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Cultures of Conflict Resolution in
Early Modern Europe
Cultures of Conflict Resolution in
Early Modern Europe
Edited by
Stephen Cummins and Laura Kounine

Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Germany
First published 2016 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2016 Stephen Cummins, Laura Kounine and the Contributors
Stephen Cummins and Laura Kounine have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Cummins, Stephen, editor. | Kounine, Laura, 1985- editor.
Title: Cultures of conflict resolution in early modern Europe / edited by Stephen Cummins and
Laura Kounine.
Description: Farnham, Surrey, England : Ashgate, 2015. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015020324 | ISBN 9781472411556 (hardcover : alkaline paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Dispute resolution (Law)–Europe–History. | Compromise (Law)–
Europe–History. | Conflict management–Europe–History. | Criminal justice, Administration
of–Europe–History.
Classification: LCC KJC3923 .C85 2015 | DDC 347.4/0940903–dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015020324
ISBN 9781472411556 (hbk)

Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii

Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Confronting Conflict in Early Modern Europe 1

Part I Rethinking Disputes and Settlements
1 Rethinking Disputes and Settlements: How Historians Can Use

Legal Anthropology 17
John Jordan
2 At the Crossroads of Feud and Law: Settling Disputes in Early

Modern Tuscany 51
Marco Cavarzere
Part II Mediation, Reconciliation, Coexistence
3 ‘Types’ of Peacemakers: Exploring the Authority and Self-

Perception of the Early Modern Papacy 77
Christian Schneider
4 Mediation and Reconciliation among Seventeenth-Century

French High Aristocrats 105
Christian Kühner
5 Containing Confessional Conflict in the Military: The Holy

Roman Empire before c. 1650 127
Nikolas Funke
vi Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe
6 Colonial Conflicts: Factional Disputes in Two Portuguese

Settlements in Asia 151
Tara Alberts
Part III Law, Courts and Conflict
7 Contesting Public Executions in Paris Towards the End of the

Wars of Religion 179
Tom Hamilton
8 Contested Coexistence: Lay–Clerical Disputes and their

Settlement in the Late Medieval Hungarian Countryside 203
Gabriella Erdélyi
9 The Witch on Trial: Narratives of Conflict and Community in

Early Modern Germany 229
Laura Kounine
10 Forgiving Crimes in Early Modern Naples 255

Stephen Cummins
Afterword 281
Stuart Carroll
Index289
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1 Detail of Vassalieu dit Nicolay, Map of Paris, 1609 185
2 Detail of Figure représentant le supplice & exécution de l’arrest

de mort donné contre le très-meschant, très-abominable & très
détestable parricide Ravaillac le 27 May 1610, engraving by Jan
Ziarnko, published by Jean Le Clerc (Paris, 1610). Bibliothèque
nationale de France 197
Tables
1 Appeals to and death sentences confirmed by the Parlement of

Paris in criminal cases, 1572–1610 191
Notes on Contributors
Tara Alberts (PhD Cambridge) is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the

University of York. Her recent publications include Conflict and Conversion:
Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500–1700 (Cambridge, 2013) and Intercultural
Exchange in Southeast Asia. History and Society in the Early Modern World,
edited with D.R.M. Irving (London, 2013).
Stuart Carroll (PhD London) is Professor of Early Modern History at the

University of York. He has wide interests in the history of early modern Europe
and the history of violence. He is currently working on project entitled The
Origins of Civil Society.
Marco Cavarzere (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore) is Alexander-von-Humboldt

Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.
Among his main publications are La prassi della censura nell’Italia del Seicento:
tra repressione e mediazione (Rome, 2011), and La giustizia del vescovo: i tribunali
ecclesiastici della Liguria occidentale (XVI–XVIII secolo) (Pisa, 2012).
Stephen Cummins (PhD Cambridge) is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for

the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development
in Berlin. His research interests centre on early modern southern Italy and
concern the connections of emotions of relationship – love, hatred, jealousy –
with legal and political contexts. He is revising his doctoral thesis ‘Enmity and
Peacemaking in the Kingdom of Naples, c.1600-1700’ for publication.
Gabriella Erdélyi ‘(PhD Eötvös Loránd University) is Senior Research Fellow in

the Institute of History, Research Centre for Humanities, Hungarian Academy
of Sciences, in Budapest. Her book A Cloister on Trial: Religious Culture and
Everyday Life in Late Medieval Hungary is forthcoming with Ashgate.
Nikolas Funke (DPhil Sussex) is Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the
University of Birmingham.
Tom Hamilton (DPhil Oxford) is Junior Research Fellow in History at Trinity

College, University of Cambridge. He is revising for publication his doctoral
research on ‘Pierre de L’Estoile and his World in the Wars of Religion’.
x Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe
John Jordan (DPhil Oxford) is part of the research project ‘Textilien und
materielle Kultur im Wandel’, which studies the influx of Indian cotton textiles
into early modern Switzerland, at the Historical Institute of the University of
Bern. His primary research interests lie in the socio-legal history and material
culture of early modern Europe.
Laura Kounine (PhD Cambridge) is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for the
History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in
Berlin. Her research interests focus on the history of crime, gender, emotions and
selfhood in early modern Germany. She is currently revising her doctoral thesis
‘The Gendering of Witchcraft in Early Modern Württemberg’ for publication.
Christian Kühner (PhD Freiburg/EHESS) is Lecturer in Early Modern

European History at the University of Freiburg. His book Politische Freundschaft
bei Hofe: Repräsentation und Praxis einer sozialen Beziehung im französischen
Adel des 17. Jahrhunderts was published in 2013.
Christian Schneider is a PhD fellow in History at the University of Durham.

His research focuses on papal diplomacy during the pontificate of Clement VIII
and he has published an article on the papacy’s diplomatic involvement in the
English succession crisis.
Acknowledgements
This volume developed from a conference held at St John’s College, Cambridge,

in May 2012 on the theme of ‘Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern
Europe’, where early versions of some of these essays were presented. The
conference received generous support from St John’s College, the Cambridge
History Faculty Conference Fund and the School of Humanities and Social
Sciences Conferences Fund. The editors would particularly like to thank all
those who attended the conference, and especially Stuart Carroll, Malcolm
Gaskill, Mary Laven, Ulinka Rublack and Alex Walsham, who all provided
crucial advice and helped to shape the intellectual scope and discussions of the
conference and, subsequently, the book.
The editors would like to thank their fellow contributors for all their hard
work in shaping this volume. We would also like to thank the contributors
to this book who were not part of the original conference but shared in our
enthusiasm and vision for the volume. The editors, as well as the contributors,
have benefitted from conversations with many colleagues, the names of whom
are too numerous to include here. We would also like to thank the anonymous
reader of the original manuscript, whose thoughtful critiques and suggestions
strengthened and improved our final publication.
We would also like to say a word of gratitude to those involved with the
seminal edited collection Disputes and Settlements, whose work inspired our
conference, and led to this volume, in the first place. This is also a fitting place
to pay a number of tributes. To Simon Roberts, whose essay in Disputes and
Settlements did so much to inspire historians, and who died in 2014. We also
wish to acknowledge the inspiring example and innovative work of John Bossy,
the sad news of whose death reached us as this volume was about to go to press
in October 2015.
We would like to thank Ashgate for the hard work and support we have
received from them in seeing this volume through to completion, in particular
from our commissioning editor, Emily Yates. Finally, we would like to thank
the Centre for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human
Development in Berlin, which has provided a very welcoming and supportive
environment in which we were able to bring this volume to completion.
Introduction
Confronting Conflict in
Early Modern Europe
Some of the most persistent and largest-scale accounts of change in European

history are stories of conflicts and attempts to manage them. The rise of law
courts, the decline of feud, the monopolization of violence by the state, and the
growth of civility and toleration are well-known themes of European history. In
one tradition, the study of conflict was told as a story of how people learned to
restrain hot emotional responses and thus escaped from the violent tenor of the
European Middle Ages. Johan Huizinga’s work was the most famous illustration
of these putatively ‘hot’ medieval emotional styles, and Norbert Elias described
the process of restraint in his Civilizing Process.1 Yet now such narratives of
change are routinely discussed with scepticism rather than accepted as accurate
descriptions of the uniform growth of modernity.2 In part the criticism of
evolutionary accounts of civilization developed as anthropologically inspired
studies grew in popularity and explored what law and justice might mean in
societies lacking legal codes or judicial officials.3 Such legal anthropology of
‘stateless’ places, and the histories of medieval feuding that were stimulated
1
Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1996) was published in
Dutch in 1919 and first translated into English in 1924; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process:
The History of Manners (Oxford, 1978) and the second volume The Civilizing Process: State
Formation and Civilization (Oxford, 1982) had been published in an initial edition in
German in 1939. For a summary of these accounts see Ute Frevert, Emotions in History: Lost
and Found (Budapest, 2011), pp. 14–16.
2
For critiques of the civilizing process see R.J. Robinson, ‘“The Civilizing Process”:
Some Remarks on Elias’s Social History’, Sociology, 21 (1987): pp. 1–17; Gerd Schwerhoff,
‘Zivilisationsprozess und Geschichtswissenschaft: Norbert Elias’ Forschungsparadigms in
historischer Sicht’, Historische Zeitschrift, 266 (1998): pp. 561–605; Stephen Mennell and
Johan Goudsblom, ‘Civilizing Process – Myth or Reality? A Comment on Duerr’s Critique
of Elias’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39/4 (1997): pp. 729–33; Stuart Carroll,
Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford, 2006): pp. 308–310.
3
The anthropological insights of the first half of the twentieth century were brought
to historians’ attention most effectively by Max Gluckman, ‘The Peace in the Feud’, Past and
Present, 8 (1955): pp. 1–14.
2 Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early Modern Europe
by such studies, offered inspiration for seeing both extra-legal mediation and
vengeance (or other ostensibly ‘unrestrained’ practices) as providing order
and delivering forms of justice.4 From anthropological studies it was recognized
that even in stateless societies feud was not just unrestrained violence.5 Instead
it was controlled in a variety of ways by complex normative guidelines. In this
perspective vengeance was a satisfying way of settling scores that, as a process,
naturally included conciliation at its very core.6 However, such practices were
still most often recognized as an effect of the absence of effective social control
emanating from the state, and likely to disappear as the rule of official law
was applied and violence became concentrated increasingly in the hands of
the state.7 But more recently the growth of law and courts has been interpreted
not as a story of effective repression but rather as a result of the growing
financial and emotional attractions of legal process. In this view, state formation
is consumer-led. The decline in private revenge is no longer explained only by
the rising costs of illicit violence but also the emotional, fiscal and strategic uses
of legal action.8 Accounts of the maturing power of states and their law upon
the European stage must be stories of the roles they played in conflicts between
4
A key moment was the influence upon Gluckman’s colleague at Manchester, Michael
Wallace-Hadrill: Michael Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Bloodfeud of the Franks’, The Bulletin of the
John Rylands Library, 41 (1959): pp. 459–87.
5
Paul Dresch, ‘Legalism, Anthropology and History: A View from Part of
Anthropology’, in Paul Dresch and Hannah Skoda (eds), Legalism: Anthropology and History
(Oxford, 2012), pp. 1–37 (p. 9).
6
As well as Gluckman, ‘The Peace in the Feud’, see the discussion in Paul R. Hyams,
Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2011), pp. 14–16. For a later
adaptation see Stuart Carroll, ‘The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
France’, Past and Present, 178 (2003): pp. 74–115. For a nuanced historical exploration of
the meeting of feuding and manners see Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta and
Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1993).
7
See Jenny Wormald ‘The Blood Feud in Early Modern Scotland’, in John Bossy
(ed.) Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge, 1983),
p. 103 and Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 2001),
pp. 73–5.
8
Daniel Lord Smail, ‘Telling Tales in Angevin Courts’, French Historical Studies, 20
(1997): pp. 183–215 (p. 215) and also his The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity,
and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, 2003), esp. pp. 243–4. For how some of
this work on local conditions can be combined with the analytical category of social control
see Herman Roodenburg, ‘Social Control Viewed from Below: New Perspectives’, in Herman
Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (eds), Social Control in Europe, Vol. 1 (1500–1800)
(Columbus, 2004), pp. 145–58 (pp. 151–2). For a similar argument for why knife-fighting
declined in favour of the pursuit of disputes in law courts in British-protected Greece see
Thomas W. Gallant, ‘Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth-Century
Greece’, The American Historical Review, 105 (2000): pp. 359–82 (pp. 381–2).
people. Critiques of the civilizing process still have to confront evidence of

