Glendon, Mary Ann, The Transformation of Family Law: State, Law, and Family in the United States and Western Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) provides a contemporary context to the sorts of changes and continuities in family law that we consider. Essential for domestic life of Italian families are Renata Ago, Economia barocca: mercato e istituzioni nella Roma del Seicento (Rome: Donzelli, 1998) and Cesarina Casanova, La famiglia italiana in età moderna: ricerche e modelli (Rome: Carocci, 1997). An overview of economic activity and developments in the period, though focused specifically on Florence, is Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).Google Scholar

A defining position on the historical study of gender is Scott, Joan Wallach, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–75. Joan Kelly’s, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 137–64, set the stage for the study of women and gender in our period. For earlier, see Jennifer Ward, Women in Medieval Europe 1200–1500 (London and New York: Pearson, 2002). A paradigmatic approach is that of Merry E. Wiesner, Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany (London and New York: Longman, 1998).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

De Maio, Romeo, Donna e Rinascimento (Milan: Mondadori, 1987) is an example of an analysis that relies chiefly on literary sources, not legal. Even Laura Lee Downs, Writing Gender History (London: Hodder Arnold, 2004), as a more methodological statement, neglects law. One of the few that approaches law directly is Christine Meek, “Women between the Law and Social Reality in Early Renaissance Lucca,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 182–93. Also Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Lloyd Bonfield, “Developments in European Family Law,” in Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789, ed. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 87–124, raises the related issue of the neglect of law in studies of family.Google Scholar

Studies of law in relation to marriage begin with the four volumes edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni I processi matrimoniali degli archivi ecclesiastici italiani for Il Mulino of Bologna: Coniugi nemici: la separazione in Italia dal xii al xviii secolo (2000); Matrimoni in dubbio: unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal xiv al xviii secolo (2001); Trasgressioni: seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (xiv-xviii secolo) (2004); I tribunali del matrimonio (secoli xv-xviii) (2006). But also important is Donahue, Charles Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

Useful for a more theoretical take on law are Pirie, Fernanda, The Anthropology of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially her notion of legalism; Christopher Tomlins and John Comaroff, “‘Law As . . .’: Theory and Practice in Legal History,” UC Irvine Law Review 1, no. 3 (Sept. 2011) [Symposium Issue: “Law As . . .”: Theory and Method in Legal History]: 1039–79; and David M. Engel, “How Does Law Matter in the Constitution of Legal Consciousness?” in How Does Law Matter, ed. Bryant G. Garth and Austin Sarat (Evansville: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 109–44. Pierre Bourdieu, an influential French sociologist, offered a provocative sense of law in “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,” Hastings Law Journal 38 (1987): 814–53. A balanced critique of Bourdieu is Robert Boyer, “L’anthropologie économique de Pierre Bourdieu,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 5 (2003): 65–78 and Jacques Caillose, “Pierre Bourdieu, jurislector: anti-juridisme et science du droit,” Droit et société 56–57 (2004): 17–39. Also interesting is Bruno Latour, The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d“etat, trans. Marina Brilman and Alain Pottage (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

On the education and professional lives of jurists, see Grendler, Paul, The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Manlio Bellomo, Saggio sull’università nell’età del diritto comune (Catania: Giannotta, 1979); James A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008). On forms and methods of legal thought, see James Gordley, “Ius Quaerens Intellectum: The Method of the Medieval Civilians,” in The Creation of the Ius Commune: From Casus to Regula, ed. John W. Cairns and Paul J. Du Plessis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 77–101, and Kees Bezemer, “The Infrastructure of the Early Ius Commune: The Formation of Regulae, or Its Failure,” in The Creation of Ius Commune, 57–75; Italo Birocchi, Alla ricerca dell’ordine: fonti e cultura giuridica nell’età moderna (Turin: Giappichelli, 2002); Maria Gigliola di Renzo Villata, “Tra consilia, decisiones e tractatus . . . le vie della conoscenza giuridica nell’età moderna,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 81 (2008): 15–72; Mario Ascheri, Tribunali, giuristi e istituzioni dal medioevo all’età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989); Antonio Manuel Hispanha, Introduzione alla storia del diritto europeo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999); Manlio Bellomo, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000–1800, trans. from 2nd ed. Lydia Cochrane (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

An important study of the legislative power of cities and the statutes they created is Chittolini, Giorgio, “Statuti e autonomie urbane: Introduzione,” in Statuti, città, territori in Italia e Germania tra Medioevo ed Età moderna, ed. Chittolini, Giorgio and Willoweit, Dietmar (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991), 7–45, which may best be read in conjunction with an examination of the political institutional history of Italian communes, such as Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf, 1979). Studies of juristic intervention in cases and their modes of statute interpretation include: Massimo Vallerani, “The Generation of the Moderni at Work: Jurists between School and Politics in Medieval Bologna (1270–1305),” in Europa und seine Regionen: 2000 Jahre Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Andreas Bauer and Karl H. L. Welker (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), 139–56; Mario Ascheri, “Il ‘dottore’ e lo statuto: una difesa interessata?” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 69 (1996): 95–113; Claudia Storti Storchi, “Giudici e giuristi nelle riforme viscontee del processo civile per Milano (1330–1386),” in Ius mediolani: studi di storia del diritto milanese offerti dagli allievi a Giulio Vismara (Milan: Giuffrè, 1996), 47–187; Andrea Romano, “Legum doctores” e cultura giuridica nella Sicilia Aragonese (Milan: Giuffrè, 1984). The pathbreaking work in this area was Lauro Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); on which see Julius Kirshner, “A Critical Appreciation of Lauro Martines’s Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence,” in The Politics of Law in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Essays in Honor of Lauro Martines, ed. Lawrin Armstrong and Julius Kirshner (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 7–39. Manlio Bellomo, I fatti e il diritto: tra le certezze e i dubbi dei giuristi medievali (secoli xii-xiv) (Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galilei, 2000), 465–70, 654–60, insists on the parallel between academic and forensic arguments and the fundamental place of ius commune in each, to the point of minimizing, if not denying, any distinction between theory and practice.Google Scholar

Incisive and discerning analyses of consilia are: Menzinger, Sara, “Consilium Sapientium: Lawmen and the Italian Popular Commune,” in Politics of Law, 40–54, and her Giuristi e politica nei comuni di popolo: Siena, Perugia e Bologna, tre governi a confronto (Rome: Viella, 2006); Julius Kirshner, “Consilia as Authority in Late Medieval Italy: The Case of Florence,” in Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition, ed. Mario Ascheri, Ingrid Baumgärtner, and Julius Kirshner (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 1999), 107–40; Mario Ascheri, “Le fonti e la flessibilità del diritto comune: il paradosso del consilium sapientis,” in ibid., 11–53; Massimo Vallerani, “Consilia iudicialia: Sapienza giuridica e processo nelle città comunali italiane,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Moyen Âge 123 (2011): 129–49.Google Scholar

Ascheri, Mario, “Il consilium dei giuristi medievali,” in Consilium: Teorie e pratiche del consigliare nella cultura medievale, ed. Casagrande, Carla, Crisciani, Chiara, Vecchio, Silvana (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004), 243–58. A valuable older study is Luigi Lombardi, Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1967). He concludes that the consilium pro parte was an intermediate form between the decisory consilium sapientis and the unalloyed advocacy of one party’s claims in an allegatio. Giovanni Rossi, “La forza del diritto: la communis opinio doctorum come argine all’arbitrium iudicis nel processo della prima età moderna,” in Il diritto come forze, la forza del diritto: le fonti in azione del diritto europeo tra medioevo ed età contemporanea, ed. Alberto SciumΠ (Turin: Giappichelli, 2012), 33–61.Google Scholar

