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Governor and government in sixteenth-century Rome*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2011

Miles Pattenden
Miles Pattenden
Affiliation:
Department of History, University College Cork, Tyrconnell, Off College Road, Cork, [email protected]
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 77 , November 2009 , pp. 257 - 272
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2009

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References

1 The most complete breakdown to date of who was prosecuted in the court, short of reading the inventories in Rome, is Blastenbrei, P., ‘Zur Arbeitsweise der Römische Kriminalgerichte im späteren 16. Jahrhundert’, Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 71 (1991), 425–81Google Scholar. The process against Philip II of Spain (fragmentary) is ASR, TCrGR, Processi 22 and 23. There is also a brief guide to the archival holdings of the court: Barrovecchio, M.L., Il tribunale criminale del governatore di Roma (1512–1809) (Rome, 1981).Google Scholar

2 See Cohen, T. and Cohen, E., Words and Deeds in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Papal Magistrates (Toronto, 1993)Google Scholar; Cohen, E., ‘Honour and gender in the streets of early modern Rome’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 22 (1992), 597–625CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, E., ‘The trials of Artemesia Gentileschi: a rape as history’, Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2000), 47–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, T., Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, T., ‘The case of the mysterious coil of rope: street life and Jewish persona in Rome in the middle of the sixteenth century’, Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988), 209–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, T., ‘Three forms of jeopardy: honor, pain and truth-telling in a sixteenth-century Italian courtroom’, Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998), 975–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Blastenbrei, ‘Zur Arbeitsweise der Römische Kriminalgerichte’ (above, n. 1); Blastenbrei, P., Kriminalität im Rom, 1560–85 (Rome, 1995)Google Scholar; Blastenbrei, P., ‘I romani tra violenza e giustizia nel tardo Cinquecento’, Roma moderna e contemporanea 5 (1997), 67–80Google Scholar; Blastenbrei, P., ‘Violence, arms and criminal justice in papal Rome, 1560–1600’, Renaissance Studies 20 (2008), 68–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Spizzichino, J., Magistrature dello Stato Pontificio (476–1870) (Lanciano, 1930), 380–3Google Scholar; Del Re, N., Monsignor Governatore di Roma (Rome, 1972).Google Scholar There are some remarks in Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3) , and Fosi, I., La società violenta: il banditismo nello Stato Pontificio nella seconda metà del Cinquecento (Rome, 1985), 39–44.Google Scholar

5 Delumeau, J., Vie économique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris, 1957–1959)Google Scholar; Volpi, R., Le regioni introvabili: centralizzazione e regionalizzazione dello Stato Pontificio (Rome, 1983)Google Scholar; Prodi, P., The Papal Prince, One Body and Two Souls: the Papal Monarchy in Early Modem Europe, trans. S., Haskins (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar; Visceglia, M.A. (ed.), Signori, patrizi, cavalieri in Italia centro-meridionale nell'età moderna (Rome/Bari, 1992).Google Scholar By contrast, studies that have emphasized local resistance include Caravale, M. and Caraccioli, A., Lo Stato Pontificio da Martino Va Pio IX (Storia d'Italia 14) (Turin, 1978).Google Scholar

6 See, in particular, the work of Fosi, I., La giustizia del papa: sudditi e tribunali nello Stato Pontificio in età moderna (Rome, 2007)Google Scholar; Fosi, I., ‘Sudditi, tribunali e giudici nella Roma barocca’, Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 5 (1997), 19–40Google Scholar; Fosi, I., ‘Justice and its image: political propaganda and judicial reality in the pontificate of Sixtus V’, Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993), 75–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCamerano, A., ‘Senatore e Governatore. Due tribunali a confronto nella Roma del XVI secolo’, Roma Moderna e Contemporanea 5 (1997), 41–66Google Scholar; Di Sivo, M., ‘Per via di giustizia. Sul processo penale a Roma tra XVI e XIX secolo’, Rivista Storica del Lazio 9 (2001), 13–35.Google Scholar This theme was noticed also by Blastenbrei in the analytic chapters of Kriminalität (above, n. 3).