declining interpersonal violence; yet the varying causes and inconsistencies
of such decline must be addressed.9
In a number of permutations, then, stories of how peaceful coexistence
was practised and how dispute was confronted lie at the heart of stories of
modernity and the decline of violence in Europe.10 Reconciliation also lies
behind interpretations of economic cooperation in the early modern period.11
Hostile relationships and mediation have also framed our understanding of
post-Reformation Christianity. John Bossy connected the varying success
of the post-Reformation churches to their ability to provide effective or
satisfying mediation and peacemaking between people.12 An assumption that
post-Reformation confessional plurality inevitably caused local conflict has
been challenged. Histories emphasizing neighbourly tranquillity and effective
resolution of disputes between communities of diverse confessions now
complement the stark divisions, ritual violence and hard-grained animosities
that could form around confessional divides at certain times and places.13
9
Pieter Spierenburg has pointed out some of the shortcomings of critiques of Norbert
Elias but combines this with agreeing that ‘[t]here was no unilinear and universal evolution
from a violent to a less violent society’, Pieter Spierenburg, ‘Violence and the Civilizing
Process: Does it Work?’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 5/2 (2001): pp. 87–105 (p. 89).
10
For an introduction to the lengthy historiography on the incidence of violence and
homicide in European history see: Pieter Spierenburg, ‘Faces of Violence: Homicide Trends
and Cultural Meanings: Amsterdam, 1431–1816’, Journal of Social History, 27 (1994):
pp. 701–716; Robert Muchembled, A History of Violence From the End of the Middle Ages
to the Present (Cambridge, 2012); Manuel Eisner, ‘Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal
Violence: The Long-Term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective’,
British Journal of Criminology, 41 (2001): pp. 618–38; Stuart Carroll, ‘Introduction’, in
Stuart Carroll (ed.), Cultures of Violence: Interpersonal Violence in Historical Perspective
(Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 1–46.
11
Craig Muldrew, ‘The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of
Economic Disputes in Early Modern England’, The Historical Journal, 39 (1996): pp. 915–42
(p. 918).
12
John Bossy, Peace in the Post-Reformation (Cambridge, 1998).
13
Mark Konnert, Civic Agendas and Religious Passion: Châlons-sur-Marne during the
French Wars of Religion, 1560–1594 (Kirksville, 1997); Oliver Christin, ‘“Peace Must Come
From Us”: Friendship Pacts Between the Confessions During the Wars of Religion’, in Ruth
Whelan and Carol Baxter (eds), Toleration and Religious Identity: The Edict of Nantes and Its
Implications in France, Britain and Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 92–106; Alexandra Walsham,
Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006);
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Jesse Sponholz, The Tactics of Toleration:
A Refugee Community in the Age of Religious Wars (Newark, 2011), esp. pp. 221–2. See also
the contributions to Thomas Max Safley (ed.), A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the
In early modern Europe the ways in which disputes and discord were
dealt with could vary from person to person and across regional, national and
religious borders, as well as over the overlapping jurisdictions within states.
The methods and resources available to pursue enmities, to make peace and to
resolve conflict depended on gender, social standing and age. Despite variation,
many institutions and practices were shared; conflicts could provide moments
in which states and institutions became manifest in the lives of Europeans.
Reconciliation could be both a formal and informal process. The pursuit of
conflict and its resolution, moreover, as the contributions to this volume show,
could involve whole villages, and all manner of personnel including local
magistrates, legal faculties, priests and pastors, government officials, nobility
and even the Pope. It was also a deeply gendered process.14 Men and women had
different methods of pursuing both conflict and peace and could have varying
experiences of legal and communal processes.15 Peacemaking as practice included
the agreement of more or less formal peace pacts between individuals or families.
This topic has seen considerable interest in histories of Italy in particular.16
Early Modern World (Leiden, 2011), esp. Thomas Max Safley, ‘Multiconfessionalism: A Brief
Introduction’, pp. 1–23.
14
Laura Gowing, ‘Women, Status and the Popular Culture of Dishonour’, Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1996): pp. 225–34; Elizabeth Cohen, ‘Honor and Gender
in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 22/4 (1992):
pp. 597–625; Linda Pollock ‘Honor, Gender and Reconciliation in Elite Culture,
1570–1700’, Journal of British Studies, 46 (2007): pp. 3–29.
15
For instance, Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early
Modern London (Oxford, 1998); Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern
Germany (Oxford, 1999); Alexandra Shepard, ‘Manhood, Credit and Patriarchy in
Early Modern England c. 1580–1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000): pp. 75–106; Robert
B. Shoemaker, ‘The Decline of Public Insult in London 1660–1800’, Past and Present, 169
(2000): pp. 97–131; Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex
and Marriage (London, 1999).
16
See: Marco Bellabarba, ‘Pace pubblica e pace privata: linguaggi e istituzioni
processuali nell’Italia moderna’, in Marco Bellabarba, Andrea Zorzi and Gerd Schwerhoff
(eds), Criminalità e giustizia in Germania e in Italia: pratiche giudiziarie e linguaggi giuridici
tra tardo medioevo e prima età moderna / Kriminalität und Justiz in Deutschland und Italien:
Rechtspraktiken und gerichtliche Diskurse in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Bologna,
2001), pp. 189–213; Ottavia Niccoli, ‘Giustizia, pace, perdono: a proposito di un libro di
John Bossy’, Storica, 25–6 (2003): pp. 195–207; Ottavia Niccoli, Perdonare: idee, pratiche,
rituali in Italia tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome, 2007); Ottavia Niccoli, ‘Pratiche sociali di
perdono nell’Italia della Controriforma’, in Francesca Cantù (ed.), I linguaggi del potere:
politica e religione nell’età barocca (Rome, 2009), pp. 249–73; Massimo Vallerani, Medieval
Public Justice (Washington, DC, 2012), pp. 174–227; Osvaldo Raggio, Faide e Parentele:
lo stato Genovese visto dalla Fontanabuona (Turin, 1990), p. 176; Daniele Edigati, ‘Pace e
transazione nella storia del processo criminale: il caso toscano nell’età moderna’, in Paolo
Stuart Carroll has surveyed this topic (particularly for France, Germany and
Italy) and has posed key questions for any comparative history of peacemaking.17
The pursuit of conflict, moreover, could take a number of different guises
with a range of intended outcomes. It is important to note that peace was not
always the primary motivation in ostensible contexts of resolution, mediation
or peacemaking. Outside of the discipline of history, conflict resolution has
produced a lengthy bibliography.18
The breadth of topics addressed in this volume reflects the variety of contexts
and meanings of resolution, ranging across social strata, the European continent
and beyond. If we return to John Bossy’s description of the motivation of the
conference that led to the seminal volume Disputes and Settlements we see a
similarly broad set of overlapping interests:
the idea of a social history which would be a history of actual people; a feeling
that the record of law and especially litigation was a good place to find something
about them; some experience in the history of the social institutions of
Christianity considered as peace-making rituals, and a wish to pursue the subject
of arbitration and peace-making as an important matter in itself; and an interest
in the theory of marriage represented in Romeo and Juliet.19
This volume opened up numerous avenues of research and has been an

indispensable foundation for subsequent thinking about the connection
between legal anthropology and early modern history. This volume takes
inspiration from the productive mixture of legal and social perspectives upon
conflict and its (potential) end surveyed in Disputes and Settlements. This
collection also explores what is gained by placing some of the diverse strands
of research produced in the three decades since Disputes and Settlements back
into contact.
The chapters in this volume therefore explore three broad themes:
peacemaking as practice, in particular in conversation with Bossy’s Disputes
and Settlements; the varieties of early modern mediation and arbitration; and
Broggio and Maria Pia Paoli (eds), Stringere la pace: teorie e pratiche della conciliazione
nell’Europa moderna (secoli XV–XVIII) (Rome, 2011), pp. 369–410.
17
Stuart Carroll, ‘Peace-Making in Early Modern Europe: Towards a Comparative
History’, in Paolo Broggio and Maria Pia Paoli (eds), Stringere la pace: teorie e pratiche della
conciliazione nell’Europa moderna (secoli XV–XVIII) (Rome, 2011), pp. 75–93.
18
See, for example, Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall (eds),
Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge, 1999); Mats R. Berdal, Building Peace
After War (Abingdon, 2009); and John D. Brewer, Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach
(Cambridge, 2010).
19
John Bossy, ‘Postscript’, in John Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements: Law and
Human Relations in the West (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 287–93 (p. 287).
the roles of criminal law in interpersonal conflict. There are a set of related
concerns that range across these groupings: the consumer-driven aspects
of the rise in the use of criminal and civil courts from the medieval period
onwards; the complex story of the control of noble violence; and the nature
and challenges of toleration in post-Reformation Europe. One important point
to stress is how many contributors identify the potential illusions in practices
framed as ‘pacification’ or ‘resolution’. Resolution of conflict is far from always a
positive and consensual act. Insteadit is often a product of domination and the
reinforcement of inequality. The study of peace encompasses authority, power
and inequality as well as the ‘better angels of our nature’.20
The related historical approaches in this volume are complemented by
another historiographical issue: that of differing emphases between national
historical traditions. There have been markedly diverse emphases and conceptual
vocabularies used in different traditions, such as the variations Marco Cavarzere
sketches between Italian and British and American historiographies in his
contribution to this volume. Italian historiography has tended to identify
peacemaking as the core of the formation of the state and places legal
management of disputes at the heart of narratives of state power.21 This has
been one consequence of the extensive study of urban factionalism by Italian
historians.22 Another difference that can be cited is the French (and Italian)
usage of the infrajudicial, which has had a less clear impact in English-language
historiography than in French, despite similar interests in popular forms of
dispute management.23
But despite questions of national difference in historical practice, which are
rarely clear-cut, another question of geography is raised in this volume. Studies
of conflict resolution have often been focused on a single locality, but the legal
or political institutions involved often stretched far beyond such geographical
bounds. Indeed, there were many pan-European networks, especially, perhaps,
those of the Catholic Church. This is clear in recent work that examines the
20
For the recent application of this phrase see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our
Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (London, 2011).
21
See Valerio Antichi, ‘Giustizia consuetudinaria e giustizia d’apparato nello Stato
pontificio’, in Paolo Broggio and Maria Pia Paoli (eds), Stringere la pace: teorie e pratiche della
conciliazione nell’Europa moderna (secoli XV–XVIII) (Rome, 2011), pp. 229–75; Andrea
Zorzi, ‘Legislation, Justice and Political Power in Italian Cities, 1200–1400’, in Antonio
Padoa Schioppa (ed.), Legislation and Justice (The Origins of the Modern State in Europe,
13th to 18th Centuries) (Oxford, 1997), pp. 37–55.
22
Marco Dedola, ‘“Tener Pistoia con le parti”: Governo fiorentino e fazioni pistoiesi
all’inizio del ’500’, Ricerche storiche, 22 (1992): pp. 239–59.
23
Benoît Garnot (ed.), L’Infrajudiciaire du Moyen Age à l’époque contemporaine (Dijon,
1996).
connections between local disputes and transnational legal networks.24 This