On forensic process, useful are: Vallerani, Massimo, La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005), English translation by Sarah Rubin Blanshei, Medieval Pulbic Justice (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2012); Mario Ascheri, “Il processo civile tra diritto comune e diritto locale: Da questioni preliminari al caso della giustizia estense,” Quaderni storici 101 (Aug. 1999): 355–87; on criminal procedure, Trevor Dean, Crime and Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). A more particular study of procedures in one sort of case is François-Joseph Ruggiu, “Pour préserver la paix des familles … : Les querelles successorales et leurs règlements au xviii^e siècle,” in La justice des familles: Autour de la transmission des biens, des savoirs et des pouvoirs (Europe, Nouveau Monde, xii^e-xix^e siècles, ed. Anna Bellavitis and Isabelle Chabot (Rome: École Française, 2011), 137–63.Google Scholar

For those interested in historical studies of nuns, there are some excellent works: Schutte, Anne Jacobson, By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); P. Renée Baernstein, A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York and London: Routledge, 2002); Sharon T. Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). On prostitutes, Maria Serena Mazzi, Prostitute e lenoni nella Firenze del Quattrocento (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1991).Google Scholar

On the utility of such sources for studying the history of family, see Ingrid Baumgärtner, “Consilia–Quellen zur Familie in Krise, und Kontinuität, ,” in Die Familie als sozialer und historischer Verband: Untersuchungen zum Spätmittelalter und zur frühen Neuzeit, ed. Schuler, Peter-Johannes (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1987), 43–66; while Mario Sbriccoli, L’Interpretazione dello statuto: Contributo allo studio della funzione dei giuristi nell’età comunale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1969) addresses the patterns and tropes of statute interpretation.Google Scholar

Bellomo, Manlio, Problemi di diritto familiare nell’età dei comuni: Beni paterni e “pars filii” (Milan: Giuffrè, 1968) discusses the general issues of property relations between father and son while Thomas Kuehn, Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), takes on the narrower issue of liability. Also useful is Thomas Kuehn, “Debt and Bankruptcy in Florence: Statutes and Cases,” Quaderni storici 137 (Aug. 2011): 355–90. On the use and liability of sureties, Julius Kirshner, “A Question of Trust: Suretyship in Trecento Florence,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985), 129–45. Fascinating on the process of debt collection is Daniel Lord Smail, Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2016).Google Scholar

A penetrating essay on law and family is Ago, Renata, “Ruoli familiari e statuto giuridico,” Quaderni storici 88 (April 1995): 111–33; followed closely by Maria Carla Zorzoli, “Una incursione nella pratica giurisprudenziale milanese del Seicento e qualche riflessione su temi che riguardano la famiglia,” in Ius mediolani, 617–57. They contrast with Giulio Vismara, “L’unità della famiglia nella storia del diritto in Italia,” Studia et documenta historiae et iuris 22 (1956): 228–65. Useful, though from a different context, is Laura Edwards, “The Peace: The Meaning and Production of Law in the Post-Revolutionary United States,” UC Irvine Law Review 1 (2011): 565–85.Google Scholar

For family history: Tamassia, Nino, La famiglia italiana nei secoli decimoquinto e decimosesto (Milan: Sandron, 1910); Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Random House, 1962); Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) and idem, ed., Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) are representative of a household-centered line of research. David Reher, “Family Ties in Western Europe: Persistent Contrasts,” Population and Development Review 24 (1998): 203–34, offers the contrast between north and south in terms of weak and strong kinship ties; for which also see Igor Mineo, “Stati e lignaggi in Italia nel tardo medioevo: Qualche spunto comparativo,” Storica 2 (1995): 55–82; and directly from a legal point of view Andrea Romano, Famiglia, successioni e patrimonio familiare nell’Italia medievale e moderna (Turin: Giappichelli, 1994). See also Jack Goody, The European Family: An Historico-Anthropological Essay (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), for a functionalist anthropological perspective; and Mary Hartman, The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

Hajnal, John, “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective,” in Population in History, ed. Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (London: Arnold, 1965), 101–43, importantly offers the contrast of different marital patterns of northern and southern Europeans.Google Scholar

Mitterauer, Michael and Sieder, Reinhard, The European Family: Patriarchy to Partnership from the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Oosterveen, Karla and Hörziner, Manfred (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Raffaella Sarti, Europe at Home: Family and Material Culture 1500–1800, trans. Allan Cameron (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, abridged ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). Also Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Eviatar Zerubavel, Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar

Casey, James, The History of the Family (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989) vitally distinguishes family as moral or conceptual entity from lived experiences, as does John R. Gillis, A World of Their Own Making: Myth, Ritual, and the Quest for Family Values (New York: Basic Books, 1996). A fine general evocation of Italian family history is Franca Leverotti, Famiglie e istituzioni nel medioevo italiano: dal tardo antico al rinascimento (Rome: Carocci, 2005). Gianna Pomata, “Family and Gender,” in Early Modern Italy, ed. John A. Marino (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 69–86. Her concern with the relative balance between the two coexisting modes of thinking about family, as vertical lineage or horizontal cognate group, stands in interesting contrast to that of the corresponding essay in the chronologically previous volume in the Short Oxford History of Italy, namely, Julius Kirshner, “Family and Marriage: A Socio-Legal Perspective,” in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, ed. John M. Najemy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 82–102. Also David Herlihy, “Family,” in his Women, Family and Society in Medieval Europe (Providence and Oxford: Barghahn, 1995), 113–34.Google Scholar

Anthropological works, beyond that of Goody, include Ellickson, Robert C., The Household: Informal Order around the Hearth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Marshall Sahlins, What Kinship Is and Is Not (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); James Leach, “Knowledge as Kinship: Mutable Essence and the Significance of Transmission on the Rai Coast of Papua, New Guinea,” in Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered, ed. Sandra Bamford and James Leach (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2009), 175–92; Tim Ingold, “Stories against Classification: Transport, Wayfaring and the Integration of Knowledge,” in ibid., 193–213; Janet Carsten, After Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

The classic study of Florentine households is Herlihy, David and Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985). See also a review of their book by R. M. Smith, “The People of Tuscany and Their Families in the Fifteenth Century: Medieval or Mediterranean?” Journal of Family History 6 (1981): 107–28.Google Scholar

For Florence otherwise, Goldthwaite, Richard, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); F. W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “‘A uno pane e uno vino’: The Rural Tuscan Family at the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century,” in her Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 36–67; Sergio Tognetti, Da Figline a Firenze: Ascesa economica e politica della famiglia Serristori (secoli xiv-xvi) (Florence: Opus Libri, 2003); Alessandro Valori, “Famiglia e memoria: Luca di Panzano dal suo ‘Libro di Ricordi’: uno studio sulle relazioni familiari nello specchio della scrittura,” Archivio storico italiano 152 (1994): 261–97.Google Scholar

