarantees that came with marriage in order to claim the right to control her. Marino, by implication, was the sort who had to marry a woman; but even after marrying her, he was not able to keep her if a stronger man like Onofrio wanted her. After the marriage, Marino returned home and Leonora returned to Onofrio. Elite men’s reclamation of their married concubines reminded ordinary people that lower-status men only had their wives with the consent of their superiors. There was little a legitimate but lower-status husband could do to assert his claim to his wife if a more powerful man wanted her. Simone Circolaro took this notion that elite concubinage was a threat to the legitimate marriages of ordinary people and made it the backbone of his case to compel the return of his wife, Bona, who had left him to live as the concubine of the nobleman Bettino Draper di Morandi. His suit argued, “If [Bettino] did not give her food and persuade her to follow this evil life, she would live with Simone, her husband, in the pacific state of matrimony.”62 The patrons’ ability to keep their concubines from their legitimate husbands could humiliate the husbands. The husband of Venier Venier’s concubine Caledonia sized up the situation and fled soon after their marriage rather than “suffer” (patir), according to one witness.63 The case between Giacomo Comello and his wife, Leonora, demonstrates what could happen when a husband chose to remain. In 1568, Giacomo brought a divorce case against his wife on the grounds of her adultery with Bartolomeo Averoldo, the man whose concubine she had been before her marriage. After dowering and marrying Leonora to Giacomo, Bartolomeo had refused to let her go live with Giacomo, backing up his claims with his band of bravi, or armed followers. In desperation, Giacomo turned to a powerful nobleman, the count Guglielmo Bevilacqua, who spoke to Bartolomeo, apparently at least in part trying to convince him that giving up Leonora to the lower-status man would not be disgraceful. The count outlined “gentlemanly” behavior with regard to concubines. “I began to discuss with him and reprove him,” the count told the court, “that he should now let this Leonora go to her husband, that this is what a gentleman does when he has married off one of his women; he then lets her go with her husband.” The count gave Bartolomeo examples: “one of my uncles and my brother, they also had kept women, and they then married them off, and after [the women] were married, they let them go to the house of their husbands.”64 But beyond that, 62

“se lui non la alimentasse et persuadesse a questa mala vita lei viverebbe con Simone cuo marito in stato matrimoniale et pacifico.” Cause, b. Processi matrimoniali 1540–1560, 1552 Bona di Brenzon v. Simone circularius. 63 Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio di Sommacampagna v. Venier Venier, Witness’s name missing. 64 “comminciai a ragionar con lui, et riprendenerlo, che doveria mo lassar andar questa Leonora a casa da suo marito, che questa e cosa da gentilhomo, quando si ha maridatto usa sua, lassarla andar XXX

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there was little anyone could or would do if Bartolomeo refused to respect the bonds of matrimony in order to show his superiority to artisan men. This exchange that Guglielmo reported suggests how important it was that elite men respected the conventions regulating the practice of marrying off former concubines, which was a practice central to concubinage in Verona. As the count pointed out, even the highest elites—for his was one of Verona’s most powerful families—followed these rules. Reintegration into society through respectable marriage was the major compensation concubines received and was also crucial to maintaining the level of acceptance the institution of concubinage itself enjoyed from society at large. If significant numbers of men began to abuse the practice, as they were tempted to do, it could discourage women not just from becoming the concubines of these particular men but of any men, as well as lowering the overall toleration of the practice. The way the count censured Bartolomeo shows that informal mechanisms existed to enforce the conventions, and it also hints at social stratifications among the elite men who kept concubines. Bartolomeo was likely a member of the Brescian nobility, and his aggressiveness may be attributable to his efforts to establish himself in Verona. The count was trying to tell this newcomer how to behave like a Veronese gentleman, information which Bartolomeo may or may not have needed. He manipulated an important Veronese institution just like a native when he placed Leonora in the Trinità, a house established for the protection of women, and then continued to visit her in this supposedly cloistered space. Another abuse related to the concubinage triangles that also deeply disturbed many inhabitants of Verona was husbands who sought to initiate clientage ties with rich and powerful men by installing their wives as the men’s concubines. When this happened the line between concubine and whore was further blurred and concubinage began to look like a particularly dangerous kind of prostitution that subverted and corrupted ordinary people’s marriages. Two women seeking separations each charged that her husband had tried to make her consent to be the concubine of “a rich merchant or gentleman.” One of the husbands had explained to a witness that this gentleman would “give me money when I need it.” 65 Public 65

poi con suo marito [...] uno mio barba, et mio fratello, anche loro hanno tenuto delle done, et le hanno poi maridatte, et dapoi che sonno sta maridatte, le hanno lassatte andar a casa delli lor mariti.” Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, Testimony of Magnificus comes Guglielmus filius Magnifici comitis Antoniis de Bevilaquis. 65 “un bon mercante over gentilhomo.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Sancta uxor m. Andreae. “mi daria di dinari quando ne volesse.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1570 Lucia de Tonsis v. Giuseppe q. Antonio Drezzi de Marcemigo, Testimony of Matthea f.q. Bartholomei de Berdenaighis de Marcemico.

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opinion held such husbands in very low regard, considering them a contemptible mixture of pimp and cuckold—pathetic, but also threatening. The situation of Giacomo Comello again provides a good example. In his case to the court, Giacomo, presented himself as the innocent victim of the powerful Bartolomeo Averoldo, who refused to give up Giacomo’s wife. But in his wife’s and her witnesses’ telling, Giacomo was quite willing to let Bartolomeo keep her, so long as he, Giacomo received compensation. One witness reported Giacomo’s cooperation with disgust: when Bartolomeo came to Leonora’s house, Giacomo “warmed…the bed” for them.66 While Bartolomeo spent his time with Giacomo’s wife, Giacomo himself lived at Bartolomeo’s expense, eating with Bartolomeo’s workmen and sharing a bed with one of the household servants. According to one witness, Giacomo held himself sufficiently compensated, but those who saw him regarded him as both disgraced and evil. The workmen called him “Messer Cornelio,” or “Mr. Horn,” and one speculated that if Giacomo had not been afraid of Bartolomeo he would have “put her under” other men as well.67 According to her witnesses, the situation greatly upset Leonora, who argued about it with Giacomo, ultimately crying, “I didn’t get married in order to return under Lord Bartolomeo Averoldo.”68 She had expected to live as the wife of a financially secure and respectable man. Elena de Laude’s neighbors were similarly disgusted by the efforts of her husband, Gerolamo Bernardi, a piece worker in the cloth trade, to take advantage of Andreas Morandi’s passions for his wife. Andrea, son of the late Lord Giacomo di Morandi, admitted to the court that he had long tried with money and gifts but without success to convince Elena to be his inamorata. Gerolamo, however, saw in this an opportunity. He sought gifts and loans from Andrea, which he got, and finally offered Andrea the use of his wife. Having accepted, Andrea began making regular visits to the house when Gerolamo was not at home, using the pretense that he was a kinsman. But the ruse was a failure: [T]he relationship was discovered because I was unknown to [the neighbors] and so they clearly knew that I was not her kin, but that things were going as they were, and that [Gerolamo] consented to what we were doing. Many people reproved him for this, but he denied it. 66

“scaldasse [...] il letto.” Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, Testimony of Margarita uxor q. Joannis Lorichi de Avio. 67 Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, Testimony of Egregius Petrus Antonius filius q. prudentis Gabrielis fabri. 68 “Non mi ho maritata per tornar sotto il signor Bartolomeo Averoldo.” Cause, b. 1554– 1567/1577–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, Testimony of Aurelia uxor prudentis Joannis Baptiste scuffionarii.

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Community pressure did, however, succeed in ending this very troubling situation. Andrea withdrew from the arrangement, for he perceived that “the relationship was not very honorable and…it was already discovered by everyone.” 69 With the woman unwilling and the husband in control, Andreas was ashamed before the community. He was not getting what an elite man expected from such a relationship: power and respect.

NONELITE CONCUBINAGE Nonmarital relationships between two ordinary people differed significantly from elite concubinage, further supporting the contention that elite men used concubinage to gain power and respect. When two ordinary people chose to engage in concubinage, they often did so because they were blocked from legitimate marriage by a formal or informal impediment, that is, by law or by other circumstances that made it better for them if they did not formally marry. This did not preclude some nonelite men from seeking to use concubinage much as elite men did, as a way to enhance and demonstrate their superiority to others. It was, however, more difficult for them to do this without having elite status. It is likely that nonelite couples, particularly in rural areas, had trouble openly flouting sexual conventions and that communities exerted pressure on nonmarital unions among nonelites to maintain a low profile and to imitate marriage. There is much less information available about ordinary, nonelite Veronese men and the women who chose to have nonmarital relationships with them than there is about elite concubinage. One cannot be sure who in the visitation records were not elite and only a handful of marital court cases—six, to be precise, four rural and two urban—deal with ordinary people who chose to carry on longterm, publicly known nonmarital sexual relationships. Nonetheless, even these few cases do involve common themes and concerns that can help to show the outlines of the practice and to gauge the needs and pressures that shaped it. Returning to Giberti’s visitation record for a moment, after separating out the men known to be elite, there are 130 reports in which the men are not clearly elite. It does stand to reason that some of these involved nonelites, and in fact, seven citations do specify the man’s occupation: a servant, a teacher, two factors for members of the Venetian Emo family, another factor for an unspecified lord, and two innkeepers. The ecclesiastical visitors used concubinarius and related terms 69 “le pratica si scopresse perche essendo io sconosciuto chiaramente si sapeva ch’io non era suo parente ma che le cosa passava al modo che lera et che lui era consentitiuto a quanto si faceva et de cio molti lo reprendevano et lui negava, and “la pratica non era molto honorevola et [...] gia si era scoperta a tuti.” Atti, b. 8, 1548 Helena de Laude v. Hieronymus Bernardius tascheries, Testimony of Egr. Andreas q. Domini Jacobi de Morandis.

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for several types of relationships. Some people accused of concubinage probably would have married but for an impediment of kinship. For example, the authorities noted in 1532 that “Toni called ‘Casatis’…keeps a certain Mariola his cousin for his concubine.”70 In fact, however, the visitors seldom used concubinage terminology for relationships barred by the canonical impediment of kinship, and instead usually noted that such couples were “involved carnally.” 71 It may have been that in cases of incest the reformers used this terminology because they wanted to emphasize the carnal, and therefore most serious, aspect of the relationship. Some couples were unable to wed legally because of another canonical impediment, previous marriage: one or both were already married. The episcopal visitors labeled these relationships “concubinage” more consistently than they did nonmarital relationships caused by the impediment of consanguinity. For instance, the visitation report records that Baptista called “Villano,” “having left his wife and children, adheres to Lucia, his concubine.”72 In the interest of thematic continuity, these relationships will not be treated here. Once those cases of concubinage necessitated by legal impediments to marriage are removed, two groups remain: one composed of couples who were legally able to marry but chose not to, and a second made up of relationships involving married men who kept concubines in addition to their wives. The six marriage court cases can shed some light on both these types of relationships. Much more than elite men who kept concubines, the nonelite men were constrained by the communal notions of proper sexual behavior and of their responsibilities toward the women and their common children. While some nonelite men did try to use these relationships to enhance their status and power, they were less able to shake free of communal values: the women would not cooperate, and their neighbors seem to have been less likely to stand for such behavior, particularly in rural areas. The six cases divide easily into two groups. The two urban cases were both divorce suits brought by wives against their husbands, who were keeping concubines. 70

For citations specifying occupations, see RPV, 402, 635, 681, 1057, 1315. “Toni dicti [sic] Casatis, qui tenet quandam Marilam eius germanam consobrinam pro eius concubina,” RPV, 931. See also RPV, 927, for Perezolo who tenet Antira, his affine. 71 For instance, they wrote that Togninus Pauli se carnaliter immisceat with Nigrella, cousin of his dead wife. RPV, 1071. That the visitors were not using this or similar phrases to make a distinction between casual relationships and established concubinage relationships is indicated by entries such as that for Meneghinus, who was apparently living with his kinswoman lover, for he “non recessit a domo cuiusdam eius consobrinae, cum qua habuit carnale commercium” (RPV, 1320). The visitors also used the phrase in situations where they might as easily have said concubinage, as when ser Gasparinus de Isedo se carnaliter immisceat with his serving maid (RPV, 537). 72 “relicta propria uxore et filiis, adheret cuidam Luciae eius concubinae.” RPV, 961.

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These cases did use the word concubine. The men, both involved in the hat trade, were not high status, but significantly both also appear to have been a cut or two above the average laborer—what might be called “middle status.” One was not simply a hatmaker, but kept a rather large hat-making establishment with several employees; the second was married to the natural daughter of Lord Giovanni Battista Peregrini.73 The four rural cases all involved couples who were eligible to marry each other, but, at least according to the men, had not; indeed, these are suits to enforce clandestine marriage contracts, as discussed in the previous chapter. 74 No one called these relationships concubinage, nor the women concubines. In this milieu, the only alternative to a wife was a prostitute. But this term was used merely for lack of a better one—ordinary men did not, generally speaking, keep concubines—and did not necessarily imply a loose woman. Their villages were not sure whether there had been a formal marriage, but they recognized that these were long-term relationships, most over a decade old, in which the women were monogamous. Each of the couples had produced at least two children. These suits introduce three situations that could make a nonmarital union an attractive option to ordinary people: widowhood, service to a lord, and disparity of status. Widows and to a lesser degree widowers had strong incentives not to remarry. Widowers with children from a first marriage might want to avoid producing more legitimate children who would necessitate the further division of limited property.75 Widows faced even greater disincentives to remarriage. Under Veronese customary law, a widow who remarried lost all the goods she had received from her first husband and lost her children to her first husband’s family, among other disabilities.76 It is not known whether any of the men involved in these cases was a widower, but it is unlikely. There is, however, one widow, Antonia di Marco, who had one child by her deceased husband.77 One reason she did not marry Domenico Gaudi, with whom she had a decade-long relationship and 73 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1568 Clara q. Hieronymi Barberii v. Antonius del Blanco; and ibid., 1550 Paula f. naturalis q. Nob. Joannis Baptistae de Peregrinis v. Raphaeles de Fenetis biretarius. 74 Here the possibility is considered that the woman who claimed a marriage had taken place was lying and the man who denied the marriage was telling the truth. What separates these four suits from the other clandestine marriage cases is the longevity of the relationship and the ambiguity in neighbors’ minds about what the relationship was. 75 On incentives not to remarry in Florence, see Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother,’” in her Women, Family, 117–31. Illegitimate children could later be legitimated if necessary and could be left bequests. According to Harrington, Reordering Marriage, 241–42, in many sixteenth-century German cases of concubinage, the man was a widower. 76 Zagata, Cronica della città di Verona, 232. 77 Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1586, 1539 Antonia filia Marci v. Domenico de Gaudis frazorius.

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two children, may have been to avoid losing her house, her first child, and the other goods that enabled her to provide at least partial support for her family. Another situation that might impel a man to eschew legitimate marriage was being in service to a lord, as appears to have been the case with Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” who had been in a relationship of ambiguous status with Chiara Dionisi for many years. One witness who had known Bartolomeo for over twenty years reported that over the years Bartolomeo “had commonly stayed with different gentlemen as a servant, but then he went to stay with the noble Giulio Gandin.” 78 Although Bartolomeo did not himself claim that he did not want to marry because the lord whom he served wanted him to remain unmarried, this seems likely, given the testimony of numerous witnesses that Bartolomeo felt his behavior was restricted by his patron. Chiara and her family claimed that Bartolomeo had married her clandestinely because he did not want his lord to know he had married. Bartolomeo’s own witnesses testified that he tried to hide the fact that he had children so that his lord would not find out.79 Presumably lords did not want the loyalties of those in their service to be divided, as they would be if they had families to care for. Moreover, Bartolomeo may have been one of the lord’s bravi, or armed retainers. These were generally young, and presumably single men, who are generally more willing to lead violent and lawless lives because they have less to lose than married men.80 A poor woman might enter an illicit union or ambiguous relationship with a higher-status man as a gamble, as in the case of elite concubinage, although in the nonelite case it seems less likely that the woman could hope for a dowry at the end. Instead, she might hope that the relationship would look enough like marriage or would simply turn into de facto marriage. A commoner, like a member of the elite, might want to have a nonmarital relationship with a particular woman whom he did not want to marry because she was lower in status and poorer than he. Some ordinary men involved in concubinage relationships did try to use keeping a concubine as a way to demonstrate that they were superior to others and exempt from the normal rules of sexual behavior, but they were constrained by two things. First, because they were not elite, they 78 “era solita a star con diversi gentilhomini per servitor, ma poi che lui e andato a star con il nobile da Giulio Gandin.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of Ser Baptista de Mayatis q. Domini Joannis petri de Verona. 79 “perche non vorria chel mio patron sapesse tal cose vi prego che siate contento trovarmi una baila.” Chiara’s brother also claimed this: “so ben che li ha tolti lui tutti a dara baila perche non volea che la chiara governasse li detti figli per m. Julio Gandin.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of S. Baptista Mayatis q. D. Joannis petri de Verona. 80 Jonathan Walker, “Bravi and Venetian Nobles, c. 1550–1650,” Studi Veneziani, n.s., 36 (1998): 85–114.

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had a harder time escaping from communal norms, or merely a few neighbors’ opinions. Second, they had less of an advantage over the women with whom they were involved because of greater social equality and so had to compromise more than did elite men. This may have been the case with Caterina Lucadelli and Zuanne Mauro, who had a long-standing relationship and two children. The visitation record listed Zuanne among the local village notables; Caterina was a peasant. 81 Zuanne sought to use concubinage as a way to mark himself off as superior within his social group, but found his behavior limited by others’ expectations that he behave more conventionally. Witnesses’ testimony describes how Zuanne sought from the beginning to portray the relationship as one in which he recognized no need to follow the normal rules of honorable behavior. He reportedly routinely dismissed Caterina as a whore and a “poor ignoble rustic” to whom he had no obligations, least of all to keep a promise of marriage.82 Yet communal norms, or at least the opinion of some neighbors, undermined Zuanne’s ambitions. Not everyone in the village of Albaredo held Zuanne to be as superior to Caterina as he apparently did; some did not think it out of the question that Zuanne and a “poor rustic” like Caterina marry. One evening Zuanne’s companion Antonio challenged Zuanne about the promise implicit in saying to Caterina, “I don’t want any other woman than you,” asking Zuanne if he would marry her. Zuanne cavalierly denied he could be held to anything: “I’ll marry a dick for all I seem to remember,” he said.83 It is, however, significant that Zuanne had to keep making such promises to Caterina to keep her, and that Antonio and others thought that he should honor them. Zuanne’s own behavior, moreover, was in the end actually quite honorable: despite his words, he did remain with Caterina for over fifteen years and three children, for whom he provided regular and reliable financial support. Both Battista della Spada and Bartolomeo Barberi similarly claimed at various times in public that their partners were not only not their wives, but were sexually promiscuous. Battista told the parish priest that her child “could as easily be someone else’s as mine.”84 Yet the men visited the children, provided the women 81

Atti, b. 7a, 1542 Caterina Lucadelli v. Giovanni Mauro; and RPV, 1325. “paupercula rustica et ignobilis.” Atti, b. 7, 1542 Caterina Lucadelli v. Giovanni Mauro, Testimony of Albertus q. ser Antonii Bertolasii. 83 “non voio altra femina che ti [at this point the witness added he was not sure if Zuanne said ‘voio’ or ‘toro’] [...] Io toro un cazo per questo mi par de recordarme.” Atti, b. 7, 1542 Caterina Lucadelli v. Giovanni Mauro, Testimony of Antonius q. C… [illegible]. 84 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena”; “il potrave cosi esser d’unaltro come anche mio.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Ven. Dominus Andreas Morada Capellanis ad presens in ecclesia S. Salvatoris de Sona. 82

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with money to raise them, and spoke of them to others as their own children. Bartolomeo also recognized that he had incurred a perpetual financial obligation to Chiara and her family, even if not married to her. One of the urban cases, that between Chiara Barberi and her husband Antonio del Blanco shows that even if a commoner did keep women “at his demand,” as Antonio did, he did not do so on quite the same terms as an elite man would. By the time Chiara brought a suit for divorce against him in 1568, Antonio, the owner of a sizable hat-making concern in the city of Verona, was about seventyfive years old and had been living with his concubine, Menghina, for ten or eleven years. Witnesses testified that he had “kept concubines” and frequented prostitutes openly throughout their long married life. This was clearly an expensive habit and a way to demonstrate wealth. But at least some neighbors thought Antonio was living inappropriately. To keep up his style of life, Antonio had had to pawn items from his wife’s dowry. One witness volunteered the opinion, “If [Antonio] had conducted himself as respectable men do, he would have lived on his own [earnings].”85 Antonio was, moreover, unable to maintain that, in keeping a concubine, he was exempt from the normal standards of sexual and marital behavior the way elite men effectively did. In the couple’s protracted disputes, which were conducted openly before the neighborhood, often via go-betweens, Antonio had to justify his behavior within the framework of marriage. Antonio treated his decision to live with his concubine instead of with his wife as punishment for his wife’s insufficiently respectful behavior toward him. When Chiara (through a mediator) asked him to return, Antonio replied that he would “as long as she lets me be the boss, for I don’t want her to open her arms, but I want her to support me as is her duty.” Chiara also sought to hold Antonio to a certain standard of spousal behavior. For instance, a hatmaker named Bernardo testified that Chiara had told him many times that “she had pleaded with Antonio, her husband, to take care of his house and to behave the way good Christians do.” If he did, she promised, she would “do her duty.”86 The testimony of the witnesses in the rural cases suggests that rural communities tolerated concubinage relationships between two nonelites only within 85 “Dicens ex se, se si havesse governato come fa li homini da ben havera vivuto da se.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1568 Clara q. Hieronymi Barberii v. Antonius del Blanco, Testimony of Prud. Joseph f. Francesci Rigatini. 86 “gli veniro volentieri a star orzu mentre che la mi lassia patron che non volglio che la parte le brache ma le voglio portar mi come e il dovere.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1568 Clara q. Hieronymi Barberii v. Antonius del Blanco, Testimony of Petrus q. Bernardi merzarius de S. Silvestro Veronae. “ha pregato il ditto Antonio suo marito che di gran il voglia tender a casa et far come fanno li boni christiani [...] lei fara il debito suo.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1568 Clara q. Hieronymi Barberii v. Antonius del Blanco, Testimony of Bernardus Biretarius q. Antonii de Manarii.

