Italian and Italian American Studies Stanislao G

Italian and Italian American Studies Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Series Editor This publishing initiative seeks to bring the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. I&IAS will feature works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices in the academy. This endeavor will help to shape the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing the connection between the two. The following editorial board of esteemed senior scholars are advisors to the series editor. REBECCA WEST JOHN A. DAVIS University of Chicago University of Connecticut FRED GARDAPHÉ PHILIP V. CANNISTRARO† Stony Brook University Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY JOSEPHINE GATTUSO HENDIN VICTORIA DeGRAZIA New York University Columbia University Queer Italia: Same-Sex Desire in Italian Literature and Film edited by Gary P. Cestaro July 2004 Frank Sinatra: History, Identity, and Italian American Culture edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese October 2004 The Legacy of Primo Levi edited by Stanislao G. Pugliese December 2004 Italian Colonialism edited by Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller July 2005 Mussolini's Rome: Rebuilding the Eternal City Borden W. Painter Jr. July 2005 Representing Sacco and Vanzetti edited by Jerome A. Delamater and Mary Ann Trasciatti September 2005 Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel Nunzio Pernicone October 2005 Italy in the Age of Pinocchio: Children and Danger in the Liberal Era Carl Ipsen April 2006 The Empire of Stereotypes: Germaine de Staël and the Idea of Italy Robert Casillo May 2006 Race and the Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861–1911: Meridionalism, Empire and Diaspora Aliza S. Wong October 2006 Women in Italy, 1946–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study edited by Penelope Morris October 2006 A New Guide to Italian Cinema Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones November 2006 Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians, 1860–1974 Mark Seymour December 2006 Human Nature in Rural Tuscany: An Early Modern History Gregory Hanlon March 2007 Human Nature in Rural Tuscany An Early Modern History Gregory Hanlon HUMAN NATURE IN RURAL TUSCANY © Gregory Hanlon, 2007. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7764-9 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-53769-3 ISBN 978-0-230-60303-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230603035 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: April 2007 10987654321 To the custodians of local history: Loretta Roghi, Biblioteca comunale Torrita Giovanna Piochi,Centro culturale Montefollonico Don Aldo Franci, Archivio diocesano Pienza Principal Publications by Gregory Hanlon L’Univers des gens de bien: Culture et comportements des élites urbaines en Aquitaine au XVIIe siècle (Bordeaux: Presses de l’Université de Bordeaux, 1989). Community and Confessions in seventeenth-century France: Catholic and Protestant coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian aristocrats and European conflicts, 1560–1800 (London & New York, University College London Press & Holmes and Meier, 1998). Early Modern Italy 1550–1800: Three seasons in European history (London & New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000). Storia dell’Italia moderna 1550–1800 (Bologna, Mulino Editore, 2002). Early Modern Italy 1550–1800: A comprehensive bibliography of titles in English and French, published electronically at www.earlymodernitaly.com, 9th edition, 499pp. and 10,097 titles, January 2006. Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Measures and Values xiii Introduction 1 1 Governance 11 The Community 11 The Coppoli Fief 24 2Cooperation 39 Sociability 39 Collaboration 52 3Competition 69 A Civil Arena 69 Criminal Process 76 The Gravity of Crimes 82 Profiles in Crime 93 4 Reproduction 103 Sexual Destinies 103 Workable Families 117 Passing On 134 5 Invention 139 Economic Collapse 140 The Church Triumphant 148 Making Tuscans 165 Conclusion 173 Notes 175 Index 213 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations Following page xiv Plate 1 A humble village casalino, in Via di Sotto Plate 2 The Montefollonico village square Plate 3 A large podere farmhouse, near San Valentino church Plate 4 The Madonna del Criano sanctuary, just outside the wall Plate 5 The Via di Sopra, with San Leonardo church Plate 6 Montefollonico, the village plan Plate 7 A village cantina Plate 8 The city of Montepulciano, as seen from Montefollonico Plate 9 The Landucci manor, on the Via di Sopra Plate 10 The village “palazzo,”seat of the magistrate and village council Plate 11 