On families in other places, Grubb, James S., “House and Household: Evidence from Family Memoirs,” in Edilizia privata nella Verona rinascimentale, ed. Lanaro, Paola, Marini, Paola, and Varanini, Gian Maria (Milan: Electa, 2000), 118–33, and his Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Cristina Cenedella, “Proprietà ed imprenditorialità a Milano nel secondo Quattrocento: la famiglia del patrizio Ambrogio Alciati,” Studi di storia medioevale e di diplomatica 11 (1990); 199–255; Franca Leverotti, “Strutture familiari nel tardo medioevo italiano,” Revista d’historia medieval 10 (1999): 233–68; Anna Bellavitis, Famille, genre, transmission à Venise au xvie siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008); Chiara Porqueddu, Il patriziato pavese in età spagnola: Ruoli familiari, stile di vita, economia (Milan: Unicopli, 2012); David Rheubottom, Age, Marriage, and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Ragusa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), makes important points about the dynamics of a lineage in contrast to the fixity of name, coat of arms, and so forth.Google Scholar

On the law in Venice, Cozzi, Gaetano, “Authority and the Law in Renaissance Venice,” in Renaissance Venice, ed. Hale, J. R. (London: Faber & Faber, 1973), 293–345; James E. Shaw, The Justice of Venice: Authorities and Liberties in the Urban Economy, 1550–1700 (Oxford: British Academy, 2006); Umberto Santarelli, “La riflessione sugli statuti di Bartolomeo Cipolla,” in Bartolomeo Cipolla: Un giurista veronese del Quattrocento tra cattedra, foro e luoghi del potere, ed. Giovanni Rossi (Padua: CEDAM, 2009), 161–74.Google Scholar

On the relative difference in the legal and social situation of women in Florence and Venice, Cohn, Samuel K. Jr., “Donne in piazza e donne in tribunale a Firenze nel Rinascimento,” Studi storici 22 (1981): 515–33, reprinted in his Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 16–38; Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 27–52; but see also Isabelle Chabot and Anna Bellavitis, “A proposito di ‘Men and Women in Renaissance Venice’ di Stanley Chojnacki,” Quaderni storici 118 (April 2005): 203–38.Google Scholar

Concerning genealogical trees and related diagrammatic conceptions of kinship: Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, “The Genesis of the Family Tree,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 4 (1991): 105–29; eadem, “Family Trees and the Construction of Kinship in Renaissance Italy,” in Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History, ed. Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Brigitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 101–13 (reprint of a 1994 article from Quaderni storici 86, 405–20), and the more thorough and handsomely illustrated L’Arbre des familles (Paris: La Martinière, 2003). See also Simon Teuscher, “Flesh and Blood in the Treatises on the Arbor Consanguinitatis (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries),” in Blood and Kinship: Matter for Metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present, ed. Christopher H. Johnson, Bernhard Jussen, David Warren Sabean, and Simon Teuscher (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 83–104; Anthony Molho, Roberto Barducci, Gabriella Battista, and Francesco Donnini, “Genealogy and Marriage Alliance: Memories of Power in Late Medieval Florence,” in Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Honor of David Herlihy, ed. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., and Steven A. Epstein (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 39–70.Google Scholar

Cavallo, Sandra’s works include, “L’importanza della ‘famiglia orizzontale’ nella storia della famiglia italiana,” in Generazioni: Legami di parentela tra passato e presente, ed. Fazio, Ida and Lombardi, Daniela (Rome: Viella, 2006), her “Family Relationships,” in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Early Modern Age, ed. Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2010), 15–32 and her Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy: Identities, Families and Masculinities (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007),Google Scholar

For readings of Alberti, see Najemy, John M., “Giannozzo and His Elders: Alberti’s Critique of Renaissance Patriarchy,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. Connell, William J. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 51–78; Thomas Kuehn, “Leon Battista Alberti come illegitimo fiorentino,” in La vita e il mondo di Leon Battista Alberti: Atti di convegni internazionali del Comitato Nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Leon Battista Alberti, Genova, 19–21 febbraio 2004, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2008), 1: 147–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Hardwick, Julie, “The State,” in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family in the Early Modern Age, ed. Cavallo, Sandra and Evangelisti, Silvia (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 135–51, notes the importance of political connections for family. Daniela Frigo, Il padre di famiglia: Governo della casa e governo civile nella tradizione dell’“economica” tra cinque e seicento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985) surveys the advice literature of the sixteenth century. Elizabeth W. Mellyn, Mad Tuscans and Their Families: A History of Mental Disorder in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) has noted the presumption of patrimonial competence as a mark of sanity.Google Scholar

Discussion of the Ciuranni relies on Chabot, Isabelle, Ricostruzione di una famiglia: i Ciurianni di Firenze tra xii e xv secolo (Florence: Le Lettere, 2012). Maria Pia Contessa, “La costruzione di un’identità familiare e sociale: un immigrato cipriota nella Firenze del secondo Quattrocento,” Annali di storia di Firenze 4 (2009): 151–92, is our source for Giorgio di Baliano. Tim Carter and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Orpheus in the Marketplace: Jacopo Peri and the Economy of Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).Google Scholar

For discussion of the precedents left in Roman law, Laurent L. J. M. Waelkens, “Medieval Family and Marriage Law: From Actions of Status to Legal Doctrine,” in The Creation of the “Ius Commune”, 103–25; Thomas, Yan, “Il padre, la famiglia e le città: Figli e figlie davanti alla giurisdizione domestica a Roma,” in Pater familias, ed. Arru, Angiolina (Rome: Biblink, 2002), 23–57; Peter Birks, “The Roman Law Concept of Dominium and the Idea of Absolute Ownership,” Acta juridica (1985): 1–37; Alain Pottage, “Introduction: The Fabrication of Persons and Things,” in Law, Anthropology, and the Constitution of the Social: Making Persons and Things, ed. Alain Pottage and Martha Mundy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–39; Philippe Moreau, “The Bilineal Transmission of Blood in Ancient Rome,” in Blood and Kinship: Matter for Metaphor from Ancient Rome to the Present, ed. Christopher H. Johnson, Bernhard Jussen, David Warren Sabean, and Simon Teuscher (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2013), 40–60 and Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, “Flesh and Blood in Medieval Language about Kinship,” in Blood and Kinship, 61–82; Carlos Amunátegui Perelló, “Problems Concerning Familia in Early Rome,” Roman Legal Tradition 4 (2008): 37–45.Google Scholar

On paternal power for later periods, see Cavina, Marco, Il padre spodestato: l’autorità paterna dall’antichità a oggi (Bari: Laterza, 2007); Manlio Bellomo, “La struttura patrimoniale della famiglia italiana nel tardo medioevo,” in Marriage, Property, and Succession, ed. Lloyd Bonfield (Berlin: Dunckler and Humblot, 1992), 53–69.Google Scholar

Bartolo’s views of nobility are discussed by Castelnuovo, Guido, “Revisiter un classique: noblesse, hérédité et vertu d’Aristote à Dante et à Bartole (Italie communale, début xiiie-milieu xive siècle),” in L’hérédité entre Moyen Âge et Époque moderne: perspectives historiques, ed. ver der Lugt, Maaike and de Miramon, Charles (Florence: SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008), 105–55. For a discussion of the legal features of his argument in a different context, see my “Bartolus’s Definition of Family: An Aspect of Juridical Thought in Petrarch’s Time,” in Studi petrarcheschi, forthcoming.Google Scholar

The final quotation is from Misericordia, Massimo della, “Founding a Social Cosmos: Perspectives for a Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Lombardy,” in A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan, ed. Gamberini, Andrea (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 356–79.Google Scholar