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limits and perhaps for a limited period of time. To a degree, neighbors apparently understood the reasons that some people chose to eschew legitimate marriage, and so long as the couples did not openly flout the standard morality, tried to blend in, and did not create additional burdens for the parish in the form of abandoned children, they were left to go about their business. To avoid community disapproval, the relationships had to be discreet, and ideally to look as much as possible like marriage. These four relationships resembled marriage, specifically clandestine marriages that had not gotten beyond the ambiguous, prepublicity stage discussed in previous chapters. The couple was not coresident, but the man visited frequently and openly. The neighbors were aware that a relationship existed, but were not sure what its status was. The woman’s sexual fidelity to the man appears to have been particularly important to ensuring a measure of acceptance for the union. One witness, for example, asked about the reputation of Isabetta Ferrari, declared, “I don’t want to say Isabetta is a bad sort because I have always heard it said in Marano that she was not involved [sexually] with anyone else except Battista, and know that Giacomo, her father, wants to join her to Battista.”87 In another suit, in response to a similar question, a witness replied, “I have never heard from anyone that she has been involved [sexually] with anyone except Bartolomeo…and she is a woman of a good reputation and of a good life.”88 The crucial difference between these cases and the usual clandestine marriage suits was the length of the relationships. Most clandestine marriage suits were brought within a year of the alleged contract by women who, in many cases, were pregnant. These cases, however, involved relationships that had been going on for ten or fifteen years and had produced two or more children. One witness indicated the high value placed both on the relationship’s longevity and its similarity to marriage—and probably the expectation that these relationships could simply turn into de facto marriages—when she told the court that it would be right for Chiara to win her suit against Bartolomeo because Chiara had been with him for such a long time.89

87 “Non voglio dir che la Isabetta sia di cativa sorte per che sempre ho sentito dir per marano che no la havuto a far cum altri che cum questo Baptista et scire quod ipse Jacobus pater dicatea Helisabeth desiderat associare dictam Helisabeth Baptistae.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Joannes q. Antoni de Laurentiis de Marano. 88 “Non ho mai sentito dire ad alcuno che costei habbi havuto a far con alcuno salvo che con Bartolomo [...] et de dona da bene e di bona vita.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of Egr. vir Bontaninis f. Domini Domenici. 89 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of Domenica ux. Jo. Petri.

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At the same time, however, there might also be time limitations on tolerance for these ambiguous relationships. The case of Isabetta Ferrari and Battista Guglielmi della Spada suggests these limitations as well as illustrating the close relationship between clandestine marriage and nonelite concubinage. 90 Four years before she brought the suit, Isabetta alleged, she and Battista had clandestinely exchanged vows and had begun to have sex. After seeking and receiving her father’s blessing, Battista, who came from a somewhat richer family than Isabetta, then refused to make the marriage publicly known and began to deny that it had taken place. It is unclear why Isabetta did not bring a suit at this point. Instead, the relationship continued. Isabetta had one child and became pregnant with another. During these four years, this relationship looked very much like the other concubinage cases, and had she allowed the matter to remain ambiguous, it might have remained so. Two things happened, however. Members of the parish clergy began questioning Battista closely about whether they were married; and Isabetta apparently decided she wanted nothing less than public marriage, turning down Battista’s family’s offers of a respectable dowry, and declaring she was his wife and would not take money.91 Another obstacle that nonelite men faced when they tried to conduct concubinage relationships in such a way as to demonstrate their own dominance was that the women were not necessarily socially inferior to them and could hold their own in conflicts and enforce compromises. Some of the marriage court cases are themselves examples of this. As mentioned above, unlike typical cases to enforce clandestine marriages, three of these cases involved relationships that had been going on for over a decade with no apparent efforts to ensure that marriage was publicly acknowledged. In fact, it is possible that these cases did not arise to enforce marriage contracts at all; they were actually brought as part of larger conflicts about the conduct of the relationship. The women appear to have been using the marriage court in effect to regulate their concubinage relationships. The main source of conflict in these relationships was treatment of the children. Antonia and Domenico had earlier been told by the parish priest that in order to receive communion, they had to publicize their marriage in the customary way at the local osteria, where people publicized agreements of all sorts.92 Significantly, Antonia did not seize her chance. What she made sure they settled before the witnesses at the osteria was not marriage, but the amount Domenico was going to pay her to suport his children. Caterina Lucadelli similarly had a dispute with Zuanne Mauro regarding their children around the time she brought the 90

This suit is discussed in some detail in chap. 3 above. Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1546 Elisabetta Ferrari v. Battista della Spada, Testimony of Ven. Dominus Andreas Moranda; ibid., Testimony of Ven. Michael de Guidorubeis capellanus curatus in Marano. 92 Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1586, 1539 Antonia filia Marci v. Domenico de Gaudis frazorius. 91

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marriage court case. Witnesses are not clear on the details, but the conflict involved who was to have custody of their son and daughter. Caterina had earlier gone so far as to bring a case about it against Zuanne in the secular court in the town of Cologna.93 For both of these women, bringing a putative marriage case in ecclesiastical court could have been primarily another way to show the men that they meant business. Also significant is that fact that the couples had disputes about the children at all. This is something that did not come up in the cases dealing with elite concubinage. It is unlikely that a lower-status concubine would dispute her patron’s plans for the children, first because it was customary for him to take the children and treat them relatively well and, second, because these concubines had so little authority with respect to their elite patrons. In nonmarital relationships among ordinary people the situation was different. The fate of children was more questionable, and the mother could actively disagree with the father’s plans for the children. Children burdened these relationships, not only because they required resources, but because their existence made the relationship that much more obvious to the community and might eventually force it to be defined so that the offspring could be classed as legitimate or illegitimate. It is likely that such considerations lay at the heart of the custody dispute between Caterina Lucadelli and Zuanne Mauro, the latter of whom, witnesses said, wanted the children so that he could have them raised elsewhere.94 Out of sight is out of mind. The extensive discussions about wet-nursing in the case between Chiara and Bartolomeo demonstrate the conflicts between the parents (and perhaps within each parent) that could arise about how to treat the children. Bartolomeo’s interests lay in playing down the existence of any children; in fact, he told one friend that he did not want his employer, Lord Giulio Gandin, to know that he had any children. This is probably why Bartolomeo took each child from Chiara shortly after it was born and found it a wet nurse well away from their village. Such a course is surprising because they were not rich, and the impression that they were trying to play down the child’s existence is heightened by the fact that they made the arrangements anonymously. It appears that Bartolomeo had a choice of how to have it nursed, as a legitimate child or as an illegitimate one, and he chose the latter, but lied to Chiara about how he had described the children.95 The difference probably 93

Atti, b. 7a, 1542 Caterina Lucadelli v. Giovanni Mauro. Cologna and the towns around it were a special administrative zone under the jurisdiction of Venice, so people in these towns did not bring secular cases in Verona, but in Cologna. 94 Atti, b. 7a, 1542 Caterina Lucadelli v. Giovanni Mauro. 95 Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1567 Chiara de’ Dionisiis v. Bartolomeo “el Paltena,” Testimony of ser Baptista de Mayatis q. Joannis petri; and Testimony of Antonius f.q. Baptiste de rossis.

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lay in the quality of the nursing. The circumstances Bartolomeo placed his children in were not promising: the first nurse had recently had her infant die and she wanted to avoid being “poisoned” by [having?] too much milk; the second was never paid. Both these children died, and the third was still at nurse. While ordinary people were constrained in how they could practice concubinage, the nobility and their practices may have influenced nonmarital unions among ordinary people. Particularly in the bassa veronese the nobility increasingly dominated rural society. The most prominent families in Veronese government appear to have favored this region for keeping concubines. As this was also the area which they favored for investing, one might see concubinage as another aspect of the growing noble domination of rural society: not just the land, but also the women. In the parishes of the bassa, the episcopal visitors frequently reported finding concubinage in clusters of three or more. The village of Marega, for example, which had an adult population of about four hundred, reported a constant new supply of concubinage relationships: two in 1526, another two in 1532, and four new ones in 1541. Often one family would dominate a particular village. For instance, the Bevilacqua placed their mark on Nogarole Rocca in the 1530s when at least three of them kept concubines in this parish with an adult population of about three hundred. Similarly, two of the Landi family kept concubines in Correzzo.96 Nobles could effectively force their servants into concubinage relationships by discouraging them from marriage, as the nobleman Giulio Gandin did to Bartolomeo “el Paltena.” Seeing how elite men practiced concubinage may also have encouraged ordinary people to follow suit. Zuanne Mauro, the local notable who was involved with the “poor rustic” Caterina, lived in an area of the bassa veronese full of examples of elite concubinage, according to the visitation record. His cavalier treatment of her in front of his friends might have been partly in imitation of the nobles around him.

REFORMERS’ ATTITUDE AND STRATEGIES The religious reformers’ main task in trying to end the practice of nonmarital unions was to convince people that concubinage was wrong. The first problem they faced was that for many of the most powerful men in the city and dioceses— including the secular officials upon whose cooperation the religious leaders relied—keeping a concubine was an integral part of their lives, which they had no 96

RPV, 100, 927, 1221, 1251, 1315. The visitation record for the city, although it is incomplete and contains very little information, also turns up some cases of elite concubinage. For example, RPV, 1685.

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desire to give up. The second problem was that the practice of concubinage at all levels of society had developed in such a way as to minimize the reasons individuals had to object to it—practical reasons that could have given impetus to purely moral objections and fueled a widespread moral campaign against the practice among the laity.97 In elite concubinage, concubines were treated less well than wives and were reintegrated into respectable society; nonelite concubinage kept a low profile, resembled marriage, and made sure the children were not a burden on the rest of society. Over the decade and a half of Bishop Giberti’s tenure, he and his associates developed a strategy against concubinage that the later bishops Lippomano and Valier largely followed. They tried to incite popular opposition to concubinage couples by portraying concubinage as a danger not just to the souls of the participants, but as a threat to the order and survival of the entire community. As part of this effort, they targeted elite male offenders in order to undermine the tacitly exempt status elite concubinage enjoyed. They also went after the weaker link, the women, trying to convince them that being a concubine entailed too much risk. The authorities sought to destroy the special status that concubinage enjoyed by denying its independent existence and identifying it instead with other well-recognized transgressions: fornication and adultery. In the 1520s and ’30s, the episcopal visitors accepted the notion that concubinage was an independent category and they used concubinage as a blanket term for any established relationship between two people, whatever their marital status, who were not married to each other. But by 1541, their use of the term had become more precise: a nonmarital union involving a person who was married to someone else they now identified not as concubinage, but as adultery, a usage which Bishop Valier continued in his visitations. They thus tied concubinage into larger arguments about the central role of legitimate marriage in maintaining social order, to which adultery was one of the primary dangers. In the 1550s Bishop Lippomano continued the effort to discredit concubinage as an acceptable alternative to marriage by identifying it with unlawful sex and opposing it to godly order based on sacramental marriage. In a discussion of marriage as a sacrament, after stating that marriage or celibacy were people’s only options, Bishop Lippomano specifically prohibited (elite) concubinage: “Similarly, if one keeps a femina a sua posta this relationship is not marriage, for it is against God’s law, which prohibits fornication.”98 97

Di Simplicio, Peccato, 183–241, argues that a cycle of moralizing set into motion in Siena by religious reformers made nonelite concubinage disgraceful in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and discouraged people from practicing it. He does not, however, explain why anyone would have wanted to oppose concubinage. 98 “Similmente se uno tenesse una femina a sua posta, questa tale congiuntione non è matrimonio, XXX

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The reformers sought to provoke popular opposition to concubinage by convincing people that it was a danger not simply to individuals’ souls, but to the entire community, which had to excise it. Bishops instructed priests to preach against concubinage as a general matter, but also to be sure to admonish individual sinners.99 While this could and should be done privately, particularly in confession, Giberti came to recognize, and the later bishops agreed, public chastisement was more efficacious for persistent sinners, particularly when it was done in such a way that it highlighted the separation of those who practiced concubinage from the rest of the community. Between 1525 and 1532, the episcopal visitors favored excommunication for those who persisted in concubinage. Beginning in 1533, and dominating in 1541, however, were several new, more refined punishments aimed at isolating those who engaged in concubinage. During these visitations, the bishop or his vicar commonly instructed priests that when a concubine or a man who kept a concubine was present in the church, the priests were not to celebrate mass. Sometimes he even had transgressors physically expelled from their villages altogether. In instructions he issued to his priests in 1541, the bishop sought further to isolate couples engaged in concubinage from their neighbors by decreeing excommunication for anyone who rented or otherwise provided living space to such people. Another change in the 1541 visitation, as already noted, was more care in the use of vocabulary to highlight the particular wickedness of some couples: now those couples engaged in an informal union in which one was legally married were specifically called adulterers.100 Agostino Valier and his associates continued the campaign against concubinage in a similar manner, while also integrating it into the more fully developed ideology that the orderly Christian family was the foundation of the social order. These later reformers continued identifying concubinage with the sexual transgressions of adultery and fornication, and began to tie them to the larger

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perché è contra la legge di dio, la quale prohibisce le fornicatione.” Lippomano, Confirmatione, 393r. 99 Bishop Lippomano instructed priests to admonish people engaged in concubinage or adultery, who, if they had not left the relationship within fifteen days, were to be publicly excommunicated and prohibited from church and from interaction with the faithful. Luigi Lippomano, Aloysio Lipomano Vescovo di Verona et Con &c. & prelato domestico Sua Santita al Ven. D. ([Verona?], [1548?]). See also, Agostino Valier, Agostino Valerio Vescovo di Verona alli R. P. Predicatori della Città, & diocese di Verona, salute nel Signore (Verona: Sebastiano et Giovannai dalle Donne Impressori Episcopali, n.d.) and Agostino Valier, Agostino Valerio per la gratia. 100 For expulsion from villages, see, RPV, 1205, 1211, 1216, 1240, 1251, 1256, 1369; for excommunication, see CON, bk. 9, chap. 5, 137–38; for use of the term “adulterers,” see RPV, 1240, 1298, 1315, 1350, 1373. Of the twelve reports in which this distinction was made, eleven were in 1541.

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problems of social disorder and heresy. Silvio Antoniano in his highly influential Tre libri dell’educatione dei figliuoli wrote of adultery that it not only is an injury to “the legitimate marital bed,” and “the greatest injustice against the neighbor,” but is an offense to God and a “great injury…to the public and civil society.” Fornication was no less dangerous. In the five chapters devoted to the importance of chastity, Antoniano further eroded any sense that there could be a special, licit kind of extramarital sexual relationship like concubinage. Fornication led inevitably via carnality to heresy, family degradation, and social disorder. 101 In his own writings, Valier identified the concubinage of the few as a sign of the spiritual state of the diocese as a whole. In a proclamation to the faithful written following a series of calamities in 1575, the bishop wrote, “Above all, I will sing eternally of God’s mercies…, it being that…now he had reduced men to penitence, some have taken their concubines as wives, others have left theirs.” At a more quotidian level, he urged individuals to refuse to tolerate concubinage and to keep themselves separate from people involved in it. In addition to reprinting and endorsing Giberti’s Constitutiones, in which that bishop had forbidden people to lodge those involved in concubinage, Valier more specifically identified concubinage as a danger to families by instructing padri di famiglia not to allow its practioners into their houses as servants. He told masters of shops not to hire them as workers and further associated concubinage with familial disorder by listing them next to fathers who “make their families suffer.”102 In implementing this vision of the world, however, the reformers faced several obstacles, not the least of which was the well-established place concubinage had in the lives of the elite. All of the bishops, as members of the aristocracy themselves, would have been aware of the importance of concubinage among their peers. Bishop Giberti, the son of a Genoese nobleman and his concubine, would have been particularly familiar with the details of the practice. As Giberti recognized, concubinage was so entrenched in society that dislodging it would require the cooperation of spiritual and secular leaders; but as his associate Tullio Crispoldi lamented, it was often these very secular officials who were among the worst offenders.103 101 “del legitimo maritale letto”; “grandissimo ingiustitia contra il prossimo”; “la ingiuria grande [...] contra il publico, & contra la società civile.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 84r. For importance of chastity, see ibid., ff. 85r–89r. 102 “più di tutti canterò le misericordie di Dio [...] essendo che [...] ha ridotti molti a penitenza, alcuni han prese le concubine per moglie, altri le han lasciate.” Agostino Valier, Agostino Valerio Vescovo di Verona a Tutti i Fedeli della Città, & Diocese Nostra Salute Nel Signore (Verona, 1575); Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 27; and “facendo patir le propria famiglia.” Ibid., 37. 103 Crispoldi, Istruttione, 494. For examples of secular-religious collaboration, see RPV, 1062, 1383.

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Priests had difficulty establishing their authority over members of the nobility and other gentlemen. Some Veronese citizens avoided the oversight of the priests in the rural parishes, where they kept their concubines, by seeing confessors and taking communion in the city where their transgressions would have been less obvious, or else they found amenable confessors at monasteries. Others simply did not care, like Lord Giordano de Villimpenta, who had remained unconfessed for twenty-five years. Priests were reluctant to confront elite men and perhaps even to report them to the bishop when asked. At the time of Giberti’s last visitation, Zuanne Mauro had been in a nonmarital union with Caterina Lucadelli for a decade and more, but the parish priest apparently did not report this relationship to the bishop. A closer look at the visitation record suggests a possible reason why: this same Zuanne Mauro was one of the local notables whom the bishop asked to testify on the moral character of the priest. When a priest met with Venier Venier’s concubine, Caledonia, to urge her to leave concubinage, Venier threatened the priest physically.104 Giberti recognized this reluctance to challenge powerful men and made a particular effort to impress upon his priests that no one was exempt from the rules of sexual conduct. In his Constitutiones, he ordered “the rectors and parish priests of our city and diocese to admonish and require… laymen…, of whatever status, degree, order, or condition they are,…[to] reject concubinage and the concubines themselves.” Already in 1541, the bishop had made his visitation an example of challenging elite men who kept concubines. Focusing on the nobility appears to have been a new strategy. In the visitations of the 1520s and ’30s, only 13 percent of the men cited for concubinage had “dominus” or other similar title before their or their fathers’ names. In 1541, the proportion almost tripled to 38 percent, of whom one was a count.105 Of course, naming this high a proportion of elite men required the priests’ cooperation, which they may have been more willing to give fifteen years into the bishop’s successful tenure. The more public punishments the bishop began meting out during this visitation take on an additional dimension 104

RPV, 1256 (Villimpenta), 1325 (Mauro); Lord Bartolomeo de Dressando refused to baptise his daughter by his concubine, presumably because of a conflict with the priest over the concubine (RPV, 1350); Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio v. Venier Venier, Testimony of Hon. don Baptista Scalia rector ecclise parochialis omnium sanctorum. 105 “Rectoribus, Plebanis nostrae civitatis, & diocesis…laicos…, cuiuscumque status, gradus, ordinis, vel conditionis existant, admoneant, & requirant, quod…concubinatum, & concubinas ipsas…dimiserint.” CON, bk. 9, chaps. 5, 137. In the visitations of the 1520s and ’30s a total of 142 men were cited for concubinage, of whom eighteen had the title of “lord”; a further thirteen men did not have this title, but had other indicators that they were high status, such as being designated “Veronese citizen.” In 1541 there were fifty-five citations of concubinage, of which twenty-one had the title “lord,” and a further seven were otherwise high status.

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when it becomes clear that many of the men before whom the parish priests were refusing to say mass were the local nobles whose estates dominated the region. The visitation record itself, as if to inspire the religious leaders to come, details the many successes of Bishop Giberti versus these powerful men. In 1541, the record reports, he finally convinced Lord Alessandro di Fiore to marry Magdalena Mantuana, who had been his concubine for over eleven years. Even more spectacular was Giberti’s triumph over Butterino dei Butterini. 106 When the bishop heard that Butterino’s concubine, Caterina, would be glad to leave him if only she were not afraid of Butterino’s retaliation, the bishop promptly provided her with a place to live and sent men to have her two daughters brought to her. The next day Butterino, through what kind of coercion is not revealed, appeared contrite before the bishop. He confessed his sin and agreed to spend three months in prison if he violated the protection order for Caterina and her daughters. Similar efforts continued during Bishop Valier’s reign. Valier continued to target the nobility during his visitations. Antoniano’s educational treatise sought to convince elite men to avoid concubinage by portraying such sexual misbehavior as the hallmark of the ignoble. Rather than enhance an elite man’s status, Antoniano argued, sexual misbehavior undermined it and even threatened the social order. Incontinence, he wrote, “makes one’s whole life most unhappy and unsuited to civil actions, and to knightly and gentlemanly behavior.” Moreover, it often leads to the unfortunate situation in which “a great man is made subject to the most vile and infamous people for fear that his woes will be discovered.” 107 Another way of ending concubinage was to block the supply of willing women by convincing them that it was not worth the risks. The reformers’ second target was women: both those who were already concubines and those who might consider entering such unions. As matters stood in the early sixteenth century, it appears that a fair number of women decided that they were willing to risk possible disgrace in return for living well for a time as the concubine of a higher-status man and in all likelihood receiving a dowry and a husband at the end of it. One of the authorities’ strategies was to attempt to discourage women from considering concubinage by convincing both the women and the communities around them that the risks to both their reputation and their souls were very high indeed—in fact, that they were certain. During the visitations of the 1520s in particular, but also the 1530s, the visitors had, somewhat surprisingly, primarily approached concubinage as the crime of the man. The visitors frequently neglected to find out the woman’s name or even to 106

RPV, 1287, 1383. “rendono tutta la vita infelicissima, et inetta alle attioni civili, et alle operationi di cavalleria, et di gentil’huomo.” Antoniano, Tre libri, 87v. “un grande huomo, e necessitato a star soggetto a persone vilissime, & infamissime per timore che non si scuoprano le sue piaghe.” Ibid., 88r. 107

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mention the concubina at all, simply labeling the man a concubinarius. This neglect extended even to punishment: the man would be threatened with excommunication unless he expelled his concubine, while the concubine herself was not explicitly sanctioned. This lack of attention to the women is particularly puzzling where confession and communion are concerned. Usually only men were listed as unconfessed and uncommunicated. What about their concubines? Were they communicating? Or were the priests simply not bothering to mention them? 108 This treatment of the couples gives the impression that people thought of concubinage as the man’s fault: typically, he was told to dismiss her; more rarely are they told to separate. The visitors displayed a different attitude toward the women in the 1541 visitation than in the earlier visitations. In the records of all visitations, the proportion of reports of concubinage that included the woman’s name remained constant at just over half. What was new and significant, however, was that several of the 1541 citations actually centered on the woman, showing that Giberti was now focusing more on individual women whom he tried to convince to leave concubinage. Giberti’s greatest triumph was enabling Caterina to leave Butterino di Butterini, but he noted other successes as well. For example, in the parish of Sustinenza, Chiara, the former concubine of Lord Jacobo Bravo, a knight, had “left sin and wants to live well.” This too was a notable success for the visitors because they had cited the knight for this relationship in 1532 to no effect. Two other women, one in Ronco all’Adige, the other in Montorio, also left their noble patrons to marry other men, the record reported: Fior, the former concubine of Lord Gerolamo Caliari, and Lucia, the former concubine of Lord Francesco Brugnanico.109 Another part of the strategy, certainly, in singling out the concubines was to focus public attention on them, to highlight them as sinners and whores, albeit sometimes reformed sinners. The religious authorities played on the existing ambivalence, hoping to push concubines over into the realm of whores once and for all. The campaign to convince the women themselves and others that concubinage was disgraceful was encompassed in the authorities’ larger efforts to reform and restrict women’s behavior, and particularly to discourage prostitution. Prostitution was a particular focus of the religious reformers and the laity alike in the sixteenth century. Dividing women into virgins and whores facilitated the evercloser identification of concubines with prostitutes. It is possible that some of the 108

For example, RPV, 285, 610, 1062. One could argue that the women may have been living in a different parish from the men, but if that were the case then other parishes should have had lists of women not communicating, which they do not. 109 RPV, 969 (Caterina), 1285 (Fior), 1350 (Lucia); “recessit a peccato et vult bene vivere” (RPV, 1249). Also, in the same place, “Quaedam Beatrix, concubina cuiusdam, dimissio peccato, nupsit et perseverat in bono proposito.”