volume ranges across Europe, east to west, north to south, Protestant to Catholic,
including France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the Portuguese overseas empire.
While the focus is therefore on Europe, there is also a pressing need both to
address European expansion overseas and to place Europe in relation to other
parts of the world. The presumption of the pacification of Europe and its
virtues of tolerance can be questioned when a broader frame of comparison is
adopted. Beyond the European continent, thinking about imperial legal systems
or regimes of pacification can be reinvigorated by the incorporation of current
understandings of early modern European realities.
Part I, ‘Rethinking Disputes and Settlements’, explicitly situates this book
in dialogue with John Bossy’s Disputes and Settlements, by engaging with and
reflecting upon the various ways that historians and anthropologists have
approached the theme of conflict and its resolution since the publication of
Bossy’s seminal volume 30 years ago. John Jordan opens the section with a
historiographical chapter that explores the influence of legal anthropology
upon early modern history. The collection Disputes and Settlements defined
many of the features of the field for the subsequent generation. The cross-
fertilization between history and anthropology has framed numerous questions
for historians in both obvious and subtle ways. Jordan’s careful tracing of a set
of scholarly preoccupations brings into focus the complexities of the legal. In
particular he leaves us with the reminder that there is no single realm of the law;
plural authorities and overlapping jurisdictions were the rule in early modern
Europe. He suggests that historians need to return to worrying over some of the
questions about what precisely defines the legal and how it relates to the broader
world of the dynamic, processual enforcement of norms.
Marco Cavarzere’s reconstruction of the interventions of the Florentine
authorities into the internal feuding of Pistoia provides a compelling example
of how certain types of conflict became sites for political intervention and the
innovation of new forms of civic government. His work is an example of the
productive result of incorporating feuding and law in the same analysis, leaving
behind assumptions that the two are mutually exclusive. Yet at the same time as
he recognizes the survival of the feud, he also makes the vital point that change
occurred both in how conflicts happened and how they were resolved. ‘Apparent
immobility’ could hide considerable change. The micro-politics of communities
must be combined with a study of the policies of territorial states in order to see
changes that may otherwise be obscured.
24
For an example of early modern lives crossing geographical and legal borders see
Eric Dursteler, Renegade Women: Gender, Identity, and Boundaries in the Early Modern
Mediterranean (Baltimore, 2011).
Then we move to a section entitled ‘Mediation, Reconciliation, Coexistence’,

which groups together four chapters that have a concern with practices of
peacemaking or cultures of mediation. Christian Schneider’s discussion of papal
peacemaking reminds us that this was one of the major roles of the Pope. But
this character of mediation was not unitary. Schneider delves into a number of
examples to demonstrate the importance of breaking down the peacemaking
to show the variety of different powers and attributes behind apparently
similar situations. Schneider’s intervention also alerts us to the significance of
the detailed survey of the specific roles and abilities of individuals for studies
of conflict resolution. The exact ranges of action provided to or possessed by
peacemakers changes how we regard their intervention in conflicts. In the case
of the post-Reformation papacy, Schneider argues that pragmatic ambitions
towards retaining international neutrality sat uneasily alongside ambitions to
supreme authority.
Talk around reconciliation was often different from its reality. Christian
Kühner’s chapter demonstrates this in his study of mediation among the
French high aristocracy. Above all, it is the personal aspects of mediation that
are significant in his narrative. Acts of mediation were interventions between
people, often fraught and reliant on careful stage management. Kühner alerts us
that conflict was essential to aristocratic identity and reminds us of the political
significance of personal relations. Mediation between rivals and the processing
of offences were at the centre of the political life of the French nobility. In his
work, the court emerges as a location where anger was often demonstrated but
practices of intervention were more common than acts of violence. Even in this
context acts of mediation did not simply produce peace but could become sparks
for further conflict or used as cover for the continuation of adversarial relations.
While pacification could be a cloak for hostility, good fellowship could
be found in the midst of war. Nikolas Funke demonstrates that the multi-
confessional companies of soldiers in the Holy Roman Empire, despite their
reputations as violent and godless above all else, developed styles of sociability
that defused or rather avoided confrontation over religious matters. The codes
of soldiery provided a basis for coexistence to triumph within a given company
of soldiers and, at times, between companies on opposing sides. Confessional
variety led to a pragmatic, shared vision of Christianity that either avoided
theological differences or engaged with them in playful sociability. With this
perhaps surprising setting he encourages us to rethink our assumptions about
where and how peaceful coexistence is generated.
Tara Alberts shows the frustrations that even saints-to-be could face when
they became caught up in local conflicts. Alberts alerts us to the fact that the
sources we use to study conflict are often starkly partisan, one side claiming
total innocence and ascribing total guilt to the other. Exploring three factional
conflicts involving ecclesiastics and secular authority, her work places into
question rigid divides between religious and secular peacemaking. She reminds
us that stereotypes about the roles of certain officials were deployed in conflicts,
perhaps altering our understanding of the events themselves. Taking us outside
of Europe, her work raises questions about imperial spaces and questions
assumptions about the division between a pacified European centre and
violent peripheries.
The chapters that make up Part III, entitled ‘Law, Courts and Conflict’,
explore how disputes were pursued in tribunals and investigate the relationship
between law, conflict and communal relations. These chapters further consider
the ways in which the resolution of conflicts could become arenas in which
states attempted to extend their authority yet also vital forums for internal
community politics. States’ interests in pacification did not always have the
simple consequences of increasing power. Programmes of state expansion could
fail to achieve their goals or provide opportunities for the creative usage of state
authority by representatives of local power.
Tom Hamilton explores the fraught place of justice and capital punishment
during the French Wars of Religion. He shows that the ostensible purpose
or meaning of ritual could be challenged or inverted in practice. Further, we
should not reduce a complicated event like an execution to a simple function.
The materiality and contingency of such events meant that they could generate
meanings and effects far from the ideal purpose that inspired them.
Gabriella Erdélyi shows how violence against or involving priests was a local
phenomenon that could also potentially be propelled into the international
networks of the Catholic Church. Here we see elements of Schneider’s
international vision of the papacy and Alberts’ treatment of secular–religious
conflicts. The papal bureaucracy was a resource to be used in local conflicts.
Erdélyi uses her findings to challenge simple accounts of civilizing processes and
asks us to consider the use of law as a weapon rather than as a way to solve or
finish conflict. She further explores how languages of emotions were used to
describe or excuse violence.25
Laura Kounine highlights the complex interpersonal relations that lay
behind a witchcraft trial. She traces how the application of law upon those
accused of witchcraft was a highly fraught process which attempted to establish
the truth of private intentions in the midst of communal life. What Kounine’s
reconstruction demonstrates is that the trial process was a key point at which
conflict between two parties was constructed and solidified. Conflict within
the community could be amorphous, contradictory and transient. The legal
process, in its attempt to create a fixed narrative of criminal intent, solidified
25
See the seminal Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their
Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, 1987).
social relations and marked a point of no return. Spaces of justice or law had a
whole range of effects upon the experience of communal life.
Stephen Cummins explores the consequences of a legal institution that a
victim’s kin could issue to forgive an offender for a homicide or other serious
crime in the early modern Kingdom of Naples. Cummins explores the legal and
moral thought around jurisprudence and legal policy and the practical social
consequences of this institution. Viewing the aftermath of violent offences in a
broad perspective illustrates how the problem of peacemaking practices cannot
be reduced to social control but created various effects for offenders and the
kin of victims as well as holding multiple and often contradictory places in
legal and political thought. This book closes with reflections by Stuart Carroll,
which reconnects this volume with the images of European dispute resolution
that John Bossy identified in 1983: feud, charity and law. In doing so, Carroll
reminds us of the continued vitality of Bossy’s original vision: ‘the idea of a social
history which would be a history of actual people’.26
The breadth of approaches – from above, below and ‘within’ – as well as
the range of geographical, historiographical and temporal dimensions, allow
for a book that considers ‘cultures’ both in plural and in contact.27 Alongside
the variety and breadth of the whole, the chapters have a common focus
upon conflict and the multiple, and at times intangible or illusory, notion of
its resolution.
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Part I
Rethinking Disputes and Settlements
Chapter 1
Rethinking Disputes and Settlements: How
Historians Can Use Legal Anthropology
John Jordan*
Just over thirty years ago Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations
in the West was published, raising historians’ awareness of and engagement
with legal anthropology and its methodology.1 Inspired by legal anthropology,
historians began to ask new questions of their sources and to pursue new research
directions. As the contributions to this volume show, the field has continued
to evolve. But, in the intervening years, so has legal anthropology. The Bossy
conference and volume captured a specific moment in time (and a turbulent one
at that) within legal anthropology, not its terminus.
The focus of this chapter is first of all on how legal anthropology itself
has developed among anthropologists, and secondly on how historians have
engaged with the insights and findings of legal anthropology: in short, on how
the legal anthropological turn has come of age within the discipline of history
in the time since Disputes and Settlements was published. A concluding section
suggests some potential avenues for future research. The discussion is meant to
be illustrative of major trends rather than a comprehensive analysis of each.
First, what is legal anthropology? At its core, it is a methodological approach
that attempts to identify rules, whether legal or otherwise, and to observe how
they inform, guide and constrain behaviour. At the same time, it considers these
questions from a human perspective, and asks how people ignore, adhere to or
improvise around rules. Such research is not restricted to courtrooms and other
legal domains. As one of its leading practitioners, Sally Falk Moore, described it:
An anthropological approach to law inquires into the context of enforceable

norms: social, political, economic, and intellectual. This includes, but goes further
than, what Western governments and courts define as law. In anthropology,
while the ‘socio-legal’ includes formal juridical institutions and their social
* I would particularly like to thank John E. Jordan, Stephen Cummins, and Laura Kounine
for their helpful comments, suggestions and patience over multiple drafts.
1
John Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West
(Cambridge, 1983).
surroundings, it also encompasses law-like activities and processes of establishing

order in many other social domains, formal and informal, official and unofficial,
in our own society and in others.2
From Bossy to Today: The Legal Anthropologist’s Perspective
From its inception, a central challenge for legal anthropology has been how to
compare law in Western and non-Western (most frequently African) societies.
Countless debates over whether Western legal categories could be applied to
non-Western societies, including a spirited one between Max Gluckman and
Paul Bohannan, dominated the field in its early years.3 The result was neither
consensus nor a decisive majority for one view. Legal anthropologists instead
began to study order and its points of rupture (disputes), since both could
be studied without defining the legal. Moreover, disputes were considered a
phenomenon that could be compared cross-culturally.4 For most of the 1970s,
such studies characterized legal anthropology.5
But if one takes stock of the field at the end of the 1970s, one sees fissures
beginning to appear in the foundation. Simon Roberts and John Comaroff
argued that the focus on disputes alone was too narrow; rather, ethnographers
needed to study disputes in their ‘total social context’.6 Others charged that these
studies were ‘atemporal’ and failed to take proper account of how the particular
2
Sally Falk Moore ‘General Introduction: What Is an Anthropological Approach to
Law?’, in Sally Falk Moore (ed.), Law and Anthropology: A Reader (Oxford, 2005), pp. 1–4
(p. 1).
3
See Max Gluckman, The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia
(Manchester, 1955); and Paul Bohannan, Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv (London,
1957). Gluckman and Bohannan continued the debate (along with Sally Falk Moore) in
a later volume edited by Laura Nader. See Max Gluckman, ‘Concepts in the Comparative
Study of Tribal Law’, in Laura Nader (ed.), Law in Culture and Society (Chicago, 1969),
pp. 349–73; Sally Falk Moore, ‘Descent and Legal Position’, in Laura Nader (ed.), Law
in Culture and Society (Chicago, 1969), pp. 374–400; and Paul Bohannan, ‘Ethnography
and Comparison in Legal Anthropology’, in Laura Nader (ed.), Law in Culture and Society
(Chicago, 1969), pp. 401–418.
4
As Martha Mundy and Tobias Kelly later summarized the contemporary points
of view, ‘processes and settlement of disputes represented universal, comparable social
phenomena across all societies’. See ‘Introduction’, in Martha Mundy (ed.), Law and
Anthropology (Aldershot, 2002), pp. xv–xxvi (p. xvii).
5
There were disagreements over whether to use the rule-centred or processual
paradigms described by Roberts in his introduction to Disputes and Settlements. The original
inspiration for the processual approach came from Laura Nader; see Nader (ed.), Law.
6
John Comaroff and Simon Roberts, Rules and Processes: The Cultural Logic of Dispute
in an African Context (Chicago, 1981), pp. 13–14.
Rethinking Disputes and Settlements 19
ethnographic moment had been shaped by history and/or power relations.