On Cipolla, , Bartolomeo Cipolla: un giurista veronese del Quattrocento tra cattedra, foro e luoghi del potere, ed. Rossi, Giovanni (Padua: CEDAM, 2009).Google Scholar

On women in the Renaissance, Kelly, Joan, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Bridenthal, Renate and Koonz, Claudia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 137–64; Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Women: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholastic and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). On the querelle des femmes and related issues, see Gisela Bock, Women in European History, trans. Allison Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

For the earlier period, Skinner, Patricia, Women in Medieval Italian Society, 500–1200 (Edinburgh: Pearson, 2001), 190–95; Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, I dirirtti delle donne nella società alto-medievale (Naples: ESI, 1986).Google Scholar

Anthropological studies of women and honor include Pitt-Rivers, Julian, The Fate of Shechem of the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and in general, Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). See also Martine Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family, trans. Sarah Matthews (Oxford: Blackwell and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).Google Scholar

For Strozzi, and Datini, , Ann Crabb, , The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); eadem, The Merchant of Prato’s Wife: Margherita Datini and Her World, 1360–1423 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015); Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato (New York: Octagon, 1979).Google Scholar

The legal situation of women in southern Italian communities is nicely laid out by Papagna, Elena, “Le dame napoletane tra Quattro e Cinquecento: Modelli culturali e pratiche comportamentali,” in Con animo virile: Donne e potere nel Mezzogiorno medievale (secoli xi-xv), ed. Mainoni, Patrizia (Rome: Viella, 2010), 485–526; and Patrizia Mainoni, “Il potere di decidere: Testamenti femminili pugliesi nei secoli xiii-xiv,” in Con animo virile, 197–261; Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, “Donne, famiglia e potere,” in Con animo virile, 31–51.Google Scholar

On women in law, Koch, Elisabeth, Maior dignitas est in sexu virili: Das weibliche Geschlecht im Normensystem des 16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1991); Annalisa Belloni, “Die Rolle der Frau in der Jurisprudenz der Renaissance,” in Die Frau in der Renaissance, ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994), 55–80; Marie A. Kelleher, The Measure of Woman: Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) and “Person and Gender in the Laws,” in Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. Judith A. Brown and Robert C. Davis (New York: Longman, 1998), 87–106; and most importantly Simona Feci, Pesci fuor d’acqua: donne a Roma in etB moderna: diritti e patrimoni (Rome: Viella, 2004).Google Scholar

For the Roman law on women, useful are Thomas, Yan, “The Division of the Sexes in Roman Law,” in A History of Women in the West, ed. Duby, Georges and Perot, Michelle, 5 vols., vol. 1: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. Pantel, Pauline Schmitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 83–137; Suzanne Dixon, “Infirmitas Sexus: Womanly Weakness in Roman Law,” Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 52 (1984): 343–71; Antti Arjava, Women and Law in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Nikolaus Benke, “Why Should the Law Protect Roman Women? Some Remarks on the Senatus Consultum Velleianum (ca. 50AD),” in Gender and Religion: European Studies, ed. Kari Elisabeth Berrisen, Sara Cabibbo, Edith Specht (Rome: Carocci, 2001), 41–56.Google Scholar

On women in markets, see Matchette, Ann, “Women, Objects, and Exchange in Early Modern Florence,” Early Modern Women 3 (2008): 245–51; Laurence Fontaine, “Il posto delle donne nella piccola economia finanziaria in Europe in età moderna,” Quaderni storici 137 (Aug. 2011): 513–32; Martha Howell, Commerce before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Laurence Fontaine, L’économie morale: pauvreté, crédit et confiance dans l’Europe préindustrielle (Paris: Gallimard, 2008); Claire Crowston, “Family Affairs: Wives, Credit, Consumption, and the Law in Old Regime France,” in Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France, ed. Suzanne Desan and Jeffrey Merrick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 62–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Some interesting perspectives on fathers and paternal power are Hardwick, Julie, Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 1998); Manlio Bellomo, Problemi di diritto familiare nell’età dei comuni: Beni paterni e “pars filii” (Milan: Giuffrè, 1968) and “Famiglia (diritto intermedio), Enciclopedia del diritto 16: 744–79 (1967); Thomas Kuehn, Emancipation in Late Medieval Florence (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982); and Marco Cavina, Il padre spodestato: l’autorità paterna dall’antichità a oggi (Bari: Laterza, 2007).Google Scholar

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Also of note for themes in this chapter: Kuehn, Thomas, Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002); Julius Kirshner, “Baldus de Ubaldis on Disinheritance: Contexts, Controversies, Consilia,” Ius Commune: Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte 27 (2000): 119–214; Antonio Marongiu, Beni paterni e acquisti nella storia del diritto italiano (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1937).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

In general on the giovani, see Crouzet-Pavan, Elisabeth, “A Flower of Evil: Young Men in Medieval Italy,” in A History of Young People in the West, ed. Levi, Giovanni and Schmidt, Jean-Claude, trans. Naish, Camille, 2 vols., vol. 1: Ancient and Medieval Rites of Passage (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997), 173–221; Renata Ago, “Young Nobles in the Age of Absolutism: Paternal Authority and Freedom of Choice in Seventeenth-Century Italy,” in History of Young People, 1: 283–322; Sandra Cavallo, “O padre o figlio? Ruoli familiari maschili e legami tra uomini nel mondo artigiano in età moderna,” in Paterfamilias, ed. Angiolina Arru (Rome: Biblink, 2002), 59–100.Google Scholar

Contini, Elvira, “Societas e famiglia nel pensiero di Baldo degli Ubaldi,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 82 (2009): 19–92.Google Scholar

From the vast literature on marriage, useful have been Lombardi, Daniela, Matrimoni di antico regime (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). For the debates at the Council of Trent, Gabriella Zarri, “Il matrimonio tridentino,” in Il concilio di Trento e il moderno, ed. Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), 437–83; Charlotte Christensen-Nugues, “Parental Authority and Freedom of Choice: The Debate on Clandestinity and Parental Consent at the Council of Trent (1545–63),” Sixteenth Century Journal 45 (2014): 51–72; Chiara Valsecchi, “‘Causa matrimonialis est gravis et ardua’: consiliatores e matrimonio fino al Concilio di Trento,” Studi di storia del diritto 2 (1999): 407–580.Google Scholar

On aspects of the process of marriage, see Cavallar, Osvaldo and Kirshner, Julius, “Making and Breaking Betrothal Contracts (Sponsalia) in Late Trecento Florence,” in “Panta rei”: studi dedicati a Manlio Bellomo, ed. Condorelli, Orazio, 3 vols. (Rome: Il Cigno Galileo Galilei, 2004), 1: 395–452; now in Kirshner, Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 20–54. Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte, Jr., eds, To Have and To Hold: Marrying and Its Documentation in Western Christendom, 400–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) contains a number of useful essays, including Judith Evans-Grubbs, “Marrying and Its Documentation in Later Roman Law,” in To Have and To Hold, 43–94, and Thomas Kuehn, “Contracting Marriage in Renaissance Florence,” 390–420.Google Scholar

Studies utilizing court records are Donahue, Charles Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds, Matrimoni in dubbio: unioni controverse e nozze clandestine in Italia dal xiv al xviii secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001); Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni, eds, Coniugi nemici: la separazione in Italia dal xii al xviii secolo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008); Chiara La Rocca, Tra moglie e marito: Matrimoni e separazioni a Livorno nel Settecento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009); Cecilia Cristellon, La carità e l’eros: il matrimonio, la Chiesa, i suoi giudici nella Venezia del Rinascimento (1420–1545) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010).Google Scholar