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women’s refuges established or enlarged in Verona in the sixteenth century, such as the Convertite and Novizze and Trinità, were intended as places for former concubines in addition to former prostitutes. One of Valier’s synodal decrees of 1579 provides evidence that ecclesiastical efforts to encourage women to leave concubinage continued, although not always in the most constructive way. Valier chided overzealous priests, “When concubines…present themselves to the priest, they are not to be ejected with cruel words, but they are to be calmly heard and exhorted to a better life.”110

NM NM NM Although concubinage offered the possibility of economic and social betterment to some women and men on the lower rungs of Veronese society, the elite male dominance that drove the practice also caused problems for many individuals and families. To enhance and display their status, noblemen (and men aspiring to nobility) diverted resources from their legitimate families, destroyed others’ marriages, compromised reputations, and undermined the authority that ordinary men exercised over their own households. In opposing concubinage, Veronese religious reformers opposed more than improper sexual behavior. They set themselves against the elite culture of which concubinage was the product. Both of these threatened the social order that the churchmen promoted, one based on well-run families created by legitimate marriages and headed by law-abiding fathers and husbands. Playing on discontents and fears connected to concubinage, the churchmen tried to discourage the practice and to convince the Veronese that keeping a concubine was not a sign of a man’s power, but of his weakness and disgrace. There are only a few signs, however, that this message affected popular attitudes, even after several decades of authorities’ efforts. A lone voice heard in a case from 1582 stands out in its echoing of the religious rhetoric of the time. Asked to characterize a man involved in a separation suit, the witness, a layman, condemned the husband simply for keeping 110

Count Guglielmo Bevilacqua told Bartolomeo Averoldo that the place for his former concubine, Leonora Maratolla, was not the Trinità, but the Convertite. Cause, b. 1554–1567/1577– 1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, Testimony of Magnificus comes Guglielmus filius Magnifici comitis Antoniis de Bevilaquis. “Quod concubinae…quando se presentant sacerdoti, ne eiciantur inhumanis verbis, se placide audiantur et exhortentur ad meliorem vitam.” ACVR, Decreta Synodalia, 1579 n. 6. Valier’s synodal decrees are transcribed in Quartaroli, La famiglia, CXXXIX– CLXXVIII.

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concubines: “I hold him to be one of those men you find now, a person who, I think, has little fear of God, [and who] is disgraced by keeping whores.” 111 To the extent there were changes in attitudes and practice at the end of the sixteenth century and beyond, the process was slow and the causes lay not only in learned condemnations but in people’s daily experiences with concubinage, the costs and benefits they found. It is likely that for some the social and marital tensions concubinage caused made the moral condemnations increasingly advocated by the Counter-Reformation church seem ever more attractive, creating something of an alliance between the church and those who felt themselves injured by concubinage. For all the harm that concubinage caused, however, the very obvious flouting of the rules that it represented and the elite style of life that attended it were also attractive to some people—probably particularly in comparison to the religious model of personal rectitude. This was especially true for some common men, perhaps precisely because they felt they were made vulnerable by elite men’s power. As this chapter showed, some common men tried to emulate elite male authority by keeping concubines themselves, though they found opposition from their peers as well as from church authorities. Other common men imitated a more general style of elite masculinity—in which effort they also met opposition—which will be explored in the next chapter.

111

“lo tengo per uno delli homini che si trova adesso, persona che credo habbi pocco timor di Dio infamato di tenir putane.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Angelica de Galupis v. Giovanni de Gregoris, Testimony of ser Vincentius q. Joannis a ferro.

M5N MARRIAGE DISSOLUTION AND HONOR

Husbands and wives in early modern Verona who were dissatisfied with their marriages could, under some circumstances, separate or even fully dissolve the marriages and remarry. They generally did this informally, without reference to courts or permission from any authority; indeed complete dissolution of a marriage was illegal. De facto marriage dissolution was a complex phenomenon that scholars have identified across premodern Europe but still insufficiently understand.1 Because the practice of separation and divorce was largely informal and illegal, it has left few documentary traces.2 The informality also means that the practice did not necessarily have continuity from time to time and place to place, with the result that treatments of informal marriage dissolution tend to be large scale, quite general, and encyclopedic, to privilege the attitudes of the authorities, and to look forward to the legalization of divorce. Informal separation, however, as a practice that differed over time and from place to place, needs

1

For example, a leading synthesis of recent literature on the history of the family, Gottlieb, Family, does not treat the issue of informal divorce at all. Scholars disagree over how common the practice was, with Lawrence Stone, for example, arguing it was uncommon overall, but perhaps quite common among the poor, who had few property interests. The Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 2, 142. Roderick Phillips, in contrast, argues it was extremely uncommon because precisely these poorer people could not afford to leave the economic security that marriage provided. Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 364–77. 2 For one kind of documentary source, see Esposito, “Convivenza,” 508–9, on contracts outlining (technically illegal) amicable separation between fifteenth-century Roman spouses. In my understanding, “separation” means simply ceasing cohabitation; “divorce” means considering the marriage ended and therefore allowing the possibility of remarriage. Because the primary concern here is with the informal practice, which did not involve as much precision, I will avoid the word “divorce” and will use “separation” or “marriage dissolution” as neutral terms that do not imply either the presence or the lack of ability to remarry.

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to be studied for particular locations and periods to understand its relationship to marriage and to the larger social order.3 In the eyes of contemporaries, maintaining the proper order within marriage was essential to maintaining the proper functioning of society. Marriage was the basic social and economic unit: it was the means of most property transfers through dowries and inheritance and, as the nucleus of the family, it was the site of most economic endeavors and of the raising of the next generation of Christians. Efforts to dissolve a marriage, therefore, potentially disrupted the maintenance of the social order. Yet people in Verona did dissolve their marriages, particularly when they believed that continuing the marriage would harm them more than ending it would. They often did so, moreover, with the support of others, sometimes including the authorities. The now familiar episcopal visitation records and marriage disputes heard before the ecclesiastical tribunal in Verona allow a detailed examination of this phenomenon between about 1525 and 1585. The fact that only especially difficult situations (and those that one spouse thought the ecclesiastical court would judge to his or her advantage) reached the court necessarily distorts the view of informal marriage dissolution that legal documents provide. But the very difficulty of the separations involved in the formal proceedings itself sheds light on a particularly controversial aspect of informal marriage dissolution: wives who left their husbands claiming mistreatment. In seeking to resolve disputes arising from an informal separation, each sex tended to turn to the formal arena of the episcopal court in a distinctive way. Women by and large brought suits seeking formal confirmation of their efforts to leave their husbands either to enable them to regain control of their dowries or in response to their husband’s demands they return. Men, in contrast, almost exclusively brought suits seeking restitution of conjugal rights—that is, seeking to compel the return of wives who had left them (see table 5.1). Wives’ and husbands’ claims in these suits, along with the testimony of their witnesses, suggest that when a wife left her husband citing his mistreatment of her, her departure caused great harm not just to her husband’s economic position, but also to his reputation: it dishonored him. One way for him to remedy that harm was to compel her return; one way to compel her return was to win a suit for restitution of conjugal rights in the episcopal forum. This chapter uses records of several dozen suits to investigate the nature of the harm informal separation in these circumstances caused to husbands, who ranged in status from semiskilled wool workers to members of minor aristocratic families, and even a count. This will help to shed light not just on the practice of 3

Stone, Road to Divorce, esp. 141–49; and Ferraro, Marriage Wars.

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informal separation, but also on the complexity of masculinity in early modern Verona: its significant privileges, which were sometimes limited by confining responsibilities, particularly for lower-status men, and also the conflicting visions of it different people espoused. The information in these marital disputes moreover suggests that informal marriage dissolution initiated by a mistreated wife served a conservative and punitive function. In supporting respectable women who left their abusive husbands, neighbors, family, and friends helped to enforce a certain model of industrious and responsible manhood on Veronese husbands who were tempted to defy it. Similar motives may also explain the support that religious and secular authorities increasingly gave to such women, known as malmaritate. Committed to the ideal of the patriarchal family as the foundation of patriarchal society, these authorities wanted (like the neighbors, family, and friends mentioned above) to encourage a similar ideal of disciplined masculinity. Paradoxically, helping some women who left their misbehaving husbands was one way to do this.

FORMAL AND INFORMAL MARRIAGE DISSOLUTION In the eyes of the church, any married couple who wanted to live separately had to get the permission of the episcopal court.4 In practice, however, most couples simply went their separate ways; recourse to the formal arena of the court and involving the ecclesiastical authorities appealed only to some spouses who had disputes connected to the dissolution. In Verona, these included primarily those couples in which only one spouse wanted to end the marriage, and those who had financial disputes, particularly over the wife’s dowry. Two types of marriage cases before the Veronese diocesan court, both occasioned by the opportunity for a limited type of formal marriage dissolution offered by canon law, provide information about informal marriage dissolution and especially about the phenomenon of wives leaving and their husbands trying to get them back: adherere suits and suits for separatio a thoro et mensa. The first was a suit to enforce conjugal rights. One spouse would bring this against the other who had left to compel the spouse’s return to the marriage, to “adhere” (adherere) to his or her legitimate husband or wife. Defendants usually responded to these suits with a countersuit requesting formal sanction for dissolution of their marriages—usually either a suit for annulment or a suit for separatio a mensa et

4

Bishop Giberti strictly enjoined his priests to intervene in situations where spouses were not cohabiting and require them to seek permission to do so or else face excommunication, CON, bk. 9, chap. 5: 137–38. Valier was similarly concerned with this issue.

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thoro, or separation from bed and board—that explained why he or she should not have to return. Of the twenty-seven Veronese suits initiated as adhere suits, thirteen met countersuits for annulments versus eleven for divorce. It appears, however, that frequently a defendant faced with a suit to adhere chose to bring an annulment suit rather than a divorce suit because the facts of his or her situation fit better into that formal cause. A separatio, also called a divortium, did not, like an annulment, give the spouses the right to remarry, but only to live separately and separate their finances. In legal parlance, an annulment could also be called a divortium, but in this case a vinculo, or from the marriage bond itself.5 In addition to using it as a response to an adherere suit, a spouse could initiate this suit directly. The rule that the winning party had the right to the wife’s dowry made this sort of suit particularly attractive to some. Husbands and wives appear to have used the court differently, as indicated by the rates at which each sex initiated each kind of marriage suit. Generally speaking, as already mentioned, wives used the court to facilitate leaving their husbands, while husbands used it to confirm their marriages in the face of a wife’s attempts to leave. Husbands brought twenty (83 percent) of the twenty-four surviving cases initiated as adherere causes, and wives brought only four (17 percent). Furthermore, wives brought 77 percent of the cases known to be initiated as separatio causes, and husbands 23 percent (table 5.1). Table 5.1: Type of Suit Involving Marriage Dissolution Heard before the Ecclesiastical Court of the Diocese of Verona by Spouse Initiating, 1538–1593 HUSBAND INITIATED

WIFE INITIATED

(NO.)

(%)

(NO.)

(%)

TOTAL (NO.)

Adherere

20

83

4

17

24*

Separatio

4

23

13

77

17*

DISSOLUTION SUIT

Total

24*

17*

41*

*These are not the total number of these types of cases for which records survive because the initiator of the suit cannot always be determined. For complete figures, see table 2.1 above.

The initiative for these marriage suits lay with the spouses; the ecclesiastical authorities rarely initiated suits ex officio, and when they did, judging by the sur5 Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 67–69, 74–107. Some annulment suits are useful here because the spouse claiming the annulment included pejorative details about the other spouse in much the same way spouses arguing separation suits did. See, for example, Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor, in which Giulia alleged both a prior contract and cruelty.

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viving Veronese cases, it was only to sort out cases of suspected bigamy. The interest of the ecclesiastical authorities in ensuring that legally married couples cohabit was, however, growing in this period as part of their efforts to strengthen the patriarchal family. Bishop Giberti instructed his priests to preach against, investigate, and punish married couples who failed to cohabit, even when there was no suspicion of illicit sexual activity. In addition to reprinting Giberti’s edict, Bishop Valier also addressed the matter at some of his diocesan synods.6 Information in some of the suits suggests that as the century wore on parish priests did indeed begin to pressure spouses who had separated informally to seek formal permission from the episcopal court.7 The claims of the litigants and the testimony of their witnesses include information about the events that preceded the advent of the formal proceedings—the process of marital disintegration and eventual informal dissolution as one spouse left the other. The formal demands of litigation, however, shaped and filtered what facts were included. To obtain a legal separation from bed and board, a spouse generally had to prove the other spouse’s adultery and/or severe cruelty. The standards for these transgressions as interpreted by the Veronese court were fairly high. A notary recorded in one suit in 1582 that he had explained to the plaintiff, Giulia Albiani, thus: “[First], that a husband, leaving his wife, keeps other women and commits adultery, [second] that she cannot live with him without danger to her life.” 8 What is particularly useful, however, for understanding the larger process of marital disintegration and dissolution and of people’s attitudes and perceptions connected to them is how the plaintiffs—mostly women—and their witnesses chose to portray the defendants’—usually the husbands’—transgressions. They did not confine themselves to proving “the facts,” but embellished them with colorful details imbedded in descriptions of events that were intended to portray the defendants as failed husbands. This shows not only patterns of 6

CON, bk. 9, chap. 5, 137–38; and ACVR, Decreta synodalia, 1579: “De uxoribus nolentibus habitare cum maritis”; 1586: “Contra curatos qui celebrant contractus matrimonii inter mulieres, quarum mariti sunt absentes, absque eo ut certi reddantur de morete aut vita dictorum coniugum…” 7 The visitors clearly did so during the visitations of Giberti’s term in office. The 1582 suit between Giulia Albiana and her husband (and cousin) Pietro Albiani began at one of the visitations during Valier’s reign. Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani. See also Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Antonius a Sella v. Barbara dalla Bocca, for an example of a priest who refused to let a wife enter the church or take communion because she refused to live with her husband. 8 Cruelty as a grounds for a separation was not actually part of canon law but began to be accepted by ecclesiastical courts in the thirteenth century, Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 104. “chel marito lassando la propria moglie tenghi altre donne et commetti adulterio, l’altra che senza pericolo della sua vita non possia habitar con lui” (emphasis added), Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani.

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expectations of proper industrious and responsible husbandly behavior, but also competing models of masculine behavior that tempted some husbands, as well as expectations placed on wives. The descriptions of events contained in the court records were certainly shaped by the litigants and their lawyers for the ecclesiastical audience of the judge.9 One can, nonetheless, discern in them more generally held attitudes because of the level of detail participants in the cases included. Witnesses’ testimony, in particular, though clearly influenced by the lawyer-composed questions put to them, could be hard to control; notaries apparently wrote down most of what witnesses said, even opinions volunteered not in direct response to questions. The information available in Giberti’s visitation records and the legal disputes allows a reconstruction of the outlines of informal marriage dissolution. These records, along with prescriptive literature, show that people sometimes separated—and also remarried—informally without involving either secular or religious authority.10 Dissolving a marriage informally was fraught with economic, legal, and social risks that discouraged many people from taking this step. Economic circumstances could mitigate these risks and make it easier for people who were unsatisfied with their marriages to leave them. Nonetheless, because of their weaker economic position, it was always harder for women to leave a marriage than for men. The visitation record indicates that both women and men initiated separations in all areas of the Veronese diocese (see map 5.1). The visitors to the rural parishes of the diocese during Bishop Giberti’s term in office recorded sixty-six instances of married couples who were not cohabiting. In fifty-nine of these cases they indicated which spouse had initiated the informal separation. While there are too few reports over too long a period to allow an analysis of their geographical distribution, interestingly, the episcopal visitors’ reports do suggest that Veronese women may have been somewhat better able to leave their marriages than historians have generally assumed. Between 1525 and 1541, the visitors attributed thirty-six marital breakups to husbands, who had either expelled their wives (usually for adultery) or else deserted them, and twenty-three, only somewhat fewer, to wives who left their husbands (see table 5.2).11 9 On this issue, see Davis, Fiction; and “Introduction” to Ferraro, Marriage Wars, applying Davis’ standards and methodology to early modern Venetian marriage cases. 10 In addition to reports of spouses who were not cohabiting, Giberti’s visitation record contains several suits involving annulments requested on the basis of one spouse’s prior marriage—in effect, prior informal separation. 11 Phillips, for example, argues that women in particular, once married, had no other options outside of marriage; Putting Asunder, 391. Expulsion is an interesting phenomenon whose conventions XXX

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Table 5.2: Instances of Noncohabitation Reported during the Episcopal Visitations Conducted in the Diocese of Verona between 1525 and 1541 Compared by Geographical Zone* TOTAL ZONE

INITIATOR

(NO.)

(%)

WIFE

HUSBAND

UNKNOWN

High hills and mountains

11

17

3

6

2

Foothills

13

20

5

7

1

Lakeshores

10

15

4

6

0

2

3

0

1

1

Bassa veronese

30

45

11

16

3

Total

66

100

23

36

7

Moraine

*Numbers do not include reports of concubinage in which the concubines happen to have been married, which would have raised the number of wives initiating marriage dissolutions.

Historians have explained the difficulty of leaving a marriage, especially for women, in terms of the family economy that dominated early modern Europe. The family economy describes a situation in which all members of a family are essential to an economic enterprise. This usually meant farming, but could also include small-scale manufacturing of a good such as woolen cloth. 12 Thus, outside the family unit there were few ways to earn a living, perhaps especially for women. Family-based enterprises—primarily small farms—were certainly the most common sort in the Veronese contado. A few small commercial centers and noble estates, however, also provided opportunities for individuals to survive outside of a family at least temporarily, as servants or laborers in small industry (particularly in towns in the bassa veronese, like Isola della Scala) or on the lands of others. For women who were deserted or who left their husbands, these small commercial centers may also have offered opportunities to work as prostitutes, while the existence of noble estates in some regions, such as the bassa veronese and the foothills, may also have presented the possibility of becoming servants or concubines. Verona itself, although not included in most of the surviving visitation reports, 12

deserve more attention. Most reports in the visitation came in 1541 from the bassa veronese. The reason often given was the wife’s adultery. RPV, 1256, 1287, 1298, 1308, 1339, 1350. 12 Phillips, Putting Asunder, 7, 363–77; and Martha C. Howell, “Women, the Family Economy, and the Structures of Market Production in Cities of Northern Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” in Women and Work in Preindusturial Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 198–222.

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Map 5.1: Location of Informal Separations Reported during Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti’s Visitations to the Diocese of Verona, 1526–41

Based on the map of the diocese of Verona contained in Antonio Fasani, ed., Riforma pretridentina della diocese di Verona. Visite pastorali del Vescovo G. M. Giberti, 1525–1541 (Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989).