7 Fosi, La società violenta (above, n. 4); Braudel, F., ‘Misere et banditisme’, Annales. Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 2 (1947), 129–43Google Scholar; Ceglie, S. ‘“Di folta selva per le vie coperte’: dai banditi del Cinquecento ai briganti dell'Ottocento’, Rivista Storica del Lazio 9 (2001), 77–91.Google Scholar

8 Nussdorfer, L., Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton, 1992).Google Scholar

9 The most useful description of the criminal courts in the city is in Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), 8–24. See also: Fosi, I., ‘Il governo della giustizia’, in G., Ciucci (ed.), Roma moderna: storia di Roma dall'antichità a oggi (Rome, 2002), 115–4Google Scholar. ; Di Sivo, ‘Per via di giustizia’ (above, n. 6), 16–20. There are also various monographs concerning the individual tribunals, including Del Re, N., La Curia capitolina e tre altri antichi organi giudiziari romani (fourth edition) (Rome, 1993).Google Scholar Understandably, given the distribution of surviving documentation, studies of the Vicar tend to focus on the period after 1600: Caselli, V., Il Vicariato di Rome. Note storico-giuridico (Rome, 1957)Google Scholar; Micheletti, D., Aspetti di riforma post-tridentina a Roma. ‘Il cardinale Vicario’. Testimonianze di archivio relative alla sua giurisdizione e al suo governo (1558–1714) (Rome, 1988).Google Scholar The treatise about his office by the eighteenth-century incumbent Niccolò Antonio Cuggiò has been edited recently, Della giurisdizione e prerogative del Vicario di Roma, ed. D. Rocciolo (Rome, 2004).

10 Rè, C. (ed.), Statuti della città di Roma del secolo XIV (Rome, 1883).Google Scholar

11 See the inventory for the Tribunale del Senatore in the ASR for details of the surviving material (before 1560 there being only investigazioni and a few querele). There is also a hitherto unnoticed registro d'atti from 1479–80 filed in Camerae I, Taxae Maleficiorum 1749.

12 Aside from the specific documents cited below, there is an inventory of legislative documents relating to the Governor and his court and to the temporal government of the Papal States: Regesti di bandi, editti, notificazioni e provvedimeti diversi relativi alla città di Roma ed allo Stato Pontificio (Rome, 1920–58), especially vols I–II.

13 See the letter of Eugene IV to Giuliano Ricci, Archbishop of Pisa, 17 January 1436, in which the Pope appointed him ‘almae Urbis Romae eiusque Comitatus, et districtus pro nobis et Romana ecclesia in temporalibus Gubernator’. Theiner, A., Codex Diplomaticus Dominii Temporalis S. Sedis III (Rome, 1862), 336–7Google Scholar.

14 ‘Capitula declaratoria iurisdictionum Curiarum Urbis’ (1473), in Fenzonio, G.B., Annotationes in Statuta sive Jus Municipale Romanae Urbis (Rome, 1636), 669.Google Scholar Confirmed by Leo X, ‘Etsi pro cunctarum’ (1514), in Tomassetti, A. (ed.), Bullarum Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum Taurinensis editio, 24 vols (Turin, 1857–1872), V, 614–17Google Scholar.

15 Del Re, Monsignor Governatore (above, n. 4), 17–33.

16 For brief biographies of the sixteenth-century Governors, see Del Re, Monsignor Governatore (above, n. 4), 70–97.

17 The two offices were separated briefly under Sixtus V, which resulted in the Governor temporarily losing his civil jurisdiction: ‘Cum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae’ (1590), in Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), IX, 155–8 (and it was restored by Paul V with the bull ‘Universi agri’ (1612), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum, XII, 58–111). See Del Re, Monsignor Governatore (above, n. 4), 31–3; Felici, G., La Camera Apostolica (Rome, 1940), 99–100.Google Scholar

18 Del Re, Monsignor Governatore (above, n. 4), 16–17.

19 ‘Cum Apostolica Sedes’ (1570), Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), VII, 847–8.

