Abstract
Early modern Italy had a reputation for violence and travellers’s accounts are now being confirmed by a young generation of scholars working in Italy's voluminous judicial archives. Most of this research has concentrated on the North and Centre of Italy. In contrast, the Kingdom of Naples, the largest state in the peninsula, has been neglected, in part because of the obstacles faced by the lone researcher. The task of mastering the Kingdom's patchwork of jurisdictions is a formidable one and made considerably more difficult by the destruction of the records of the central criminal court, the Vicaria, during the Second World War. Scholars will therefore welcome Stephen Cummins’ determination and tenacity in consulting a large array of different manuscript sources, including those generated by the central administration, by the ecclesiastical authorities both locally and in Rome, and crucially, the processi criminali produced by the Regia Audienza of Capitanata and the Molise for the seventeenth century. Manuscript sources are supplemented by the large number of diaries and chronicles that survive for the region. This diverse source base is interpreted through the lens of recent scholarship which sees the problem of violence as rooted in political and social relationships. Enmity was at the heart of these relationships. It was a phenomenon widely discussed (6–10) by contemporaries. Central to the experience of communal life and social relations, its language and idioms permeated the legal system. Enmity was identified by Neapolitans as a challenge to order and justice, but it also offered mediators and arbitrators a means to enhance their charismatic authority by reconciling enemies. In five economically and clearly written chapters, which make light of often difficult and disparate sources, Cummins accounts for why ‘enmity sprawled across early modern society and thought’ and points to why, unlike other Italian states, the Kingdom of Naples found itself unable to extract itself from the labyrinth. Chapter 1 demonstrates that enmity was considerably worsened by the failures of Spanish administration. From the 1620s there were escalating cycles of violence which were directly attributable to the fiscal demands placed on the Kingdom and the indulgence displayed towards corrupt and self-serving aristocrats. The venal nature of the Spanish state was characterized by its failure to dispense impartial and swift justice. This does not mean that this was a lawless society, as Chapter 2 makes clear. Rather the law was a labyrinth, whose complexity and legalism were both costly and an obstacle to justice. It was subject to political interference and characterized by deal-making and negotiation, leading to what contemporary critics saw as ‘an abominable traffic’ in the law. Chapter 3 offers a clear and succinct analysis of the practice of early modern politics, the careful management of friends and enemies, a reminder to those who equate politics with events that the political is an existential category. The Kingdom was a confusion of overlapping and competing grids of urban, feudal and ecclesiastical power that generated enmities, which prevented the development of cohesive opposition to Spanish rule, while at the same time permitting the viceroy to intervene and arbitrate in the localities. Italy's banditry problem was one reason why the peninsula differed from the rest of Europe. Cummins (Chapter 4) shows that bandits were not liminal figures. They were connected to both the state, local elites and communities, and were often indistinguishable from soldiers, whom they resembled. Through a study of Domenico Allegretti and his gang, we see the entrepreneurial side of violence and the uses that bandits had for local people. Cummins does not neglect the emotional aspect of enmity. Reconciling enemies was central to the Jesuit Missions, whose theatrical ceremonies were designed to manufacture certain emotional dispositions in the actors. The final chapter explores the tsunami of violence unleashed by the 1647 Revolution and locates the difficulty of pacification in the complexity of factions and the collapse of social trust. Remission and pardon were the only real solutions to the crisis, but Cummins is aware that peace was a coercive practice that left justice wanting. Otherwise, the widespread resort to outlawry swelled the ranks of the bandit gangs. All in all, this is a significant contribution to our understanding of why the Kingdom of Naples began to diverge from Northern Italy, but it also has wider implications for our understanding of how the political shapes social and affective relations. There is more to be done. Cummins is to be congratulated for showing the extent to which enmity continued to shape Neapolitan society at the end of the seventeenth century and the ways in which it shaped the Neapolitan Enlightenment.