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had a heterogeneous economy and the most work opportunities for single people, for example as servants or as workers in the wool or silk industries. The city would, therefore, likely have had a somewhat higher rate of wives who left husbands, and it is indeed not surprising that it acted as a magnet for some husbands and wives who left their marriages in the countryside and were presumably seeking means to support themselves.13 Leaving a marriage was riskier for a wife than for a husband for moral as well as economic reasons. In Verona as in the rest of Europe, women earned significantly less than men, and were also less able to find work than men because of the dangers of travel. Tax records illustrate the economic risks faced by widows and women living separately from their husbands. Such women were among the poorest people in any given location, including the city of Verona, where widows and wives separated from their husbands together made up 12 percent of those classed as poor, with separated wives making up 0.64 percent.14 Some wives who left or were left by their husbands could return to their families (as indeed the visitors reported several wives had) but they could probably only remain temporarily. Ideally, although it was illegal, they would remarry, which evidence from the marriage court cases suggests was a quite viable option, particularly for young people. 15 This could, however, be difficult, particularly for women with children or those past childbearing age.16 Those who could or would not marry might go into service or become wool or silk laborers, or they might become concubines or prostitutes. Giacoma de Guxolengo, from the town of Villafranca, for example, demonstrates the options both of remarriage and of concubinage. She had first married a shepherd named Panocartis, who left her and married another woman. Giacoma then found a new husband, Melchior Simoni, who also left her. Only when marriage failed a second time did Giacoma finally become the concubine of the son of Lord Angelo Vertua. Another example is the case of Sebastiano de Burgo, who complained to the bishop in 1530 that his wife had left him to live in the house of Count dei Cavalchaselli. By the 1532 visitation Sebastiano had remarried, although his wife was still living.17 13

Lanaro Sartori, “Il mondo contadino,” 309–44; Varanini, “Campagne,” 185–262; and Phillips, Putting Asunder, 372–76. 14 Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia,” 57; and on women and work in Verona, ibid., 56–65. See also Tagliaferri, Economia, 108–12, on poverty of widows in Verona and on women and work in Verona, 85–87. 15 For cases involving instances of spouses who informally separated and remarried, see Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1542 Off. episcopatus v. Joannes dictus Moretus; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Giuseppe filius Bianchin Pelacani v. Zuanna f.q. Bartolomeo del Zumela e Orsola nezza di Grazia di Santa Maria a Frata. 16 Poor widows beyond their twenties or early thirties in seventeenth-century Florence found it very difficult to remarry: Lombardi, Povertà, 81–82. Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia,” 57, suggests it was difficult for all widows in Verona to remarry. 17 RPV, 689, 885, 1028.

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The concept of women (who were not nuns) living outside of either their natal or marital families troubled sixteenth-century authorities, who conceived of noncloistered honorable women as belonging to one of three categories: virgin, wife, or widow, all safely ensconced in a household headed by a male. Bishop Valier, indeed, wrote a famous series of treatises outlining the proper behavior for each type of woman.18 Ex-wives, like never-married women who were not nuns, did not fit into these honorable categories and were therefore immediately suspect and troubling. The authorities nonetheless recognized the existence of such women and understood the problems that they faced. One of their primary worries was that these women, who earned less than men, if left to support themselves outside of marriage would turn to prostitution to survive. A 1569 case illustrates the risks a woman ran if she left her husband, even if she had the help of friends or family. A woman known only as Adriana had left her husband Tommaso Tintor, justifying her departure to neighbors by his cruelty to her. During her marriage Adriana had often found refuge at the house of a friend, but when she finally left her husband, there were limits to the help she could expect from her friend. Tommaso stayed in Verona and found a new wife. In contrast, Adriana left Verona out of fear of her husband and became a prostitute in Brescia to support herself. In another case, a woman who was deserted by her husband became a concubine.19 Growing concern with preventing these economic choices and thereby “preserving women’s honor” expressed itself throughout the Italian peninsula from the fifteenth century in the establishment of such schemes as dowry funds to enable poor girls to marry and various types of institutions to house and train in a trade women and girls deemed “at risk” of prostitution as well as former prostitutes. In Verona these institutions were known as the Convertite, the Trinità, the Novizze di S. Francesco, and the Derelitti. An avowed purpose of these public and private initiatives was to protect or redeem women’s honor. Among the types of women expressly identified as those needing the haven of institutions were unhappily married women, known as malmaritate.20 The suits that came before the diocesan court show what compelled some wives to leave despite the risks: husbands who beat them excessively with little or no provocation, sold or pawned their wives’ dowries, refused to work and spent 18

All are contained in Valier, Institutione. This categorization of women by sexual/marital status in the premodern period is well recognized. See, for example, Hufton, Prospect, esp. 1:36–39. 19 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Marino Brusch. Mantuani v. Leonora q. Francesci de Bonzanis. 20 Lanaro Sartori, “Patrizi e poveri,” 140–43. On females (the derelitte) specifically see, for example, Ordini e capitoli del governo delli derelitti, institutio nella magnifica città di Verona l’anno 1572 (Verona: Sebastiano dalle Donne, 1585), 33–36.

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their time drinking at taverns, perhaps bringing home prostitutes, and in a pinch might try pimping their wives to make some extra money. In short, the risks some wives faced within their marriages made leaving worth the risks they faced outside of the marriage. Court cases reveal two examples of such situations. In 1582 Gaspare Trentino, a carter based in the city of Verona who traveled frequently, brought a suit before the episcopal court to compel his wife, Chiara Fasoli, to return to live with him.21 Chiara, now living with her parents, responded with a suit for a legal separation on the grounds of his adultery and cruelty. This cause carried the burden of proof, and so the case that followed was conducted by Chiara and her lawyer. Chiara’s capitula detail her husbands’ alleged offenses: Gaspare regularly left her alone for long periods of time; when home, he beat her; he pawned or sold all of her dowry to pay for food; he worked very little; he forced his wife to participate in unnatural sexual acts; and finally, precipitating her departure, he had tried to strangle Chiara, and would have succeeded were it not for the aid of her family and a neighbor. Chiara’s witnesses—who included her family members as well as neighbors with varying degrees of familiarity with her situation—confirmed her accusations, adding details such as if her family had not helped to feed her when Gaspare was away, she would have been forced into prostitution. As it was, neighbors testified, they had noticed that for a period of several weeks Gaspare had frequently brought home one man for meals, and it appeared to them that Gaspare was interested in making money by establishing his wife in a relationship with this or another man. Another witness volunteered a striking incident he had witnessed. One day soon after Chiara left Gaspare, Gaspare came to see her at her parents’ house to ask her to come and sleep with him. “The girl’s father wanted her to and was happy that he go and sleep with her; but she did not want to, nor did her mother.” Chiara’s brother also sided with her and their mother, angrily threatening his brother-in-law, until restrained by the witness.22 In the second case, Laura de Soci had left her husband, Cesare dei Gatti, late in 1580 or early in 1581, and, like Chiara, had taken refuge with her parents. In January of 1581 Cesare brought a suit to compel her to return; Laura responded with a suit for a separation. Her suit, colorfully and emphatically confirmed by witnesses, paints an even more harrowing picture of a marriage than did Chiara’s. Laura alleged that from the very beginning of their marriage Cesare had mistreated her, calling her despicable names and beating her at all hours of the day and night. He had several times threatened to kill her and had beaten her while 21

Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli. “el padre della puta voleva et si contentava che l’andasse a dormir con lei ma ella non volse neancho sua madre.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Francesco Ferraris [?]. 22

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she was pregnant, causing her to miscarry and almost lose her own life. Her charges ended with an indictment of his character in general: The truth was and is that the said Cesare, being desirous of lifting himself in [others’] eyes, sold all the movable goods and [clothing?] of the poor unhappy woman so that the said poor Laura had to sleep on the straw; and he made his life at the tavern, enjoying himself and fleeing work with all his might, as will be better described by witnesses.23

MARRIAGE AND HONOR In addition to husbands’ abuse of their wives, the ecclesiastical court cases also reveal another less investigated aspect of the story of wives leaving their husbands: how deeply injured some husbands felt to be left by their wives and their corresponding strong desires to have their wives return. It is striking that although wives were probably deserted at a higher rate than were husbands, these deserted women apparently did not bring suits in larger numbers to have their husbands compelled to return to them. Instead, what was probably a proportionately small number of deserted husbands, like Gaspare Trentino, was responsible for initiating the lion’s share of adherere suits that came before the court. As has been seen, husbands brought five times as many of the surviving suits as wives. The records of these suits do not show emotional motivations, but do suggest two other interrelated reasons men wanted their wives to return: financial issues and reputational concerns. Wives were clearly important economic resources and losing a wife would therefore damage a husband’s financial position. For common men, a wife’s labor, whether for wages or with him in a joint economic endeavor such as a farm or workshop, was important to his maintaining his standard of living. A wife’s dowry usually provided a good proportion of the household goods, such as the bed and kitchen items, and perhaps a small amount of cash. Elite men, naturally, did not rely as directly on their wives’ wages, though a wife’s labor running the household was important. For these men, however, a wife’s dowry represented a large proportion of their total wealth. Indeed in this period dowries among the elite were growing at a rate many contemporaries found disturbing. A husband whose wife had left him, however, would usually already have control of her dowry and would therefore not need to bring a suit to compel her return in 23 “la verita fu et e che detto Cesare essendo desiceroso di levarsi davanti alli ochi della povera infelice tutta la mobelia et [illegible] che ha in casa lha veduta, per el che detta povera laura era necessitat dormir su la paglia et gli faceva la sua vitta alla osteria giovando et fuggendo il lavoro a tutto il suo potere et come meglio cose detto dalli testimonii.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci.

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order to keep it.24 The question of why men brought so many suits to compel their wives to return—and thus how they were injured by being left—therefore requires a more complete answer, one involving honor. Honor was a high value commodity in the medieval and early modern periods; and a wife’s desertion could hurt this asset directly. In 1553 Francesco Mazzacavallo’s petition in his adherere suit against his wife Francesca told the court that a few days earlier, after eleven years of marriage, Francesca had simply left and refused to return “to the ruin of her soul, and in grave ignominy of her said husband, and to the scandal of many.” Some thirty years later, in 1584, Lord Giovanni Genovese similarly lamented that despite his wise and prudent care for his wife, Caterina De Caliari, she had returned to him only “ill repute and dishonor,” by leaving him and carrying wild and untrue stories about him to the criminal officials without respect for “the reputation of both of them.”25 Marital breakdown and desertion were highly public processes not only because of the well-known lack of privacy in the early modern period, but also because women in troubled marriages frequently sought the aid of others. The resulting public knowledge of the couple’s problems and the support that friends and neighbors demonstrated for a woman’s decision to leave would increase her husband’s shame. Because it was so difficult to leave a marriage, in leaving her husband, the marriage suits show, a wife was, in effect, declaring—with the support of her friends and neighbors—that her husband was not fulfilling the widely recognized duties and responsibilities of a good husband: to protect and preserve his wife’s person, property, and honor.26 In common perception, moreover, this failure did not simply show the men to be bad husbands, but revealed them more seriously as failures as men and as threats to the larger social order. 24 Grubb, Provincial Families, 16. A woman who had left her husband might well bring a formal separation suit to compel him to return her dowry to her. Sometimes, however, in particular circumstances, a husband would bring a separation suit against his wife who had left him to ensure he received and kept her dowry. For example, Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Tarsia Morandi v. Giulio Folignino, in which Tarsia brought a suit to enforce their marriage contract, and Giulio countered with a suit for a divorce for adultery. Giulio won and received her dowry. 25 “in perniciem animae suae et in gravem ignominiam dicti eius mariti ac scandalum pluri” (emphasis added), Atti, b. 9, 1553 Francesco Mazzacavallo v. Francesca sua moglie; and “biasimo et deshonor” and “la reputatione di ambi doi.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Catarina f.q. Domini Bartholomei de Caliaris v. Dominus Giovanni f.q. Domini Simeone Januensis detto Camarato. Stefano Dei Stefanis also complained in his capitula that his wife Isabella Mona was “difammando la bona compagnia che sempre ha havuta... da stephano.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. 26 Henry Kamen found similar expectations in early modern Catalonia. He further asserts that in Catalonian separation suits, “dishonour rather than adultery was the primary offense; women, too, had honour and were entitled to defend it.” The Phoenix and the Flame, 307, 309, 311.

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This idea is based on generally held expectations of elite and common husbands and of their wives. Some people commonly identified a husband’s failings in these areas with a lack of the masculine qualities that contemporaries understood to uphold the sexual, social, and, increasingly, religious and political orders of early modern Italy.

BUONA COMPAGNIA AND THE MARITAL ORDER To receive a formal separation through the church a wife had to show that her husband treated her with excessive, unjustified, and life-threatening cruelty and/ or that he had committed adultery. While these were technically the only grounds the court would recognize, wives’ suits did not confine themselves to descriptions of severe beatings or instances of adultery. Probably intended to convince the judge of the respectability and thus trustworthiness of one party (in these cases the wife) and the bad character of the other (here, the husband),27 these additional allegations, along with witnesses’ responses to them, cumulatively reveal a more general sense of how these husbands had violated the expectations of a good husband encompassed in the phrase buona compagnia, which the husband owed his wife.28 Marriage gave husbands great authority over their wives in both law and tradition. As the phrase buona compagnia itself suggests, however, it was supposed to be a relationship of mutual support in which each spouse had specific duties to support the other. This standard thus defined the limits of a husband’s power over his wife by describing a husband’s duty and responsibility to preserve and protect his wife, her resources, and her reputation.29 A wife who left her husband carried a stiff burden of proof to justify her decision before the court of public opinion before she ever came to a formal court. She was not just leaving a marriage, but leaving a husband who did not want her to go. Defying her husband, she potentially disrupted the marital order, which was based upon wives’ submission to their husbands’ (reasonable) authority.30 Such a wife therefore had to reassure others—especially those 27

Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 105, found additional charges like these included in medieval English suits and evaluates them in a similar way. 28 Spouses owed it to each other reciprocally. Phillips has found a similar standard in eighteenth-century France, designated as husbands treating their wives maritalemente. Putting Asunder, 322. 29 These notions were, however, also incorporated into the legal practices of the ecclesiastical courts. For example, James Brundage has found that canonists and secular authorities “provided a process whereby the wife might secure a separation from her husband if she could show that he was endangering her financial security and that his conduct tended to impoverish her.” Brundage, Law, Sex, 542. The relationship of this to the normal legal process is not clear. 30 Hufton, Prospect, 37–40.

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whose help she needed to leave (and later perhaps a judge)—that she was not a disobedient wife chafing at normal husbandly authority, but that her husband was using his authority in an illegitimate manner, in violation of buona compagnia. In leaving their husbands, therefore, these wives claimed not to be challenging but to be upholding the marital order, which they asserted their husbands were threatening. In order to enlist the sympathies and help of neighbors, friends, and officials, a wife in a troubled marriage had to show them that she was herself respectable, that she did not in any senses deserve the way her husband was treating her. In her formal case a woman almost always included a capitulum claiming that she was a respectable (da bene) woman and wife. In this forum her claims would have had a twofold purpose: generally to show that she was a good woman, but more specifically to show that she was of good fama and therefore met a legal standard of trustworthiness.31 These clauses, along with witnesses’ responses, illustrate what comprised a married woman’s honor in the eyes of her contemporaries and how her honor was involved in the process of leaving her husband. While sexual virtue must be included on any list of honorable characteristics, a wife’s honor had other important components. Neighbors prized industry and competence in household management, as well as modesty.32 Above all, respectable wives were expected to treat their husbands with honor, respect, and obedience at all times, even when their husbands mistreated them. Witnesses confirmed Isabella Mona’s claim that despite her husband’s vicious mistreatment of her, Isabella herself consistently “exhibit[ed] in every plain and honest act the required duty to her husband, as wives should toward their husbands.” 33 In illustrating the respectability of Bernardina de Minzono, whose husband habitually 31

Hufton, Prospect, 266. The testimony of those without good fama was worthless in court. Francesco Migliorino, Fama e infamia. Problemi della società medievale nel pensiero giuridico nei secoli XII e XIII (Catania: Giannotta, 1985), esp. chap. 2. 32 Lucia f. Zenonis de Jacomellis, for example, in her testimony praised Bernardina di Minzono as “da fati a casa e alla campagna de bon consiglio.” Another, Dominicus Cornatus, in his testimony, said she “vive de le sue fadige...” Cause, b. 1549–1569/1579–1584, 1579 Bernardina di Agostino di Minzono v. Tommaso di Bernardino Brixiano. A transcription of this suit can be found in Vanna Tognoli, Osservazioni sulla condizione giuridica della donna veronese nel Cinquecento (Tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi di Padova, 1972–73), 88-104. For similar notions elsewhere at this time, see David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 288; and Hufton, Prospect, chap. 4. 33 Her capitula state “ha prestato in ogni liciso et honesto atto il debito obsequio al marito, come devono fare le moglie verso i loro mariti.” When asked by Stefano’s interrogatory what she meant by obsequia, one neighbor said she meant that “Isabetta habbi prestato i debiti obsequii al marito come sarebbe dir quando suo marito la dimandava haverlo servito, et portatoli honore et perche mi ho sentito alcune volte chiarmarla da esso suo marito et lei risponderli et ubidirlo, altro non so circa delli servici della carne tra marito e moglie.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis, Testimony of Tuscana ux. messeri Cosmo Calzarerii.

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and, in witnesses’ judgment, unjustly beat her, one witness approvingly quoted Bernardina’s own expression of her continuing sense of duty to her husband: “If no one ever finds a taint upon my honor so that I shine like a star for my husband, then I will be content.”34 Other witnesses likened wives to martyrs for their patient sufferings. One, a midwife who had attended at a miscarriage probably caused by the husband’s beatings, listed the husband’s misdeeds, the wife’s virtues, and said, “she is what is called a donna de corona,”35 that is, a martyr. Opinion of women who talked back, let alone fought back, was mixed, but tended to go against the wife. People did not hesitate to tell some women that they had brought any mistreatment on themselves by their own improper behavior. One witness commented ruefully that “the strength of women is in their tongues.” Of the same woman, her husband’s nephew offered with some approval, “She often responds [to him] vigorously.” But others were less tolerant—or perhaps simply more realistic. “She should keep her mouth closed; I think that if she would be quiet, he wouldn’t give it to her,” one opined. Similarly, when one wife sought sympathy from her neighbors for her husband’s frequent beatings, the neighbors blamed her for talking back and provoking her husband. 36 Indeed, neighbors admired the suffering of a patient Griselda, although they also recognized and supported her right to leave her husband if he mistreated her. 37 These demands put a wife with an abusive husband in a paradoxical position. Her husband was endangering her life and her honor in such ways as refusing to work, beating her, insulting her, selling all her goods, gambling away the proceeds, 34 “Se mai niun mi trovava tara nel mio honor, che mio marido mi stella, che mi contento.” Cause, b. 1549–1569/1579–1584, 1579 Bernardina di Agostino di Minzono v. Tommaso di Bernardino Brixiano, Testimony of Lucia f. Zenonis de Jacomellis. 35 “le e come se dice una donna de corona,” adding “e un peccato che la sia toccato a questo cesare che e tutto il contrario.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci, Testimony of Margarita obstetrix vidua relicta q. messeri Sebastiani Vicentini. Another case is somewhat more ambiguous. One witness volunteered the comment (in the record subdens), “Se dice anche che Apollonio haveva ditto chel voleva menar ditta sua muglier alla corona...” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone, Testimony of Alexander q. Marci biretarius. On the theme of mothers as martyrs see Clarissa W. Atkinson, The Oldest Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). Many wives and their witnesses equated living “like a good Christian” with respectability. 36 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Angelica de Galupis v. Zuanne de Gregoris. “la forza delle donne e la lingua,” Testimony of ser Vincentius q. Joannis a ferro; “Molte volte risponde gagliardamente,” Testimony of Jacobus f.q. Joannis Marie de Taxesis; and “la doverebbe tenir la lingua dentro doi denti, che credo che se la tacesse lui non li darebbe,” Testimony of Caterina uxor Joannis de Raldonis, nuncupata la Pacenga; and Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1569 Domenica f.q. Lucae Domenici de Camillo v. Dominico eius maritus. 37 Ferraro asserts that Venetian abused wives were not “patient Griseldas.” “Power to Decide: Battered Wives in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 48, no. 3 (1995): 500. The comments in these Veronese cases suggest that neighbors would have been less likely to support wives leaving their husbands when they judged the wives shrews. See also Hufton, Prospect, 54.

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and forcing her directly or indirectly to prostitution, yet she could not directly oppose him. She could refuse to comply with unreasonable requests, but could not honorably respond either verbally or physically. Instead, she had to enlist the help of her neighbors—both male and female—in sanctioning him. In one 1569 suit, several male witnesses described an occasion when they were called upon by the couple’s landlady to chastise the husband: “and so everyone reproved the said Tommaso, telling him that they had to live peacefully and not to keep giving it to Giulia.” In other cases, witnesses cited the husband’s mistreatment of his wife and declared that the common opinion of the neighborhood was she should not have to stay with him.38 Witnesses’ testimony shows that women would tell their neighbors about their husbands’ mistreatment, explaining the beatings that neighbors heard through thin walls with claims that their husbands, for example, wanted them to perform forbidden sexual acts (generally sodomy) or to earn more money. According to Isabella Mona and her neighbors, the main point of conflict with her husband, Stefano dei Stefani, was that Stefano wanted to sell property that was part of her dowry. When she refused her permission, he beat her. Isabella, in her neighbors’ opinion and her own, suffered bravely, and when she could stand it no more, rather than lash out directly at her husband, she attacked herself: she attempted suicide by throwing herself into the Adige. Since she did it in front of a large crowd of neighbors who quickly fished her out, it appears to have been more of a symbolic act to confirm her virtue and convey her desperation than a serious attempt on her own life. 39 Elite wives like Isabella Mona, who was a member of the nobility, had more trouble than ordinary women in both publicizing their husbands’ mistreatment of them and in exposing him to meaningful moral sanction by those whose opinion could hurt him. Such wives tended to be more physically isolated than ordinary women both from their neighbors and from their high-status peers. They did have servants around them constantly, but it is unlikely that servants’ negative opinions of their master’s mistreatment of his wife would carry much moral weight with him. For these wives, however, the courts, both secular and ecclesiastical, offered a way to expose their husbands’ behavior both to wider public scrutiny and to the sanction of people of their own milieu, such as public officials—and if the matter reached court, the servants’ testimony would have value. 38

“et cosi tutti ripresero il detto Thomaso dicendogli che doveriano viver in pace et non star a dar a questa Julia.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor, Testimony of Messer Joseph f. Joannis dicti il Gaio biretarius de contrata S. Egidii; Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone, Testimony of Alexander q. Marci biretarius; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Angelica de Galupis v. Zuanne de Gregoris, Testimony of ser Vincentius q. Joannis a ferro. 39 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis.

