Vendetta (Early Modern History)

The book deals with the relations between anger, emotions and trial rites in sixteenth century. After a general introduction on the values of emotions, justice and anger the book presents the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice. The second part of the book presents some of the documents which availed to the lawyers for preparing Marcantonio Trissino's defence.

La stanza di Andrea Trevisan is inspired by a dramatic event which took place at first in an isolated village in the Padua countryside, but then unfolded in Venice by involving some important judicial institutions of the Serenissima. Love, anger and enmities seem to unescapably push the protagonists toward a violent and tragic destiny. The emotional and sentimental background brings to light an enveloping narrative that outlines the main political and cultural features marking a republican power deeply rooted in the conflicts between the lagoon noble houses. However, from within the Ducal palace, the Council of Ten emerged  from the final decades of the Sixteenth century to enforce a new political course and flat-out affirm the obligation for peace between noble houses, as it assumed the exclusive domain to regulate any form of violence arising within the Venetian ruling class. La stanza di Andrea Trevisan discloses therefore how the elaborate and contested emotional level, especially if analysed in light of the interpersonal relations put forward by such case-study, is inestricably bound to the political and cultural context which gave life to it and made its peculiar imprint on the evidence that passed on its memory.

A true story of vendetta and intrigue, triumph and tragedy, exile and repatriation, this book recounts the interwoven microhistories of Count Girolamo Della Torre, a feudal lord with a castle and other properties in the Friuli, and Giulia Bembo, grand-niece of Cardinal Pietro Bembo and daughter of Gian Matteo Bembo, a powerful Venetian senator with a distinguished career in service to the Venetian Republic. Their marriage in the mid-sixteenth century might be regarded as emblematic of the Venetian experience, with the metropole at the center of a fragmented empire: a Terraferma nobleman and the daughter of a Venetian senator, who raised their family in far off Crete in the stato da mar, in Venice itself, and in the Friuli and the Veneto in the stato da terra. The fortunes and misfortunes of the nine surviving Della Torre children and their descendants, tracked through the end of the Republic in 1797, are likewise emblematic of a change in feudal culture from clan solidarity to individualism and intrafamily strife, and ultimately, redemption.

Despite the efforts by both the Della Torre and the Bembo families to preserve the patrimony through a succession of male heirs, the last survivor in the paternal bloodline of each was a daughter. This epic tale highlights the role of women in creating family networks and opens a precious window into a contentious period in which Venetian republican values clash with the deeply rooted feudal traditions of honor and blood feuds of the mainland.

The paper deals with the relationships between judicial practices and the feud, which acquires interesting relevance both in customary systems and in systems governed by the legal process. First is described the crucial transition from customary practices mainly handled by the community (prevailing in the early medieval age) to practices managed by professionals (lawyers) and the procedures successively worked out by them. Feuding is examined along with the researches conducted on single European areas and for different historical periods, especially for the early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, considering the various disciplines used. In reality, while focusing on the relationship between the spread of violence and the need for peace, the discussion on the subject of feud in Europe paid little attention to the role played by the spread of Roman canonical procedures and the mediation carried out by lawyers, both in their tracts and their judiciary practice, in order to introduce a new social order. In the early modern period,  the intense dynamics of social violence and the decisive interventions of state powers increased along with the use of new trial procedures. These transformations were relevant and even decisive, especially after the introduction of strict inquisitorial rites, which subtracted from the privileged classes the independent resolution of conflicts and the traditional management of procedural practices.

The book is published at the initiative of Tignale Municipality (Brescia) to commemorate the 4th centenary of the cruel battle which took place on the 17th August 1617 in the mountains above. A day which was soon recorded in the majestic ex-voto describing the death of the great outlaw Giovanni Beatrice (Zanzanù), which occurred between the two streams in the Monible valley, and today preserved in the Madonna di Montecastello sanctuary-

Il libro è pubblicato su iniziativa del comune di Tignale (Brescia) per ricordare il quarto centenario della cruenta battaglia svoltasi il 17 agosto 1617 nei monti soprastanti. Un giorno che, di lì a poco, venne ricordato nel maestoso ex-voto ancor oggi esistente nel santuario della Madonna di Montecastello, in cui è descritta la morte del grande fuorilegge Giovanni Beatrice (Zanzanù), avvenuta tra i due ruscelli che scendono lungo la valle delle Monible.