20 Statuta Almae Urbis Romae Auctoritate S.D.N. Gregoru Papae XIII Pont. Max. (Rome, 1580).

21 There is already a substantial general literature on petitions and appeals to the Pope in the early modern period. See Niccoli, O., Perdonare: idee, pratiche, rituali in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome, 2007)Google Scholar; Fosi, I., “‘Beatissimo Padre’: suppliche e lettere nella Roma barocca’, in C., Nubola and A., Würgler, Suppliche e gravamina: politica, amministrazione, giustizia in Europa (secoli XIV-XVIII) (Bologna, 2002), 343–65Google Scholar.

22 This function was specified by the bull ‘Cum ab ipso’ (1562), Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), VII, 214–24, esp. pp. 219–21. By the 1560s the Procuratore Fiscale regularly had up to four deputies judging from the names in the registers of acts held by the court.

23 There are few records of the number of men retained by the Governor in the sixteenth century. On the role of the Bargello and the sbirri, see Hughes, S. ‘Fear and loathing in Bologna and Rome. The papal police in perspective’, Journal of Social History 21 (1987), 97–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blastenbrei, P., ‘La quadratura del cerchio. Il bargello di Roma nella crisi sociale tardocinquecentesca’, Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica 1 (1994), 5–37Google Scholar. A general description of the court and its personnel was not compiled until De Luca, G.B., Il dottore volgare, overo, Il compendio di tutta la legge civile, canonica, feudale, e municipale: nelle cose più ricevute in pratica (Rome, 1673), vol. 9, book XV, 296–302Google Scholar. The records of the sbini ire preserved only from 1596, ASR, Camerae II, Birri (memorie diverse), although it would be reasonable to presume that these figures represent an increase on previous levels. The account books for 1515–19 show regular payments to an executioner of 3 ducats per month, ASR, Camerae I, Taxae Maleficiorum 1748.

24 ‘Ad fidei constantiam’ (1550), in Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), VI, 409–12.

25 See the papal bulls ‘Cum nobis constet (1535) and ‘Cupientes, pro communi’ (1561), in Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), VI, 194, and VII, 95–7.

26 ‘Ad eximiae devotionis’ (1561), in Tomassetti (ed.), Bullarum Romanorum Pontificum (above, n. 14), VII, 128–34, esp. pp. 131–2.

27 See the comments of Dermot Fenlon in his review of Prodi's Papal Prince (above, n. 5): Fenlon, D., The Scottish Journal of Theology 44 (1991), 120–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Weber, C. (ed.), Legati e Governatori dello Stato Pontificio (1550–1809) (Rome, 1994), 35.Google Scholar Other studies have shown the incentives and willingness for local élites to work with church officials (Governors or Bishops) and, in the case of Carlo Borromeo, to use them to consolidate a position within local polities, even outside the boundaries of the Papal States. See Fontaine, M.M., ‘For the good of the city: the Bishop and the ruling élite in Tridentine Modena’, Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997), 29–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, A.D., ‘Relations between Church and State: Catholic developments in Spanish-ruled Italy of the Counter-Reformation’, History of European Ideas 9 (1988), 385–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Borromeo, A., ‘Archbishop Carlo Borromeo and the ecclesiastical policy of Philip II in the State of Milan’, in J.M., Headley and J.B., Tomaro (eds), San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (Toronto, 1988), 85–111.Google Scholar

29 Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), 72–280.

30 For examples, ASR, TCrGR, Investigazioni 71, 23r; Processi 160 no. 7.

31 There are several instances of Jews paying fines to the Senator: see, for example, Camerae I, Taxae Maleficiorum 1747, fol. 2, 30v-30r, 32v, 33v; Taxae Maleficiorum 1749, fol. 12, 3r.

32 See Inventory 280 in the ASR. Paul's treason and rebellion trials are preserved as TCrGR, Processi 23. These trials often had complex political implications: see Aubert, A., Paolo IV: politica, inquisizione e storiografia, second edition (Florence, 1999).Google Scholar During the 1590s there was a substantial increase in a range of charges relating to abuse of office or failure to recognize authority. See, for example, ASR, TCrGR, Processi 263 no. 17, 299 no. 27, 300 no. 17, 304 no. 21. Also for ‘Violenza al nome della Curia’, 280 no. 7, 289 no. 5, 290 no. 21, 294 no. 2, 296 no. 14, for example.