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Elite women initiated most of the separatio suits that women brought before the diocesan court. Information in suits involving elite wives shows that they also tended to take their conflicts with their husbands to secular courts as well. Elite women’s dowry wealth partially explains their apparently more frequent recourse to the court system. They could afford it—the suits show such women frequently had the support of their natal families (who shared an interest in the dowry)—and had economic reasons to seek the authorities’ intervention. It is likely, however, that they also brought the suits in efforts to publicize their husbands’ behavior and thus to shame them. Before bringing a separatio suit in the ecclesiastical court, Giulia Albiani, for example, had brought a defamation suit in secular court against her husband (and cousin), Pietro Albiani. Lord Giovanni Genovese complained to the ecclesiastical court about the harm to his reputation his wife Caterina caused by bringing tales of his cruelty to “public officials” when she sought the aid of the podestà in leaving him.40 All wives, elite or common, impressed first upon neighbors, family, and friends, and later upon the court that they were not willingly or capriciously leaving their husbands. They were not chafing at normal and accepted husbandly authority, but rather were reluctantly escaping particularly bad husbands, whose improper behavior made their authority over their wives illegitimate. They were leaving in order to save their lives, their souls, and their honor. Money was a constant theme in wives’ allegations and witnesses’ testimony. Husbands controlled their wives’ dowries during the husband’s lifetime. There were, however, limitations on that control: it remained the wife’s property, and while the husband enjoyed its fruits, he could not alienate it. Wives and witnesses frequently complained that husbands ignored these limitations on their financial authority as well as other economic responsibilities, in this way injuring their wives. Some husbands refused to work to help earn money to feed their wives and children. Others gambled away their own and their wives’ earnings and then pawned their wives’ dowries. Giulia di Zuanne told the court that she feared her husband, Tommaso Tintor, would gamble away everything including her dowry and, like many wives, sought to have her husband put up monetary surety to ensure he would not sell her dowry goods.41 Wives, witnesses, and authorities did not perceive the danger to wives to be just physical or financial. Rather, physical and financial injuries also harmed a wife’s reputation or honor. An overarching theme of wives’ and witnesses’ complaints is husbands’ failures to preserve their wives’ position and reputation, failure that 40

Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis. 41 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor.

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resulted from husbands’ lack of respect for their wives and by extension for the position of wife more generally. From there, it was not too great a leap to characterize such men as threats to the larger order of society. Wives and their witnesses understood a husband’s violence and financial irresponsibility as failures that hurt the woman’s reputation and status as a respectable wife. They emphasized that the beatings were not just excessive, but that they were done without a legitimate reason. Because a husband had the right in law and custom to “correct” her in this way, it was a sign to the community that she had misbehaved. Therefore, if a husband beat his wife without a good reason, he could hurt her reputation unjustly. Witnesses’ testimony shows that neighbors did sometimes assume wives were at fault when their husbands beat them. When Bernardina di Minzoni complained to her neighbor Lucia about being beaten by her husband, Lucia blamed the beating on Bernardina. Lucia told the court, “I reproved her that she had to control herself.” When Domenica de Camillo made a similar complaint to her neighbor Perina, Perina assumed that Domenica deserved the correction and told her, “you need to do what he wants if you don’t want him to give it to you.”42 A husband’s lack of good financial management could be not simply a threat to a wife’s physical well-being, but to her moral well-being, her reputation, and her social status.43 Some women complained that their husbands’ financial irresponsibility forced them to beg food from their neighbors, thus shaming them by altering their social relationships and putting them below their neighbors. This was particularly the case for Isabella Mona, the daughter of a nobleman who had married beneath her status, who had to ask her commoner neighbors for food. 44 For ordinary laborers it was also shameful to beg, particularly in times other than those of famine, when even respectable, hard working people could not afford food. Wives and their witnesses also dwelt on transgressions that were not directly harmful to survival, like Giacomo Polidori’s one day selling all his wife’s clothes. While clothing was a financial asset, it was also an important indicator of social status and hence of dignity. The way her husband, Stefano dei Stefani, undermined her rightful social position was a primary theme of the elite Isabella Mona’s case against him, and clothing was an important issue both to Isabella herself and to her witnesses. When Isabella came to her marriage, her court papers claimed, she had 42 “io la riprendeva che doveva governarsi.” Cause, b. 1549–1569/1579–1584, 1579 Bernardina di Agostino di Minzono v. Tommaso di Bernardino Brixiano, Testimony of Lucia f. Zenonis de Jacomellis; and “bisogna che voi fate a suo seno se non volete chel ve daga.” Cause, b. 1540–1560, 1569 Domenica f.q. Lucae Domenici de Camillo v. Dominico eius maritus, Testimony of [illegible] dicta Perina ux. q. Perino Graceteti de S. Nazaro. 43 Ferraro found similar attitudes in early modern Venice, “Power to Decide,” 501–2. 44 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis.

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had clothing “in accordance with her status” (per pari suo), but her husband’s poor financial management required him to sell it, which exposed her to humiliation. She could not go out in public, even to mass, without proper clothing. Her witnesses had a keen sense of the injustice of her husband’s behavior, volunteering such additional information as that her mother-in-law refused to be seen in public with Isabella because Isabella did not have appropriate clothing.45 After a husband’s death or when a couple split up, a woman’s dowry was an important resource to help preserve her position. For an ordinary woman, the resource of her dowry would be a bulwark against true poverty; it could help her to support herself without having to turn to begging or prostitution. An elite woman’s dowry would help her to maintain her standard of living, to live as an honorable woman of her status should, with servants and adequate clothing and the like, or perhaps even to keep her from starving. Most suits initiated as separatio suits (as opposed to those brought in response to adherere suits) were brought by wives, most likely as part of their efforts to regain control of their dowries, which law granted to the winning party in a separatio.46 The women who brought these separatio suits had already successfully left their husbands, and now they wanted their dowries. As some wives explicitly told the court, they wanted to leave their husbands in order to be able to “live properly” or “Christianly” (christianamente),47 and a dowry could be important in enabling them to achieve this, to live in a manner appropriate to their status. Of the seventeen cases known to have been initiated as separation suits, wives initiated thirteen, over three times as many as husbands, who brought only four (see table 5.1). Seven of the thirteen women who brought separatio suits were members of the elite. It was probably more difficult for elite women to divorce informally because there was more at stake and more recourse to the law, which did not (at least in theory) recognize informal marriage dissolutions. At least five of these women (two of whom were elite) specifically asked the diocesan court for their dowries back. 45 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati. “Dicens ex se, ‘so ben che ho dimandata detta Isabella alcune volte se era statta a messa cio le feste li mi dicevadi no, dicendomi che sua madonna non la volvea in sua compagnia perche non era vestita a suo modo.’” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis, Testimony of Tuscana uxor m. Cosmi Calzarerii di Forantis de mercato novo veronae. 46 Brundage, Law, Sex, 541–42; and Ferraro, “Power to Decide,” 497. According to the Veronese statutes, a wife who committed adultery forfeited her dowry. STV, bk. 3, chap. 41, 161. On the medieval law regarding return of control of dowries to women, see Julius Kirshner, “Wives’ Claims against Insolvent Husbands,” in Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy, ed. Julius Kirshner and Suzanne F. Wemple (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 256–303. 47 See Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani; and ibid, 1583 Giovanna Poichini v. Alessandro Zeneti. Both these women were responding to suits their husbands had brought for them to adhere.

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There was some dispute over jurisdiction, although generally it appears that ecclesiastical courts did not have the authority to restore dowries. The basic division of competencies with regard to marriage between secular and religious laws and courts was secular control of property matters and ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the bond itself. According to James A. Brundage, however, medieval “Canonists claimed that the jurisdiction of the church’s tribunals reached beyond questions of separation or nullity and included the right to determine the division of property between spouses when a marriage broke up.” However, secular rulers did not always agree. The suit between Aurelia Boschetis and her husband Count Ercole dei Giusti contains a sustained dispute between the bishop’s court and the Podestà of Verona over whether the bishop had the power to restore Aurelia’s dowry to her. The resolution appears to be that it did not. In Verona at least, a wife needed first to get a formal separatio from the ecclesiastical court before asking the secular powers to grant her control of her dotal goods, property, and cash. This was particularly important for elite women, whose difficulties as widows reclaiming their dowries from their late husbands’ families are notorious.48 Nonetheless, the episcopal court sometimes did grant women their dowries, as it did to Isabella Mona in 1584.49 A particularly harmful result of a husband’s financial irresponsibility—at least for a common woman—was endangering her sexual reputation, a basic element of being an honorable wife or woman. While shelters existed to protect women without protectors, marriage and a husband’s protection were the ideal shelter.50 It was, therefore, an issue of great concern to all when a husband failed in this essential duty. A central theme of both Chiara Fasoli’s charges and her witnesses’ testimonies was how she constantly risked the shame of prostitution because of her husband, Gasparo Tridentino’s financial irresponsibility and lack of respect for her. When Gasparo was away for long periods on jobs as a carter, he left Chiara no money or food, tempting her to prostitute herself simply to eat, a fact which her husband recognized and commented on to neighbors. Gasparo once told a neighbor that 48

Brundage, Law, Sex, 479; Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti; Kuehn, Law, Family, 49–50, 52–53; and Klapisch-Zuber, “The ‘Cruel Mother,’” in her Women, Family, esp. 121. 49 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. On the opposite situation in seventeenth-century Venice, where a secular body established to restore dowries to separated wives began to grant the separations itself, see Angelo Rigo, “Giudici del procurator e donne ‘malmaritate’. Interventi della giustizia secolare in materia matrimoniale a Venezia in epoca tridentina.” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti 151 (1992–93): 241–66. 50 The community of Castel d’Azzano was scandalized by one husband’s failure to fulfill his responsibilities and control his mentally deficient wife, whom he “permittit…vagare hac et illuc,” presumably putting her at risk of immorality. RPV, 1273.

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he had left his wife alone with “little help and that if she behaved badly with her body she would have reason.”51 Wives and their witnesses also complained about husbands’ insufficient respect for their wives expressed in both words and deeds. Husbands could injure their wives through defamation, calling them what one wife’s court papers called “injurious and ignominious” names.52 Witnesses readily substantiated that a husband had done this and agreed that it hurt his wife. A wife’s industry was one of the things that neighbors often cited as an admirable quality. When a husband, therefore, called his wife such names as “cow” (vacca) or “lazy” (poltrona)53 he called this virtue into question. According to her witnesses, Laura was a supremely responsible and hardworking woman, a galante putta, whose labor supported three children and a shiftless husband. Nonetheless, in the witness’s opinion, her husband, Cesare, still had the power to “injure her by calling her… poltrona.” This did not simply hurt Laura’s feelings, but could have a real effect on how others thought of her.54 Husbands also failed to show the proper respect for their wives in more direct ways. One wife, for example, complained that her husband did nothing to support her when his children by his first wife refused to follow her orders and generally did not treat her with the respect due to her as their father’s wife. 55 An 51 “pocco aggiuto et che se havesse fatto male del corpo suo haveria havuto raggione.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Domina Isabella ux. prud. Jo. Pauli Righesi. It is likely that such occasional prostitution was not uncommon. 52 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci, in Laura’s capitula. 53 I have translated poltrona as “lazy” to emphasize this aspect of its meaning, leaving aside the probable additional connotation of whore. “Lazy whore” might be the best rendering in English. I emphasize, however, that the word had definite connotations of laziness, evident in its meaning in modern Italian of armchair and in the related verb poltrire, to laze about. The word poltrona also invites us to reflect upon the association of prostitutes with laziness. Historians have frequently noted that disparaging comments aimed at women generally implied they were sexually loose, usually by calling them whores. Such a designation should not, however, be taken as referring merely to a woman’s sexual behavior; calling a woman a whore was also a way to say that she was the antithesis of a wife: not a hardworking woman taking care of a husband, family, and household. In a certain sense, people probably saw prostitutes as by definition lazy: women who, without other responsibilities, sat around with nothing to do except prepare themselves to attract men for short sexual encounters. 54 “ingiuriandola con dirli [...] poltrona.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci, Testimony of Donna Margarita vidua relicta q. Barthomei Tessarii de S.to Joanne in Valle. Isabella Mona’s husband Stefano called her mulazza, according to a witness, suggesting she was obstinate and disobedient of her husband, another charge that could hurt her reputation as a good wife and woman. Ibid, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis, Testimony of Tuscana uxor messeri Cosmo Calzarerii de Forantis. 55 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Angelica de Galupis v. Zuanne de Gregoris. Bartholomeus q. Baptistae sentelarii, for example, testified, “ho veduto et sentito che se la ghe comandava delli servitii che andavano a un’altra banda et non l’obedevono.”

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elite wife charged her husband with denying and even harming her status when he treated her not like a wife but like a “scullery maid” (una sguatara).56 People involved in separation suits treated adultery, one of the two grounds for separation formally recognized in ecclesiastical court, not simply as the crime of sexual relations with another woman, but as another way a husband failed to treat his wife with the proper respect. When Isabella Mona charged her husband with adultery, she did not cite the simple fact that he had been known to visit whores, but showed he had done so in a way that shamed his wife: he had caused “the greatest scandal by bringing public prostitutes into his own house, casting his wife out of her own bed.”57 Camilla di Gregorio similarly complained that her husband, Venier dei Venier, had forced her to sleep with the servants while his concubine slept in his bed.58 A husband also had the ability to shame his wife more directly. A wife’s sexuality was her husband’s (or her father’s) property, as statutes on rape and adultery recognized.59 Some nonelite husbands, however, misused their power over their wives’ sexuality by compelling them to commit adultery as prostitutes or concubines. In most people’s understanding, a man who not only failed to protect her honor but also endangered her honor himself nullified his rights to her. Leonora Maratolla, a former concubine, blamed her husband, Giacomo Comello, for the fact that she had continued her sexual relationship with her former patron even after her marriage.60 Both her capitula and the testimony of her witnesses show that Leonora had sought to sway public opinion by telling everyone around her that her apparent adultery was not her fault, but that of her husband. Witnesses contended that Leonora had played by the rules: she had been a concubine, but eventually sought to leave that questionable moral state and become an honorable member of society by marrying a respectable man. Her new husband, however, failed to provide the necessary protection and forced her to continue her dishonorable relationship. 56

Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Caterina de Cognis v. Gentile Calchasole. “et con grandissimo scandolo conducere nella casa propria le publiche meretrice, discacciando la moglie di proprio letto.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. Other examples are discussed with reference to concubinage in chapter 4. It is probably significant that the crime of bringing a whore into a wife’s bed was one of the grounds for divorce a woman had been allowed under Germanic law. The other was “d’averla data in braccio all’adultero,” which was another common charge in these cases discussed below. Pertile, Storia, 3:362 n. 6. This suggests that the notion that a wife’s grounds for divorce were the shame her husband caused her was an ancient one. See also Hufton, Prospect, 57, 262. 58 Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Camilla di Gregorio di Sommacampagna v. Venier Venier. 59 Brundage, Law, Sex, 396–97, 569–70. For Veronese law, see STV, bk. 3, chap. 41, 161. 60 Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola. 57

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In this sort of situation, leaving her husband allowed a wife to preserve or salvage her honor by removing herself from her husband’s authority, thus to live “Christianly” or “honestly.” When Leonora failed to reenter respectable society through marriage, she sought to leave her husband and finally to enter the Trinità, a semireligious refuge for unprotected laywomen who wanted to take vows. When marriage failed to protect her, entering a shelter was another route to redemption from concubinage, albeit through permanent separation from society. In a somewhat similar situation in the 1580s, Gasparo Tridentino saw the opportunity to prosper from the beauty of his wife, Chiara, and had no scruples about exposing her to shame. He dreamt of a life of ease funded by establishing his wife as the concubine of “a rich merchant or gentleman.”61 Neighbors strongly suspected that he had a candidate in mind, one of his employers, whom Gasparo invited home regularly. Leaving her husband kept Chiara from going “to the bad” (a male) a hundred times, in the words of a neighbor. At first her family tried to protect her in her marriage. When Chiara was reduced to living on bread, they gave her “soup, wine and whatever else we had,” according to her sister.62 Her father and brother tried to intervene with her husband, citing their own continuing link to Chiara. One neighbor reported seeing Chiara’s father and brother hunting for Gasparo with a long stick after Gasparo had beaten Chiara. “I don’t want anyone putting his hands in my blood,” the witness heard her brother say to her father.63 Eventually, however, her family took her back into the protection of their household. When Chiara returned to her family, the threat of desertion spurred Gasparo to appeal to Chiara’s brother, Cesare, for her return with promises of buona compagnia. Cesare, however, refused, declaring himself the guardian of his sister’s honor and her husband a threat to it:

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“un bon mercante over gentilhomo.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Sancta uxor m. Andreae. In 1574, Bishop Valier issued a proclamation treating this sort of situation specifically, suggesting it was not uncommon: “De patribus seu matribus seu maritis qui filias aut uxores respectuive prostituunt & consentiunt inhonestam vitam ducere.” Agustino Valier, Casus Episcopales Quorum Absolutionem Reverendissimus D. Augustinus Valerius Dei, Et Apostolice Sedie Gratis, Episcopus Veronensis Sibi & suo in spiritualibus Vicario reservavit (Verona, 1576). 62 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Sancta uxor messeri Andreae; and “minestra, vin et di quel che era.” Ibid., Testimony of Camilla f. Bartholomei Fasoli. 63 Venthura fil Philippi de Venturis reported in his testimony that “detto Bartholomeo havea un’manipolo in mano et sentei a dir doppo a esso suo padre che era incholera che disse non voglio che niuno metta le mani nel mio sangue con dir che detto Gasparo havea voluto amazzar la detta chiara con una storta” (emphasis added). Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli.

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q Chapter 5 Now brother-in-law, why ever do you think I’d let you go with my sister Chiara? Haven’t you said that if my sister leaves this contrada [where her family lived] that you will find her a gentleman or a merchant who will keep her? So you want me to do this honor to my sister and to myself ?64

Her father and brothers reasserted their protection over her, declaring that her husband had failed in this, one of a husband’s primary duties.

REASON AND THE SEXUAL HIERARCHY Failing in the ways outlined in the court cases did not mean simply that a person was a bad husband; to his neighbors, his associates, and the authorities it signaled his failure as a man. Wives, witnesses, and authorities treated husbands’ transgressions as evidence that these husbands did not have the basic mature masculine qualities of reason and self-control. These supposedly inherent qualities made men superior to women, who were ruled by their emotions and bodies, and implicitly justified men’s authority over women. Learned literature defined men’s superiority to women in terms of the superiority of mind to body and reason to caprice;65 testimony in the court cases echoed these ideas. A man who failed to exhibit these characteristics was reviled, for he failed to uphold the established sexual hierarchy and so lost his authority as a man over women, and thus his claims to honorable masculinity. Marriage was an important step in becoming not simply a man, but an honorable man in Verona, because for most males it was the most common route from the status of dependent son and/or servant to that of mature man with authority over others. By marrying, a man gained rights and responsibilities over his wife defined both in custom and in law. A married man also potentially became a padre di famiglia, a household head, who might, depending on his wealth and status, have additional dependents such as children and servants. Taking and keeping a wife was therefore an important expression of masculine maturity and the ability to govern others, particularly for common men, for whom it might be the sole expression of this authority. The motives and explanations, and sometimes exact words, that wives and witnesses attributed to husbands who beat their wives demonstrate that the husbands 64 “An’ cugnato come volete che vi lascia andar con mia sorella chiara non havete dito che mia sorella se parte de qui di questa contra che ghe tovari un’gentilhomo o un’ merchante che la tenira voleti dunque far questo honor a mia sorella e a me.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Gasparo Tridentino v. Chiara f. Bartolomeo Fasoli, Testimony of Camilla f. Bartholomei fasoli. 65 Hufton, Prospect, 28–61, esp. 36, 42–49, 51.

