3 - The Culture of Vendetta

Summary

High rates of interpersonal violence in Renaissance Italy were not signs of backwardness, requiring repression in order for the conditions of modernity to be set: quite the opposite. Italy, the most economically advanced and urbanised region of Europe, was the first to experience the negative consequences of social mobility and social differentiation. Notaries, accountants and lawyers were not modern bureaucratic functionaries. In order to be accepted as gentlemen they also had to act like gentlemen. The creation of a more amorphous social elite forced Italians to rethink the rules regulating social conduct, codifying the laws of civility and the duel, and elaborating the art of peacemaking. None of this stopped the violence however. Renaissance ideals of glory triumphed over the pious trappings of chivalry. Fighting was liberating, permitting any man, whatever his status, to win fame. Duelling became endemic, a corollary to and consequence of vendetta. The rest of this chapter outlines the contours of the new Renaissance masculine culture.