On marriage and household, Laslett, Peter, ed., Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985); Wally Secombe, A Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe (London and New York: Verso, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases of forced consent or rape include Menchi, Silvana Seidel and Quaglioni, Diego, eds, Trasgressioni: seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (xiv-xviii secolo) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004); Joanne M. Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Daniela Hacke, “‘Non lo volevo per marito in modo alcuno’: Forced Marriages, Generational Conflicts, and the Limits of Patriarchal Power in Early Modern Venice, c. 1580–1680,” in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, Silvana Siedel Menchi (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 203–21; Anne Jacobson Schutte, By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking Monastic Vows in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011); Giovanni Cazzetta, Praesumitur seducta: onestà e consenso femminile nella cultura giuridica moderna 53 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1999); Caroline Dunn, Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Joanne M. Ferraro, Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557–1789 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

Valuable studies of marriages in particular communities are Carboni, Mauro, “Marriage Strategies and Oligarchy in Early Modern Bologna,” in Marriage in Premodern Europe: Italy and Beyond, ed. Murray, Jacqueline (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 239–56; Lucia Ferrante, “Marriage and Women’s Subjectivity in a Patrilineal System: The Case of Early Modern Bologna,” in Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative Interdisciplinary History, ed. Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Walther, Brigitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 115–29; James S. Grubb, Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

On England, Hanawalt, Barbara, The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Gardner, Jane F., Women in Roman Law and Society (London: Croom Helm, 1986) discusses women’s legal agency.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

On marital relations, Marchetto, Giuliano, “Diritto sul corpo e ‘servitù coniugale’ nella dottrina canonistica pretridentina,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 34 (2008): 89–112. On marital property relations, the classic study is Manlio Bellomo, Ricerche sui rapporti patrimoniali tra coniugi: contributo alla storia della famiglia medievale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1961); to which should be added Laurent Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes: l’exlusion des filles dotées xiième-xvème siècles (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987). Essential are the numerous studies of Julius Kirshner: idem and Jacques Pluss, “Two Fourteenth-Century Opinions on Dowries, Paraphernalia and Non-Dotal Goods,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon law, n.s. 9 (1978): 65–77; Julius Kirshner, “Li Emergenti Bisogni Matrimoniali in Renaissance Florence,” Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2002), 79–109, now in Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship, 55–73; Julius Kirshner, “Materials for a Gilded Cage: Non-Dotal Assets in Florence, 1300–1500,” in The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present, ed. David I. Kertzer and Richard P. Saller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 184–207; Julius Kirshner, “Pursuing Honor While Avoiding Sin: The Monte delle Doti of Florence,” Studi senesi 89 (1977): 177–258; Julius Kirshner, “Family and Marriage: A Socio-legal Perspective,” in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 82–102. Also informative is Jane Fair Bestor, “The Groom’s Prestations for the Ductio in Late Medieval Italy: A Study in the Disciplining Power of Liberalitas,” Rivista internazionale di diritto comune 8 (1997): 129–77. Absolutely vital on dowries and women’s rights to and control of property is Isabelle Chabot, La dette des familles: Femmes, lignage et patrimoine à Florence aux xiv^e-xv^e siècles (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2011).Google Scholar

Botticini, Maristella and Siow, Aloysius, “Why Dowries?” American Economic Review 93 (2003): 1385–98, pose the vital question in functional terms and raise doubts as to the size of dowry in relation of patrimony as a whole, as does Gregory Hanlon, Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: An Early Modern History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Allan A. Tulchin, “Low Dowries, Absent Parents: Marrying for Love in an Early Modern French Town,” Sixteenth Century Journal 44 (2013): 713–38, takes a similar perspective for France.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

On fear and lack of consent for religious vocations, in addition to Schutte (above), Strocchia, Sharon T., “Taken into Custody: Girls and Convent Guardianship in Renaissance Florence,” Renaissance Studies 17 (2003): 177–200; Saundra Weddle, “Identity and Alliance: Urban Presence, Spatial Privilege, and Florentine Renaissance Convents,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 394–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Kirhsner, Julius, “Women Married Elsewhere: Gender and Citizenship in Italy,” in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Schutte, Anne Jacobson, Kuehn, Thomas, Menchi, Silvana Siedel (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 117–49; now in Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship, 161–88, is one of few examinations of the issue. Stefanie B. Siegmund, “Division of the Dowry on the Death of the Daughter: An Instance in the Negotiation of Laws and Jewish Customs in Early Modern Tuscany,” Jewish History 16 (2002): 73–106. Siegmund suggests that Jewish practices may give the lie to the idea that lower nuptiality among Christians was the consequence solely of dowry inflation.Google Scholar

The now classic study of guardianship is di Renzo, Gigliola Villata, La tutela: indagini sulla scuola dei glossatori (Milan: Giuffrè, 1975); to which can be added Francesca Morandini, ed., “Statuti e ordinamenti dell’Ufficio dei pupilli et adulti nel periodo della Repubblica fiorentina (1388–1534),” Archivio storico italiano 113 (1955): 522–51, 114 (1956): 92–117, 115 (1957): 87–104; Giulia Calvi, “Widows, the State and the Guardianship of Children in Early Modern Tuscany,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 209–19; Giulia Calvi, “Dal margine al centro: soggettività femminile, famiglia, Stato moderno in Toscana (xvi-xviii secc.),” in Discutendo di storia: soggettività, ricerca, biografia (Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1990), 103–18; eadem, “‘Cruel’ and ‘Nurturing’ Mothers: The Construction of Motherhood in Tuscany (1500–1800),” L’Homme 17 (2006): 75–92; B. A. Holderness, “Widows in Pre-Industrial Society: An Essay upon Their Economic Functions,” in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle, ed. Richard M. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 423–42; and Caroline M. Fisher, “Guardianship and the Rise of the Florentine State, 1368–93,” in Famiglia e poteri in Italia tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Anna Bellavitis and Isabelle Chabot (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2009), 265–82.Google Scholar

A famous example of a social misalliance denied in court is Brucker, Gene, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar

On retrieval of a dowry from a financially strapped husband, Kirshner, Julius, “Wives’ Claims against Insolvent Husbands in Late Medieval Italy,” in Women of the Medieval World, ed. Kirshner, Julius and Wemple, Suzanne F. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 256–303; now in Marriage, Dowry, and Citizenship, 131–60; Thomas Kuehn, “Protecting Dowries in Law in Renaissance Florence,” in Studies on Florence and the Italian Renaissance in Honour of F. W. Kent, ed. Peter Howard and Cecilia Hewlett (Tournhout: Brepols, 2016), 199–216.Google Scholar

On the marital obligations of spouses in southern Italy, see Ferente, Serena, “Women and the State,” in The Italian Renaissance State, ed. Gamberini, Andrea and Lazzarini, Isabella (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 345–67. Thomas Kuehn, “Family Solidarity in Exile and in Law: Alberti Lawsuits of the Early Quattrocento,” Speculum 78 (2003): 421–39, is an example of women and dowries in the political distress of exile. See also Elena Brizio, “In the Shadow of the Campo: Sienese Women and Their Families (c. 1400–1600),” in Across the Religious Divide: Women, Property, and Law in the Wider Mediterranean (ca. 1300–1800), ed. Jutta Gisela Sperling and Shona Kelly Wray (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 122–36; Megan Moran, “Brother-Sister Correspondence in the Spinelli Family and the Forming of Family Networks in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” Sixteenth Century Journal 44 (2013): 47–71, at 71; Serena Giuliodori, “¿Qué fuentes?, ¿Qué cuestiones? Los estudios sobre la capacidad patrimonial de la mujer en Italia durante la baja edad media,” Studia historica, Ha. Medieval 26 (2008): 91–109.Google Scholar