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believed their use of violence expressed rightful authority over their wives, particularly where the wives’ labor and resources were concerned. Isabella Mona’s husband, for example, beat her to force her to alienate part of her dowry to free up cash for his use. According to witness Caterina dei Bernardelli, Cesare dei Gatti beat his wife, Laura dei Soci, to make her work more and because she complained he had pawned her dowry goods.66 Ventura di Omniboni, husband of Magdalena di Laurenzi, claimed an open-ended right to beat his wife not just to get the resources due to him, but also simply because he was her husband. The testimony of one of Magdalena’s witnesses attributed Ventura’s violence toward his wife to a conflict between Ventura and his father-in-law over money, specifically the payment of her dowry, that is, the resources of his wife he felt he was owed. “By the blood of the Virgin,” he (blasphemously) said to the witness, “if my father-in-law, Bartholomeo, doesn’t give me the rest of the dowry, I’m going to kill my wife.” Geronimo dei Antoni further gave evidence showing that Ventura claimed extensive authority over his wife simply by right of being her husband. The witness had been present when Magdalena’s father told Ventura, “You’ve been wrong to beat Maddalena the way you have.” To this Ventura replied, “Can’t I do it to her if she is my wife?” 67 In contrast to the men’s implicit or explicit claims that their violence was a legitimate expression of their rights as husband and governor, the women and their witnesses treated the husbands’ violence as violations of the marital order, as transgressions of the limits the standard of buona compagnia placed on husbands’ behavior. While recognizing husbands’ legal and traditional right, and indeed duty, to correct their wives’ disobedience physically, the wives claimed that their husbands exceeded the recognized standards of “reasonable” correction. In so arguing, wives’ cases specifically raised questions about a husband’s “reason” (raggione), by which they meant roughly his self-control.68 66 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. “Dicens... detto Cesare gli dava senza causa legitima solum perche voleva che lavorasse piu del dovere et perche lei bravava che lui ghe impegnava li suoi mobili.” Ibid., 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci, Testimony of Catherina de Bernardellis relicta q. Bernardini Bracenti. 67 “al sangue della madonna se mio messere Bartholomio non mi dara il mio [resto?] della dotte che amazarò mia moglie,” “al qual,” the witness continued, “li disse che faria male a [illegible] le che non li haveva colpa.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1563 Magdalena di Bartholomeo di Laurenzi v. Ventura di Omnibono di Omniboni, Testimony of Baptista q. Antonii de Leonardis de Marano; and “hai fatto male a dar delle botte alla Madalena come hai fatto il qual Ventura li disse non li possi dar se e mia moglie.” Ibid., Testimony of Hieronimus f. Leonardi Antonii de Vaona de Marano. 68 This term also had the connotation of sanity, but people do not seem to be trying to prove that these men had literally, medically, lost their senses. In substantiating this claim, people did not call men mad (pazzo) or give examples of other kinds of insane behavior other than their treatment of their wives. This is in contrast to one suit, Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1569 Michael Bracento e Cassandra eius filia v. prudens Petrus Maria Capellarium f. naturale q. nob. Leonardi Minischalchi, in which the natural son of a XXX

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In describing husbands’ violence toward their wives, wives and witnesses did not confine themselves to claims that the beatings were unjustified or that a wife’s life was in danger, as canon law required. Rather, they more subtly implied that this misbehavior meant that the husbands were defective men who, like stereotypical women, were ruled by their impulses, not their minds—or were even below women, like animals, who had no right to authority over women. 69 The main theme of Isabetta Zibellari’s 1541 case for divorce from her husband, Paolo Fabrilignario, was her husband’s lack of reason and even of humanity, which implicitly negated his right or ability to exercise authority over her. Paolo had initiated the proceedings by bringing an adherere case against Isabetta after she left him to live first with her mother and then with a lover, Giovanni Francesco Ferro. Isabetta’s basic claim was that she should not have to return to Paolo because of his cruelty to her, but her case expressed this in terms that called into question his fitness as a man. Her first and second formal claims emphasized that Paolo was ruled by his body, like a woman or an animal, not by his mind, like a proper man: He was a “bestial man” (homo bestialis) “without prudence” who acted according to his “appetites” and “beat her…bestially and without reason.” Her final point continued the theme of Paolo as animal by accusing him of sodomy, that is, animalistic sexual practice. Isabetta’s witnesses agreed with this depiction. A neighbor named Bernardina, for example, confirmed that she “know[s] Paolo to be a very bestial man without intellect,” which she illustrated with examples of unprovoked and excessive attacks on his wife.70 A case almost thirty years after this condemned a husband in much the same terms. Lucia de Tonsis’s 1570 capitula for her separatio suit against her husband, Iseppo Drezzi, explained his specific misdeeds of excessive beatings and attempts to pimp his wife as the result of his character defects, specifically his lack of reason, which made him a continuing danger to her. He is a man of little brains or trustworthiness and is known as a man without reason so that it is said by everyone who has the acquaintance

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nobleman sought an annulment from his marriage to the daughter of a laborer on the grounds that he was insane when he contracted the marriage. Michele’s argument is replete with medical claims. 69 Hufton argues that women were seen as a buffer between men and animals. Prospect, 46. Chapter 1, above, contains a fuller discussion of animal imagery. 70 “Paulus fuit et est homo bestialis et absque prudentia qui secundum eius apetitum omnia vult facere” and “ipam verberat [...] bestialmente et sencia rason et causa alcuna.” Isabetta’s capitula; and “lo ho conosciudo per un homo molto bestiale sencia intelletto.” Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Paolo Fabrilignario di Francesco v. Isabetta di Francesco Zibellari e Zuan Francesco ferro, Testimony of Bernardina f. messeri Antonii de [illegible].

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of the said Iseppo that, because he is lacking in reason, he would easily bring misfortune to the said Lucia, his wife.71 A man without the qualities that made him superior to women—those associated with the brain and reason—could not be trusted with responsibility over his wife, or with other responsibilities. One witness’s description of him was echoed by others: “this Iseppo doesn’t behave like a man but like an animal.” 72 Husbands’ governance was supposed to protect women from themselves, from their own capriciousness and impulses. Men who could not fulfill these duties because they themselves were ruled by their impulses were a danger not just to their wives, but to society more generally. Husbands (and their lawyers) realized the nature of the threat of their wives’ accusations and sought to head it off by presenting themselves in their own court papers as the upholders of the sexual order. The husbands emphasized their own reasonableness and their wives’ instability, and indeed their wives’ need for the supervision of their husbands. Cesare dei Gatti’s suit, for example, claimed that his wife, Laura, had left him out of “pure caprice” (capriccio). Lord Giovanni Genovese, for his part, claimed that his wife, Caterina, had shown herself to be undisciplined in numerous ways, including fleeing her husband, and he implied that she therefore needed to be returned to his reasoned oversight. 73

GOVERNO AND THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY Because this basic sexual hierarchy was one of the essential underpinnings of the early modern social order, a husband’s failings had implications beyond the fate of his individual marriage. Secular and religious authorities built on the sexual and marital hierarchies, attempting to reorder society around the family headed by the padre di famiglia, or “housefather.” His governo—or rule—over his wife and household would, ideally, ensure stable social hierarchy, political order, and proper religious and moral behavior. This ideology identified a husband’s responsibilities 71

“e homo di poco cervello et fiducia et e conosciuto per homo senza raggion di modo che da tutti, che hanno cognition del detto Giuseppe [Iseppo] se dica, che facilmente, per esser privo di Raggione, farebbe dispiacere, alla detta Lucia, sua moglie.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1570 Lucia de Tonsis v. Iseppo q. Antonii Drezzi. 72 “esso Iseppo no procede da homo ma da animale.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1570 Lucia de Tonsis v. Iseppo q. Antonii Drezzi, Testimony of Bonus q. Zaneti di Batilaris de... Illasi habit. in villa Marcemighi. 73 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci; and ibid., 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis. For his part, Stefano dei Stefani charged that his wife, Isabella Mona, had left him and made up the charges against him because she was bored and insufficiently occupied with appropriate occupations. Ibid., 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis.

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toward his family ever more closely and explicitly with the maintenance of public order. The well-run family was the mirror of the godly state as well as the godly state’s foundational unit. The notions of the padre di famiglia and governo found elaboration in handbooks and manuals on the governance of the family aimed at both the elite and commoners, and incorporated it in edicts, sermons, and legislation, particularly regarding the poor. These two learned concepts were similar to the popular notions of buona compagnia and raggione. People involved in the separation suits used the term governo and related words freely, especially in the cases conducted during the 1570s and 1580s.74 The term governo, or “governance,” summed up the ideal of the padre di famiglia, and by extension all men worthy of respect under this system of values. This term took the notions of self-control, control of dependents, of household, of finances, all familiar from the ideals of buona compagnia and raggione, and joined them together more tightly as the private underpinnings of public order. Each aspect of governo implicated the others and it was difficult in people’s perceptions for a man to lack one without lacking the others. In one of the earliest uses of the term governo in these suits, the positiones of her 1547 separation case, Agnese di Simone Sapa accused her husband, Apollonio, of being a “man without reason,” subject to his appetites, and also “without governo.”75 This picture of Apollonio was familiar to the couple’s neighbors, who believed that it justified his wife’s leaving him. One man said he knew that Apollonio had beaten his wife, and “in the contrada he is held to be a bestial man and it is said that he beats his wife beyond what is necessary (fora de proposito) and that she should not have to go with him.” This same man later used the term governo in the combined sense of household financial management and proper management of his wife, and perhaps of himself: “it is said in the contrada that if this Agnese stays with her husband that he, no longer having governo of that which is his, will let her be known carnally to anyone who desires her.”76 Apollonio’s lack of control of himself, his finances, and his household, including his wife, caused him to 74 Only one suit, Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis, used the phrase padre di famiglia. 75 “homo senza rason e governo.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone, Agnese’s articulos. See also ibid., 1546 Antonio f.q. Jacobi Pistoris de S. Vitale v. Helisabeth e Bernardius de Azzano carterius. Helisabeth and her father’s response to Antonio’s adherere suit complained that Antonio had dissipated “substantiam suam” and “male se regando et gubernando, non vult laborar de eius arte..., et quo est impotans ad alimentandum se et uxorem.” 76 “le ben vero che in contra e tenuto per homo bestiale et se dice chel da a sua moglier delle botte fora de proposito et che lei non doveria andar cum lui” and “se dice in contra che se questa Agnese stesse cum suo marito che lui non havendo piu governo di quel che ha che lassaria conoscer carnalmente essa a chi la paresse.” Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone, Testimony of Alexander q. Marci…biretarius.

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bring not simply dishonor to his wife, but also scandal to the community, and disruption of the public order. People involved in the separation suits also connected a husband’s mistreatment of his wife to his lack of respect for the social order. According to witnesses, Tommaso Tintor, for example, had beaten his wife Giulia in front of them. One witness simply stated that the beating had taken place. Two others, however, expanded on the incident, describing it as an occasion on which Tommaso had not simply injured his wife but had flagrantly violated accepted social behavior. Zuanne Raimundo, according to the testimony of Zuanne himself and of his cousin, had tried to stop Tommaso from beating Giulia by reminding him of his duty “to give respect to the master of the house, who was away.”77 Tommaso did not heed his warning and went ahead with the beating. Zuanne and his cousin expressed the sentiment that husbands who mistreated their wives were the sort of men who more generally ignored accepted social conventions that upheld the social order, such as respecting the authority of a householder, or heeding the chastisements of one’s neighbors. People applied governo and related words differently to common and elite men. Governo extended beyond a man’s responsibilities to maintain order within his household to his duty to uphold the social hierarchy directly by fulfilling, and helping his family to fulfill, their given social positions and functions not only as husband, wife, or child, but as noble ruler or common laborer. People thus applied the term governo differently to common and elite men, because their duties within the social hierarchy differed. Through the exercise of good governo, an elite husband was expected to maintain the sound financial and social position of his family and thus to contribute to the maintenance of the dominance—the governance—of the elite over the rest of society. When an elite wife accused her husband of treating her like a servant, as at least two wives did, she was accusing him not just of lacking proper respect for her as a wife, but of lacking proper respect for her as a fellow member of the elite, thus undermining the larger social order which decreed greater respect for elites than for a scullery maid—as Caterina dei Cogni charged her husband treated her.78 Both wives, moreover, charged that their husbands had treated them in this way while improperly treating their concubines, women of low status, far too well. Similarly, when the noble Aurelia, wife of Count Ercole dei Giusti, and her witnesses accused the count of making his legitimate family suffer for the sake of his illegitimate family by his concubine, they were accusing him not just of betraying 77 “io ditto che’ el stesse in drio et chel no butesse detta sua moglie et chel portasse respetto al patron di casa per non esser lui in la terra.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor, Testimony of prudens Joannes Raimundus f.q. Jo. Antonii. 78 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Caterina de Cognis v. Gentile Calchasole.

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his wife, but of betraying his class. Governo for elite men, who were both private and public governors, meant both their fitness for private and for public rule. Caterina dei Caliari invoked this double notion when she accused her husband, Lord Giovanni Genovese, of “tyranny” over her.79 These were potent accusations and elite husbands took them seriously. 80 The several-page statement Lord Giovanni Genovese submitted to the court in 1585 in response to his wife’s charges against him is particularly expansive. Much of the statement is taken up with Giovanni’s attribution of fault to his wife: she was an “imperfect animal,” “undisciplinable” despite his exercise of “honest and reasonable,” “wise and prudent” rule and determined “to go her own way.” 81 When the document moved beyond such generalities to give details of his good governo, the examples focused on his attempts to maintain and enhance not just Caterina’s position, but also that of her sisters. His will had left his wife all his property outright should there be no children. In addition, Giovanni had already substantially raised her sisters’ dowries, which would enable them to make better marriages. Notions of the proper ordering of society gave good governo a somewhat different meaning for common men. Manual labor defined common men because it divided them from the nobility, who were barred from involvement in the mechanical arts on pain of losing their noble status. From the other end of the social spectrum, regular and diligent labor separated the respectable poor from the reviled figure of the able-bodied beggar, who, it was thought, refused to work because he was lazy. The economic constriction of the sixteenth century reduced labor opportunities, hitting day laborers particularly hard and creating more paupers and beggars, who overwhelmed institutions’ and individuals’ abilities to help them. In common perception, the figure of the pauper, especially male, was suspect, at once feared for the disorder he was presumed to cause and reviled as powerless.82 Caterina di Violante’s suit against her husband, Lorenzo di Faustino, a very poor man, played on these notions, focusing on his lack of industry and regularity. Her case shows the domestic aspect of suspicion of male paupers: that they were unable or unwilling to fulfill the responsibilities of husbands. Caterina charged that her husband had no fixed home, no domain to rule like a proper husband, but 79 Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis. 80 Count Ercole apologized to Aurelia and promised never to offend her in these ways again. She rejected his apology and continued with her suit. Atti, b. 7a, 1541 Nob. Aurelia de Boschetis v. conte Ercole de Giusti. 81 “animal imperfetto” “indisciplinabile” “honesto et raggionevole” “prudente et savio” “per far a modo suo.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis. 82 Ventura, Nobiltà, chap. 5, esp. 300–30 on “la viltà delle arti meccaniche”; and Pullan, Rich and Poor, 199, 220–21.

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wandered from one poor shelter to another, which meant, in the thinking of the day, that as an able-bodied pauper he was lazy and did not want to work. She used other means as well throughout her case to imply that he was irresponsible and avoided labor: she asked that he be required to deposit a surety to guarantee he provide her with food and said that she feared losing her dowry to his gambling. Lorenzo’s response directly addressed the implications not simply that he was poor, but more importantly that his poverty meant his character was such that he was not able to be a good husband who could maintain and protect a wife. Although poor, his court papers claim, he was an upright (probum) man who works enough at his job to ensure the virtue (virtum) of himself and of his wife.83 The issue of labor formed the focal point of the separatio suit brought by Margarita, wife of Giacomo dei Polidori, in response to her husband’s demand that she return to him. While Margarita did claim that Giacomo had beaten her, the focus of her suit and of Giacomo’s response to her charges was Giacomo’s refusal to work at his trade.84 According to two of her capitula and many witnesses, Giacomo simply did not want to work at his occupation of weaver. Her witnesses described the violent arguments the couple got into over Giacomo’s refusal to work, his tendency to sell the materials people gave him to weave, and his repeatedly pawning all of the family’s household possessions. Witnesses judged him an imprudent and irresponsible man who did not think about the future: “he would eat his part of the sun,” opined one. Another commented, “It’s true he only has what’s on his back, because I know what’s on his back.… [I]f has something to sell, he’ll sell it.”85 Neighbors paid close attention to his work habits and circumstances, which scandalized them. Said one: 83

Atti, b. 7b, 1544 Lorenzo del fu Faustino v. Caterina di Violante. Lorenzo initiated the suit to compel Caterina to return to him. Interestingly, Caterina responded with a sort of hybrid suit. Her capitula claimed both that he was poor and without a home (as if she were bringing a suit for a separation) and that he already had a wife when he married Caterina (consistent with a suit for an annulment). Caterina was clearly grasping at any possible way to justify not returning to Lorenzo. On “the use made of alternative or contradictory pleadings by defendants” in medieval English suits, see Helmholz, Marriage Litigation, 126. 84 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati. This case is interesting (and in the surviving Veronese separation suits unique) for its lack of adherence to the basic canon law requirement of proving excessive cruelty and/or adultery. It is even more interesting for the fact that Margarita won. This suggests that the Veronese court accepted the littlediscussed standard recognized by Brundage, that a husband’s endangering his wife’s financial security constituted grounds for a legal separation. Brundage, Law, Sex, 54. 85 “mangiara la sua parta del sol.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati, Testimony of Domina Stella ux. Antonii De Gaiis de Brixia militis; and “Questo e verissimo che lui non ha se no quello che ha in dosso perche so quello che ha anco in dosso [...] pur se havesse da vender [illegible] venderia.” Ibid., Testimony of Domina Jana ux. Cesaris Tamburini.

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Giacomo answered these charges with the claim that although his style of life was not regular, he did earn well, an attitude which the court, like many of his neighbors, found unacceptable. His capitula argued that although he did not work at his trade, he hunted and fished to provide food for his family and he did occasional, and highly profitable, work for various noblemen that earned him more than his wife earned and more than he would have earned as a weaver, which his witnesses, at least, confirmed. The court’s decision in this case—one of the few that survive—illustrates the strength of the authorities’ commitment to enforcing the ideal of the industrious laborer. The court agreed with Margarita and her witnesses that Giacomo’s style of life, and particularly his style of labor, was unacceptable. In an unusually detailed and specific decision, the court outlined exactly how Giacomo was to behave; any deviation would justify his wife’s leaving him. Giacomo had to provide his wife with the necessary food and clothing and treat her well as a good husband should. Importantly, however, it was not left up to him how he did this. The court decreed he had to “exert himself in his honest occupation.” Providing for his family was not enough in itself; he needed to do so in a conventional and predictable—“honest”—way. He needed to demonstrate industry, self-discipline, and regularity. Both sides in the 1581 case between Cesare dei Gatti and his wife Laura dei Soci, laborers in the textile industry, associated a husband’s ability to govern and manage himself, his wife, and his household finances with his adhering to a regular trade.87 Laura’s capitula claimed that since the time of their marriage Cesare had treated her badly, beating her and calling her degrading names, hurting her so severely and so regularly that in 1575 she miscarried and nearly lost her own life. 86 “sono piu di tre anni che io sto in questa terra in questa contra ne mai lo vidi lavorar ben vi dico che se volesse lavorar che guadaneria assai, quanto a questo io vidi portar un telar in casa, ma quello li costasse no ve lo so dir et gli dicessemo voi travate da lavorar per lei, ma per voi no et lui rispose che lui non volea lavorar & il telar had venduo [crossed out: per sei libre che io so] & lo vendete di notte.” She added, “et non va mai a servir niscuna ch’io sappia e se guadagna dinari li tira per lui.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati, Testimony of Domina Lutia uxor Egr. Andrae Bergoman C[or?]poralis. 87 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci.

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He managed finances poorly, selling their furniture and spending money freely at the tavern, where he went to avoid working. Although Laura’s capitula had not used the word, one of her witnesses illustrated Laura’s claims with frequent references to Cesare’s lack of governo. Margarita, a widow and midwife, summed up all the couple’s problems in terms of Cesare’s lack of governo, which Margarita tied to his attitude to his work. She confirmed Cesare’s violent treatment of his wife and then offered this explanation: “[Cesare] is a man who did not govern (signorava) too well.” She later expanded on Cesare’s character: If he had wanted to manage well (governar bene) and attend to his work, he would have had his affairs in order because the said Laura is a woman who works gladly and well and she is what they call a “woman of the crown” and it is a shame that she is joined to this Cesare, who is completely the opposite.… I understand that messer Francesco, father-in-law of the said Cesare, wanted to take him into the house and teach him the trade of sword maker because he saw that he did not want to work in weaving; but he did not want to go there and then [later] he did want to come but his father-in-law did not want to because he saw that he did not want to control himself well (non si vuol governar bene).88 In his capitula and the lengthy statement that preceded them Cesare countered these accusations, claiming he in fact did adhere to this model of respectability: he worked at his trade, provided his wife with buona compagnia and marital affection, and generally cared for her in a responsible and upright way. Cesare’s final capitulum addressed his reputation, which he linked to his behavior as a husband: “Cesare bears a good name as a respectable man (homo da bene) of good reputation and fame and he has never given his wife bad company (cattiva compagnia).…” 89 The phrase andare a spasso, “to go out and have a good time,” appears again and again in condemnations of common husbands. When used in reference to 88

“l’e un huomo che non signorava troppo bene” and “se lui se havesse voluto governar bene et attendar al lavoriero haveri [?] fatto bene let fatti suoi perche la detta laura e donna che lavora volontiere et bene, che la e come se dice una donna de corona et e un peccato che la sia toccata a questo cesare che e tutto il contrario che lei addens ho inteso che m Francesco suocero de detto Cesare lo volveva tuore in casa et insegnarlo el mestier del spadaro perche el vedeva chel non voleva lavorare nel tellar ma lui non ghe volse andare et poi [illegible] ghe voleva andare ma suo suocero non lo volsuto [?] perche el vede chel non si vuol governar bene.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci, Testimony of Magarita obstetrix vidua relicta q.m. Sebastiani Vicentini. 89 “Cesare porta nome di homo da bene di bona voce et fama et che mai habe fatto alla detta Laura sua moglie cattiva compagnia.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci.