The story of Zanzanù is symbolically the history of the birth of  outlaw imagine in early modern age. Zanzanù firstly became a 'bandit' because he received a banishment penalty owing to the killing of a member of a rival family. But then, unable to establish a peace with his enemies, he couldn't return to his village and he followed a vengeance for his father killing. Survived to several ambushes of his enemies and of bounty killers who chased him, he soon entered the  dimension of myth until he died the 17th of august 1617 in a bloody battle which lasted a full day.

The book is based on an important criminal trial instructed by the courts of Vicenza and Padova in the years 1605-06 subsequently a decision of the Venetian Counsel of ten. The defendants belonged to the Vicentine aristocracy and were accused of many felonies like rapes, violences and assaults against the women and the men of their families of a small village of the Venetian mainland. But the study of the trial is also the occasion for describing the functioning of criminal justice and its changes during the last decades of sixteenth century.

Nel problema della giustizia, per Sciascia, s’involge quello della libertà e della dignità umana. Sciascia affida alla propria opera e alla letteratura il riscatto dall’ingiustizia che per lui era iniziato col riscatto della Sicilia dal feudo e dalla mafia. Nel corso degli anni Settanta, quelli del terrorismo, in cui egli vive la solitudine dell’intellettuale disorganico a ragion di stato e di partito (solitudine accettata e contrapposta alla concezione comunista, d’origine gramsciana, dell’intellettuale organico), tale riscatto era poi proseguito nel nome di una verità fattasi più sfuggente.
Dopo la risalita dalla Nekuia dell’apocalisse ideologica del Novecento, Sciascia, come il Candido protagonista del romanzo che segna la svolta della sua opera e del suo pensiero, capisce il giuoco, come un personaggio del Pirandello a cui sempre più, a partire da quegli anni si avvicina. Capisce il giuoco dell’apocalisse ideologica dei totalitarismi novecenteschi: con il delirio giuridico del codice Rocco, al fondo di Porte aperte, e con gli altri deliri ideologici della storia con il loro sempre medesimo e funerario fondo di cattolica o di altra, corrispettiva, lugubre inquisizione che a sprazzi balena nel "Cavaliere e la morte", in certi sinistri bagliori apocalittici che rivelano la cupa e disperata misantropia al fondo delle filantropiche utopie politiche che si vogliono assolute come le fedi. Il loro sogno di giustizia assoluta, con la connessa illusione di liberazione dal male, il loro desiderio del fiat iustitia, porta infatti con sé il conseguente pereat mundus. Il desiderio di una più generalizzata pena di morte diviene il primo anello della follia di tanti lucidi, sistematici, deliri totalitari che realizzano sempre più e meglio il fantasma distruttivo che portano in sé, trasformando così quel desiderio in incubo pantoclastico.
Una riflessione sulla letteratura e sul proprio destino, e su quello del proprio Paese e dell’umanità intera, si ha nella voce" Udienza" dell’"Alfabeto pirandelliano" e nel testamentario "Il cavaliere e la morte" che sin dal titolo, abolendo il diavolo dell’acquaforte di Dürer ("Il cavaliere, la morte e il diavolo") che ispira il racconto, indica la via di una resistenza al male e al dolore del mondo che si attua non indossando armi e armature (da crociata o da inquisizione), ma coltivando, nel nome dell’amore della vita, valori diversi da quelli imperanti: la lettura e la memoria dei poeti prediletti; la divagazione del pensiero, dei sentimenti, della fantasia; il piacere della gioia del corpo e dello spirito.
La via di resistenza a un male che non è fuori di noi ma in noi: «il delitto ci appartiene». La conseguente difficoltà a giudicare si origina, in Sciascia, oltre che sul cristiano nolite iudicare, anche e soprattutto sui fondamenti della letteratura di Manzoni e di Pirandello. Anche se, bisogna aggiungere che, anche se il delitto ci appartiene, «c’è chi appartiene al delitto» e il relativismo pirandelliano, lungi dal divenire, dunque, un nuovo dogmatismo di scetticismo dogmatico, di assenza di giudizio e di verità si riscioglie nella sciasciana verità di "Una storia semplice".