Pruning scene, ex voto image (1696) from the Madonna della Quercia sanctuary at Viterbo Plate 12 Landscape near Castelmuzio, showing traces of promiscuous culture Plate 13 The Via di Sopra, near the church of San Leonardo, looking north Plate 14 The Via di Sotto, looking north Plate 15 Montefollonico and its outlying podere farms, circa 1660 Plate 16 San Bartolomeo parish church Plate 17 Montefollonico woods today This page intentionally left blank Preface his book originally set out to study the behavior of social elites in TSiena, a project not dissimilar to one in Aquitaine that constituted my doctoral dissertation. Funded twice by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, I conscientiously applied myself to explore a variety of urban records. But I gradually realized that Siena was too big and too “city” to study adequately, notwithstanding its modest size. The panoply of urban institutions generated mountains of paper of every description. Siena is an excellent place to take the measure of Italian institutions and society. While my work there resulted in two books, neither one was the local study I had set out to undertake. From the moment I encountered the material from the fief of Montefollonico in the municipal library of Torrita, I realized that the dusty registers sitting on three short shelves enclosed the minutia of daily life lived almost four centuries ago. The diocesan archives of Pienza—newly reordered and catalogued by a young archivist, Giuseppe Chironi— supplemented the community documents with those of Counter- Reformation Italy’s influential and invasive religious administration. Sienese archival stacks contained the records of the Granducal and urban governments. With all these documents at hand, it became possible to attempt the ideal: undertake a nominative study of social behavior, that is, focus my attention on the individual actions of ordinary people. The second transformation of this research sprang from my re- acquaintance with the new behavioral sciences during a teaching semester at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1996. My doctoral work invoked briefly the ethology of Konrad Lorenz and his contemporaries, that is, the study of animal behavior. The two connected fields of evolutionary psychology and ethology provide a conceptual framework I can test empirically with the sources enumerated above. I have always been dissatisfied with the approach to behavioral history that posits culture as a kind of “black box” that admits a wide range of human behavior without explaining the reasons for it. Close work on religious history in early modern France (simi- larly a nominative study) taught me to be wary of doctrines and xii PREFACE discourses, justifications and beliefs. The building blocks of human life are universal: hierarchy and governance, cooperation and competition; reproduction; invention and adaptation. To explain the regularities and the vari- ations of these central features of human existence, culture is only a proximate explanation, a slippery slope toward naive idealism. Better to seek the good reasons that people in contexts different from our own had for acting in ways that seem foreign to us. Raymond Boudon’s classical rational-actor sociology combines here with the behavioral sciences to give depth to empirical research. Together they provide new and better ways of thinking about human existence. The custodians of local history in Tuscany aided this research immea- surably. Tuscans enjoy a well-deserved reputation even in Italy for the vitality of their local cultural life. There are three persons whose assistance made diligent gleaning almost easy; Don Aldo Franci, now in his mid-90s, is the creator of the diocesan archive of Pienza, as well as the guardian of its treasures. In Torrita di Siena, librarian Loretta Roghi provided the wel- coming atmosphere that made it possible to make the most of annual research trips. Giovanna Piochi, erstwhile director of the Centro Culturale Montefollonico, passionately contributed in ways too numerous to enu- merate. The Sienese state archives were also an excellent place to work, rendered congenial by its director, Dr Carla Zarrilli, and efficient by its per- sonnel, in particular Maria Assunta Ceppari (who helped familiarize me with Italian paleography) and Luciana Franchino (who was always willing to fetch me another bundle of documents). Local historians were good sounding boards for my various discoveries, Oscar Di Simplicio especially, but also Mario Ascheri and Neda Mechini. The mayor of Torrita, Montefollonico resident Paolo Pieranni, was also an enthusiastic backer of the project from its inception.

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