The first thorough study of charity, and medical and poor relief, in post-Renaissance Italy.

"The eleven articles by leading historians included in this collection engage with a variety of topics and microhistories that touch on some of the most important aspects of pre-modern Italian life (1400-1700): charity, finance, inheritance, sociability, dowries and family strategies, public performance, and illness and its cures. The book is divided into four sections: charity and economy, culture and society, family and inheritance, and medicine and health. All of the articles are firmly grounded in original archival research while, at the same time, engaging with the rich and complex array of secondary scholarship in the area."--

This is the first book in English to provide a comprehensive examination of the hospital movement that arose and prospered in northern Italy between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Throughout this flourishing urbanised area hundreds of independent semi-religious facilities appeared, offering care for the ill, the poor and pilgrims en route to holy sites in Rome and the eastern Mediterranean. Over three centuries they became mechanisms for the appropriation of civic authority and political influence in the communities they served, and created innovative experiments in healthcare and poor relief which are the precursors to modern social welfare systems. Will appeal to students and lecturers in medieval, social, religious, and urban history and includes a detailed appendix that will assist researchers in the field.

Drawing on extensive archival evidence, Carol Bresnahan Menning examines the remarkable evolution of the Florentine monte from a small charitable pawnshop to a flourishing savings organization and a powerful instrument of patronage and state finance.

Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 offers a radical reassessment of the history of early modern papacy, constructed through the first major analytical treatment of papal elections in English. Papal elections, with their ceremonial pomp and high drama, are compelling theatre, but, until now, no one has analysed them on the basis of the problems they created for cardinals: how were they to agree rules and enforce them? How should they manage the interregnum? How did they decide for whom to vote? How was the new pope to assert himself over a group of men who, until just moments before, had been his equals and peers? This study traces how the cardinals' responses to these problems evolved over the period from Martin V's return to Rome in 1420 to Pius VI's departure from it in 1798, placing them in the context of the papacy's wider institutional developments. Miles Pattenden argues not only that the elective nature of the papal office was crucial to how papal history unfolded but also that the cardinals of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries present us with a unique case study for observing the approaches to decision-making and problem-solving within an elite political group.

An illuminating study of early modern efforts to regulate sound in women’s residential institutions, and how the noises of city life—both within and beyond their walls—defied such regulation. Amid the Catholic reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the number of women and girls housed in nunneries, reformatories, and charity homes grew rapidly throughout the city of Florence. Julia Rombough follows the efforts of legal, medical, and ecclesiastical authorities to govern enclosed women, and uncovers the experiences of the women themselves as they negotiated strict sensory regulations. At a moment when quiet was deeply entangled with ideals of feminine purity, bodily health, and spiritual discipline, those in power worked constantly to silence their charges and protect them from the urban din beyond institutional walls. Yet the sounds of a raucous metropolis found their way inside. The noise of merchants hawking their wares, sex workers laboring and socializing with clients, youth playing games, and coaches rumbling through the streets could not be contained. Moreover, enclosed women themselves contributed to the urban soundscape. While some embraced the pursuit of silence and lodged regular complaints about noise, others broke the rules by laughing, shouting, singing, and conversing. Rombough argues that ongoing tensions between legal regimes of silence and the inevitable racket of everyday interactions made women’s institutions a flashpoint in larger debates about gender, class, health, and the regulation of urban life in late Renaissance Italy. Attuned to the vibrant sounds of life behind walls of stone and sanction, A Veil of Silence illuminates a revealing history of early modern debates over the power of the senses.