In the spring of 1583, Nicolò Cassich was killed in the field church in Murvica located in the vicinity of the town of Pag. Cassich had been banished in 1579 on the charge of having posted a libello famoso (defamatory leaflet) against a representative of Venice to the island. The investigation launched by the local authorities promptly revealed that the killing had been carried out by Zuanne Pastorcich, himself a bandit, who intended to avail himself of the benefits provided by law and request his release from the banishment penalty. To that end, Pastorcich presented the head of the bandit on the pietra del bando in the town square, so that it could be identified by some witnesses, who readily made themselves available. But as the authorities proceeded with such identification, a woman stepped out from the crowd that had flooded the square. She removed Cassich’s head from the stone and took it to the main church in town. The authorities’ efforts to recover it were futile, and the incident evinced that the killing of Nicolò Cassich in that small church had created a deep rift within the community. And although Pastorcich eventually obtained the bounty he had claimed, the killing was deemed a genuine desecration, and that sacred place was interdicted from divine worship for several years.

Nella primavera del 1583 Nicolò Cassich venne ucciso nella chiesa campestre di Murvica, posta nelle vicinanze della città di Pago. Il Cassich era stato bandito  nel 1579 con l’accusa di aver affisso un libello famoso contro il rappresentante veneziano dell’isola. Il processo avviato dalle autorità locali rivelò da subito che l’uccisione era avvenuta ad opera di Zuanne Pastorcich, pure bandito, il quale, avvalendosi dei benefici previsti dalle leggi, intendeva ottenere la propria liberazione.
A tal fine egli presentò la testa del bandito nella piazza della città, perché fosse identificata da alcuni testimoni, resisi presto disponibili. In realtà, mentre le autorità procedevano a tale riconoscimento, dalla folla accorsa numerosa in piazza, si staccò una donna, che sottrasse la testa del Cassich, portandola con sé sino alla chiesa principale della città. A nulla valsero i tentativi delle autorità di recuperarla, in quanto l’episodio dimostrò come l’uccisione di Nicolò Cassich in quella piccola chiesa avesse creato una forte spaccatura all’interno della comunità. E, nonostante il Pastorcich ottenesse infine i premi richiesti, l’uccisione venne considerata come una vera e propria profanazione; e quel luogo sacro fu interdetto per alcuni anni al culto divino.

The paper deals with the history of the Venetian criminal trial in early modern age. Particularly the research speaks of the relations between inquisitorial and 'open' (or adversarial) trial. It was the last procedure which may be considered the mean through which were achieved new forms of social control.

The paper deals with the relationships between judicial practices and the feud, which acquires interesting relevance both in customary systems and in systems governed by the legal process. First is described the crucial transition from customary practices mainly handled by the community (prevailing in the early medieval age) to practices managed by professionals (lawyers) and the procedures successively worked out by them. Feuding is examined along with the researches conducted on single European areas and for different historical periods, especially for the early Middle Ages, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, considering the various disciplines used. In reality, while focusing on the relationship between the spread of violence and the need for peace, the discussion on the subject of feud in Europe paid little attention to the role played by the spread of Roman canonical procedures and the mediation carried out by lawyers, both in their tracts and their judiciary practice, in order to introduce a new social order. In the early modern period,  the intense dynamics of social violence and the decisive interventions of state powers increased along with the use of new trial procedures. These transformations were relevant and even decisive, especially after the introduction of strict inquisitorial rites, which subtracted from the privileged classes the independent resolution of conflicts and the traditional management of procedural practices.

