Systems of Charity in Turin (1541-1789)
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SYSTEMS OF CHARITY IN TURIN (1541-1789) SANDRA CAVALLO THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 1993 ABSTRACT The thesis represents the first thorough study of forms of charity and medical and poor relief in an Italian city in the post-Renaissance period. It complements the studies of other Italian cities carried out for an earlier period and contributes to comparison between European patterns of charity. The study reverses the usual demand-centred approach, which sees transformations in charitable provision mainly as a response to changing demographic and economic conditions, by focusing instead on the role played by changes in the nature of "supply", i.e. in the social composition of governors and benefactors and in the indirect and symbolic meanings which charity embodied for its dispensers. The main argument of this study is that the nature of control over charity had a significant impact on the form initiatives towards the poor took: dynamics of conflict, prestige and patronage among the elites contributed to forge charitable attitudes and definitions of poverty to a much larger extent than it has been recognised. Wills and other biographical material, figurative representations of charity and analysis of the architectural form of institutions have been used, besides the more obvious sources, to trace shifts in the symbolic implications of charity. This study also contributes to a reassessment of the periodisation and the features usually regarded as typical of the 'Italian model' of charity and poor relief. It argues, in particular, that the importance of institutional forms of care and assistance has been exaggerated and the role played by outdoor relief for the poor and sick underestimated. Moreover, it emphasises the crucial function of the municipal government as agency of relief well into the early modern period. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements p.5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 8 I. SIXTEENTH CENTURY MUNICIPAL PLANS FOR POOR RELIEF 1. The 1541 Plan in Turin 18 2. Civic Ideology and Provision for the Poor 26 3. New Methods and Conceptions of Poor relief? 34 4. A Secularisation of Charity? 43 5. Turin's "Civic Religion" in the Late Middle Ages 49 II. CIVIC CHARITY IN THE AGE OF STATE FORMATION 1. The Growth of Municipal Poor Relief 57 2. Responses to the Plague 65 3. Anti-Famine Policy 82 4. Charitable Resources for the Poor and Sick in "Normal Times" 96 5. Poor Relief and City Politics 107 6. The Rise of Ducal Charity 115 III. MOTIVATIONS FOR CHARITY 1. From Civic to Voluntary Charity 132 2. Charity and the Defense of Status 147 3. The Corporate Control over Charity 156 4. The Internment of the Poor 164 5. Charity and Prestige 174 6. Charity and Patronage 191 7. The Management of Charity 198 3 Iv. CHARITY AND GENDER 1. Women and Convents 207 2. Asylums for Penitents 218 3. Women and Property 228 4. Charity as an Expression of Conflict Within the Family 240 V. HOSPITALS AND POOR RELIEF IN THE AGE OF ABSOLUTISM 1. Attacking the Independence of Charitable Institutions 251 2. The 1717 Congregazioni di Caritâ 257 3. The First Lying-in Ward and School for Midwives 270 4. The Hospital Reform of the 1730s 289 5. The Privatisation of Charity 297 CONCLUSION 312 BIBLIOGRAPHY 320 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Welicome Trust for its generosity in giving me research grants over the years during which I have been working on this thesis. The We].lcome Institute and its staff have provided a stimulating environment for research and discussion. My supervisor Bill Bynum has been a constant support and I am especially grateful to him for the way in which he helped me to orientate in the world of history of medicine. Roy Porter has been generous with comments and references and Andrew Wear always helpful and encouraging. Fellows and research students have been a source of support and friendship and in particular I would like to mention Amal Abou-Aly, Cathy Crawford, Renate Hauser and Philip Wilson. Finally, this study has benefited much from discussion with Jonathan Barry, Cohn Jones and Margaret Pelling. 5 ABBREVIATIONS Archives AAT Archivio Arcivescovile, Turin ACT Archivio Comunale, Turin AOC Archivio Ospedale di Carità, Turin AOSG Archivio Ospedale S.Giovanni AOSML Archivio Ordine di S.Maurizio e Lazzaro ASSP Archivio Storico S.Paolo AST, P.S. Archivio di Stato di Torino, prima sezione AST, S.r. Archivio di Stato di Torino, sezioni riunite BR Biblioteca Reale Archival Funds Ins. Insinuazione di Torino (in AST, s.r.) LPqM Luoghi Pu di qua dai Monti (in AST, p.s.) OPCB Opere Pie Comuni e Borgate (in AST, p.s.) Ord. Ordinati del Comune di Torino (in ACT) PCF Patenti Controllo Finanza (in AST, s.r.) T.P. Testamenti Pubblicati dal Senato (in AST, s.r.) Printed Primary Sources Borelli G.B.Borelli, Editti antichi e nuovi dei sovrani Princthi della Real Casa di Savoia, Turin 1681. D. F.A.Duboin, Raccolta