Violence and Justice in Bologna

Edited by Sarah Rubin Blanshei - Contributions by Sarah Rubin Blanshei; Margaux Buyck; Christopher Carlsmith; Sara Cucini; Trevor Dean; Carol Lansing; Gregory Roberts; Colin S. Rose; Massimo Vallerani and Melissa Vise

This collection of essays offers a unique contribution to the study of violence and justice in a late medieval and early modern Italy by combining a multivocal perspective with a case-study focus on the city-state of Bologna. Drawing on the city's singularly rich archival resources, the authors explore various facets of violence-ranging from the interpersonal to the less frequently studied typologies of blasphemy, rape, political rebellion, and student brawls-and set the institutions of the police and law courts into their socio-political and cultural contexts. They also apply a broad variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches-processual, microhistorical, legalism, comparative and criminological-to their assessments of the procedures and practices of criminal justice and the experiences of violent behavior, providing both short-term, in-depth analyses of specific events and over-arching reviews of long-term trends.Bologna itself, with its renowned university, economic innovations, strategic importance as a commercial and cultural crossroads, its political volatility and experiments with diverse constitutional structures, provides a rewarding laboratory for analyzing changes and continuities in late medieval and early modern violence and justice. From these studies emerges a narrative that challenges the traditional portrayal of those periods as eras when brutality and rage were "normal" in social relations and criminal justice was characterized mainly by punitive strategies of torture and repression.

Introduction, Sarah Rubin BlansheiAbbreviationsPart I: Criminal Justice: Procedures and PracticesChapter 1: Vendetta, Violence, and Police Power in Thirteenth-Century Bologna, Gregory RobertsChapter 2: Criminal Court Procedure in Late Medieval Bologna: Cultural and Social Contexts, Massimo ValleraniChapter 3: Bolognese Criminal Justice: From Medieval Commune to Renaissance Signoria, Sarah Rubin BlansheiChapter 4: Investigating Homicide: Bologna in the 1450s, Trevor DeanChapter 5: Violence and the Centralization of Criminal Justice in Early Modern Bologna, Colin S. RosePart II: Typologies of ViolenceChapter 6: Contra Ribaldos Proditores: From Factional Conflict to Political Crime in Renaissance Bologna, Sara CuciniChapter 7: The "Enormous and Horrendous" Crime of Poisoning: Bologna, ca. 1300-1700, Margaux BuyckChapter 8: Accusations of Rape in Thirteenth-Century Bologna, Carol LansingChapter 9: To the Podestà or the Inquisitor? Adjudicating Violence against God in Bologna, 1250-1450, Melissa ViseChapter 10: Student Violence in Late Medieval and Early Modern Bologna, Christopher Carlsmith