La breve e lunga esistenza di Giovanni Beatrice fu contraddistinta da fasi che, in successione, possono essere considerate paradigmatiche nella costruzione del mito del fuorilegge. La prima, caratterizzata dalla serie cruenta di vendette si concluse nel 1607 con l’uccisione dello storico nemico Riccobon Sette. Pur personalmente colpitoda numerose sentenze di bando, in realtà Giovanni Beatrice si era sempre mosso all’interno della cosiddetta banda Zanoni, guidata dallo zio Giovan Francesco.
L’agguato di Riva, nel febbraio del 1609, lo isolò e lo spinse probabilmente a
cercare un rifugio e delle protezioni che lo allontanarono dai luoghi in cui era nato e vissuto; anche se, tra il 1610 e il 1611, di seguito all’abbattimento della sua casa di Gargnano, compì gli ultimi e clamorosi atti di sfida.
Gli anni successivi al febbraio del 1609 sono però comprensibili solo se vengono considerati alla luce di quanto si era svolto nel periodo che va dal giugno del 1607, contrassegnato dall’uccisione di Riccobon Sette, all’agguato notturno da cui Giovanni Beatrice riuscì a sfuggire tuffandosi nelle acque del lago dall’imbarcazione che si stava avvicinando a Riva del Garda. Un periodo breve, ma intenso, durante il quale la banda Zanoni si mosse spavaldamente sul bacino del lago dedicandosi apertamente all’attività di contrabbando, ma anche contrapponendosi a irriducibili e pericolosi nemici. Nel corso di quei diciannove mesi l’azione repressiva delle istituzioni veneziane contribuì all’affermazione di una nuova narrazione, che fu probabilmente decisiva nel determinare non solamente il sanguinoso agguato di Riva, ma pure la successiva biografia del bandito Giovanni Beatrice. Una biografia che,
entrando nella dimensione del mito, sarebbe stata successivamente raccontata avvalendosi di un codice interpretativo complesso e contraddittorio

Widely used in all ages in diverse political structures, the penalty of banishment takes on great importance starting from the late middle ages, both as an arm of political struggle (so-called political banishment) and as an instrument of social control used in defence of community order and values, and also to facilitate the resolution of conflicts between families in competition for honour and the management of economic resources. It was, therefore, a penalty that interacted with judiciary trial rites and that reflected the heteronomous medieval constitutional system, characterized almost everywhere by a dense network of jurisdictions, each of which was endowed with its own autonomy, even if moral, religious and political values were largely shared. Many statutes of the subject cities not only provided that bandits could be killed with impunity by anyone, but also that they could win their freedom by killing each other. This was a norm aimed to assure respect for the periods of truce needed by local judicial institutions and conflicting families to lessen internal tensions and start peace negotiations. Faced by a serious situation explicitly attributed to the emergence of a type of banditry considered aggressive and dangerous the Council of Ten took firmly into its own hands the complicated matter of banditry, which, though with significant interference, had for roughly two centuries been the competence of the local jurisdictions. The penalty of banishment inflicted by authority of the Council of Ten comprised all the territories of the state, going beyond traditional boundaries, and was made more effective by the concession of bounties, and above all by the granting of so-called voci liberar bandito. The arrest or killing of a bandit was awarded with the acquisition of a voce that could be used by the person directly interested, or could be passed on to others, who could in turn ask for the liberation of another bandit. In this way an authentic market of voci was created, and most importantly the figure of the bounty killer came into being. The new legislation adopted against banditry at the end of the century created a short circuit between the vendetta system and traditional practices of mediation aimed at reaching truces and pacification. Its effectiveness could be achieved by intervening in the dynamics of local conflicts and by making use of awards and benefits to encourage informers and the involvement of communities and bounty killers.  The judiciary activity of the Council of Ten and the use of its inquisitional rites was an essential support for the repression that hinged principally on the banishment laws.

The article, based on interdisciplinary historiographical and anthropological studies and archival documents, collected folk literature and other documents, will reconstruct the ritual of blood feud with emphasis on the act of humiliation and penance as reflected in documents from Southeast Europe, comparing them with many fragments of medieval European cases, reflecting general ritual structure in the field of public affairs: Homage (gift, first approach), Fides (fidelity, oath, truce) and Investiture (appointment), and, in case of dispute settlement, Pace Perpetua – lasting peace (love, marriage), with particular focus on principles of the so called gift-exchange societies. The hypothesis of this article, based on collected material and on outlined cases, is arguing in favour of the principle of the general ritual structure for all public aff airs, in which precisely the gesture of penance and humiliation plays an important symbolic role, especially in the ritual of vindicta, that is in the customary system of conflict resolution.

First of all, the banishment penalty reflected the political and constitutional European polycentrism and its interrelations with a society for a long time animated by conflicts between factions and family groups. To reach a lasting peace between the opponents was indeed an essential moment of the vendetta system, as much as ensuring tranquillity and the safekeeping of the community’s values. The system was endowed with a pronounced juridical dimension and it interacted, on the constitutional level, with the role played by the courts and, in particular, trial and customary rites. These were aimed to manage conflicts between opposite groups by pulling away the one who broke social stability through banishment, if necessary.
During the Sixteenth century, a series of important social, demographic and economic problems sensibly reshaped the conception of social control and order, and the long-established management of penal justice as well. The banishment penalty, no longer embedded in its traditional constitutional dimension and harshened both in its repressive and rewarding aspects, became an efficient instrument to impose a different political legitimacy. Faced with these transformations, bandits quickly took the physiognomy of actual outlaws, painted as political opponents and, as such, to be dealt with any repressive instrument available.