On the different situation regarding women’s legal agency in Venice, see Linda Guzzetti, “Women in Court in Early Fourteenth-Century Venice,” in Across the Religious Divide, 51–66. Pathbreaking here has been the work of Chojnacki, Stanley, notably the essays in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); but see also the careful critiques of Anna Bellavitis, “Genere e potere politico fra Medioevo ed età moderna,” Quaderni storici 118 (2005): 230–38, and Isabelle Chabot, “Ricchezze femminili e parentela nel Rinascimento: Riflessioni intorno ai contesti veneziani e fiorentini,” Quaderni storivi 118 (2005): 203–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The “cruel” mother emerged from Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane, “La ‘mère cruelle’: maternité, veuvage et dot dans la Florence des xiv^e et xv^e siècles,” Annales ESC 38 (1983): 1097–1109; see also Isabelle Chabot, “Seconde nozze e identità materna nella Firenze del tardo Medioevo,” in Tempi e spaze della vita femminile nella prima età moderna, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi, Anne Jacobson Schutte, and Thomas Kuehn (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 493–523.Google Scholar

On widows, Cavallo, Sandra and Warner, Lyndan, eds, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York and London: Longman, 1999); Isabelle Chabot, “Lineage Strategies and the Control of Widows in Renaissance Florence,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 127–44; “Widowhood and Poverty in Late Medieval Florence,” Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 291–311; “‘La sposa in nero’: la ritualizzazione del lutto delle vedove fiorentine (secoli xiv-xv),” Quaderni storici 86 (Aug. 1994): 421–62.Google Scholar

Howell, Martha, “The Properties of Marriage in Late Medieval Europe: Commercial Wealth and the Creation of Modern Marriage,” in Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Davis, Isabel, Müller, Miriam, and Jones, Sarah Rees (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 17–61, suggests that reliance on moveable property encouraged more companionate marriages.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

On plague mortality and preparing for death, Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Weaver, Helen (New York: Vintage, 1982); Alberto Tenenti, Il senso della morte e l’amore della vita nel Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1957); Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). More broadly on death and inheritance, Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité de l’au-delà: les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d’Avignon à la fin du Moyen Âge, vers 1320-vers 1480 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1980); Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the Afterlife (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); and his The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Thomas Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

Important, but succinct, for the Roman law basis of inheritance is Borkowski and du Plessis, Textbook on Roman Law, 210–30. Clearly central to my understanding of the medieval period is Romano, Andrea, Famiglia, successioni e patrimonio familiare nell’Italia medievale e moderna (Turin: Giappichelli, 1994). On the feudal law, see Harry Dondorp and Eltjo J. H. Schrage, “The Sources of Medieval Learned Law,” 7–56, and Magnus Ryan, “Succession to Fiefs: A Ius Commune Feudorum?” 143–57, in The Creation of the Ius Commune: From Casus to Regula, ed. John W. Cairns and Paul J. Du Plessis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). On the acceptance into law of primogeniture, see Bartolomé Clavero, “Dictum beati: a proposito della cultura del lignaggio,” Quaderni storici 86 (Aug. 1994): 335–63. Paolo Grossi, Il dominio e le cose: percezioni medievali e moderne dei diritti reali (Milan: Giuffrè, 1992), is the most thorough and readable account of property law.Google Scholar

The best overview of inheritance statutes remains the workmanlike survey of Niccolai, Franco, La formazione del diritto successorio negli statuti comunali del territorio lombardo-tosco (Milan: Giuffrè, 1940). See also Laurent Mayali, Droit savant et coutumes: l’exclusion des filles dotées xiième-xvème siècle (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1987); and for a parallel development that, however, had little resonance in case literature, Roberta Braccia, “‘Uxor gaudet de morte mariti’: la donatio propter nuptias tra diritto comune e diritti locali,” Annali della Facoltà di Giurisprudenza di Genova 30 (2000–2001): 76–128. On inheritance in Venice, see Anna Bellavitis, Famille, genre, transmission à Venise au xvie siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2008) and her “Patrimoni e matrimoni a Venezia nel Cinquecento,” in Le ricchezze delle donne, 149–60. Also of interest is Laura Turchi, “L’eredità della madre: un conflitto giuridico nello stato estense alla fine del Cinquecento,” in Le ricchezze delle donne, 161–85. For Milan, see Thomas Kuehn, “Gender and Law in Milan,” in A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan, ed. Andrea Gamberini (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 406–31.Google Scholar

Jewish law is nicely covered by Colorni, Vittore, Legge ebraica e leggi locali: ricerche sull’ambito d’applicazione del diritto ebraico in Italia dall epoca romana al secolo xix (Milan: Giuffrè, 1945). Useful on statute interpretation is Laurent Mayali, “La notion de ‘statutum odiosum’ dans la doctrine romaniste au Moyen Âge: Remarques sur la fonction du docteur,” Ius Commune 12 (1984): 57–69.Google Scholar

Important on various features of dowry law are, Kirshner, Julius, “Maritus Lucretur Dotem Uxoris Sue Premortue in Late Medieval Florence,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 77 (1991): 111–55; Gian Paolo Massetto, “Il lucro dotale nella dottrina e nella legislazione statutaria lombarda dei secoli xiv-xvi,” in Ius mediolani, 189–364. For examples of security for dowry and delays in repayment, see Julius Kirshner, “Encumbering Private Claims to Public Debt in Renaissance Florence,” in The Growth of the Bank as an Institution and the Development of Money-Business Law, ed. Vito Piergiovanni (Berlin: Dunckler and Humblot, 1993), 19–75.Google Scholar

For the Roman law basics of testaments, see Borkowski and du Plessis, 217–40. On the jurisprudential interpretation of testaments, see Padovani, Andrea, Studi storici sulla dottrina delle sostituzioni (Milan: Giuffrè, 1983); Ferdinando Treggiari, Minister ultimae voluntatis (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002); Giovanni Chiodi, L’interpretazione del testamento nel pensiero dei Glossatori (Milan: Giuffrè, 1997). For analysis and an edition of Arsendi, Andrea Romano, Le sostituzioni ereditarie nell’inedita “Repetitio de substitutionibus” di Raniero Arsendi (Catania: Giannotta, 1977); Giovanni Rossi, “Il testamento nel medioevo fra dottrina giuridica e prassi,” in Margini di libertà: testamenti femminili nel medioevo, ed. Maria Clara Rossi (Verona: Cierre, 2010), 45–70.Google Scholar

On the prevalence of fideicommissa in practice, see in general, Hanlon, Gregory, Early Modern Italy, 1550–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); Renata Ago, Gusto for Things: A History of Objects in Seventeenth-Century Rome, trans. Bradford Bonley and Corey Tazzara, with Paula Findlen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). She builds on the anthropological insights of Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). An interesting case for which there is abundant documentation is found in Tim Carter and Richard A. Goldthwaite, Orpheus in the Marketplace: Jacopo Peri and the Economy of Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013). Another example can be found in Thomas Kuehn, “Fideicommissum and Family: The Orsini di Bracciano,” Viator 39 no. 2 (2008): 323–42. An example of inventories of different sorts in the hands of one noble is Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and His Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).Google Scholar