A third critique noted that such studies often ignored that the society in question
was part of a (often post-colonial) state with its own legal institutions, personnel
and practices that would have shaped its culture of dispute. Still others stressed
that disputes were not in fact a comparable cross-cultural phenomenon because
of the differences in legal and other institutions between Western and non-
Western societies.
Through this last criticism, the definition of the legal domain again raised
its head. For if legal anthropology was going to be comparative, then surely one
must have at least a working or operational definition of what law is. But therein
lay a central bone of contention. Where some scholars called the rules or customs
of non-Western societies ‘law’, or (at the time) ‘customary law’, others steadfastly
maintained that the term ‘law’ should be reserved for the law of the state.7 The
basic disagreement over what constituted the legal domain, and whether it made
sense to isolate legal from social or cultural analyses, led some, Roberts included,
to argue for the abandonment of legal anthropology.8 For if there is no agreement
on the scope of the legal, or no desire to distinguish legal from social processes,
how is legal anthropology distinct from social or cultural anthropology?9
Thus the Bossy volume appeared at a turbulent moment in the short lifespan
of legal anthropology. Yet the field did not cease to exist; rather, its practitioners
regrouped. Two major trajectories shaped this period of refocus.10 The first
considered how best to classify norms and other non-official processes of
order which operated alongside state law. This occurred under the banner of
‘legal pluralism’. The second devoted increased attention to history and power
7
Among the most prominent for reserving ‘law’ for state law was Simon Roberts.
See his Order and Dispute: An Introduction to Legal Anthropology (Harmondsworth, 1979),
pp. 17–29. As noted by June Starr and Jane Collier, William Twining made the point that
customary law is an invention of British lawyers and colonial administrators. See ‘Historical
Studies of Legal Change’, Current Anthropology, 28/3 (1987): pp. 367–72 (p. 368).
8
See Comaroff and Roberts, Rules and Processes, p. 1; Simon Roberts, ‘Do We Need
an Anthropology of Law?’, Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter, 25 (1978): pp. 4–7;
Francis Snyder, ‘Dispute Processes and Law: A Critical Introduction’, British Journal of Law
and Society, 8/2 (1981): pp. 141–80 (p. 164); Martin Chanock, ‘Signposts or Tombstones?
Reflections on Recent Works on the Anthropology of Law’, Law in Context, 1 (1983):
pp. 107–125. Clifford Geertz weighed in and referred to legal anthropology as a ‘centaur
discipline’, neither fully anthropological nor fully legal. See his Local Knowledge (New York,
1983), pp. 167–234.
9
As Francis Snyder powerfully wrote, ‘The anthropology of law is a myth if conceived
as the search for ahistorical and cross-culturally valid features of law or, alternatively as the
reduction of historically and culturally specific normative forms to ethnographic descriptions
of individual behaviour.’ See Snyder, ‘Dispute Processes’, p. 164.
10
For a succinct overview, see Mundy and Kelly, ‘Introduction’, pp. xvi–xix.
in legal anthropological studies.11 No longer would legal anthropologists ‘isolate

the “legal” as a separate field of study’. Instead, the legal would be embedded in
its holistic social, economic and historical context.12
The move to a more historically inclined approach mirrored a general trend
in social anthropology to reconnect with history. As Kunal Parker argued,
‘the need for anthropology to establish a relationship to history was part of the
effort to rehabilitate anthropology after the anticolonial critiques the discipline
sustained in the 1970s and 1980s’.13 This development brought with it an
increased interest in diachronic processes, particularly as they related to legal
change. As June Starr and Jane Collier summarized it:
instead of focusing on disputes and attempts at settlement of problems, new

objects of study surfaced: how culture mediated legal ideas, the legal strategies
of a ruling or a minority group, the negotiation of a dispute across international
boundaries, the creation by legislation of new ‘redistributive’ networks, how
state-enacted law changed rural agrarian hierarchies, or how less powerful groups
struggled to obtain laws representing their interests.14
But Starr and Collier (and others) were not content with merely expanding
the scope to incorporate history and time, they also wanted to make power,
specifically asymmetrical power relations, a central part of their analysis. The
impetus came from a conference in 1985 whose proceedings were published
as History and Power in the Study of Law (edited by Starr and Collier). With
contributions from many leading legal anthropologists, History and Power
quickly became one of the most influential texts in the field, increasing
practitioners’ awareness of power relations within the realm of law. At its core
11
See, for example, Sally Falk Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law
on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980 (Cambridge, 1986); June Starr, Law as Metaphor: From Islamic
Courts to the Palace of Justice (Albany, 1992); and Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai’i: The
Cultural Power of Law (Princeton, 2000).
12
To invoke Francis Snyder again, ‘The future development of legal anthropology
lies, therefore not only in elucidating the relationships between social action and cultural
ideologies, but also in grasping the extent to which these relationships and the wider social
processes of which they form a part are the product of specific historical and economic
conditions.’ See his ‘Dispute Processes’, p. 164.
13
See Kunal Parker, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: A Historian Among the Anthropologists’,
Law & Society Review, 38/4 (2004): pp. 851–60 (p. 851). June Starr and Jane Collier
acknowledge the influence of Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu on these developments.
See ‘Historical Studies’, p. 367. More generally, see Bernard Cohn, An Anthropologist Among
the Historians and Other Essays (Oxford, 1987); and John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff,
Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder, 1992).
14
Starr and Collier, ‘Historical Studies’, pp. 367–8.
was the conviction that the law is inherently an uneven playing field. As Starr
and Collier wrote in the Introduction, ‘Because all the contributors hold the
view that legal orders create asymmetrical power relations, they also share
the assumption that the law is not neutral. The legal system does not provide
an impartial arena in which contestants from all strata of society may meet to
resolve differences.’15
As a methodological or theoretical stance, Starr and Collier’s position has
had its critics, the most trenchant of whom was Peter Just. To Just, such a position
takes ‘a theoretical stance that is, not to put too fine a point on it, neo-Marxist.
It assigns a primacy to asymmetric relations of power that assumes class interests
and antagonisms.’16 Just was not opposed to power being part of the analysis;
he simply warned ‘that the tendency to reduce all contestations to contests
over class power can obscure other kinds of inconsistencies and contestations’.17
Regardless of whether one views legal relations as generally asymmetrical or not,
power, with due attention to its historical dynamics, has become a central theme
of (legal) anthropological inquiry.
The other response to legal anthropology’s conceptual crisis at the beginning
of the 1980s was the growth of legal pluralism. The term legal pluralism first
entered the anthropological lexicon in the 1960s.18 But it was not until the
1980s that it and its key dimensions were defined, most notably in two articles,
one by John Griffiths and the other by Sally Engle Merry.19 Definitions still vary,
but most would agree that legal pluralism is ‘a situation in which two or more
legal systems coexist in the same social field’.20
15
June Starr and Jane Collier, ‘Introduction: Dialogues in Legal Anthropology’, in June
Starr and Jane Collier (eds), History and Power in the Study of Law: New Directions in Legal
Anthropology (Ithaca, 1989), pp. 1–28 (p. 7).
16
Peter Just, ‘Review Essay: History, Power, Ideology, and Culture: Current Directions
in the Anthropology of Law’, Law & Society Review, 26/2 (1992): pp. 373–411 (p. 384).
17
Ibid., pp. 406–7.
18
See Denis Cowan, ‘African Legal Studies: A Survey of the Field and the Role of the
United States’, Law and Contemporary Problems, 27/4 (1962): pp. 545–75; Franz von Benda-
Beckmann, Rechtspluralismus in Malawi: Geschichtliche Entwicklung und heutige Problematik
(Munich, 1970); Jacques Vanderlinden, ‘Le Pluralisme juridique: essai de synthèse’, in John
Gilissen (ed.), Le Pluralisme juridique (Brussels, 1972), pp. 19–56; and M.B. Hooker, Legal
Pluralism: An Introduction to Colonial and Neo-Colonial Laws (Oxford, 1975). A further
important step was the Journal of African Studies changing its name and focus in 1981 when
it became the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law. See John Griffiths, ‘From the
Editor’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 19 (1981): pp. v–vi.
19
John Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism?’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial
Law, 24 (1986): pp. 1–55; and Sally Engle Merry, ‘Legal Pluralism’, Law & Society Review,
22/5 (1988): pp. 869–96.
20
Merry, ‘Legal Pluralism’, p. 870.
As co-editor of the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, John Griffiths
was one of legal pluralism’s most influential early advocates. Griffiths’s article,
originally given at the Law and Society Association conference in 1981, argues
against what he termed the ideology of legal centrism, that
law is and should be the law of the state, uniform for all persons, exclusive of all
other law, and administered by a single set of state institutions. To the extent that
other, lesser normative orderings, such as the church, the family, the voluntary
association and the economic organization exist, they ought to be and in fact are
hierarchically subordinate to the law and institutions of the state.21
Instead, Griffiths advocated extending the definition of law to include all forms
of social control or normative order.22 He classified all norms, rules and orders
that arise from social fields as legal in nature regardless of whether they had any
basis in state-generated or codified law. For Griffiths, ‘all forms of social control
are more or less legal’.23 In short, Griffiths regarded the norms and customs of all
societies as ‘law’.
Griffiths’s attempt to expand the realm of law was quickly challenged. Even
like-minded legal anthropologists argued his definition of the law was too broad,
and thus made it impossible to distinguish legal from social norms. Under this
definition, basic aspects of social life, such as etiquette, would fall within the
category of law.24 As Sally Engle Merry wrote, ‘Where do we stop speaking of
law and find ourselves simply describing social life? Is it useful to call all these
forms of ordering law? In writing about legal pluralism, I find that once legal
centralism has been vanquished, calling all forms of ordering that are not state
21
Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism?’, p. 3. Some, such as the historian Paul Halliday,
have questioned whether this ideology of legal centrism was ever as preponderant as Griffiths
made it out to be. See Paul Halliday, ‘Laws’ Histories: Pluralisms, Pluralities, Diversity’, in
Lauren Benton and Richard Ross (eds), Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850 (New
York, 2013), pp. 263–72.
22
Griffiths roots his definition of law and legal pluralism in Sally Falk Moore’s research
model of the semi-autonomous social field, a topic that I will return to later in this chapter.
See Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism?’, pp. 29–37.
23
Griffiths, ‘What is Legal Pluralism?’, p. 39, fn. 3.
24
Sally Falk Moore noted the same problem in Bronisław Malinowski’s approach to
law, famously writing, ‘The conception of law that Malinowkski propounded was so broad
that it was virtually indistinguishable from a study of the obligatory aspect of all social
relationships.’ See Sally Falk Moore, Law as Process (Boston, 1978), p. 220.
law by the term law confounds the analysis.’25 Instead of terming norms, rules
and customs as ‘law’ or ‘non-state law’, Merry prefers ‘normative orders’.26
Others, in particular Brian Tamanaha and Simon Roberts, have taken issue
with using the term ‘law’ to describe forms of normative ordering that do not
correspond to (Western) state law. Roberts sees the Western understanding of the
nature of law as too tied to a specific historical and cultural trajectory to employ
it in such a universal manner.27 Tamanaha has argued against the assumption
of legal pluralists ‘that state law norms and institutions are in fact involved in
the maintenance of societal normative order’.28 For Tamanaha, whether state
law plays such a role is an empirical question to be investigated, not an a priori
assumption. He also noted that such an assumption risks overlooking that law
can be an instrument of power in society.29 The overlooking of power as an
analytical factor was a point that Merry had noted, but she focused on the power
of state law to coerce: ‘I think it is essential to see state law as fundamentally
different in that it exercises the coercive power of the state and monopolizes the
symbolic power associated with state authority’.30
The larger issue remains a definitional one. What exactly is law? What makes
something legal? Is it the positive law or codified statutes of Western countries?
Is it the rules that uphold social order? Is it institutional norm enforcement? Or
is it whatever ethnographers or their informants term law?31 Within legal studies,
anthropology and sociology, there has been extensive debate on the definitional
25
Merry, ‘Legal Pluralism’, p. 878.
26
Griffiths has since reversed field. He now favours the term normative pluralism. See
John Griffiths, ‘The Idea of Sociology of Law and Its Relation to Law and to Sociology’, in
Michael Freeman (ed.), Law and Sociology (Oxford, 2006), pp. 49–68 (pp. 63–4).
27
Simon Roberts, ‘Against Legal Pluralism: Some Reflections on the Contemporary
Enlargement of the Legal Domain’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 42 (1998),
pp. 95–106 (p. 98). Roberts extended this line of analysis in a later article; see his ‘After
Government? On Representing Law Without the State’, The Modern Law Review, 68/1
(2005): pp. 1–24.
28
Brian Tamanaha, ‘The Folly of the “Social Scientific” Concept of Legal Pluralism’,
Journal of Law and Society, 20/2 (1993): pp. 192–217 (p. 210).
29
Tamanaha, ‘The Folly’, p. 211. June Starr and Jane Collier argued the same point; see
‘Introduction’, p. 9.
30
Merry, ‘Legal Pluralism’, p. 879. Legal pluralism has been a subject of a more
extensive debate than can be addressed here. Other important contributions include Chris
Fuller, ‘Legal Anthropology: Legal Pluralism and Legal Thought’, Anthropology Today, 10/3
(1994): pp. 9–12; Franz von Benda-Beckmann, ‘Who’s Afraid of Legal Pluralism?’, Journal
of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 47 (2002): pp. 37–82; and Anne Griffiths, ‘Legal
Pluralism’, in Reza Banakar and Max Travers (eds), An Introduction to Law and Social Theory
(Oxford, 2002), pp. 289–310.
31
This ‘labelling approach’ was suggested by Brian Tamanaha. See his ‘A Non-Essentialist
Version of Legal Pluralism’, Journal of Law and Society, 27/2 (2000): pp. 296–321.
issue, but neither consensus nor satisfactory definition has emerged.32 For now
scholars are again leaving the definitional quagmire to the side, and focusing
on other matters.33 One eminent legal anthropologist recently questioned if a
definition is even necessary.34
The rise of legal pluralism was also aided by a change in the societies studied
by ethnographers. In legal pluralism’s earlier years, most fieldwork was carried out
in non-Western societies. Since the early 1980s, however, legal anthropologists
have increasingly studied the West. Whereas in non-Western societies it may
have been more difficult to classify plural legal orders (especially non-state
normative orders), legal anthropologists quickly recognized multiple sources
inherent in state law in the West. The law of geographic entities (nations, cities)
is intertwined with tax, criminal and other law codes that can and do operate
simultaneously.35 Furthermore, religious law of Christianity, Judaism or Islam
may intersect with state law.36
Parallel to these developments has been the rise of academic interest in the
expanding range of transnational law. For legal anthropologists, international
organizations, such as the European Union or World Trade Organization,
have increasingly become the site of fieldwork, thereby raising awareness of
mercantile, environmental or human rights law.37 Concomitant with these
developments has been the realization that ‘local places are now intersected
Part of the difficulty stems from theorists’ desire to create a social scientific, cross-
32
culturally applicable definition. It may be that law is too multifarious a concept to permit
such a definition. For recent attempts to craft such a definition, see Brian Tamanaha,
‘An Analytical Map of Social Scientific Approaches to the Concept of Law’, Oxford Journal of
Legal Studies, 15/4 (Winter, 1995): pp. 501–535; Brian Tamanaha, A General Jurisprudence
of Law and Society (Oxford, 2001); and William Twining, ‘Review: A Post-Westphalian
Conception of Law’, Law & Society Review, 37/1 (2003): pp. 199–258.
33
One exception: a group of scholars at the University of Oxford engaged in work on
legalism. I will return to them later in the chapter.
34
Moore ‘General Introduction’, p. 2.
35
On state legal pluralism, see Gordon R. Woodman, ‘Ideological Combat and
Social Observation: Recent Debate about Legal Pluralism’, Journal of Legal Pluralism and
Unofficial Law, 42 (1998): pp. 21–59; and Carol Greenhouse, ‘Legal Pluralism and Cultural
Difference: What is the Difference? A Response to Professor Woodman’, Journal of Legal
Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 42 (1998): pp. 61–72.
36
John Bowen, ‘How Could English Courts Recognize Shariah?’, St. Thomas Law
Review, 7/3 (2011): pp. 411–35.
37
See, for example, Mark Goodale and June Starr (eds), Practicing Ethnography in Law:
New Dialogues, Enduring Methods (New York, 2002); Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet
von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths (eds), Mobile People, Mobile Law: Expanding Legal
Relations in a Contracting World (Aldershot, 2005); Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet
von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths (eds), The Power of Law in a Transnational World:
Anthropological Enquiries (New York, 2009); William Twining, General Jurisprudence:
by national and global movements of capital, land and labor relations, ideas
and values, images, and laws’.38 With scholars paying more attention to how
national and transnational law affects local processes, and the plural sources of
state law, there has been increasing recognition that legal pluralism is a feature
of all societies and social fields. While disagreement may remain over whether
to term non-state normative orders as legal, scholars, including some of legal
pluralism’s strongest critics, have acknowledged the reality of legal pluralism,
and its importance in drawing attention to the multiple normative orders that
can be found in any social field.39
Alternative Heuristic Frameworks
In Disputes and Settlements, Roberts mapped rule-centred and processual