The paper deals with the story of Marcantonio Trissino, the grandson of Giangiorgio Trissino, the famous man of letters and humanist. In the year 1583 Marcantonio, abruptily and amazingly, killed Giulio Cesare Trissino outside Vicenza's dome while he was surrounded and protected by numerous friends and followers. Giulio Cesare Trissino was suspected by the public opinion being the mandant of Ciro Trissino's murder, the father of Marcantonio, killed in february 1576 in his palladian villa located in Cornedo, a Vicentine village, by a group of goons, masked and dressed in black suits. During the trial instructed in Padua by appointment of the Counsel of ten, Marcantonio Trissino defended his violent behavior advocating that his mind was run over by anger and furor. The trial rhetoric vehicles the great themes of vendetta and honor and introduce to the tensions between retributive and restorative justice.

The present paper examines a criminal trial officiated in Bologna against a citizen of Florence accused of having assaulted fellow Florentine Matteo Minutoli, whose father had been exiled together with Dante in 1302. The events - which tie into the factional divisione between white and black Guelfs - will be contextualised and analysed following the various procedural phases of the trial. This case study makes it possible to analyse two key aspects of the political experience of popolo regimes: the growing interference of the political sphere in the administration of criminal justice; and the effects of new laws on vendetta and interpersonal violence and ideology of public order on the effective responses given by civic authorities to the problem of internecine divisions.

The essay is a general view on the political and anthropological problem of social control in the Republic of Venice in early modern age. Law and justice administration are examined in their transformations. A moral and ancient tradition centered on feud and honor pervaded the culture of violence and the criminal trial, but at the end of XVIth century a new punitive justice directly controlled by the Venetian Counsel of ten weakened the feud and the traditional judiciary trial. Banditry and aristocratic crimes were the most visible effects of the new Venetian political action. The transformations proceeded by a strong demand of security and stillnesses which originated in many social and economic contexts and which couldn't be insured anymore by the justice and the legal system of the numerous towns of the Venetian mainland.

The article, on the basis of a comparative and interdisciplinary research of a case study of vengeful murder and acquittal from 1401 in Landar (Slavia Veneta or Slavia friulana), analyses the transformation of the social system of control and the exercise of the justice on the turn from the Middle Ages to the Modern period. The case study clearly shows the characteristics of the common practice of dispute resolution system and juridicial trials, that allowed vengeance if the side of the perpetrator was not prepared to negotiate for peace making. Although the present case already shows elements characteristic for judicial proceedings of the Modern period, the judicial process and the judgment itself have been conducted in accordance with customary law. The article also comparatively shows how the legislation changed in the early modern period, with special regard to the events in the Holy Roman Empire and the Venetian Republic. In addition to fiscal and military reorganization, the centralization of justice was of fundamental importance in the efforts of European rulers to establish supreme control over the entire territory under their jurisdiction. In order to achieve this goal, however, the rulers had first to restrict, by means of legislation and other coercive means, the arbitrary conflict resolution system by custom. For this purpose, they established a judicial system, i. e. punitive control over both, individual, influential families and clans, as well as the population in general. The state inquisitorial trial rites, introduced in most Western and Central European countries, in the early modern period lead to an important novelty: the state judicial apparatus has earned the right of prosecution ex officio. While earlier, in the so-called adversarial law, the judicial investigative process may only be led after the lawsuit of the affected communities, in the inquisitorial procedure the judicial trial was initiated by the central judicial authorities, which was the primary reason for their creation. In some more remote areas, such as Montenegro and Albania, which were examined in the article as comparative areas, the custom of conflict resolution system, vendetta or osveta, has preserved deep in the 19th Century. Especially the study of this custom confirms our thesis, that this was not only a European (medieval) custom, but a system of conflict resolution known to all worldwide communities.