er ordine di niateria delle leqci. editti. manifesti,. emanate dai sovrani della real Casa di Savoia sino all'8-12-l798, 23 Toms, Turin 1818-69. Periodicals AHN Acta Historica Neerlandicae Aiffi American Historical Review AIIGT Archivio deli' Istituto Italo-Germanico di Trento Ann.Osp.M.Vitt. Annali dell'Ospedale M.Vittoria di Torino 6 Ann.Osp.M.Vitt. Annali dell'Ospedale M.Vittoria di Torino ARH Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte Archive for Reformation History ASI Archivio Storico Italiano ASL Archivio Storico Lombardo BSSS Bib].ioteca della Società Storica Subalpina BI SSSV Bollettino dell'Istituto di Storia della Società e dello Stato Veneziano BSBS Bollettino Storico Bibliografico Suba lp mo BHM Bulletin of the History of Medicine Economic History Review ESR European Studies Review Giorn.Acc.Med. Giornale dell'Accademia di Medicina, Torino JIH Journal of Interdisciplinary History Loc.Pop. St. Local Population Studies Mem.Acc. Sc.Tor. Memorie dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino NRS Nuova Rivista Storica RSLR Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa SHM Social History of Medicine S?1RH Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Univ.Birm.Hist.Jl University of Birmingham History Journal 7 INTRODUCTION Measures for the poor in Italy have been studied primarily in cities in the small states of the North and the Centre which in the Renaissance developed a sophisticated system of government based on the city-state and the principality'. It is these studies which have provided the basis for a picture of the principal characteristics of the Italian system of poor relief: the importance of the charitable activities of the confraternities; the existence as early as the fifteenth century of large hospitals with hundreds of medical patients; and the early appearance of a policy of renfernement in the form of legislation which confined beggars and other categories of outcasts in institutions. It is usually assumed that these elements combined to make the charitable system existing in certain parts of Italy exceptional in the more general European context. The towns 1 Surveys of the numerous works on poor relief published in the last two decades (most of them on single institutions or single aspects of relief) are in: M.Rosa, 'Chiesa, idee sui poveri e assistenza in Italia dal Cinque al Settecento', Società e Storia, 10 (1980); G.Assereto, 'Pauperismo e assistenza. Messa a punto di studi recenti', ASI, 141 (1983); A.Pastore, 'Strutture assistenziali fra Chiesa e Stati nell'Italia della Controriforma', Storia d'Italia, Annali IX, La Chiesa e ii Potere Politico, (edited by G.Chittolini and G.Miccoli), Turin 1986; S.J.Woolf, The Poor in Western Europe in the Ei ghteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, London and New York 1986 (Introduction); B. Pullan, 'Support and redeem: charity and poor relief in Italian cities from the fourteenth to the seventeenth', Continuit y and Change, 2 (1988). Among the most significant studies to be published after these surveys, P.Gavitt, The Os pedale degl j Innocenti. 1410-1536, Ann Arbor 1990, and S.Cohen, The Evolution of Women's Asylums since 1500, Oxford 1992. On medical charity in particular see also J.Henderson, 'The hospitals of late medieval and Renaissance Florence: a preliminary survey', in L.Granshaw and R.Porter (eds.), The Hos p ital in History, London 1989; K.Park, 'Healing the poor: hospitals and medicine in Renaissance Florence', in J.Barry and C.Jones (eds.), Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, London 1991. 8 of the Veneto, of Tuscany and Lombardy - which had already led the way in adopting public health measures against the plague after the Black Death - continued in the early modern period to be admired by foreign observers and governments of the time and the measures adopted with regard to the poor and the sick to be taken as examples to emulate2. But what was the situation in those numerous areas of Italy (covering most of the South, but also many parts of the North and Centre), where the medieval tradition of commune development was not strong, and where towns were essentially creations of the early modern period 3? Turin is an ideal place to examine this question because it is not generally held to have been part of the Italian tradition of comuni and Renaissance city-states. The political system in Piedmont has usually been considered closer to the feudal system prevailing in the countries to the North of the Alps, rather than to the model of the self-governing city more typical of North and Central Italy - where the systems of relief regarded as pioneering developed4. 2 E.Chaney,"Philanthropy in Italy": English observations on Italian hospitals, 1545-1789', in T.Riis (ed.), Aspects of Poverty in Early Modern Europe, Stuttgart 1981; K.Park and J.Henderson, "The first hospital among Christians": the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova in early sixteenth century Florence', Medical Histor y , 35 (1991).