Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:14:13.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Room for tension: urban life in Apulia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Patricia Skinner
Get access

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Articles
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 66 , November 1998 , pp. 159 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I am grateful to the British Academy for the Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, and to the British School at Rome for two Grants in Aid of Research, which have enabled me to pursue this research. An earlier version of this paper was first read at the University of Birmingham conference, ‘Houses and Households in Towns’ in March 1994, where it benefited from the acute comments of those present. It has since profited from the valued criticism of Chris Wickham and Graham Loud; any errors, of course, remain mine.

References

2 Arthur, P., ‘Naples: a case of urban survival in the middle ages?’, Melanges de l'École Française de Rome — Moyen Âge-Temps Modernes 103 (1991/1992), 759–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, P., ‘Urban communities in medieval Naples’, Papers of the British School at Rome 62 (1994), 279–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, examines some of the evidence for tenth-century groupings in that city, including housing and family issues.

3 P. Delogu, Mito di una città meridionale (Naples, 1977); Taviani-Carozzi, H., La principauté lombarde de Salerne, 2 vols (Rome, 1991)Google Scholar.

4 M. del Treppo and A. Leone, Amalfi medioevale (Naples, 1977); Gargano, G., La cittá davanti il mare (Amalfi, 1992)Google Scholar; Schwarz, U., Amalfi nel medioevo (Amalfi, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 Jean-Marie Martin's monumental study, La Pouille du Vle au XIIe siècle (Rome, 1993)Google Scholar, is now the first point of reference for the social and economic history of the region in this period; on urban growth, see p. 241 onwards.

6 Eleventh century: Bordone, R., ‘La citta nel X secolo’, in Settimane di studio 38Google Scholar, Il secolo di ferro: mito e realtà del secolo X (Spoleto, 1991), 550Google Scholar; twelfth century: Matthew, D., The Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Cambridge, 1992), 44–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Martin, Pouille (above, n. 5), 768, characterized the first three decades of the twelfth century as particularly bitter; later in the twelfth century, pp. 826–7, some civic autonomy was visible.

8 I hope to examine this issue in a study of the commercial life of the region. The amount of contacts between towns is no surprise given their proximity: over 50 transactions occur in the tenth and eleventh centuries alone. Falkenhausen, V. von, ‘L'Italia meridionale bizantina (IX–XI secolo)’, in Cavallo, G. et al. , I Bizantini in Italia (Milan, 1982), 47–136Google Scholar, at p. 114, cited the cooperative venture of sailors from a number of towns to bring the relics of Saint Nicolas back from Mira in 1087 as an example of this closeness.

9 The best example I have found so far is an early group of documents recording the activi-ties of the inhabitants of the rural settlement of Castellana in Apulia, drawn up in nearby Conversano and Monopoli — Codice Diplomatico Pugliese XX, Le pergamene di Conversano, ed. G. Coniglio (Bari, 1975) (hereafter CDPXX), documents 2,16 and 26. It says something about the pull of urban centres, however, that the documents were not drawn up in Castellana.

10 It is important to stress the difference between what the documents, written by a third party according to legal formulae, tell us and the ‘real’ experiences of the people they record. It is a case of ‘looking behind the text’, as Gurevich has put it, to see the hidden socio-historical reality: Gurevich, A., Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992), 8Google Scholar. Thus, although the documents do not explicitly reveal a conscious concept of household, the evidence they furnish suggests that it did exist, as we shall see.

11 On southern Italian wills, see Skinner, P., ‘Women, wills and wealth in medieval southern Italy’, Early Medieval Europe 2 (1993), 133–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Skinner, ‘Urban communities’ (above, n. 2); Skinner, P., Family Power in Southern Italy: the Duchy of Gaeta and its Neighbours, 850–1139 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Toubert, P., Les structures du Latium médiéval (Bibliothèque des Ecoles Françaises d'Athenes et de Rome 221), 2 vols (Rome, 1973)Google Scholar.

13 C[odice] D[iplomatico] B[arese] VIII, Le pergamene di Barletta, Archivio capitolare (897–1285), ed. F. Nitti di Vito (Bari, 1914), documents 102/3 (1164) and 112 (1169).

14 In this respect the Apulian and Campanian towns differ from Rome, where isolated houses were still common in the twelfth century. Only in the thirteenth do joined houses begin to feature heavily in the Roman documents: Hubert, E., Espace urbain et habitat à Rome du Xe siècle à la fin du Xllle siècle (Collection de l'École Française de Rome 135/Nuova studi storici 7) (Rome, 1990), 166Google Scholar. The city was, of course, very much larger in area, and its previous history makes it a rather exceptional case.