paradigms, the leading approaches of the day. The rule-centred paradigm focuses
on the rules that govern and inform social life and behaviour, while the processual
concentrates on how people follow, use and sidestep those rules. Processual-type
research continued through the 1980s, albeit with an emphasis (as Roberts
urged) on placing cases within their ‘total social context’. Accordingly, research
frameworks evolved to incorporate history, power and legal pluralism.40
Rule-centred research was in decline at the time of Disputes and Settlements
and almost disappeared in the 1980s.41 In recent years, however, anthropologists
and (medieval) historians at the University of Oxford have reinvigorated
research into rules and laws, or, as they prefer to call it, legalism.42 The starting
Understanding Law from a Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009); and Francis Snyder, The EU,
the WTO and China: Legal Pluralism and International Trade Regulation (Oxford, 2010).
38
See Sally Engle Merry, ‘Crossing Boundaries: Ethnography in the Twenty-First
Century’, Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 23/2 (2000): pp. 127–33 (p. 127).
39
In 2005, Roberts wrote ‘We can probably all now go along with some general
tenets of the legal pluralists.’ See Roberts, ‘After Government?’, p. 12; and in 2008 Tamanha
concluded, ‘Legal pluralism is everywhere. There is, in every social arena one examines, a
seeming multiplicity of legal orders.’ Brian Tamanaha, ‘Understanding Legal Pluralism: Past
to Present, Local to Global’, Sydney Law Review, 30/3 (2008), pp. 375–411 (p. 376).
40
See, for example, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Fernanda Pirie (eds), Order and
Disorder: Anthropological Perspectives (New York, 2007); and Franz von Benda-Beckmann,
Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Martin Ramstedt and Bertram Turner (eds), Religion in
Disputes: Pervasiveness of Religious Normativity in Disputing Processes (New York, 2013).
41
For a good summary of rule-centred and processual research models in the 1980s, see
Just, ‘Review Essay’, pp. 373–6.
42
All are associated with the university’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. See Paul
Dresch and Hannah Skoda (eds), Legalism: Anthropology and History (Oxford, 2012); and
Fernanda Pirie, The Anthropology of Law (Oxford, 2013). They cite Lloyd Fallers as the
intellectual progenitor of legalism. See Lloyd Fallers, Law Without Precedent: Legal Ideas
in Action in the Courts of Colonial Busoga (Chicago, 1969). Another significant instance of
point for these scholars is what they consider an overemphasis on practice and
the processual approach. Such a methodology they argue ‘[isolates] “individuals”
from “society” … leaves one with morally hollow individuals … and makes the
sources of action very hard to grasp’.43 Rather, they want greater attention placed
on the rules, specifically rules
that are distinct from practice (rules that are ‘formulated’, in other words) and rules
characterized by the claim to be more than simply spontaneous improvisations,
but in some sense often systematic. Rules we might describe as legal are general
statements that often organize generalizing concepts (marriage, possession, debt,
for instance), or relate such concepts to each other. These rules need not even be
regulatory, and certainly need not be coercive.44
For example in looking at a (contested) debt case, adherents of legalism would

focus less on how the parties pursued the case, and instead on what it meant to
the parties to be a debtor or a creditor, and how rules and laws informed the
parties’ actions in the case, and conceptions of their respective roles as a debtor,
lender or guarantor. Through such an approach, legalism hopes to arrive at an
understanding of the rules that inform practice and behaviour, and to examine
the multiple roles and functions that rules and law play in society.
One way to incorporate rules (and laws) is to employ the concept of legal
culture. The term and concept originate in a 1969 article by the American
legal scholar Lawrence Friedman.45 He highlighted three specific dimensions.
‘First … the demands made upon legal institutions, calling for action of one
sort or another; second, the responses made by the legal institutions; third, the
impact and effect of these responses on the persons making the demands, and
on society as a whole.’ As Friedman wrote, ‘It is the legal culture, that is, the
network of values and attitudes relating to law, which determines when and why
and where people turn to law or government, or turn away.’46 It is an investigative
model that incorporates both the users (those who place demands on a legal
institution) and the structures (courts, division of powers), as well as substantive
features (codes, verdicts, rules) that are integral to a legal system. Studying legal
anthropologists and historians working together is the Centre d’histoire et d’anthropologie