On the essential features of fideicommissa in law, Caravale, Mario, s.v. “Fedecommesso (diritto intermedio),” Enciclopedia del diritto, vol. 17 (Milan: Giuffrè, 1968), 103–14; Luigi Tria, Il fedecommesso nella legislazione e nella dottrina dal secolo xvi ai nostri giorni (Milan: Giuffrè, 1945); Mario Bernardo Angelo Comneno and Filippo Angotti, La sostituzione fedecommissaria (Rome: Imperium, 1959).Google Scholar

Excellent studies of fedecommessi in different communities include Calonaci, Stefano, Dietro lo scudo incantato: I fedecommessi di famiglia e il trionfo della borghesia fiorentina (1400 ca–1750) (Florence: Le Monnier, 2005); Maura Piccialuti, L’immortalità dei beni: Fedecommessi e primogeniture a Roma nei secoli xvii e xviii (Rome: Viella, 1999); Maria Carla Zorzoli, “Della famiglia e del suo patrimonio: Riflessione sull’uso del fedecommesso in Lombardia tra Cinque e Seicento,” Archivio storico lombardo 115 (1989): 91–148, also in Marriage, Property, and Succession, ed. Lloyd Bonfield (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992), 155–213; Letizia Arcangeli, Gentiluomini di Lombardia: Ricerche sull’aristocrazia padana mel Rinascimento (Milan: UNICOPLI, 2003); Gerard Delille, Famille et propriété dans le Royaume de Naples xv-xix siècle (Rome: École Française, 1985).Google Scholar

On censi, Polizzotto, Lorenzo, “I censi consegnativi bollari nella Firenze granducale: Storia di uno strumento di credito transcurato,” Archivio storico italiano 168 (2010): 263–323.Google Scholar

On women’s wills and other matters of testamentary practices, useful are Shona Kelly Wray, “Women, Testaments, and Notarial Culture in Bologna’s Contado (1348),” in Across the Religious Divide, 81–94; Lanaro, Paolo, “‘Familia est substantia’: la trasmissione dei beni nella famiglia patrizia,” in Edilizia privata nella Verona rinascimentale, ed. Lanaro, Paolo, Marini, Paolo, Varanini, Gian Maria (Milan: Electa, 2000), 98–117; Simona Ricci, “De hac vita transire”: la pratica testamentaria nel Valdarno superiore all’indomani della Peste Nera (Florence: Opus Libri, 1998); Gianna Lumia, “Mariti e mogli nei testamenti senesi di età moderna,” in Le ricchezze delle donne, 43–63; Linda Guzzetti, “Dowries in Fourteenth-Century Venice,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 430–73; Giovanna Petti Balbi, “Donna et domina: pratiche testamentarie e condizione femminile a Genova nel secolo xiv,” in Margini di libertà: testamenti femminili nel medioevo, ed. Maria Clara Rossi (Caselle di Sommacampagna: Cierre, 2010), 153–82; Paolo Paterni, “Le leggi della città, le leggi della famiglia (Lucca, xvi-xviii secc.),” in Le ricchezze delle donne, 65–78; Gianna Lumia, “‘Ut cippus magis conservetur’: La successione a Siena tra statuti e testamenti (secoli xii-xvii),” Archivio storico italiano 161 (2003): 3–51; Linda Guzzetti, “Le donne a Venezia nel secolo xiv: Uno studio sulla loro presenza nella società e nella famiglia,” Studi veneziani, n.s. 35 (1988): 15–88.Google Scholar

In addition to her Famille, genre, transmission à Venise, Bellavitis, Anna, Identité, mariage, mobilité sociale: Citoyennes et citoyens à Venise au xvie siècle (Rome: École Française, 2001); eadem, “Il testamento a Venezia nel xvi secolo: diritto, dovere e spazio di libertà,” in Famiglie: circolazione di beni, circuiti di affetti in età moderna, ed. Renata Ago and Benedetta Borello (Rome: Viella, 2008), 23–45 and her “Women, Family, and Property in Early Modern Venice,” in Across the Religious Divide, 175–90. On the south, Patrizia Mainoni, “Il potere di decidere: testamenti femminili pugliesi nei secoli xiii-xiv,” in “Con animo virile”: Donne e potere nel Mezzogiorno medievale (secoli xi-xv), ed. Patrizia Mainoni (Rome: Viella, 2010), 195–261. Also Giovanna Petti Balbi, “Donna et domina: pratiche testamentarie e condizione femminile a Genova nel secolo xiv,” in Margini di libertà, 153–82; Isabelle Chabot, “‘Io vo’ fare testamento’: le ultime volontà di mogli e di mariti, tra controllo e soggettività (secoli xiv-xv),” in ibid., 205–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Further information on the Viviani case can be found in Kuehn, Thomas, “‘Nemo mortalis cognitus vivit in evo’: Moral and Legal Conflicts in a Florentine Inheritance Case of 1442,” in The Moral World of the Law, ed. Coss, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 113–33.Google Scholar

A succinct treatment of the themes of this chapter is Najemy, John M., “Governments and Governance,” in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance, ed. Najemy, John M. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 184–207, which expands his treatment in John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), esp. 215–16; also Isabelle Chabot,”Le gouvernement des pères: l’État florentin et la famille (xiv^e-xv^e siècles), in Florence et la Toscane, xiv^e-xv^e siècles: les dynamiques d’un État italien, ed. Jean Bouttier, Sandro Landi, and Olivier Rouchon (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004), 241–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

On paternalism, see Jordan, Constance, “The Household and the State: Transformations in the Representation of an Analogy from Aristotle to James I,” Modern Language Quarterly 54 (1993): 307–26; Cesarina Casanova, Regine per caso: Donne al governo in età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014); Julia Adams, The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); Igor Mineo, “Stati e lignaggi in Italia nel tardo medioevo: qualche spunto comparativo,” Storica 2 (1995): 55–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The conditions of political exile are explored by Starn, Randolph, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Christine Shaw, The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Thomas Kuehn, “Family Solidarity in Exile and in Law: Alberti Lawsuits of the Early Quattrocento,” Speculum 78 (2003): 421–39. Reintegration of magnates has been masterfully studied for Florence by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Retour à la cité: les magnats de Florence, 1340–1440 (Paris: École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 2006). On the reintegration of political exiles and the example of the Pazzi of Florence, Osvaldo Cavallar, “I consulenti e il caso dei Pazzi: Consilia ai margini della in integrum restitutio,” in Legal Consulting in the Civil Law Tradition, ed. Mario Ascheri, Ingrid Baumgärtner, and Julius Kirshner (Berkeley: Robbins Collection, 1999), 319–62, and his “Il tiranno, i dubia del giudice, e i consilia dei giuristi,” Archivio storico italiano 155 (1979): 265–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Essential on the problems of citizenship and origo for women marrying to men of other communities is Kirshner, Julius, “Women Married Elsewhere: Gender and Citizenship in Italy,” in Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Schutte, Anne Jacobson, Kuehn, Thomas, and Seidel, Silvana menchi (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 117–49.Google Scholar