15 Examples of divisions: CDB TV, Le pergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: periodo greco, ed. Nitti, F. (Bari, 1900)Google Scholar, documents 9 (1005), 12 (1012) and 22 (1033).

16 Trinchera, F., Syllabus Graecarum Membranarum (Naples, 1865)Google Scholar, document 25.

17 Amalfitan houses are documented as having two storeys in 946: Il Codice Ferris I (Amalfi, 1985)Google Scholar, ed. J. Mazzoleni and R. Orefice, document 43, but later on seem to have become much higher, owing to the limited room for expansion available in the city. Gargano, G., ‘La casa medievale amalfitana’, Rassegna del Centro di cultura e storia amalfitana 9, no. 7 (1989), 113–28Google Scholar, cited twelfth-century evidence for multi-storey buildings.

18 A very early example is the sale of two, two-storey houses in Bari by a certain Gualprandus in 942, CDB IV, document fr. 1; Bari is always likely to have been the most urbanized of all the Apulian cities.

19 CDB I, ed. Nitto, G.B. and Nitti, F. (Bari, 1897)Google Scholar, document 43.

20 CDB I, document 48.

21 CDB I, document 61.

22 See below, p. 169 and Fig. 1 for a preliminary attempt at locating viciniae or neighbour-hoods.

23 ‘… ad calcem bene earn coperire faciamus et earn de tabolis frassenegnis unde aliam domum meam ubi ipse sire Felix habitat est tabulatam intabolemus bene.’

24 CDB V, Lepergamene di S. Nicola di Bari: periodo normanno, ed. Nitti, F. (Bari, 1902)Google Scholar, document 152.

25 von Falkenhausen, ‘L'ltalia meridionale’ (above, n. 8), 115. Some proprietors were less willing to mend their damaged properties: in 1167 Savina of Bari sold the house which she had inherited because it was ruined and her husband was unwilling to repair it, CDB I, document 50.

26 Nevertheless, William's actions may have done the residents a favour: even before 1156, there is evidence for decay in the urban fabric. In 1131, for example, the archbishop disposed of ‘an old, ruined house’ in the Alfaranitis district: CDB1 I, document 43.

27 CDB I, document 53.

28 CDB I, document2.

29 CDB I, document 53.

30 CDB IV, document 17. Ten years later, document 24, Porfiro was accused by a relative of not contributing to a communal piece of building work.

31 CDBV, document 33. The property had previously been sold by a group of men and women including ‘Alfarana’ — it is tempting to speculate that this is the widow of Russo discussed below, p. 171.

32 CDB V, document 67. The alleyway may have been similar to those recorded in contemporary Milanese legislation, running between houses from the front to the back and acting as places for the disposal of waste water and sewage, which was then swept out into the street: Bocchi, F., ‘Regulation of the urban environment by the Italian communes from the twelfth to the fourteenth century’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 72 (3) (1990), 63–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 CDB IV, document 23. The 30 years he was given to carry out the work seems generous to say the least!

34 CDB VIII, document 25.

35 CDB III, Le pergamene della Cattedrale di Terlizzi (971–1300), ed. Caraballese, F. (Bari, 1899)Google Scholar, document 105. Cf. Neapolitan examples from the previous century: Skinner, ‘Urban communities’ (above, n. 2).

36 CDB V, document 65: ‘quam alius emere bolebat unde eis maximum detrimentum eveniebat’. The buyer was Brunus son of Nicolai, heir of the Alfaraniti dynasty.

37 The same tendency in Rome has been noted by Hubert, Espace Urbain (above, n. 14), 244.

38 CDB, V document 84. This document is interesting for the rare reference to a street identity — the vie publie que vadit ad petram malam — and for its measurement of a foot marked on the charter itself.

39 CDB III, document 57.

40 CDB III, document 67.

41 Regesto di S. Leonardo di Siponto, ed. Camobreco, F. (Rome, 1913)Google Scholar, document 104.

42 This may indicate that Roman law on the emancipation of sons was becoming influential: Cortese, E., ‘Il processo longobardo tra romanità e germanesimo’, Settimane di studio 42Google Scholar, La giustuia nell'alto medioevo (secoli V–VIII) (Spoleto, 1995), 621–47Google Scholar, although the handing-over of launegild, a feature of the 1148 example (see below), testifies to the blurring of the distinction between Roman and Lombard laws.