du droit at the University of Paris.
43
Paul Dresch, ‘Legalism, Anthropology, and History: A View from Part of
Anthropology’, in Paul Dresch and Hannah Skoda (eds), Legalism: Anthropology and History
(Oxford, 2012), pp. 1–37 (p. 11, fn. 20).
44
Hannah Skoda, ‘A Historian’s Perspective on the Present Volume’, in Paul Dresch and
Hannah Skoda (eds), Legalism: Anthropology and History (Oxford, 2012), pp. 39–54 (p. 39).
45
Lawrence Friedman, ‘Legal Culture and Social Development’, Law & Society Review,
4/1 (1969): pp. 29–44.
46
Ibid., pp. 33–4.
culture permits the ethnographer to reconstruct and assess the place of, and the
dynamics among, the disputants, the judiciary and the law in a given society.
Stemming from legal sociology, rather than anthropology, the concept is, not
surprisingly, more attuned to the interplay between institutions and people.47
Scholarly interest in the linguistics of the law and legal practice accelerated
in the 1970s.48 It since has remained a significant subfield of socio-legal research.
Some of its findings are now well accepted as basic methodological premises.
One in particular is the shaping power of the law, a concept discussed by Roberts
in Disputes and Settlements: specifically, that how a case appears before a court
is not necessarily representative of how the original quarrel was experienced or
conceived by the participants. For a case to appear before a court, the disputants
must present it in a manner that the court will be prepared to hear (which
may differ from the quarrel’s original substance).49 Other aspects of linguistic
research look at judicial testimony and the stories that people tell in court.50
In more recent years, as in legal anthropology more generally, research has begun
to focus on power: how power operates in everyday legal settings, and ‘the
linguistic mechanisms through which power is realized, exercised, sometimes
abused, and occasionally subverted’.51
One of the most effective conceptual frameworks for investigating
legal and social change, and the sphere of normative pluralism, remains the
concept of the semi-autonomous social field, developed by Sally Falk Moore.
The social field is the small domain, rather than society as a whole, that is
47
For an anthropologist’s take on legal culture, see Sally Engle Merry, ‘What is
Legal Culture? An Anthropological Perspective’, Journal of Comparative Law, 5/2 (2010):
pp. 40–58.
48
Much of it, no doubt, sparked by Richard Rorty and the linguistic turn. See Richard
Rorty (ed.), The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Chicago, 1967).
49
The original quotation is worth repeating here: ‘In any culture we must expect some
disparity between the form in which a dispute appears in court and the “real” substance of
the quarrel which gives rise to it. Even in the absence of specialization which characterizes the
courts of contemporary legal systems, there is likely to be some gap between the way in which
the parties conceive of their quarrel and the manner in which it is seen by interveners. The
disputants will probably know this and thus present the matter in such a way that the court
will be prepared to hear it.’ See Simon Roberts, ‘The Study of Dispute: Anthropological
Perspectives’, in Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements, p. 22.
50
Well known to historians of course through the work of Natalie Zemon Davis.
See her Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France
(Stanford, 1987).
51
John Conley and William O’Barr, Just Words: Law, Language, and Power (Chicago,
1998), p. 14. Also generally, see their Rules Versus Relationships: The Ethnography of
Legal Discourse (Chicago, 1990); and for an important early review article, see Elizabeth
Mertz, ‘Review Essay: Language, Law, and Social Meanings: Linguistic/Anthropological
Contributions to the Study of Law’, Law & Society Review, 26 (1992): pp. 413–46.
observable by the anthropologist. Society consists of a plethora of social fields

that are constantly interacting, overlapping and interdependent in numerous
dimensions. Individuals inevitably belong to and operate in several social
fields simultaneously. A social field’s boundaries are defined by a processual
characteristic: the ability to ‘generate rules and coerce or induce compliance to
them’.52 Its composition, whether a corporate group or network of individuals,
is not relevant to its boundaries. This internal capacity to generate rules and
induce compliance is what gives a semi-autonomous social field its boundaries
and its relative autonomy. Moore casts it as semi-autonomous because, while ‘it
can generate rules and customs and symbols internally … it is also vulnerable to
rules and decisions and other forces emanating from the larger world by which
it is surrounded’.53 The larger social matrix can be a court, a governmental body
or simply a social field with greater hegemony.
Moore used two examples in her article, one of which was the garment
industry in New York City.54 Here the semi-autonomous social field is the
relationship between the contractor (in charge of a production workshop) and
the union business agent. The rules guiding this relationship are those of mutual
dependence. In times of high demand, where employees may work significant
overtime, the contractor needs the union business agent not to enforce the
terms of the contract strictly. In exchange, the union agent receives gifts and
favours from the contractor (in times of low demand, the workers’ jobs are
presumably protected, but Moore focuses less on this aspect). What on the
surface may appear as simple bribery is, as Moore aptly notes, a complex series
of internally generated rules and obligations that guide how one operates within
this field (failure to comply can lead to exclusion from this segment of the
garment industry).
Outside this semi-autonomous social field lurks labour law and the union
business agent’s ability to invoke it (indeed, the agent derives his power from
his ability to invoke these laws). As it is clearly not in his interest to invoke these
laws (provided the internal rules are being adhered to), the law rarely enters this
semi-autonomous social field, and instead it is the internally generated rules that
guide people’s actions.
As the above example indicates, Moore’s model is a potent and effective
paradigm for investigating legal and social change. It gives the anthropologist
(or the historian) the framework to investigate norm enforcement, rule-making
and compliance among the myriad small social groups that dominate everyday
Sally Falk Moore, ‘Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an
52
Appropriate Subject of Study’, Law & Society Review, 7/4 (1973): pp. 719–46 (p. 722).
53
Ibid., p. 720.
54
The other dealt with the land holding and lineage practices of the Chagga in
Kilimanjaro.
life while simultaneously taking into account the larger, exogenous, hegemonic
forces (such as state law) that can directly or indirectly impact the social field
being studied.55
Where Are We Now?
When Disputes and Settlements was published in 1983, there was a widespread
understanding that disputes were the central theme of legal anthropology. Today,
there is no such thematic core. Ethnographers study many different aspects of
the legal. Nor is there a unified centre of research since the scope of fieldwork has
now extended to include Western and global dimensions. With the recognition
of history, power, legal pluralism and other research themes, there are many
subfields within legal anthropology. But as Martha Mundy and Tobias Kelly
point out, within these subsections ‘there is considerable room for dialogue with
other disciplines concerned with the same [geographic or thematic] areas’.56
Despite this diverse nature of contemporary research, some basic tenets
remain at the core of legal anthropology. In 2005, Moore described them:
[Legal] anthropologists are likely to ask in some specific setting about power,
control and justice: who makes the rules, who can undo them, how are they
normalized and enforced, and how are they morally justified. In addition, they
ask, what lies outside of the norm-governed domain and is open to individual or
group improvisation? How does this optional domain of behavior intersect with
the mandatory? How do people evade the norms and do they get away with it?57
Briefly stated, legal anthropology continues to investigate norms, rules and