Franc Miklošič was undoubtedly one of the most educated, internationally renowned and influential Slovene intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century and is foremost regarded as a philologist, linguist and one of the founders of Slavic studies. However, Miklošič's intellectual versatility also led to his engagement with history, ethnography, anthropology and law, predicated on interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. Apart from a few translations of Austrian legislation into Slovene, Miklošič did not devote himself to legal matters, with the exception of blood feud in Die Blutrache bei den Slaven (1887), one of the key works on the topic at the time. Although he agreed with the evolutionist and legal positivist views of his time on the State as the pinnacle of civilization, compared to the supposed chaos of prior societies (which continue to remain popular), in Blutrache Miklošič also presented the characteristics of the customary system of conflict resolution in kinship-based societies, which attest to the complexity of social relations in premodern Europe. It is with the help of Miklošič's work that this paper reconstructs the customary ritual of conflict resolution, which was known to all premodern European societies, and presents the attitude of his and later times towards blood feud.

The renowned late Slovene legal historian Sergij Vilfan mentioned a 'peculiarity' among sixteenth-century Carniolan peasants, referred to as grundstöer (devastation) in the sources, which was used to avenge homicide by destroying the perpetrator's property instead of killing him as in blood feud. Throughout his career, Vilfan remained somewhat unsure about whether grundstöer was distinct from the 'German(ic)' legal institution of Wüstung (devastation), used to sanction homicide the same way. The analysis presented in this paper, predicated on recent research on vengeance, establishes that they were essentially the same institution, a part of and originating from the legal custom of (blood) feud as an ancient system of conflict resolution.

http://zdjp.si/en/

The paper analyses blood feud as a legal custom of the system of conflict resolution in Inner Austria during the transition from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. Based on legal customs, statutory law, and early modern criminal law the analysis is applied to a case of blood (homicide) settlement in Upper Carniola (Gorenjska) in the 17th century. Two things in particular emerge: the long survival of this legal custom and the tendency of blood feud for peace. Both put Inner Austria in these matters firmly within the broader European legal context.

http://zdjp.si/en/

Errata:
- statutory law instead of common law on pp. 153, 155–156, 158, 162,  167.

Franc Miklošič was undoubtedly one of the most educated, internationally renowned and influential Slovene intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century and is foremost regarded as a philologist, linguist and one of the founders of Slavic studies. However, Miklošič's intellectual versatility also led to his engagement with history, ethnography, anthropology and law, predicated on interdisciplinary and comparative approaches. Apart from a few translations of Austrian legislation into Slovene, Miklošič did not devote himself to legal matters, with the exception of blood feud in Die Blutrache bei den Slaven (1887), one of the key works on the topic at the time. Although he agreed with the evolutionist and legal positivist views of his time on the State as the pinnacle of civilization, compared to the supposed chaos of prior societies (which continue to remain popular), in Blutrache Miklošič also presented the characteristics of the customary system of conflict resolution in kinship-based societies, which attest to the complexity of social relations in premodern Europe. It is with the help of Miklošič's work that this paper reconstructs the customary ritual of conflict resolution, which was known to all premodern European societies, and presents the attitude of his and later times towards blood feud.

The paper dwell upon the ambush that some vicious merchants of the Lake of Garda organized in the night of february 13rd 1609 against the bandit Giovanni Beatrice (Zanzanù) and his companions at Riva del Garda. The story is narrated in the dossier kept in the Venetian archive of Frari and instructed by the bounty killers recruited by Alberghino Alberghini and other merchants of Salò and Desenzano.

Following the stages of the custom of vengeance, this paper reconstructs conflict resolution among commoners in the Habsburg Duchy of Carniola in early modernity, focusing on the subjects of the Upper Carniolan Lordship of Bled in the first half of the seventeenth century. Disparate cases show that in the Eastern Alpine countryside the rites of enmity and peace had changed little since the Late Middle Ages. Despite the gradual implementation of early modern criminal legislation and growing state interference in the local judiciary, the latter continued to resolve conflicts, including homicide, in cooperation with the community. Remnants of traditional conflict resolution can still be found in the late nineteenth century.

http://zdjp.si/en/

Errata:

P. 681: Andreas Trost, not Tros.

First of all, the banishment penalty reflected the political and constitutional European polycentrism and its interrelations with a society for a long time animated by conflicts between factions and family groups. To reach a lasting peace between the opponents was indeed an essential moment of the vendetta system, as much as ensuring tranquillity and the safekeeping of the community’s values. The system was endowed with a pronounced juridical dimension and it interacted, on the constitutional level, with the role played by the courts and, in particular, trial and customary rites. These were aimed to manage conflicts between opposite groups by pulling away the one who broke social stability through banishment, if necessary.
During the Sixteenth century, a series of important social, demographic and economic problems sensibly reshaped the conception of social control and order, and the long-established management of penal justice as well. The banishment penalty, no longer embedded in its traditional constitutional dimension and harshened both in its repressive and rewarding aspects, became an efficient instrument to impose a different political legitimacy. Faced with these transformations, bandits quickly took the physiognomy of actual outlaws, painted as political opponents and, as such, to be dealt with any repressive instrument available.

Participation in the International Conference: Crime, Violence and the Modern State II: Blame, Culpability and Shame (Saint Petersbourg, 15-17 May 2009). Organisers: Solon / Oxford Brookes University / Herzen State University-Russia). '
Romina N. Tsakiri (University of Athens): 'sopra la infamia et dishonor...': Offences Against and Restitution of Honour in Crete under Venetian Rule (16th-17th Centuries)
In this announcement we are going to examine aspects of offences against honour in Crete under Venetian rule during the early modern period such as offences against life, property, public image and reputation-personal or of the family. Loss of honour, mainly for the upper socioeconomic classes of the island, meant their loss of power and prestige in the local society and commanded its immediate restitution, privately through revenge or publicly through the intervention of the state and the punishment of the culprit. Revenge was a matter of individuals and families regardless of origin: Cretans, Venetians and other inhabitants of the island. People of every socioeconomic status also took part in acts of revenge. The involvement in vendettas of individuals and families of the middle and upper classes seems to have been particularly important, as is indicated by the participation of people with a prominent position in the local society as well as distinguished local families. Furthermore, this kind of disputes, based on the insult to somebody's honour, most probably indicated an attitude towards the maintenance of the various correlations, economic and political, within the social class. Moreover, it is clear that the balance in the relations of its members would have repercussions in their everyday life, both within the framework of the local society and in that of their interaction with the Venetian authorities. In addition, in the countryside, inaccessible and far from the administrative centres, revenge was the result of disputes over the land, the animals and the management of resources. As was the case with urban areas, in the countryside, and within the framework of maintaining balance, one can pinpoint manifestations of the social phenomenon of vendetta in the disputes between major feudalists and the rural population as well as in the disputes between factions in the mountainous areas of the island. Particularly in the closed societies on the mountains, with an increased regard for honour, with broader family groups which were a point of reference for the individual, and with an economy which was mainly based on stock-raising, the fear for a possible outbreak of a vendetta was constant, which is why there were efforts to organise the family relationships and the broader family into as powerful a group as possible.

In the autumn of 1654 a Fehde (feud) broke out in the Styrian town of Ptuj between the Moscon and Qualandro noble families. With the killing of one of Simon Moscon’s subjects, the Fehde acquired another twist, the threat of blood vengeance. The Qualandros, the perpetrator and his son fled the vengeance into monastic asylum and into the burgher estate respectively. The Ptuj town authorities assumed the role of the mediator, in accordance with legal customs, with almost no interference from the princely (state) authorities. With the town’s mediation, peace was made in the summer of 1655; also by monetary restitution (composition) to the killed subject’s family.

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In The Benefits of Peace: Private Peacemaking in Late Medieval Italy Glenn Kumhera offers the first comprehensive account of private peacemaking, weaving together its legal, religious, political and social meanings across several cities (13th-15th centuries).  Peacemaking’s ability to hinder criminal prosecution has often been considered the result of government powerlessness. Kumhera, however, examines peacemaking’s benefits, detailing how its flexibility was crucial in creating a viable criminal justice system that emphasized violence prevention and recognition of jurisdiction while allowing space for friends, neighbors and clergy to intervene. Additionally, he explores the roles of women and clergy in peacemaking, how peace operated in a vendetta culture and how the medieval understanding of reconciliation affected the practice of peacemaking.

Between XVIth and XVIIth centuries the Venetian counsel of ten extended its inquisitorial rite to the Mainland courts, weakening the ancient judicial rites which facilitated peace and the permanence of blood feud. This process changed the image of the bandit who became real outlaws and deprived the judicial autonomy of the 'res publicae'.