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elite men, it was merely descriptive, but applied to men outside the elite, the phrase was usually used pejoratively and in opposition to honest and regular labor. The domination of Veronese society by an aristocracy that expected to live off investments and forbade even the merest hint of manual labor to its members probably helped to give a positive value to not working generally, to going about a spasso. Early modern Veronese society placed a high value on what might be termed “cutting a dashing figure”: dressing well, eating well, having many different women, and generally demonstrating independence from authority and the rules that bound most people. Equally important was exhibiting dominance over others or association with those who had power. An integral part of this was demonstrating that one had leisure and money with which to enjoy that leisure, as the aristocracy did. This style of life could bring a common man honor and respect, but was not necessarily compatible with being a humble member of the subject laboring classes, nor with being a good husband, particularly for men with limited finances. Such a lifestyle probably suggested to many observers that these men were discontented with their lot in life, and particularly with the social hierarchy that put them there. While such accusations were an additional way wives and witnesses could condemn husbands, there was also probably an element of truth to the charges. Some of these men did indeed inhabit the borders between social groups and probably desired to advance, albeit in an atmosphere increasingly inhospitable to such aspirations.90 Other men simply appeared unsatisfied by the limited life of a laborer, which in itself might have seemed subversive. A member of the elite would use the phrase andare a spasso in a nonpejorative sense, simply to describe his activities, as Matteo Constantini did to describe the way he spent his evening with his friends before going to visit his concubine, Margarita.91 Similarly, a witness in another case, prudens Gaspar son of prudens Marcantonio di Bombardelli, described an occasion when he was “in Brescia having a good time (a spasso) and I went one day…to the house of a certain prostitute named Orsolina to do business with her as a young woman.…” Once he was finished there he “returned to the osteria where I was lodging.”92 90

Stefano dei Stefani, who married Isabella Mona, a member of the lower ranks of the nobility, himself belonged to a family of limited resources without apparent distinction. Cause, b. 1580– 1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. In the tax records of 1583, Stefano’s father, Iacomo, is called a viator, or agent, and he merited only a low-level title, prudens. The family’s tax rate of five lire indicates poverty. ASVR, Comune di Verona, Cancelleria dell’estimo, Anagrafi, n. 746 (Mercato Nuovo 1583). On tax rates in Verona, see Lanaro Sartori, “Radiografia.” 91 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1542 Margarita f.q. Bernardini de Villafranca v. Bartholomeus aurifix et pictor. 92 “in Brexa a spasso io andai un giorno [...] in casa di una certa putanella qual ha nome orsolina XXX

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In contrast, Laura de Soci’s final capitulum against her husband, Cesare, summed up the nature of her husband’s transgressions, and the transgressions of many men like him, as attributable to an illegitimate desire to give the appearance that he lived a life of ease: The truth is and was that the said Cesare, desiring to lift himself in others’ eyes, sold all the furniture…of the poor unhappy woman, so that the said poor Laura had to sleep on the straw and he led his life at the osteria enjoying himself and fleeing labor with all his might.93 Cesare was using his wife as a resource to finance following a lifestyle that he felt—and his wife agreed—would bring him respect in the eyes of some. Under the alternate value system based on buona compagnia and governo, however, this was a grave lapse. It violated not just the reciprocal relationship of husband and wife, but also led to the suspicion that Cesare was trying to disturb the social hierarchy by acting in ways that many would say were inappropriate to his status. Others, however, recognized that such behavior could bring honor. Cesare and husbands like him who spent time in taverns, avoiding “honest” labor, were fleeing an artisanal, laboring-class model of masculine honor and pursuing one they found more attractive. Chiara Barberi’s witnesses in her 1568 separatio suit similarly describe Chiara’s husband, Antonio del Biancho, as a gambler who frequented osterie and had kept various women a sua posta throughout their twenty-year marriage. To support these habits, he had sold and pawned his wife’s dowry goods. People recognized that Antonio was aspiring to a more elevated style of life, one which some witnesses believed should have been out of reach for the owner of a hat-making establishment. Opined prudens Giuseppe Rigatini, “If he’d conducted himself like a respectable (da bene) man, he’d have been able to live on his earnings” 94—that is, respectable for his status as a laborer. One of the main themes of Isabella Mona’s suit and her witnesses’ perceptions of the couple’s relationship was that her husband, Stefano dei Stefani, 93

per negotiarla come giovane” and “ritornai [...] alhosteria dove era allogiato.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Giulia di Zuanne cararii v. Tommaso tinctor. 93 “la verita fu et e che detto Cesare essendo desideroso di levarsi davanti alli ochi, della povera infelice tutta la mobelia [...] che era in casa lha venduta, per el che detta povera laura era necessitata dormir su la paglia et gli faceva la sua vitta alla ostaria giovando et fuggendo il lavoro a tutto suo potere” (emphasis added), Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1581 Cesare dei Gatti v. Laura di Francesco de Soci. 94 “se si havesse governato come fa li homini da ben havera vivuto da se.” Cause, b. 1549–1570, 1568 Clara q. Hieronymi Barberii v. Antonius del Blanco, Testimony of prudens Joseph f. Francesci Rigatini. It is worth noting that this witness described his own activities as a young man with the phrase a spasso.

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treated her badly because of his determination to cut a good figure in public. 95 This is a particularly interesting case because his wife was clearly of the established elite of Verona, whose family occasionally held public office. Stefano himself was of a more ambiguous status, neither obviously noble nor rich, and it is unclear what enabled him to marry a woman of Isabella’s status. It appears that Stefano and his family were trying either to enter the elite or to preserve a precarious claim to that status. Stefano’s marriage to Isabella would have been important in this quest, but it appeared he was having problems both with his finances and with others’ perceptions of his status. Isabella did not herself directly accuse Stefano of seeking to raise his status, but her witnesses did. According to Isabella’s capitula, Stefano was notorious in the neighborhood for frequenting prostitutes and taverns. Witnesses confirmed this and gave additional information, such as that he had kept a concubine for a time. The honorable (egregius) Francesco Franzosio, by his title a man secure in a place among the elite, was even more precise about his perceptions of Stefano’s style of living: it was beyond his means and above his station; in short, he was impersonating a gentleman. Francesco volunteered this assessment of Stefano: “I also believe…the said Stefano, her husband, wants to dress like one of high station (honoratamente) and to go out and have a good time (andar a spasso) and does not want to do anything to earn money and I don’t know what [property] he has of his own.” The witness later reiterated: “he wants to go dressed like a gentleman and…the said Stefano’s father doesn’t have a thing and…is a poor man…[and] Stefano wants to spend every day having a good time in taverns.”96 Some of these errant husbands probably felt confined by the constraints and limitations that defined the life of a respectable laborer. In Margarita’s 1567 case against her husband, Giacomo, the picture of Giacomo that emerges is one of a man who did not want to be caught in the dreary hand-to-mouth existence of the silk worker he was trained to be. He wanted a freer and perhaps more exciting life that brought him into contact with the nobility and took him to different locations. Refusing to work at his trade of silk carder, Giacomo instead got occasional, and in his telling very profitable, work from noblemen that took him to Brescia and Ferrara. When not off on these trips, he hunted and fished to put food on the family table. Even Giacomo’s own witnesses described him as a man 95

Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis. “dicens ex se il credo anche perche detto Stefano suo marito vuol vestir honoratamente et andar a spasso et non vuol far cosa alcuna per guadagnar et non so che cosa habbi del suo di proprio [...] vuol andar vestito da gentil’huomo et [...] suo padre di detto Stefano non ha come si suol dir niente, et che e pover huomo, [...] detto Stefano vuol andar tutto il di a spasso super l’hosterie.” Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Isabella Mona v. Stefano de Stefanis, Testimony of Egregius Francescus Franzosius f.q. prudentis Joannis. 96

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who did not like to follow his trade, but liked to have a good time. “[H]e told me that he carded silk, but I’ve never seen him at work; I have indeed seen him fish and hunt birds…if he enjoyed working, he wouldn’t go out to have a good time (andare a spasso) the way he does.” Another witness told the court, “I know that he is a silk carder, but I’ve never seen him at work except one time at his house.… I think that he gladly goes out to have a good time (vada volentieri a spasso).” 97 This way of life (at least in the opinion of some) had to be funded by his wife’s labor, however, and, the court, like the couple’s neighbors, found his attitude to work disturbing for a man of the laboring class. In treating their wives as resources to fund their own display—often beating the wives to get what they wanted and putting the wives’ health, financial security, and reputations at risk in order to improve their own individual status—these men, consciously or not, emulated the growing noble exploitation of the resources of the city and contado to fund their own rise. Where the noble behavior supported the social hierarchy, however, that of the common men threatened it. 98 In the eyes of many early modern Veronese, bad husbands of whatever status were not simply bad husbands, but bad men whose deficiencies in such things as self-control destabilized the interwoven hierarchies of age, sex, and status that invested adult men with great responsibilities and ideally guaranteed the smooth functioning of city and contado. A wife’s leaving her husband’s authority, often with the support of neighbors, therefore openly and publicly challenged the husband’s reputation. This mode of self-divorce was a potent act, which probably helped to preserve the status quo by shaming husbands who tried to deviate from it. The support authorities gave wives, moreover, either through various types of aid or by issuing favorable court decisions, could accentuate the power of this act.

AUTHORITIES The religious and secular authorities of Verona likely found this conservative aspect of informal separation and divorce congenial, for it harmonized with their desires to regulate male behavior in order to encourage and create responsible padri 97 “mi disse lui che scartezava dilla seta sua mai l’ho visto a lavorar, lho ben visto a pescar & ucelar [...] sel si deletas di lavorar non andaria a spasso come va el.” Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati, Testimony of Paulus f. messeri Christophori pistoris; and “io so che lue e sartezin da seda, & non lho mai visto se non a lavorar una volta sola in casa sua [...] io credo chel vada volentieri a spasso.” Ibid., Testimony of Magdalena uxor q. Jacobi scartezini. 98 It was not only common men who used their wives in this way. This situation has important parallels with the life of Count Ercole dei Giusti, discussed at length in chapter 4, who diverted needed resources from his wife and family to support an important sign of his own status: his concubine.

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di famiglia at all levels of society. In their writings to their priests and for the larger public, like secular writers in the same period, Bishops Giberti, Lippomano, and Valier all reiterated the importance of maintaining the social hierarchy, and particularly of ensuring the contentment of the poor with their lot. Giberti, for example, instructed priests to preach “about the poor and their impatience and other defects which lead God to let them suffer these and other evils.”99 Valier not only reprinted many of Giberti’s writings, but also devoted a section of his Ricordi [...] al popolo della città to the subject of the patience of the poor. Valier also sought more directly to build on popular opposition to lower-status men who “squander their wages in taverns, making their families suffer” so as to encourage people to ostracize them. Such men, along with men who kept concubines and blasphemers, he informed shop owners, were not to be given work. Valier, moreover, wrote a booklet outlining the duties of the padre di famiglia generally for men at all social levels, and he sponsored and cooperated in the composition and publication of Silvio Antoniano’s influential book Tre libri dell’educazione dei figliuoli, describing the duties of elite fathers.100 As part of their reforms of marriage practices, Veronese religious authorities sought to bring an end to informal separation and particularly to informal divorce followed by remarriage, which was, in the eyes of both canon and secular law, invalid and bigamous. They used various means to accomplish these ends: preaching the doctrine of marital indissolubility; increasing priestly oversight to push separated couples toward the court; investigating the marital status of recent immigrants who wanted to marry; investigating ex officio rumors of marriages contracted despite one spouse already being married. The suits contain evidence of these efforts in action. One parish priest, for example, refused to allow a woman who had informally left her husband to enter the church, presumably until the situation was regularized by the court, and Giulia Albiani’s separation suit against her husband, Piero, began during Valier’s visitation to her parish in the far southeastern corner of the bassa veronese.101 The few decisions that exist for the adherere and separatio suits also give a sense of the effect the ecclesiastical authorities hoped to have on the behavior of the laity. From this group of cause papers, only seventeen decisions exist and no act books recording the day-to-day activity of the court survive that might furnish 99

“Delli poveri & della loro impatientia, & altri diffetti per li quali Dio la lassa incorrere li detti & altri mali.” Giberti, Per li padri, Bii+2v. For an example of a similar work with a secular author, see Canobbio, Discorso, esp. 18 on the harm caused by irresponsible poor fathers. 100 Valier, Ricordi al popolo, 43–46; “consumar nelle taverne il suo guadagno, facendo patire le propria famiglia.” Ibid., 37; and Valier, Ricordi per li padri. 101 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali secolo XVI, 1569 Antonius a Sella v. Barbara dalla Bocca; and Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani.

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more outcomes.102 Almost half of these extant decisions (eight of seventeen) unfortunately come from the adherere suits that defendants answered not with separatio suits but with claims for annulment, and so are of little use for understanding the court’s opinion of separation per se. Many of the nine remaining decisions in the suits considering separations are, however, quite revealing. Judging simply by these nine suits, the court appears to have been fairly sympathetic to the claims of spouses who wanted to separate.103 The court granted the request for a separation in four, or almost half. In three of the five remaining suits, moreover, the denial of the separation was conditional. In the decision to the 1567 suit between Giacomo Polidori and Margarita Segati, for example, the judge instructed Margarita to return to Giacomo and remain with him unless he failed to work at honest labor. In 1582, the judge gave Giulia Albiani the option of either returning to her husband or staying in the shelter called the Casa di S. Francesco, and in 1547, the court sent Agnese di Simone back to her husband, but required him to deposit a surety to guarantee his proper behavior and treatment of his wife.104 In addition to pressure on people to bring their separations to court, secular and religious authorities also cooperated to make it easier for some women in bad marriages to leave their husbands and bring suit against them. Court cases from the 1560s and especially 1570s and 1580s show evidence of wives taking advantage of the shelters established for women “at risk,” that were established in Verona starting during Giberti’s tenure, and of instances of direct aid from various authorities. For example, in 1565 Leonora Maratolla, a concubine, sought refuge both from her husband, Giacomo Comello, and from her patron, Bartolomeo Averoldo, in the Trinità. During her trial against her husband in the 1580s, Isabella Mona, stayed in another location, the Misericordia. These refuges did not simply provide shelter. The experience of Caterina de Caliari demonstrates how helpful the authorities could be to a woman trying to 102 In most cases where there is no decision among the cause papers, it is not clear why. It may be that the couple abandoned the legal process in midstream, or the piece of paper with the decision may simply have become separated from the other papers and been lost. 103 Helmholz characterized the ecclesiastical judge in medieval England as a rather “heavyhanded marriage counselor.” Marriage Litigation, 101. Others have taken issue with this characterization. 104 Cause, b. Cause matrimoniali 1549–1570, 1567 Giacomo Polidoris v. Margarita di Bartolomeo Segati; Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani; and Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone. In the third as in one other case, the judges also used the decisions to instruct the wives on their proper behavior. See also Cause, b. 1554–1569/1579–1584, 1568 Giacomo Comello v. Leonora Maratola, which Leonora won, but was instructed to live in an honest place for the lifetime of her husband. On notarial acts regarding such monetary deposits by husbands, see Esposito, “Convivenza,” 506–7.

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bring suit against her husband. According to Caterina, when her father died, she lost his protection against her husband, and she turned to the public authorities. First, at her request, the “men of the Podestà” came to her house and escorted her to the safety of the Trinità, and later to the Casa di S. Francesco. While there, a notary came to her to take her depositions and a lawyer helped her file her court cases against her husband.105 The case of Tarsia Morandi in 1584 gives another example of the active intervention of the authorities in helping a malmaritata against her husband. The female head of the Derelitte, having heard and seen Tarsia’s husband’s continual mistreatment of her (the couple lived next door), sought out Tarsia and offered her refuge in the shelter, which was not strictly speaking intended for this purpose. When the male governors decided Tarsia could no longer stay there, the governatrice found Tarsia a new, informal shelter in another contrada with a noblewoman of the Bevilacqua clan. Studies of such institutions and shelters for malmaritate have shown that one of their important functions was, through often conventlike discipline, to conserve or redeem the honor of the women who entered them, often multiple times.106 Given the significance of marital separation (and hence of malmaritate) in early modern Verona, as not simply a means to restore or protect the honor of wives, but also to dishonor their misbehaving husbands, this can be seen as a new dimension to authorities’ actions to help malmaritate. To the extent that the secular and ecclesiastical authorities were helping wives, as they must have been aware, they were also hurting—and thus disciplining—their husbands by giving credence and voice to the wives’ charges and by keeping the wives out of their husbands’ authority.

105 Cause, b. 1580–1585, 1584 Caterina de Caliaris v. Giovanni Januensis. Wives were not always in control of their internment, however, and it could be more confinement than refuge. Pietro Albiani, for example, petitioned the court to have his wife, Giulia, confined in a safe place away from her family, who, Pietro claimed, were disreputable and thus corrupting his wife and endangering his own honor. Ibid., 1582 Giulia Albiani v. Pietro Albiani. Similarly, Agnese di Simone was confined with a court-appointed upstanding member of the community charged with treating her like a daughter during the trial. Cause, b. 1544–1549, 1547 Apollonio di Martino v. Agnese di Simone. Even when the confinement was unwilling, it probably did not significantly lessen the harm a husband suffered by being deprived of his wife, and she could still conduct the court case. It may, however, have made life unpleasant for some wives and helped to induce them to return to their husbands. 106 See especially Lucia Ferrante, “Honor Regained: Women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in Sixteenth-Century Bologna,” trans. Margaret A. Gallucci, in Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 46–72; but also Lombardi, Povertà; and Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. 37, 72, 75–78, who argues that one purpose of these efforts was to reform the family, but emphasizes only the restrictions placed on the women.

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NM NM NM Despite the growing strength and organization of ecclesiastical structures in Verona, religious authorities on their own could not coerce people into adhering to their models of proper behavior. Parish priests could preach sermons on the evils of visiting taverns, for example, and scold individual men for mistreating their wives or refusing to work; they could even urge people to use the bishop’s court to settle their problems. To fully implement their ideal of the disciplined padre di famiglia and his dutiful family, however, the religious authorities needed to convince the laity, as individuals and as groups, that they had something to gain by working with them—by being their allies—in enforcing the reformers’ models of husband, wife, servant, laborer, master, or even nobleman. In the intersection of formal and informal separation in Verona, this alliance can be seen in action. The churchmen, with their notions of governo and padre di famiglia, offered mistreated wives—and their kin and neighbors—help in enforcing their own similar standards of buona compagnia and raggione on husbands attracted by the carefree model of masculinity a spasso exemplified by the nobility. It is by no means clear, however, that the churchmen’s model would prevail in the short term over attitudes and structures that were seemingly inextricably linked to the noble dominance of early modern Italian society.

M6N CONCLUSIONS

The sixteenth century in Europe was marked by heightened claims of religious and secular authorities to control, organize, and schematicize all aspects of life, from government to poor relief, membership in the social hierarchy, and family life. One of the most prominent of the organizing schema was the model of the patriarchal family with the father as absolute ruler and his wife, children, and servants as obedient and disciplined subjects. Until recently, historians have focused on reconstructing this ideal order—although they have often not been fully aware that it was primarily an ideal. Now, however, scholars’ perspective appears to be shifting to look at the conflicts, inconsistencies, and ambiguities beyond and beneath the ideal family and social order. This study of marriage, concubinage, and marriage dissolution in sixteenth-century Verona is part of this new perspective. One of the most interesting aspects of sixteenth-century Veronese family and society is the complexity and variety within the patriarchal order, particularly as revealed in the constant and unavoidable conflicts between types of male authority that existed within it: fathers versus sons, husbands versus fathers, elite patrons versus common husbands. The increasingly emphatic insistence in this period on a clear hierarchy of authority modeled on the family takes on new meaning—and sometimes resembles desperation—when viewed in light of a situation in which lines of authority, within families but also within the secular and to a lesser extent religious structures, frequently remained so unclear. Understanding the complexity of the relationships of authority within this social order is an essential next step in understanding gender more fully: specifically the place of women in the social order. Unraveling the complexity and contradictions of masculine authority reveals a picture of early modern social order as not predicated simply on the subjugation of women to men, but as being given life, prolonged, and changed by the actions and strategies of individuals of both sexes working within those many different claims of authority. As daughters, concubines, and wives, women reacted to and negotiated between the claims of authority over them made by the various men in their lives—

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husbands, patrons, and fathers. In the absence of and even next to strong male claims to control women’s marriage choices, mother’s and bride’s claims to influence proceedings could still come to the fore. Brides indeed could make their marriages on their own authority alone, although at the price of the loss of support from their fathers or male kin during their marriages. One phenomenon that would reward further investigation is the cooperation between widowed mothers and their unmarried daughters to get the daughters established as wives or as concubines who would then support the aged mother. Historians have primarily restricted themselves to understanding families on a particular social level—for example, the aristocratic family, the merchant family, or the artisan family. This study examines the interaction between different social levels on marriage and family life through concubinage and clandestine marriages. The mixed-status families formed by the practice of concubinage had repercussions on the elite families of the men as well as the common families of the concubines. Clandestine marriages and their attendant complications were also, I argue, often the result of attempts to cross status boundaries. In contrast to the growing control of formal law and authority over marriage, the transcripts of cases brought before the marriage court show a prevalent informality of, and authorities’ lack of predictable control or influence over, not just marriage formation but also the illegal practice of marriage dissolution. At the level of jurisdiction, the bishop and his court had to compete not just with abbots who would hear marriage suits and secular courts that might serve litigants’ interests just as well (with suits for seduction, for example), but the even more prevalent option of settling matters without involving any court. At the level of enforcement, ecclesiastical authorities sometimes even had trouble convincing people that excommunication was a serious penalty. While not major players in these dramas, religious authorities were still forces that husbands and wives might take into account, sometimes by their own choice, and sometimes—and perhaps increasingly—by the choice of the authorities themselves. Authorities did actively encourage the laity to use the bishop’s court; and in some cases, especially when they suspected bigamy, they initiated suits themselves. Simply making themselves readily available for the voluntary use of people with problems, however, was probably a major route to any actual increase in authorities’ control. Individuals engaged in disputes over marital matters might choose as part of a strategy to seek the aid of a priest, enter a woman’s shelter, or have recourse to one of the increasingly prominent formal fora like the bishop’s court. Once having voluntarily subjected themselves to that authority, some remained in control of the process; others, however (like some parties in separation suits), found it difficult to extricate themselves from the authorities’ control not simply over the dispute at hand, but over issues of their behavior more generally.

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Historians have often asserted that bonds of the families of ordinary people were weaker than those of the elite because the former lacked the strong patrilineal ideological foundations reinforced with property interests of the latter. While this is true as far as it goes, it is not a sufficient characterization of those ties. Their potential weakness makes the bonds that clearly did exist between family members at lower social levels all the more interesting and in need of further examination and explanation. The Veronese nonelite family—and to a lesser degree Veronese society—was a group of more and less powerful individuals of both sexes bound together by material, reputational, and legal bonds of dependence of varying strength who had to cooperate within those strictures. Male superiority and female dependence formed an important premise of those relationships, but the simplicity of this principle belied the complexity of its application to the lives and circumstances of peasants and lords, husbands and wives, children and parents, and women and men. In the complexity and inconsistencies of the patriarchal order lay the ability of individuals, through their disputes and conflicts, to change this order over time beyond recognition.