laws; social order; and the manner in which people (or groups) navigate this
terrain. Following the development of the last 30 years, these studies account
55
Unlike Griffiths, Moore was clear that the normative orderings of the semi-
autonomous social field should not be termed or considered as legal. Instead, Moore prefers
the term ‘reglementation’ to describe these normative orders (an awkward term that has
not caught on among scholars), a point she reinforced in 2001. See Moore, ‘Certainties
Undone: Fifty Turbulent Years of Legal Anthropology, 1949–1999’, The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute, 7/1 (2001): pp. 95–116 (pp. 106–7). Denis Galligan recently
proposed a similar model of ‘social spheres’. Oddly, he did not cite Moore. See his Law in
Modern Society (Oxford, 2007), pp. 103–120.
56
Mundy and Kelly, ‘Introduction’, p. xviii. For other good recent overviews of legal
anthropology, see Franz von Benda-Beckmann, ‘Riding or Killing the Centaur? Reflections
on the Identities of Legal Anthropology’, International Journal of Law in Context, 4/2
(2008): pp. 85–110; and Michael Freeman and David Napier (eds), Law and Anthropology
(Oxford, 2009).
57
Moore, ‘General Introduction’, p. 2.
for how history and power have shaped the sites of fieldwork and the multiple
sources of law operating in any social field.
From Bossy to Today: The Historian’s Perspective
Since the rise of the ‘new cultural history’ in the 1970s and 1980s, historians
have increasingly used legal sources, particularly court records, as windows into
social life. Carlo Ginzburg famously used the interrogation of a Friulian miller
in the sixteenth century to investigate lay and folk beliefs.58 Emmanuel Le Roy
Ladurie used documents of the Inquisition to recreate the life of a remote French
village.59 Gene Brucker used the dossiers of a Florentine notary to examine a tale of
courtship gone awry.60 Why? Court records are one of the best – and, at times, the
only – sources to access the world, thoughts and even words of non-elites.61
As pioneering as these studies were, one would be hard pressed to classify
them as employing a legal anthropologic perspective, since none are primarily
concerned with interaction between the legal and social domains or processes of
establishing order. Instead, to investigate the legacy of Disputes and Settlements,
we must look more to studies where laws, courts and order function as
protagonists rather than as supporting actors.
Here we find a field rich with significant scholarship that has examined
disputes and other socio-legal issues.62 As with early legal anthropology, many
58
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century
Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, 1980).
59
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, trans. Barbara
Bray (New York, 1978).
60
Gene Brucker, Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence
(Berkeley, 1986).
61
Although, as Thomas Kuehn reminds us in a trenchant critique of Brucker, legal texts
are not transparent windows into the past, but highly stylized texts. See Thomas Kuehn,
‘Reading Microhistory: The Example of Giovanni and Lusanna’, The Journal of Modern
History, 61/3 (1989): pp. 512–34.
62
Some noteworthy pieces include: Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (eds), The
Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986); Guido Ruggiero,
Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (Oxford, 1985); James
R. Farr, Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650 (Ithaca, 1988),
pp. 150–95; William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in
Saga Iceland (Chicago, 1990); Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal
Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1991), pp. 75–100; Thomas V. Cohen, ‘A Long
Day in Monterotondo: The Politics of Jeopardy in a Village Rising (1558)’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 13/4 (1991): pp. 639–68; Edward Muir, Mad Blood Stirring:
Vendetta and Factions in Friuli during the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1993); Daniel Lord Smail,
‘Hatred as a Social Institution in Late Medieval Society’, Speculum, 76/1 (2001): pp. 90–126;
of these studies placed social order at the centre, and tried to find its breaking
points: what kind of behaviour could one get away with, and what not? Given
historians’ use of court records, much of this work has been quite adept at
situating disputes within their ‘total social context’.63 This includes an extensive,
and perhaps excessive, attention to honour, and the role it played in sparking and
channelling conflict.
Contributing to historians’ research on these topics has been the practice
theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the processual approach described by Roberts
and Comaroff.64 Inherent in both is the idea, as Chris Wickham writes, ‘that
legal rules themselves can be negotiated as part of disputing strategies’.65 As
such, these studies have put the questions of why people went to court, or, more
generally, how people processed conflicts, specifically the moves and tactics of
disputants, at the centre of their investigations. For example, Daniel Lord Smail
portrayed people in late medieval Marseille not just as users, but as ‘consumers’
of services offered by courts.66 Elizabeth Cohen looked at how early modern
Romans responded to slights to their honour, particularly through the practice
Chris Wickham, Courts and Conflict in Twelfth-Century Tuscany (Oxford, 2003); Susanne
Pohl-Zucker, ‘Uneasy Peace: The Practice of the Stallung Ritual in Zürich, 1400–1525’,
Journal of Early Modern History, 7/1 (2003): pp. 28–54; Susan Reynolds, ‘The Emergence
of Professional Law in the Long Twelfth Century’, Law and History Review, 21/2 (2003):
pp. 347–66; Stuart Carroll, ‘The Peace in the Feud in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
France’, Past and Present, 178 (2003): pp. 74–115; and Bernard Capp, ‘Life, Love and
Litigation: Sileby in the 1630s’, Past and Present, 182 (2004): pp. 55–83.
63
For example, see Thomas V. Cohen, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (Chicago,
2004).
64
See Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge,
1977); Thomas V. Cohen, ‘Bourdieu in Bed: The Seduction of Innocentia (Rome, 1570)’,
Journal of Early Modern History, 7/1 (2003): pp. 55–85. For the processual approach, see
Robert Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England
(London, 2007); and Drew D. Gray, Crime, Prosecution and Social Relations: The Summary
Courts of the City of London in the Late Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke, 2009).
65
Wickham, Courts and Conflict, p. 5.
66
Daniel Lord Smail, The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity and Legal Culture
in Marseille, 1264–1423 (Ithaca, 2003). In his work on the Low Countries, Maarten van
Dijck also stressed the financial dynamics of using court institutions in assessing both the
socio-economic profile of court users, and their reasons for going to court. See his ‘Towards
an Economic Interpretation of Justice? Conflict Settlement, Social Control and Civil
Society in Urban Brabant and Mechelen During the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern
Period’, in Manon van der Heijden, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Griet Vermeesch and
Martijn van der Burg (eds), Serving the Urban Community: The Rise of Public Facilities in the
Low Countries (Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 62–88.
of ‘house scorning’.67 Scott Taylor studied the often violent reactions of sixteenth-
century Castilians to being reminded of outstanding debts.68
A salient factor to historians taking this approach is the large number of
medieval and early modern legal cases that abruptly break off without a court
verdict, or at least without a recorded one. Many historians interpret this to
mean that launching a suit was a bargaining gambit, a tactic designed to pressure
an adversary to accept an extralegal settlement rather than face a potentially
more punitive court sanction.69 In arriving at such an interpretation, historians
have placed great emphasis on the role (they can only presume was) played by
the extralegal realm – a realm for which sources rarely survive.70
What of rules and laws in studies of dispute resolution? For many historians
working in this realm, rules and laws are not often at the forefront of their
studies, partly because it is unusual to find reference to rules in court records.
For example, in the legal verdicts of cases of theft, illicit sex and other crimes
in the Saxon city of Freiberg, rare is a reference to any specific legal stipulation.
Instead, the records summarize the perpetrators’ offence and punishment, but
only seldom note which legal ordinance had been violated.71 Further, early
modern legal codes were complex, contradictory and cluttered. Many codes
could operate simultaneously, each with differing stipulations.72 Finding the
67
Elizabeth S. Cohen, ‘Honor and Gender in the Streets of Early Modern Rome’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 22/4 (1992): pp. 597–625.
68
Scott Taylor, ‘Credit, Debt, and Honor in Castile, 1600–1650’, Journal of Early
Modern History, 7/1 (2003): pp. 8–27. Within this volume, see the contributions from
Christian Schneider, Christian Kühner and Gabriella Erdélyi.
69
Within German historiography, Martin Dinges is the most well-known advocate.
See ‘Justiznutzungen als soziale Kontrolle in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Andreas Blauert and
Gerd Schwerhoff (eds), Kriminalitätsgeschichte: Beiträge zur Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte
der Vormoderne (Constance, 2000), pp. 503–544. For an English condensation, see Martin
Dinges, ‘The Uses of Justice as a Form of Social Control in Early Modern Europe’, in Herman
Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (eds), Social Control in Europe, Vol. 1 (1500–1800)
(Columbus, 2004), pp. 159–75.
70
The extralegal realm bears a similarity to Benoît Garnot’s concept of the infrajudicial.
See Benoît Garnot (ed.), L’Infrajudiciaire du Moyen Age à l’époque contemporaine (Dijon, 1996).
On extralegal settlements, see Carl A. Hoffman, ‘Außergerichtliche Einigungen bei Straftaten
als vertikale und horizontale soziale Kontrolle im 16. Jahrhundert’, in Blauert and Schwerhoff,
Kriminalitätsgeschichte, pp. 563–79; and Gerd Sälter, ‘Lokale Ordnung und soziale Kontrolle
in der frühen Neuzeit: Zur außergerichtlichen Konfliktregulierung in einem kultur- und
sozialhistorischen Kontext’, Kriminologisches Journal, 32 (2000): pp. 19–42.
71
See for example, Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden (hereafter SHStA Dresden),
13749, Urfriede- und Zetergeschreibuch (1539–1558), Nr. 421; and SHStA Dresden,
13749, Urfriede- und Zetergeschreibuch (1559–1578), Nr. 420.
72
See Wickham, Courts, pp. 3–4; and Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and
Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), p. 62.
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belle braccia sul capo, per riassettare con le svelte dita i pettini sopra
la corona dei capelli, con il tono sicuro e naturale di chi dice cosa
evidente di per sè. — Ma non ha visto lei come guastano le cose più
belle?
E tacque, intenta a domare l’ultimo dei pettini, che resisteva alla
pressione delle piccole dita.
— Per esempio? — dissi io.
— Per esempio, il Metropolitan; — rispose, ripigliando in mano il
lavoro. — È un bel teatro; gli spettacoli sono magnifici.... Ma ecco,
ad un tratto, bisogna infilare in fretta gli ermellini e le pelliccie,
ravvolgersi la testa nella sciarpa, impugnare gli strascichi; e giù di
corsa, per gli anditi angusti e le scalette ripide, sin nella trivialità di
Broadway; a cercare affannosamente sui marciapiedi sudici, tra i
cocchieri e gli chauffeurs che vociano, la propria vettura....
L’interruppi, osservando che il non aver edificato in New-York un
teatro monumentale, non era ragione sufficiente a definir barbaro un
popolo che aveva fatte tante grandi cose, sopra un così vasto
continente.
— Ma tutta l’America — replicò — rassomiglia a una
rappresentazione del Metropolitan, e all’architettura di New-York.
Disordine babelico dappertutto; non una sfumatura, mai; trapassi
sempre bruschi, repentini, violenti che rimescolerebbero il sangue
anche ad un elefante. Ma non sentono dunque che cosa sia una
stonatura, questi Americani?
L’osservazione, anche se espressa con forma un po’ bizzarra, non
era sciocca. Non volendo però darle ragione, rammentai scherzando
alla signora i discorsi fatti la sera precedente.
— Ma ieri sera anche lei ha udita, signora, la nuova parola dei tempi.
L’America è lo specchio della giovinezza del mondo....
Tacque un momento, poi con forza, quasi con ira:
— Ho incontrati nella vita pochi uomini che mi siano più antipatici di
quel.... Come si chiama? Chi è? E antipatico anche a lei, spero. Che
villano rifatto! Ha osservato come veste?
E scoppiò in una fragorosa risata! Confessai che non ci avevo
badato: parermi però che l’Alverighi di solito vestisse con eleganza.
— Ma non ha visto, ieri sera? — incalzò subito. — Aveva un tait nero
e un gilet grigio incensurabili; e poi e poi.... un paio di calzoni
turchino scuri....
E rise di nuovo. Mi strinsi nelle spalle e un po’ sarcasticamente:
— Badi, signora, che un giorno non le chieda in nome di quale
autorità lei vuole impedirgli di appaiare il nero, il grigio e il turchino.
Se però le dà fastidio il sentirlo, ho il dispiacere di dirle che parlerà
ancora, e molto. Ieri sera ci ha demolito Parigi, la tragedia e la
scultura greca; questa sera tocca a Shakespeare....
— Un americano difenderà dunque l’arte della vecchia Europa
contro un europeo? — conchiuse, quando le ebbi raccontato quel
che si era combinato a colazione. — Ma non importa: voglio
assistere alla discussione; mi servirà, se non altro, come esercizio di
italiano.
Ragionammo ancora un poco; poi la salutai. Sull’altro fianco della
nave, quasi interamente sdraiato sopra un seggiolone, come sopra
un letto, stava l’Alverighi, anche egli intento a leggere un libro. Per
terra, a destra e a sinistra, parecchi libri giacevano alla rinfusa. Mi
trattenni un poco con lui, e vedendo che leggeva «Amleto» in una
edizione inglese; ed aveva per terra a portata di mano la traduzione
del Rusconi:
— Si prepara per questa sera? — gli dissi.
Raccattai da terra un dopo l’altro i libri che giacevano intorno a lui:
erano la «Patria lontana» di Enrico Corradini, il «Libro di Versi» di
Olindo Malagodi, l’«Evolution creatrice» del Bergson, le «Vues
d’Amerique» di Paul Adam, il «Volonté et Liberté» del Lutoslawski.
Osservai pure che questi libri erano gualciti, come se fossero stati
molto maneggiati; ma che nel tempo stesso di nessuno tutte le carte
erano state tagliate. Chiacchierai un poco con lui; poi gingillai sino
all’ora del pranzo, scherzando ironicamente con gli altri amici
sull’imminente macello di «Amleto» e pensando ogni tanto alla
signora, alla vivacità e alle contradizioni dei suoi discorsi, a quella
sua maniera di trattare cordiale e graziosa, a quel tono spigliato e
sicuro, serio e frivolo nel tempo stesso, con cui parlava.
E quando finalmente la sera, in ritardo come al solito, la signora
Feldmann venne alla mensa, indossando un altro abito di gala non
meno sfarzoso ma questa volta tutto nero — cosicchè sul nero del
tronco le spalle e il collo nudi abbagliavan più candidi — tutta la sala
si volse a guardarla, ma con un movimento di occhi e di spirito
diverso. Non si chiese già, stupita, come la sera precedente: «Chi è
costei?» ma giuliva e ammirante sussurrò: «Eccola, finalmente!» I
camerieri le stavan d’attorno in tre o quattro, non perdendola mai
d’occhio un istante; tutti, anche l’Alverighi, le parlavano con un tono
di ossequiosa premura: ed essa ascoltava, rispondeva, sorrideva,
volgeva dall’uno all’altro dei convitati i begli occhi dorati, allegra e
vivace come la sera precedente. Di nuovo era ringiovanita!
Parlammo, come è naturale, della discussione imminente.
— È pronto lei? — avevamo chiesto, la signora ed io, al Cavalcanti,
raccomandandogli di difendere bene Shakespeare contro i «barbari»
dell’America.
Scherzammo un po’ intorno all’imminente discussione; si ragionò poi
di cose di poco momento; sinchè, un po’ repentinamente, la signora
Feldmann mi domandò se davvero negli Stati Uniti il marito possa
fare divorzio all’insaputa della moglie, senza neppure avvertirla.
Durante il mio soggiorno in America, il signor Gilder, allora direttore
del «Putnam’s Magazine», mi aveva ragionato a lungo di questo
argomento: ero quindi in grado di rispondere seriamente a questa
domanda: ma siccome l’argomento si prestava, mi venne l’idea di
sbizzarrirmi un po’ in paradossi ed esagerazioni.
— Altro che, se è possibile! — dissi. — L’America del Nord è la terra
promessa dei mariti scapati. Mi ricordo, a bordo del «Savoie», un
giorno, ho sentito dal mio lettuccio due emigranti che parlavano fuori,
sul ponte, proprio sotto il finestrino della mia cabina. Uno era croato
l’altro veneto; parlavano italiano, dunque, e il croato, un emigrante
incallito, diceva all’altro che era un novizio: «Gran paese l’America!
Ci si piglian tante mogli quante uno vuole!»
La signora sorrise e non disse nulla: invece l’ammiraglio:
— Ma non è possibile, — esclamò risentito. — In un paese civile....
— È invece una cosa semplicissima, — risposi con l’aria più
candida. — Molti Stati permettono di chiedere il divorzio, se l’altro
coniuge dimora in un altro Stato, con quello che nel diritto americano
si chiama il «constructive service», cioè senza citazione personale,
come si trattasse di un processo «in rem o quasi in rem» e non «in
personam»: basta, per esempio, pubblicare la citazione nei giornali
del luogo. Orbene: se la moglie risiede in un altro Stato o all’estero, il
marito cita la moglie per via dei giornali; la moglie naturalmente non
li legge; al giorno stabilito il marito comparisce solo soletto innanzi al
Tribunale, ottiene la sentenza, e....
— Ma c’è una cosa al mondo più personale dello stato civile? —
protestò l’ammiraglio.
— Lei dimentica — risposi — che l’America del Nord è una
federazione di Stati. Imposta la citazione personale, il coniuge offeso
dovrebbe citare il coniuge colpevole innanzi alla corte dello Stato
dove costui risiede; il che vuol dire che il coniuge colpevole,
mutando residenza, potrebbe scegliersi lo Stato e la legge sui
divorzio più favorevole. Per evitare questo scoglio....
— Sono andati a dar di cozzo in quell’altro! Un bel guadagno! —
interruppe brusco l’ammiraglio.
— Ammiraglio, — risposi — le leggi si possono paragonare ad
automobili, che vanno per strade tortuosissime; guai se a certe
voltate corressero difilate! Rovescerebbero! Del resto, si consoli. La
suprema corte di Washington a riconoscere esplicitamente il divorzio
come una procedura «in rem», non ci si è decisa mai. Anzi una
volta, credo, ha affermato di non riconoscerla per tale. Ma poi, posto
il principio, non ha osato trarne le conseguenze logiche; e allora c’è
chi dice che, in forza di quella sentenza, i divorzi fatti con il
«constructive service» non sono validi in tutta l’unione, ma solo nello
Stato in cui la sentenza fu pronunciata. Cosicchè accadrebbe
questo: che divorziati quando sono nello Stato, lui e lei ridiventano
marito e moglie quando ne escono. Nello Stato ambedue possono
sposarsi di nuovo; ma se escono dolio Stato ciascuno con il nuovo
legittimo coniuge, commettono adulterio con lui, appena varcato il
confine, se vanno per esempio da New-York a Filadelfia, che son
distanti, come lei sa, due ore di ferrovia. Se uno dei coniugi,
poniamo la moglie, abbandona lo Stato, il marito rimanendo nello
Stato continua ad essere scapolo, ma viceversa ha una moglie; e la
moglie, ridiventata tale, non ha marito, perchè lui è sempre
divorziato. Insomma c’è una moglie senza marito e uno scapolo con
moglie....
— Ma questo è un manicomio! — protestò l’ammiraglio.
— È il diritto! — risposi.
La signora aveva ascoltato questo discorso in silenzio, sorridendo
come al solito, non però nel solito modo, tutta lampi vivi e scoppi
schietti di allegria, ma con una insistenza immobile delle labbra che
mi parve quasi sforzata ed assente. Ma i servi incominciavano a
sparecchiare: l’Alverighi e il Cavalcanti uscirono, per fumare un
sigaro sul ponte, prima di incominciare la discussione: uscirono
anche l’ammiraglio e la signora, parlando sottovoce tra loro.
Eravamo intesi che ci troveremmo nel salone superiore alle nove.
Alle nove infatti, scherzando e sorridendo sulla sorte del sempre
sventurato «Amleto», salivamo tutti, anche la Gina, che, sentendosi
bene, voleva ascoltare la discussione, al salone superiore, piccolo,
basso, roseo, elegante, scricchiolante e tremolante con la gran mole
su cui posava. Non so chi aveva disposto intorno ad un tavolo, a
semicerchio, parecchie sedie, e nel mezzo, di fronte proprio al
tavolo, una poltrona: questa fu assegnata, senza discussione, alla
signora Feldmann: — «Συνἐδριον κατασκευἀσωμεν», come dice
Platone, — mormorò il Rosetti: ci sedemmo tutti a caso, con un
sussiego di serietà non scevro di qualche ironia; e quando ebbe
ottenuto il necessario silenzio, il barbaro, l’Alverighi, al tavolo, con
dinanzi aperto il volume, incominciò a parlare.
V.
— Tanto per cominciare, la prima scena è inutile. Provatevi a leggere