43 CDB, V document 2.

44 CDB, I document 47; CDB V, document 109.

45 Examples include CDB IV, documents 18 and 36; CDB V, document 87 (1136); CDB IX, I documenti storici di Corato, ed. G. Beltrani (Bari, 1923), document 6; and CDB X, Le pergamene di Barletta di R. Archivio di Napoli, ed. Candida, R. Filangieri di (Bari, 1927)Google Scholar, document 4.

46 CDB I, document 51. The document is also interesting for the reported speech it preserves — Maior, on the doorstep of Rao's house, ‘said to us … “Hear and be my witnesses”’ (dixit nobis … audite et testes mihi estote).

47 Though as we have seen in the Siponto case above, a dowry house might, exceptionally, be provided.

48 For example, CDB III, documents 62 (1149): wife not to take another husband; 94 (1164): wife lectum meum caste custodierit; 135/6 (1183): wife lectum communem servaverit, CDB V, documents 36 (1103): wife to keep bed chaste; 100 (1146): wife not to remarry. See below, p. 172, for a similar example from the Alfaraniti family in Bari. The aversion to remarriage is not confined to Lombard documents. A will from Ravello in Campania, made by Urso son of Leo and discussed below (p. 168 and n. 57) also contains a clause allowing his wife certain controls over his estate so long as voluerit custodire ipsum lectum meum. In this case, Urso may have picked up the custom from Apulia, where he had strong connections: no other document outside the Lombard parts of southern Italy contains such a clause. In Rome, however, the animosity towards remarriage appears again: widows were permitted to stay in their house only so long as they did not take another husband or deprive the heirs of their dowry: Hubert, Espace Urbain (above, n. 14), 240. On opposition to remarriage in Lazio generally, see Toubert, , Structures (above, n. 12), vol. II, 777–9Google Scholar. Cf. Skinner, P., Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy (Leiden, 1997), 112–15Google Scholar, for examples of remarriage taking place.

49 Martin, Pouille (above, n. 5), 540–3, discussed the role of the mundoald and provided bibliography.

50 CDB IV, document 33.

51 C[odice] D[iplomatico] A[malfitano, ed. Candida, R. Filangieri di, I (Naples, 1917)], document 190Google Scholar.

52 CDA 203.

53 Documenti per servire alia storia di Sicilia, serie 1, Diplomatica, XXV: Le più antiche carte dell'Archivio capitolare di Agrigento, ed. Collura, P. (Palermo, 1961)Google Scholar, document 26 (1154/71).

54 ‘Elenco delle pergamene già appartenenti alla famiglia Fusco ed ora acquistate dalla Società Napoletana di Storia Patria’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane (1883), 776, document 24. Cf. King Liutprand's law 29 on women who wish to sell their property, which stated that they had to declare their wish to do so before a judge: The Lombard Laws, trans. Drew, K.F. (Philadelphia, 1973), 158Google Scholar.

55 Skinner, ‘Women, wills and wealth’ (above, n. 11), 142–3.

56 A useful parallel occurs in a Neapolitan will of 1076, in which Maria Salbaconsa made bequests to several Neapolitan churches, seven servants or friends and Maria's nephews: Monumenta ad Neapolitani Ducatus Historiam Pertinentia, ed. Capasso, B., II, i (Naples, 1885)Google Scholar, document 523.

57 Le pergamene degli archivi vescovili di Amalfi e Ravello II, ed. Salvati, C. (Naples, 1974)Google Scholar, document 73.

58 The Amalfitans were active in trade between the Balkan coast and Apulia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and lived both in Durazzo and the Apulian cities: Abulafia, D., ‘Southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia in the medieval mediterranean economy’, in Abulafia, D., Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean, 1100–1500 (London, 1993), 12Google Scholar; see also Stuard, S. Mosher, ‘“To town to serve”; urban domestic slavery in medieval Ragusa’, in Hanawalt, B.A. (ed.), Women and Work in Pre-Industrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), 40Google Scholar and 47 on the slave trade from the Slav coast and the role of the Italians in it; also, by the same author, ‘Ancillary evidence for the decline of medieval slavery’, Past and Present 149 (1995), 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 CDB IV, document 27. I have discussed the case in ‘Women, wills and wealth’ (above, n. 11).

60 This is the impression conveyed by the Barese charters. Musca, G., ‘L'espansione di Bari nel secolo XI’, Quaderni medievali 2 (1976), 39–72Google Scholar, suggested that the origins of the rapid growth lay even earlier. The urbanization of Bari has more recently received attention from Iorio, R., ‘L'urbanistica medievale di Bari tra X e XIII secolo’, Archivio storico pugliese 48 (1995), 17–73Google Scholar. This draws heavily on Musca's article and is presented, p. 17, as ‘puramente orientative di primo approccio’. It does, however, include narrative primary sources in its survey: the present study is restricted to the charter evidence. See also Burman, E., Emperor to Emperor: Italy before the Renaissance (London, 1991), 102–26Google Scholar on ‘Byzantine Bari’.