33 Such instances can be glimpsed occasionally in the registri d'atti, as, for example, ASR, TCrGR, Registri d'atti, Manuali 17, 99v, 103v. Atti di Cancellería 86, fol. 13(R), 377, 379, 387 are three motu proprios against the former Procuratore Fiscale Alessandro Pallantieri, urging cooperation in his prosecution by the Governor and the Senator (no date given, but probably from 1557–8); no. 51 also shows cooperation between the Governor and the Auditor in conferring an absolution.

34 Rè (ed.), Statuti (above, n. 10), bk II, I–VI, 83–9.

35 See the example and discussion in Cohen, ‘Three forms of jeopardy’ (above, n. 2), 990. According to Trevor Dean, thieves routinely seem to have been tortured in fifteenth-century Rome: Dean, T., Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge, 2007), 190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the rules governing the use of torture, see Langbein, J., Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime (Chicago, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Il diario della città di Roma dall'anno 1480 all'anno 1492 di Antonio de Vascho, ed. Chiesa, G., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores (second series, volume 23.3) (Città di Castello, 1910–1911), 506.Google Scholar

37 On the Cenci, see Caiani, L., ‘Cenci, Beatrice’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 71 vols (Rome, 1960-), XXIII, 512–15Google Scholar; Bevilacqua, M. and Mori, E. (eds), Beatrice Cenci: la storia, il mito (Rome, 1999)Google Scholar; Di Sivo, M. (ed.), I Cenci: nobilità di sangue (Rome, 2002).Google Scholar

38 ASR, Camerae I, Taxae Maleficiorum 1748–9.

39 Relative currency values in Rome were subject to considerable fluctuation. In the 1515–19 books there were 100 bolognesi to a papal ducat, and twelve denarii to a bolognese. By the 1522 book this currency scheme had been replaced by that of the scudo, divided into 100 denarii (baiocchi). Some of the books also note values in old carlini (a coin first minted by Charles of Anjou that by 1500 had serious problems with debasement) and julii, created by Julius II (later changed to paoli by Paul III), which were equivalent to a tenth of a scudo. See the appendix on coinage at the end of the century in Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), 306.

40 ASR, Camerae I, Taxae Makficiorum 1747, Senator, 1573–6 (one book), and Auditor, 1570–86 (two books).

41 ASR, Atti di Cancelleria 227.

42 Studies of contemporary Inquisition courts with powers of confiscation also indicate that these were rarely sufficient to meet the court's costs. See Kamen, H., ‘Confiscations in the economy of the Spanish Inquisition’, Economic History Review 18 (1965), 511–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ; and the general comments in Rawlings, H., The Spanish inquisition (Oxford, 2006), 42–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Usually such entries are marked with the names of claimants at the front of the indices as ‘consignationum’. There are also some individual lists of creditors in the ‘Note di spese’, Atti di Cancelleria 149.

44 ASR, Camerae l, Taxae Maleficiorum 1747, fol. 2, 41r-42r.

45 McClung Hallman, B., Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley, 1985), 155–6Google Scholar. On the overall papal finances for the period, see Partner, P., ‘Papal financial policy in the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation’, Past and Present 88 (1980), 17–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Reinhard, W., ‘Finanza pontificia, sistema beneficiale e finanza statale nell'età confessionale’, in Kellenbenz, H. and Prodi, P. (eds), Fisco, religione, stato nell'età confessionale (Bologna, 1989), 459–504Google Scholar ; Delumeau, Vie économique (above, n. 5), II, 751–844.

46 ASR, Camerae I, Taxae Maleficiorum 1747, passim.

47 ASV, Miscellanea Armarium IX 70, 141r-v.

48 ASV, Miscellanea Armarium IX 70, 137v.

49 On Pallantieri's case, see Grandi, P., Il processo Pallantieri (1569–71) sotto il pontificato di S. Pio V (unpublished tesi di laurea) (Bologna, 1981).Google Scholar Two other notable examples were the processes in the Governor's court against Cardinal Benedetto Accolti (TCrGR, Processi 3 no. 2) and Cardinal Carlo Carafa (TCrGR, Process; 53–9). On the latter, see Aubert, Paolo IV (above, n. 32), 45–108. Interestingly, at least two other former Governors, Salvatore Pacino and Antonio Paganello, were required to justify their decisions in office atCarafa's trial: Processi 54, 108r–113v, 152r–157v (Pacino), 72r–75v, 231v–233v (Paganello).