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INDEX

abuse. See cruelty adherence to marriage. See cohabitation/ consummation adultery and concubinage, 135–36, 138, 156, 170– 73, 200 defined by canon law, 182n and forced marriage, 155–56 as ground for separation, 135, 149–50, 191, 200 as metaphor for all disorder, 28 agriculture, 5–6, 13. See also land ownership Alexander III (pope), on consensual doctrine/ clandestine marriage, 87 annulment, 49–50, 181n decline of, after Tridentine reforms, 54 litigation, 50–57, 180–81, 217 Antoniano, Silvio (reformer), 23, 31 Tre libri dell’educazione dei figliuoli, 30, 34, 172 aristocracy/nobility/elites. See also commoners; peasants blamed for societal ills, 15 and carnality, 18 ceto dirigente, 9 challenges to power of, 10–11 and clandestine marriages, 89, 120, 129–32 vs. commoners, 208–9, 212 and concubinage, 135–36, 140, 142–60, 173, 176–77 corruption among, 7–8, 11 and dominance and society, 207–15 dowries, 189–90, 197 fathers’ duties, 34–35 and honor, 22–23, 110, 147–48 ideology of noble superiority, 2, 20–23, 21n and inheritance, xvii nobility of blood, 21 noblewomen as concubines, 153 and oligarchy, 8 patronage networks, 131–32 and public authority, 34–35 socioeconomic power of, x, xii aristocratization, of the Veneto, 3

banns, after Tridentine reforms, 92 Biondi, Albano, 25 bishops. See religious authorities/reformers; individual names Bodin, Jean, 25 Brandileone, Francesco, 63–64 Brundage, James A., 198 buona compagnia, 45, 81, 191–202 Calvi, Giulia, xvii carnality and code of honor, 23, 34 fornication, 172 remedy for, 26 as root of social disorder, 14–20 Catholic Reform, Giberti’s influence, 3–4 cause papers. See under historiography; litigation charitable organizations, oligarchical control of, 9 children. See also under families of concubines, 150–51, 164, 167–68 custody of, in marriage court cases, 168 illegitimate, 137, 168–69 naturali vs. spurii, 138 Chojnacka, Monica, xviii Chojnacki, Stanley, xvii, xviii churchmen. See religious authorities/reformers clandestine marriage, 28, 50, 87–123. See also marriage compared/contrasted to concubinage, 166– 67 and consensual definition, 87–88 Council of Trent reforms of, 28, 87–88 definitions of, 92–93 and emancipation/independence, 63, 100– 111 and exploitation of women, 99 geographical distribution, 126–32, 127 (map) historiography of, 88, 132–33 and honor, 110–12, 123 legitimation of, 124–25 and rings, 111, 123–25

234

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clandestine marriage, continued rituals, 124–25 socioeconomic status and motives for, 107, 114–16, 143–44 strategic uses of, 99–125 Veronese distinctions, 92–93 clothing, as status indicator, 146–46n, 196–97 cohabitation/consummation, 40 and clandestine marriage, 111–12 conjugal rights (adhereve), 49, 180–81 discouraged in engagement period, 98 as last step in wedding ritual, 65–67 litigation regarding, 51–52 at newlyweds’ matrilocal residency, 67–68, 70 popular view of vs. canon law, 95 priests’ blessing before, 60 refusal of, 188 and secret marriages, 89, 95–97 and separation, 183–84 to validate marriage, 94 commerce and Casa dei Mercanti, 11 denounced by churchmen, 7n commoners. See also aristocracy/nobility/elites; peasants and clandestine marriage, 89–133 communal values regarding marriage, 161, 164–66 and concubinage, 160–76 defined by manual labor, 208 dignity of labor, 208–10 dowry practices among, 69–70 geographic mobility, and family ties, 42 impediments to marriage, 161, 163 marriage practices of, 41–59, 66 newlyweds’ residency, 67–68 reputation of, 211–12 concubinage/concubines. See also prostitution addressed by Reformers, 137 and adultery, 138 among commoners, 160–76 attitudes toward: elite vs. common, 165–66, 170–76, 207; by reformers, 169 children of, 150–51, 167–68 clothing as status indicator, 146–46n customs connected with, 134, 139, 158 defined as adultery/fornication, by Giberti, 170–71 dowering of, 134, 146, 154–55 economic benefits of, for women, 152–53 financial support of, by commoners, 164–65

gentlemanly behavior toward, 157–58 geographical distribution, 141 (map) as grounds for separation, 142, 149–50, 176, 200 highlighted as sinners and whores, 175 historiography of, 135–36 and honor, 160; of noble patron, 154–56; of husband, 157–59 vs. incest, 161 in law, 136–42 as a luxury good, 146 vs. marriage, 148, 153 of married people, 138, 143, 148–51, 161, 165 vs. morganatic marriage, 143–44 multiple, 145–46, 150, 158–59 noblewomen as, 153–153n and preservation of patrimony, 143 vs. prostitutes/prostitution, 146–47, 147n, 151, 158 public display of, 146–47 public punishment of, 172–74 reasons for, 135–36 reformers’ strategies against, 170–76 refuges for, 176, 201 regulation of, 148 of separated women, 186–87 as social danger, 172 and social status, 138–40, 144–48, 154 wives forced into, 158–60, 200–201 vs. wives, 152 Council of Trent reform of marriage law, 28–30, 45, 48, 53– 54, 87–88 crime. See also carnality agricultural fraud, 13 and carnality, 15–16 and poverty, 7 and shortage of women, 154n–155n and Veronese justice system, 12–12n Crispoldi, Tullio (reformer), 15n, 19 on families, 27–30 on marriage, 28 on parents, 37 cruelty and defamation litigation, 195 defined by ecclesiastical courts, 182–82n and governo, 206–7 as ground for separation, 188–89, 191, 195 physical abuse, 202–3, 211 resulting in miscarriage, 193, 210 various forms of, 195–97

Index

dancing, 117 defamation, 49 Della Scala family, 8, 137 dissolution. See also annulment; separation formal and informal, 180–89 risks of, 183 of unpublicized marriages, 95–97 divorce. See dissolution dowries, 40, 70 of commoners, 42, 47, 68–73 of concubines, 134, 146, 153–55 and consent to marriage, 58 contrados (groom’s contribution to), 69; after marital strife, 74 declarations/instruments, and validity of marriages, 46–47 direct, 68, 71 as economic assets, 189–90 of elites, 179, 195, 208 exploited: for concubines/prostitutes, 165; by irresponsible husband, 187, 194, 203, 213 historiography of, 68–69 husbands’ interest in, 71–72, 195 for illegitimate daughters, 151 indirect, 68–69 legal protections for, 72–73, 209 in litigation, 150, 181 for servants/orphans, 78–78n transfer of, 69–71 and widowhood, 71 duels, and code of honor, 22 education as route to Christian morality, 27 and social order, 34 and well-ordered families, 30 election fraud, 11 elites. See aristocracy/nobility/elites emancipation of sons, xxi, 63, 100–104 enforcement of marriage. See under litigation engagement, vs. matrimony, 98 excommunication, for concubinage, 171 families. See also fathers; mothers affected by concubinage, 207–8 Antoniano’s reforms for, 29–35 as an economic enterprise, 184 of brides, 61–64 children, 29 and clandestine marriage, 28, 119–24 and concubinage, 147–50

q 235

Crispoldi’s reforms for, 27–33 and dowries, 68–72 education of children, 30 emancipation of sons, 100, 103–8 endangered by concubinage, 172 vs. friendship networks, 84 Giberti’s reforms for, 4, 27–33 guidebooks, 29–30 historiography of, 220–22 humanistic view of, 26 importance of, for brides, 68–70 involvement in marriage: foster, 55; parental/paternal, 43–44 as metaphor for well-ordered society, 35–37 modern interest in, 26 natal, protection of married daughters, 69– 73 overlapping of roles within, xiii parental roles, 29–30, 32–34, 39, 60–61, 69, 75, 83 prominence of, at weddings, 68–73, 78 as protectors of women’s honor, 201–2 purpose of, 28 servants, 31 and sociopolitical/ecclesiastical order, 24– 25, 28–30, 205–15 and Ten Commandments, 27, 29, 34 threats to, from concubinage, 148–51 Valier’s reforms for, 29–35 fathers. See also families; men/boys; patria potestas conflicts with sons, and clandestine marriage, 100–102, 108–10, 112, 123 as metaphor for officials, 24–26 padre di famiglia, 30, 32, 205–15 responsibilities, 17, 24–25, 30–35 Ferraro, Joanne, xviii, xx gender as dimension of this study, xii–xiii, xv historiography of, xvi–xxi genealogy, and ideology of noble superiority, 21 geography and clandestine marriage, 126–32, 127 (map) and concubinage, 140–42, 141 (map) and informal separations, 185 (map) Giberti, Gian Matteo (bishop), 3–4, 14–19, 37 on cohabitation, 182 Constitutiones, 29, 59, 97–98 on families, 27–30

236

q Index

Giberti, continued historiography of reforms, 3–4, 3n marriage instructions, 28, 48, 97–98 on poverty and social order, 216 on socializing, 31 strategy against concubinage, 170–71, 173 on vendettas, 23–23n visitation records of, 47–47n, 89, 139 governo, and social hierarchy, 205–15 Grimani, Alvise (podestà), 11–13 Grubb, James, 105 Hacke, Daniela, xx Herlihy, David, 26 honor acquired illegitimately, 213 and dissolution suits, 179–91 and governo, 206–7 and ideology of noble superiority, 22–23, 110, 147–48, 155, 164 and lifestyle, 211–12 of men, 202, 212–13, 218 preservation of, for women, 187 and promiscuity, 151 wives’ reputations, 190, 192–93, 195, 197– 98, 201–2 of women, and refuge shelters, 187, 201, 218 households. See families humanism, view of well-ordered family, 26 husbands. See also men/boys authority over wife, 60–61, 191, 202–3 defamation of wives, 199–200 duties, 190–91, 202, 205, 207 financial irresponsibility, 196–99, 210–13 interest in dowries, 71–72, 187 lack of respect for wives, 199 prostituting of wives, 187–88, 200 reputation of, 211; and poverty, 207–8, 212–15 and sexual hierarchy, 202–5 as underpinning social order, 205–15 inheritances and dowries, 69, 71 exclusio propter dotem, 71 land fragmentation, 126 patrilineal, 71 justice system. See also litigation attempts at reform of, 13 corruption of, 12

dispute over jurisdiction, 198 matrimonial causes, 49 noble control of, 12 views on separation/divorce, 215–18 kinship, and gender, xvii Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, 40–41, 44, 60 Kuehn, Thomas, xviii–xix laborers, social status of, 208–11 land ownership and aristocratic administration, 9–10 decline of, by peasants, 6, 126 and economic power, 5 exploitation of, by elites, 6, 128 and socioeconomic control, 12 law(s) ambiguities of, xviii–xix canon: on clandestine marriages, 87, 98–99; and marital litigation, 198; and marital violence, 204; re illegitimate children, 151; and separation, 180– 80n, 191n; for valid marriage, 45, 53, 60 and concubinage, 136–42 and family, xx, 103 and limitations of source documents, 45 matrimonial causes, 49 patria potestas and emancipation of sons, xx, 103, 107 property ownership, 73 for protection of dowries, 72–73 recognition of concubines, 152 secular: on clandestine marriages, 98–99; and marital litigation, 198; on marriage, 45; rights over concubines and wives, 147–47n Lippomano, Alvise (bishop), marriage treatise, 48 litigation. See also dissolution; justice system affectionate marriages, 81 annulment, 180–81 cause papers, in Veronese diocese, xix, 52– 53, 89 child support and care, 168 defamation suit, against husband, 195 dissolution suits, 180–89 divorce, for concubinage, 161–62 to enforce concubinage relationships, 162 enforcement suits, 49–52, 87; vs. concubinage, 153 geographical distribution, 129–32

Index

litigation, continued impediment of conditions plea, 121 and literacy, 121 motives for, 90–91 for protection of dowry, 209 protection order, 174 regarding marriage, 50–59, 74 and socioeconomic status, 107, 207–9 witness depositions and testimony, 53–54, 91–92, 95 Lombard, Peter, on consensual/definition of marriage, 87 marital order and buona compagnia, 191–202 governo and social hierarchy, 205–15 and violence, 202–4, 203n marriage. See also clandestine marriage; rituals of marriage/weddings affectionate, 75, 79, 81–83, 99 “bigamous,” 52, 54–57, 60, 186 binding promises of, 93 and concubinage, 144, 153–55, 154n consanguinity rules, 48 by consent, 56–58, 75–84 consensual definition of, 40, 87–88 Council of Trent reforms (See Council of Trent) disintegration of, 182 dissolution of (See dissolution) distinguished from concubinage, 148 ecclesiastical reform of, 27–28, 45, 48, 53– 54, 216 as emancipating event, xx, 62, 100–110, 202 focus on bride’s family, 64–65 forced, 43; for adultery, 155–56 as foundation of social/moral order, 155 Giberti’s reforms, 4, 28, 48, 97–99, 182 historiography of, 39–42 and honor, 189–91 impediments to, 161 informal, 183, 186 irregular, 88–89; corrected during bishop’s visitation, 47–48, 59 legitimation of, necessary elements for, 59 maridada, 56 maridazzo, 94, 100 minimal requirements for, 45 models for formation of, 39–40 morganitic, 143–44 multiple, 54–60, 96

q 237

of ordinary people, 41–59 of orphans, 75–76 parental consent for, 100–101 parental/familial control of, 40, 42–45 paternal involvement in, 43–45, 55–56, 58, 60, 124–25 popular view vs. canon law, 95 private vs. clandestine, 94–97, 100–125 as a process, 54, 93; vs. one-time event, 98 public nature of, 59–60, 66–67, 93–97, 123–24 reforms of, social and ecclesiastical, 7–8 registration of, 54 risks of, 99–100 sacramental, vs. concubinage, 170 secret, 88–89, 96–97 and separation/divorce, 52 as social-familial strategy, xv and social inequality, 82 socioeconomic status and motives for, 41, 43–44, 90, 107, 114–16, 179 undermined by elites, 155 valid, 28, 40, 60, 87–88 Valier’s reforms, 48 by verba de futuro and verba de presenti, 89, 93 vs. engagement, 98 vs. sposar (giving of ring), 94 masculinity and honor, 190–91 and marriage dissolution, 180 and patriarchy, 180 as portrayed in marriage litigation, 182–83 men/boys. See also gender; husbands age of maturity, 103 and carnality, 17–19, 23–224 and clandestine marriage litigation, 121 as domestic apprentices/servants, 42 emancipation of, at marriage, 63, 100–105 and ideal of governo, 206–15 and marriage dissolution, 179 in patrician society, xviii reason and reputation, 202–5 role of, in wedding celebration (nozze), 56 subjugation of groom, at marriage ceremonies, 61–63 morganatic marriage, defined, 144n Morosini, Gabrielle (capitano), 20 mothers. See also families; women and clandestine marriage, 110–11, 115–16, 123–25 of concubines, 148, 153, 221 responsibilities, 17, 29–30

238

q Index

murder, 20 and the vendetta, 34–35 nobility. See aristocracy/nobility/elites oligarchy, 8–11 orphans, nonpaternal marriages of, 75–76 padre di famiglia. See fathers patria potestas, 103–204 and emancipation, 105–7 parental authority, and marriage practices, 39– 40, 42, 59–75 patriarchy authority limited by responsibility, 31–32 conventional views of, xi–xiii as cure for carnality, 17 defined, for this work, xiv and dowry interests, 69–70, 73–74 ecclesiastical ideology of, 24–37 and familial vs. public authority, 34–36 and family order, 30 father’s authority: over bride, 61–62, 64; over son, 100, 102–5 historiography of, 1, 24–25, 220–22 husband’s authority over wife, 60–61, 191 and ideal of masculinity, 180 and land ownership, 5, 128 as metaphor for social authority, 34, 36–37 and power consolidation, 25 and rise of nuclear family, 85–86 and social breakdown, 15–16 and social-familial-political hierarchy, 1, 36 and social reform, 8 and sociopolitical order, 24–25, 37 and Ten Commandments, 24–25, 34–36 and valid marriages, 60 peasants. See also commoners; marriage, of ordinary people and dowries, 130 local elites, 128–30 loss of land ownership, 6, 128 male-female contact among, 114, 116–17 nonpaternal and clandestine marriages of, 102–3 proletarianization, and clandestine marriage, 126, 128 social stratification of, 115–16, 126, 128– 30 population growth, and socioeconomic changes, 5

poverty among women, 184, 186 and carnality, 17, 33 and clandestine marriage, 114–16 and crime, 15 at decline of textile industry, 2, 5, 7 dowry as bulwark against, 197 family cohesion and marriage practices, 42– 43 and food supply, 13 of former landowners, 6, 130 increase in, 7 poor relief and ideology of noble superiority, 22 rise of, 208 social stigma of, 208–9 socioeconomic causes of, 4–5 pregnancy and litigation, 50; and clandestine marriage, 87, 91, 96, 102, 106, 112–14, 120, 122, 125, 166 priests role of, in marriage ceremonies, 64, 98 on separation, 182–82n strategies against concubinage, 173–74 prostitution, 17–18, 186–87, 194. See also concubinage/concubines as recourse for nonsupport, 198–99 regulation of, 15, 21 of wives, by husbands, 187–88 public opinion, and separation, 191 religious authorities/reformers, 13–24. See also Antoniano; Crispoldi; Giberti; Lippomano; Valier appointment of bishops, 14 and concubinage, 169–77 dissolution permission, 180–80n efforts at: centralized episcopal rule, 14; decreasing poverty, 7; socioeconomic reforms, 13–14 and Venetians, 14 and Veronese nobility, 14 view of family, 26–37 view of separation, 215–18 rettori, efforts to reform public order, 13 rings and clandestine marriage, 111, 123–25 desponsatio ritual, 47, 94 evidence of, in litigation, 56 exchange of, and consent, 58

Index

rings, continued giving of, 63–64 as part of dowry, 57 rituals of marriage/weddings, xi-xii. See also clandestine marriage; marriage rings, 57 bridal wreath, 57 cohabitation, 65 (See also cohabitation/ consummation) consent, 62, 64–65, 77 desponsatio (giving of ring), 63–64, 94 dowry transfers, 69–70 giving of the bride, 58 handclasp, 63 Italian vs. European, 65 local, 48, 57 maternal role in, 56–57, 75–76, 79–84 men/boys, 40 multiple ceremonies, 57–58 nonpaternal, 39, 44–45, 56–58, 75–84 nozze, 56, 94–95 paternal, 39, 44, 56, 58–75, 124 as prescribed by Giberti, 59 private, 101 prominence of bride’s family, 61–62 promissory ceremony, 62 rings, 56–57, 63, 123; at private/secret weddings, 97, 102 setting for, 61–62, 77, 80 three acts of, 63–64, 94, 123 traditional, 46, 57 witnesses: at clandestine marriages, 124; at marriages, 59 separation, 49. See also dissolution for adultery, 135, 149 from bed and board, 180–81 vs. bigamy/divorce, 52 for concubinage, 149 for cruelty, 188–89, 191, 195–97, 202–5 and disposition of dowries, 197 of elites, 195 for financial irresponsibility, 208–10, 209n geographic distribution, 185 (map) informal, 216 legal, 74 and multiple marriages, 58 for nonsupport, 195–96 for poor governo, 206–15 prior to public recognition of marriage, 95 reasons for, 187–89 as self-divorce, 215

q 239

servants, 42, 139 clothing limitations, 146 and concubinage, 139–40, 139n, 145, 152– 53, 169 nonpaternal marriages, 75–76, 108–10 place of, in families, 31 secret marriage between, 163 weddings of, 77–78 as witnesses in litigation, 194 sexual hierarchy, and reason, 202–5 sexuality as property of husband, 200 and violence, 19–20 sexual promiscuity, 164–65 sexual relations. See also cohabitation/ consummation among peasants, 117–19 and concubinage, 137–38 family approval for, 120, 123 with former concubine, 135, 155–57 incest, 161 rules of conduct, 173–74 sodomy, 194, 204 unnatural acts, 188 shelters/refuges, 176, 201, 217–18 social disciplining, xv, xv(n), 24, 26, 30–31 and fatherhood, 33 by neighbors, 194 social-familial changes in early modern Europe, xiv–xv, 205–15 social order/disorder and abuse of wives, 207 and carnality, 15–20 and concubinage, 172, 207–8 male hierarchy: and good sense, 202–5; and governo, 205–15 social status, 41 and abuse of wives, 215 clothing as indicator of, 146–46n, 196–97 commoners’ efforts to raise, 205–15 sources, xix–xxi, 45–49, 51 cause papers, xix, 52–53, 89 limitations of source documents, 45–49, 47n, 52–53, 89–90, 125 visitation records, 47–47n, 59, 89–93, 139, 160, 179–80, 183 trade. See commerce Valier, Agostino (bishop), 2–4, 37 on code of honor, 23–23n on cohabitation, 182

240

q Index

Valier, continued on familial hierarchy, 30 on fatherhood, 33 marriage reforms of, 48 moral reforms of, 15n on poverty and social order, 216 on socializing, 31–32 strategies against concubinage, 170–72, 174, 176 on women, 17, 187 Varanini, Gian Maria, 129 vendettas, 23–23n, 27, 34 Verona autonomy of, 10 geography of, 126–27 restoration of the Arena, 21 in the 1500s, 2–13 violence. See also crime; cruelty and carnality, 20 and code of honor, 23 as right of husband, 202–4 rise of, 11–12 and sexuality, 19–20 wealth, manipulation of, by women, xvii weddings. See marriage; rituals of marriage/ weddings widows. See also mothers; women and dowries, 71 incentives not to remarry, 162–63 witnesses at clandestine marriages, 123 in litigation, 53–54, 91–92, 95 at marriages, 59–60, 124 to wives’ honor, 192 wives behavior of, and cruelty, 193–94 as concubines, 157–58 vs. concubines, 148–52 desertion suits, 189 as economic assets, 189–90

financial security of, 191n given/sold as concubines, 200–201; for social status, 158–59 grounds for separation, 187–89 honor of, 187; defiled by husband, 200–201 marriage dissolution, 180 noble/elite of husbands, wife, concubines, 149–50 physical abuse of, 150, 187 reputation of, 192–93, 196, 199–99n and separation, 191–92 vulnerability of, 73, 149–50 women/girls. See also gender; mothers and carnality, 16–17 and clandestine marriage, 99, 113–23 and concubinage, economic benefits of, 152–53, 186 concubinage condemned, 175 decline of employment opportunities for, 5 as domestic servants, 42, 186 economic opportunities for, 184, 186 economic risks, 186–87 forced marriages, 105 and friendship networks, 84 honorable categories of, 187 independence of, in nonpaternal marriages, 77 marginalization of, in marriages, 61 and marriage dissolution, 179 and marriage practices, 40–41 noble, as concubines, 153–153n physical abuse of, 150 prostitution, 186–87, 194 protection/security found in paternal marriage, 44–45, 60–61, 68–74 refuges for, 176, 201, 217 reputation of, and litigation, 113, 117, 119– 20 role of, in nonpaternal marriage, 56–57, 75–84 and wealth, xvii