The legal situation of the Mezzogiorno is best laid out (again) by Romano, Andrea, Famiglia, successione e patrimonio familiare nell’Italia medievale e moderna (Turin: Giappichelli, 1994), along with his “Successioni mortis causa e patrimonio familiare nel Regno di Sicilia (secoli xiii-xvi),” in La transmission du patrimoine: Byzance et l’aire méditerranée, ed. Joelle Beaucamp and Gilbert Dagron (Paris: De Boccard, 1998), 211–45. Also E. Igor Mineo, Nobiltà di stato: Famiglie e identità aristocratiche nel tardo medioevo, La Sicilia (Rome: Donzelli, 2001). Important on succession in feudal law is Cristina Danusso, “La donna e i feudi: uno sguardo alla prassi successoria dell’Italia centro-settentrionale fra Tre e Quattrocento,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 65 (1992): 181–239. For Naples Giuliana Vitale, Élite burocratica e famiglia: dinamiche nobiliari e processi di costruzione statale nella Napoli angioino-aragonese (Naples: Liguori, 2003), and Gérard Delille, Famille et propriété dans le Royaume de Naples, xv^e-xix^e siècles (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1985); Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Il bisogno di eternità: i comportamenti aristocratici a Napoli in età moderna (Naples: Guida, 1988).Google Scholar

For Jewish family life and law, see Bonfil, Robert, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. Oldcorn, Anthony (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1994); Roni Weinstein, Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Italian Jews (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004); Karen Frank, “Jewish Women and Property in Fifteenth-Century Umbria,” in Across the Religious Divide, 95–108; Osvaldo Cavallar and Julius Kirshner, “Jews as Citizens in Late Medieval and Renaissance italy: The Case of Isacco da Pisa,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 269–318; Diego Quaglioni, “Gli ebrei nei consilia del Quattrocento veneto,” in Consilia im späten Mittelalter, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1995), 189–204; Daniel Bornstein, “Law, Religion, and Economics: Jewish Moneylenders in Christian Cortona,” in A Renaissance of Conflicts: Visions and Revisions of Law and Society in Italy and Spain, ed. John A. Marino and Thomas Kuehn (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 241–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Particularly useful for understanding sumptuary laws and their enforcement are: most importantly, Killerby, Catherine Kovesi, Sumptuary Lw in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002); also Ariel Toaff, “La prammatica degli ebrei e per gli ebrei,” in Disciplinare il lusso: la legislazione suntuaria in Italia e in Europe tra Medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (Rome: Carocci, 2003), 91–105; Franco Franceschi, “La normativa suntuaria nella storia economica,” in Disciplinare il lusso, 163–78; Mario Ascheri, “Tra storia giuridica e storia ‘costituzionale’: funzioni della legislazione suntuaria,” in Disciplinare il lusso, 199–211; Carole Collier Frick, “Picture Perfect: Female Performance and Social Liminality in the Florentine Renaissance City,” in Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women, ed. Joan E. Hartman and Adele Seeff (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 253–78, and her larger study, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes and Fine Clothing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 69–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

An enlightening presentation of fideicommissa and the general state of legal doctrine is Rossi, Giovanni, “I fedecommessi nella dottrina e nella prassi giuridica di ius commune tra xvi e xvii secolo,” in La famiglia nell’economia europea secc. xiii-xviii, atti della “Quarantesima settimana di studi,” 6–10 aprile 2008, ed. Cavaciocchi, Simonetta (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2009), 175–202. More broadly Luigi Lombardi, Saggio sul diritto giurisprudenziale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1967).Google Scholar

On insanity and patrimonial rationality, Mellyn, Elizabeth W., Mad Tuscans and Their Families: A History of Mental Disorder in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Carboni, Mauro, “Marriage Strategies and Oligarchy in Early Modern Bologna,” in Marriage in Premodern Europe: Italy and Beyond, ed. Murray, Jacqueline (Toronto” Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012), 239–56, gives an account of paternal management of children for one community; for which also see also Alessandro Pastore, “Rapporti familiari e pratica testamentaria nella Bologna del Seicento,” Studi storici 25 (1984): 153–68.Google Scholar

The notion of alienable possessions comes from anthropologist Weiner, Annette B., Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping – While Giving (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). A sparkling study of a succession of inventories and the various uses of a noble’s property in our period is Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and His Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012).Google Scholar

On parallel problems with entails in the Anglo-American common law tradition, a recent and illuminating take is Priest, Claire, “The End of Entail: Information, Institutions, and Slavery in the American Revolutionary Period,” Law and History Review 33 (2015): 277–319. On the writings of illuministi on inheritance, Roberto Bonini, “Ancora sui fedecommessi nel Settecento illuminista,” Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 71 (1998): 147–56. Also Marco Cavina, “Padre umanisti,” in Il Rinascimento giuridico in Francia: Diritti, politica e storia, ed. Giovanni Rossi (Rome: Viella, 2008), 313–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The notion of an inheritance crisis is set forth by Gavitt, Philip, Gender, Honor, and Charity in Late Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). The role of women is traced by Maura Palazzi, “Work and Residence of Women Alone in the Context of a Patrilineal System (Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Northern Italy),” in Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History, ed. Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Brigitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 215–30. In general, Giovanna Benadusi, “Social Relations,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. Michael Wyatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 338–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Castiglione, Caroline’s contributions are: “Accounting for Affection: Battles between Aristocratic Mothers and Sons in Eighteenth-Century Rome,” Journal of Family History 25 (2000): 405–31; “Mater Litigans: Mothering Resistance in Early Eighteenth-Century Rome,” Historical Reflections 35 (2009): 6–27; “When a Women Takes Charge: Marie-Anne de la Trémoille and the End of the Patrimony of the Dukes of Bracciano,” Viator 39, no. 2 (2008): 363–80. These and other essays can now be found in her Accounting for Affection: Mothering and Politics in Early Modern Rome (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Bizzochi, Roberto, “La dissoluzione di un clan familiare: i Buondelmonte di Firenze nei secoli xv e xvi,” Archivio storico italiano 140 (9182): 3–45, discusses the decline of one Florentine lineage.Google Scholar

The position taken by Banfield, Edward C., The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glenoce: Free Press, 1958), has to be read against the criticisms of Frank Cancian, “The Southern Italian Peasant: World View and Political Behavior,” Anthropological Quarterly 34 (1961): 1–18; Sydel Silverman, “Agricultural Organization, Social Structure, and Values in Italy: Amoral Familism Reconsidered,” American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 1–20. Less inclined to accept the notion of amoral familism are J. Davis, “Morals and Backwardness,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 12 (1970): 340–53; also William Muraskin, “The Moral Basis of a Backward Sociologist: Edward Banfield, the Italians, and the Italian Americans,” American Journal of Sociology 79 (1974): 1484–96. Banfield’s ideas were picked up by Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); but see also the essays in Nicholas A. Eckstein and Nicholas Terpstra, eds, Sociability and Its Discontents: Civil Society, Social Capital, and their Alternatives in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009). John Hooper, The Italians (New York: Viking Penguin, 2015), 182–85, also refers to Banfield. On the condoning of deceit in transactions, mainly by Guicciardini, see Thomas Kuehn, “Multorum Fraudibus Occurrere: Legislation and Jurisprudential Interpretation Concerning Fraud and Liability in Quattrocento Florence,” Studi senesi 93 (1981): 309–50. The concluding comments about personhood rely on Janet Carsten, After Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).Google Scholar