61 Sometimes the church's own location was specified further, as in the case of Saint Mary ‘above the sea gate’ and Saint George ‘above the port’ in 1059, CDB I, document 24.

62 For example, the regto of the church of Saint Maria Deipara, mentioned in 1032, Trinchera, Syllabus, document 25. This church may have been the antecedent of the modern church of Vallisa, although Iorio, ‘L'urbanistica’ (above, n. 60), 89, has it as the old cathedral beneath the present building.

13 CDB V, document 1. The wall had been used as a location earlier in 1049, CDB I, document 23.

64 CDB I, document 30.

65 CDB V, fragments 1–2. Two stalls in the market where greenstuff (foliameri) was sold are mentioned in 1104 (CDB V, document 39); the ambiguity of ubi in this document, means it is unclear whether the same or a different market is meant.

66 Iudeca: CDB V, document 52 (1108); prison: CDB V, documents 67 (1122) and 99 (1146); Saint Leo: CDBV, document 60 (1113); Saint Theodore: CDB v, documents 84 (1135) and 159 (1191); bishopric (episcopi): CDB I, document 48 (1151); alfaraniti: CDB I, documents 40 (1119) and 43 (1131).

67 Martin, Pouitte (above, n. 5), 746, commented on the lack of information regarding Grimoald's origins. Von Falkenhausen, ‘L'Italia meridionale’ (above, n. 8), 98, cited the lack of surnames as a major difficulty in tracing families.

68 There are only two instances of men named Alfaranus in the eleventh-century documentation, neither owning property nor giving a patronym. The relative wealth and status of the two Alfaranas discussed, therefore, increases the likelihood that they were the originators of the surname.

69 Skinner, ‘Women, wills and wealth’ (above, n. 11); Skinner, P. ‘Disputes and disparity: women at court in medieval southern Italy’, Reading Medieval Studies 22 (1996), 85–105Google Scholar.

70 Trinchera, Syllabus, document 18; a later process at Troia in 1024, CDPXXI, Les Chartes de Troia, ed.Martin, J.-M. (Bari, 1976)Google Scholar, document 1, is a forgery: Martin, Pauille (above, n. 5), 259 n.13.

71 CDB: IV document 36 records the engagement in 1057, document 40 the marriage.

72 CDB IV, document 42: see my discussion of the contents in ‘Women, wills and wealth’ (above, n. 11).

73 CDB IV, document 43.

74 In recreating the Alfaraniti, I have made use of two common patterns in naming among southern Italian aristocratic families: the naming of children after grandfathers (though here grandmothers might have been as important if not more so) and after uncles.

75 CDB IV, fragment 8.

76 CDB I, document 21.

77 Cf. on this point the will of Peter the judge of 1019, quoted in the dispute document of the older Alfarana in 1039, and making provision only for his wife and unmarried daughters: CDB IV, document 27.

78 CDB V, document 1; a property of one Disigius son of Amorusi is mentioned as well, as is property held through mortise of the palace of Grimoald.

79 Von Falkenhausen, ‘L'ltalia meridionale’ (above, n. 8), 115, linked Grimoald with John and Bisantius, but did not posit any firm relationship.

80 A connection made stronger if we accept the presence of the name ‘Grimoald’ earlier in the family tree.

81 CDB I, document 35.

82 CDB I, document 35. Brunus Nicolai de Argiro subsequently appears in 1119 buying an olive grove outside the city: CDB V, document 65.

83 Von Falkenhausen, ‘L'ltalia meridionale’ (above, n. 8), 77–8 and 121–3, outlined his career.

84 CDB V, document 6.

85 Duke Roger conceded ‘totam et integram curtem que vocatur de catapano’ for the building in 1087, CDB I, document 32; archbishop Elias had begun building by 1089, CDB I, document 34.

86 See above, p. 162. Significantly, the Alfaraniti are not documented with that surname between Grimoald's fall and 1189.

87 Martin, Pouille (above, n. 5), 540, rather overstated the prevalence of marriage over informal unions — the latter are of course less likely to reach the documentary record unless, like Ursus, wills include provision for the natural children.

88 I currently have on database all the documented women of Apulia up to 1200, and all the men to 1100. This has provided a valuable resource for the present study, and I owe a debt of thanks to Irene Skinner for her unstinting help in its compilation. A database of men in the twelfth century is currently in preparation.

89 Second only to Maria and its variant forms.