50 Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), 53–6; Delumeau, Vie économique (above, n. 5), I, 225–30.

51 Compiled from equivalent three-month periods in ASR, TCrGR, Investigazioni 16, 71, 151.

52 See, for example, Cohen, Love and Death (above, n. 2); Blastenbrei, ‘I Romani tra violenza e giustizia’ (above, n. 3). More generally, Smail, D.L., The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity and Legal Culture in Marseilles, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, 2003).Google Scholar For a somewhat different view, see Dean, Crime and Justice (above, n. 35), 18–22.

53 ASR, TCrGR, Atti di Cancelleria 149, fol. 13 no. 3.

54 ASR, TCrGR, Atti di Cancelleria 149, fol. 8 no. 38.

55 ASR, TCrGR, Atti di Cancelleria 149, fol. 2 no. 9. Number 10 is another claim by Esbote for over 70 ducats, which was also reduced, to 45. It is unclear which is the earlier of the two.

56 Good examples of the simultaneous or preferential recourse to violence by ‘wronged’ parties can be found in Cohen and Cohen, Words and Deeds (above, n. 2), 135–57, and Cohen, Love and Death (above, n. 2), 15–42,71–123.

57 Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), graphs la-e, 57–61.

58 Cohen, T., ‘A long day in Monte Rotondo: the politics of jeopardy in a village uprising (1558)’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 33 (1991), 639–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Castiglione, C., ‘Political culture in seventeenth-century Italian villages’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31 (2001), 523–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Though he does not make any specific calculation, Blastenbrei's tables of violent crime, based on the relazioni dei barbieri, show an increase in the average number of incidents from around 100 per month in the 1560s to nearly 150 by the 1580s (see above, n. 57). The problem, as ever, is determining the relationship between the number of reports and rates of actual crimes. Nevertheless, Blastenbrei, Kriminalität (above, n. 3), 281–301, also made some attempts to identify specifically Roman factors in criminality (pointing primarily towards immigration, economic factors and judicial culture).

60 Gross, H., Rome in the Age of the Enlightenment: the Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1990), 48, 221.Google Scholar

61 It is possible to trace a transition from the positions of leading mid-century jurists like Giulio Claro and Tiberio Deciani to Farinacci and Baiardo at the end of the century. Whereas Claro and Deciani had argued that clerical status could be straightforwardly defined, Farinacci developed it as a scale and found exceptions to the general rules that governed clerical privilege. Baiardo, whose chief work was a commentary on Claro's own interpretation of criminal praxis, found fourteen exceptions in which a cleric could be judged by a lay judge and 66 for the reverse, where Claro had designated none. Clarus, J., Opera Omnia (Turin, 1586), Quaestio 36, 281–90Google Scholar; Deciani, T., Tractatus Criminalís (Venice, 1590), I, 153, 167 ; P. Farinacci, Praxis et Theoricae Criminalis, Lib. I, Q. 8, in Opera Omnia, 5 vols (Frankfurt, 1606–60), I, 84–5, 93–6. Decisio 78, Fragementorum Criminalium, in Opera Omnia VII, 153Google Scholar; Baiardo, G.B., Additiones et Annotationes (Parma, 1597)Google Scholar , Q. 38.75–6, 139r. Not all subsequent jurists accepted Farinacci's schema (see, for example, Prospero Fagnani or Gian Battista de Luca).

62 See also Prodi, Papal Prince (above, n. 5), 59–78.

63 Tilly, C., Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge (MA), 1990).Google Scholar See also Parker, G. ‘Introduction’, in Parker, G. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Warfare (Cambridge, 2005), 1–14Google Scholar , especially p. 8; Glete, J., War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-military States (London, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 di Lampedusa, G., The Leopard, trans. Colquhoun, A. (New York, 1960), 40.Google Scholar