Everyday Crime, Criminal Justice and Gender in Early Modern Bologna

Female protagonists are commonly overlooked in the history of crime; especially in early modern Italy, where women’s scope of action is often portrayed as heavily restricted. This book redresses the notion of Italian women’s passivity, arguing that women’s crimes were far too common to be viewed as an anomaly. Based on over two thousand criminal complaints and investigation dossiers, Sanne Muurling charts the multifaceted impact of gender on patterns of recorded crime in early modern Bologna. While various socioeconomic and legal mechanisms withdrew women from the criminal justice process, the casebooks also reveal that women – as criminal offenders and savvy litigants – had an active hand in keeping the wheels of the court spinning

Jonathan Davies (ed.), Aspects of violence in Renaissance Europe, London : Ashgate, 2013, 276 p., ISBN 978-1409433415. Sanne Muurling

While the big debates within the history of violence have largely been inspired by quantitative assessments of homicide rates, there has also been an increasing interest in the examination of violence as a cultural issue. This volume, edited by Jonathan Davies, is a recent contribution to this cultural approach to violence. It consists of nine essays from various disciplines, divided into the three sections (interpersonal violence, war and justice) that intend to shed light on the varieties o..

Whore, thief and cuckold spy: Insults, gender and the politics of everyday life in early modern Bologna

Quest’articolo indaga il rapporto tra affronto verbale, genere e agentività legale nella Bologna della prima età moderna. Per molto tempo gli studiosi hanno trascurato di considerare l’impegno delle donne nell’attività criminale, o ne hanno sottolineato la distinzione. In tale contesto l’insulto è spesso stato caratterizzato una forma criminale tipicamente femminile e considerato in rapporto all’incapacità delle donne di agire in altri ambiti sociali, economici e politici della vita. Il presente studio intende sottoporre a meditazione critica tale assunto, esaminando il linguaggio e la pratica dell’affronto verbale quale discorso deviante attraverso il casellario giudiziario del Tribunale del Torrone, la corte penale di Bologna nella prima età moderna. Mentre tale fonte conferma l’esistenza di un lessico altamente sessista degli insulti, si sostiene che l’insulto maschile e femminile non vadano trattati distintamente, dal momento che i protagonisti maschili e quelle femminili attinsero a un ampio spettro di convenzioni e pratiche culturali condivise che vale la pena di esplorare.Cities, Migration and Global Interdependenc

A Game of Norms

While the treatment of migrants in the criminal justice system has recently been designated one of the most relevant research directions in the history of crime, scholarship on the period before the nineteenth century and outside of England or Holland remains far and few between. This article offers a first exploration of the role of offenders’ geographical origins in the administration of criminal justice in an early modern Italian city. It scrutinizes patterns of prosecution and sentencing for three distinct types of crime (pauper mobility, theft, and violence) brought before Bologna’s secular criminal court in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. By doing so, it reveals both the variability of repertoires of inclusion and exclusion across the spectrum of criminalized behaviours, and the different stages at which a migrant past could pose a disadvantage in the personalized game with the norms we call early modern criminal justice

Een schatkamer in Europa: Koffie, thee en porselein in de Hollandse materiële cultuur

FGW – Publications without University Leiden contrac

Redactioneel. Overleven

Cities, Migration and Global Interdependenc

The Role of Occupations in the Decline of Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Insights From Amsterdam’s Jewish Neighbourhoods, 1856–1909

The decline of pulmonary tuberculosis in the second half of the nineteenth century was instrumental in shaping long-term shifts in historical mortality patterns and life expectancy. Despite its significance, the underlying determinants of this decline remain a subject of ongoing debate. This study contributes to the discussions about the role of standards of living by examining the impact of occupation on the decline of pulmonary tuberculosis mortality in Amsterdam between 1856 and 1909. It does so through the lens of the city’s Jewish neighbourhoods, that, despite facing poverty and overcrowding, exhibited substantially lower tuberculosis mortality rates than the rest of the city, but also experienced a slower decline over time. Using individual-level mortality data from the Amsterdam Causes-of-Death Database and occupational data from marriage certificates, we analyse how shifts in occupational structures following industrialization influenced these trends. Our findings highlight the significant role of labour conditions in shaping historical health disparities and suggest that work environments, alongside nutrition and public health measures, played a pivotal role in shaping and exacerbating intra-urban health disparities