la tragedia saltandola, e vedrete! Ma che bisogno c’era di far
apparire nella prima scena lo spettro a Orazio, a Marcello e a
Bernardo, se questi subito dopo, nella seconda, raccontano la
apparizione ad Amleto? La prima scena è inutile, non solo; ma
indebolisce la scena capitale dell’atto, quella in cui lo spettro del
padre apparisce ad Amleto: perchè lo spettatore lo ha già visto, il
terribile fantasma....
E si fermò un istante, guardando il Cavalcanti, come per aspettare
se obiettasse. Ma il Cavalcanti tacque.
— La seconda scena, invece, mi piace — proseguì l’Alverighi. — Il
re fa una bella parlata agli ambasciatori che spedisce in Norvegia;
poi Laerte domanda licenza di ripartire per Parigi: indi il re e la regina
si rivolgono ad Amleto che assiste all’udienza vestito a lutto,
taciturno e cupo. Amleto entra in iscena bene, con un pezzo di
vigorosa poesia:
Seems, madame! Nay, it is: I know not seems....
e poi nel monologo:
O! that this too too solid flesh would melt.
Sebbene le imagini con cui Amleto esprime il suo dolore siano tutte
strambe, contorte, barocche, di pessimo gusto, appestate dal più
brutto secentismo....
E ascese questa progressione retorica di aggettivi, alzando la voce
ad ogni scalino e guardando di nuovo il Cavalcanti, che neppur
questa volta si mosse.
— Orazio, Marcello, Bernardo, — continuò, — raccontano
l’apparizione ad Amleto; e Amleto vuol parlare allo spettro. Arriviamo
senza inciampi alla terza scena; è una scena secondaria che
dovrebbe preparare i futuri episodi d’amore: Laerte prima e Polonio
poi parlano ad Ofelia dell’amore di Amleto avvertendola di stare
all’erta. Possiamo sorvolare. Ma eccoci alla scena quarta e qui
ricominciano i guai. Amleto, Orazio, Marcello arrivano sugli spalti per
aspettare lo spettro: nel vicino castello squillano trombe e tuonano
cannoni: il re gozzoviglia.... E Amleto allora che fa? Fa una lunga
tirata sull’intemperanza e sui vizi degli uomini.... Ben collocata,
davvero. Me lo spieghi lei, di grazia, signor Cavalcanti, se
Shakespeare è un insuperabile pittore di anime: per qual ragione
Amleto fa proprio in questo momento questa predica al colto e
all’inclita? Non aveva altro di meglio da fare?
Ma anche interrogato per nome, il Cavalcanti tacque.
— Le par che fosse il momento quello, per il poeta, — insistè l’altro
— di voltare il suo loquace burattino verso il pubblico e di mettergli in
bocca questa cicalata proprio nel momento in cui Amleto dovrebbe
aspettare, con l’anima carica di dubbii angosciosi, l’ombra del padre
ucciso? L’avrebbe fatto parlar così, lei, in un suo dramma? Mi
risponda di grazia: sì o no?
Se il Cavalcanti amava meglio, anzichè discutere, assistere allo
spettacolo interessante delle altrui discussioni, sapeva tuttavia,
quando occorreva, — era un diplomatico, non dimentichiamolo —
argomentare sottilmente in contrasto. E allora incominciò, non
potendo più senza scortesia opporre il silenzio a quelle aperte
domande forse anche sentendo, come tutti l’avevamo sentito ai primi
colpi risoluti di quella critica violenta ma non sciocca, che la
discussione era seria quanto bastava perchè non si potesse volgerla
in burla, come avevamo fatto sino allora, almeno nel nostro
pensiero. Ma parlò da principio come chi è sforzato mal suo grado.
— Amleto — egli disse — non è un uomo come lei e come me.... È
uno spirito vagabondo e fantastico.... Si abbandona ai suoi pensieri
e questi lo sospingono qua e là.... Dice quel che pensa così.... come
gli viene in mente; ma non ragiona mai a filo di logica....
— Ma ragiona o sragiona? — ribattè pronto l’Alverighi. — Lei esita?
Perchè di qui non si scappa; o ragiona....
— Ragiona, sragionando — interruppe, brusco, il Cavalcanti, come
chi si decide a saltare un fosso che gli attraversa la via. — Sembra,
che divaghi, eppure un nesso in tutto quello che dice, c’è; nascosto,
ma c’è; solamente non è facile scoprirlo....
L’Alverighi sorrise ironico.
— Un nesso che c’è e non si vede! Sarà: ma non capisco. A ogni
modo ritorneremo sulla questione tra poco.... a proposito della
pazzia. Sulla fine dell’atto non ho niente da ridire; la scena dello
spettro è potente. Atto secondo: Amleto incomincia a simular la
follia. Poichè Amleto si finge pazzo: su questo punto almeno saremo
d’accordo, spero?
— Sì e no — rispose con una certa esitanza il Cavalcanti.
— Come? sì e no? — interruppe impetuoso l’Alverighi. — Ma se
Amleto stesso dice a più riprese agli amici e lo ripete alla madre, che
finge? E poi come va che questo personaggio tanto vivo e tanto vero
non si sa poi nemmeno con sicurezza se sia pazzo o no....
— Il carattere di Amleto — rispose il Cavalcanti un po’ impacciato —
è complesso e profondo, e perciò anche involuto ed oscuro. Chi ne
intende una parte e chi un’altra; e quindi ognuno può farsene un suo
concetto. Per questa ragione appunto piace, interessa, attira tanti....
E poi i simulatori della follia sono sempre un po’ pazzi davvero. È
cosa dimostrata, ormai. Il genio di Shakespeare ha divinato....
Ma l’Alverighi, che già mentre il Cavalcanti parlava, aveva
incominciato a far dei segni di diniego impazienti:
— Ma che dice, ma che dice! — interruppe alla fine. — Shakespeare
sarebbe allora anche un precursore di Cesare Lombroso? E perchè
no, del telegrafo e dell’areoplano? Anche questo ci aspettiamo un
giorno o l’altro, da lor signori, ammiratori di Shakespeare. Vuol
sapere che cosa è questo profondo carattere di Amleto e la sua
pazzia? Glielo dirò io. Il carattere di Amleto è un pasticcio fatto di
cose diverse e incompatibili l’una con l’altra; e la pazzia un rottame
dimenticato in mezzo al dramma per negligenza. Lei sa che
Shakespeare ha tratto il suo dramma da Saxo Gramaticus. Ha letto
mai, lei, Saxo Gramaticus? Ebbene lo legga: vedrà che Amleto è
bambino, quando suo padre è ucciso: e quindi il suo racconto si
capisce, è chiaro, è logico, è umano. Lo zio usurpa al fanciullo il
potere; Amleto è trasportato da amici del padre in un lontano
castello; cresce, sa che lo zio lo tien d’occhio, e per ciò si finge
scemo: scemo, non pazzo: per rassicurare l’usurpatore, che non
rivendicherà un giorno il trono; per salvare la pelle sua e vendicar
quella del padre.... La successione al trono insomma è la ragione
per cui Amleto fa le viste di essere idiota.... e sfido chiunque a
dimostrare che questa ragione non sia ragionevole. Ma ecco
sopraggiunge un genio sovrano, il principe dei poeti, uno spirito
universale e caccia le mani nel vecchio racconto.... Gesummaria,
che disastro! Mi fa ammazzare il padre, quando Amleto è già un
uomo; e tutto il dramma, così semplice e umano del cronista, diventa
un rebus indecifrabile. Perchè il re non è Amleto invece dello zio?
Tolta di mezzo la lotta per la successione, a cui il poeta non accenna
mai, anche la simulata follia doveva sparire; invece è rimasta:
perchè? Probabilmente perchè si prestava a scene bizzarre che
facessero smascellar dalle risa il popolaccio della platea, come lo
spettro gli faceva venire la pelle d’oca. E per questo Shakespeare
l’ha fatto comparire e ricomparir sulla scena....
L’Alverighi parlava ad ascoltatori ancora mal disposti, sebbene meno
che da principio. Ma quando egli disse queste cose, sentimmo tutti
che nessuno avrebbe saputo rispondergli. E nessuno infatti —
nemmeno il Cavalcanti — rispose. L’Alverighi si godè un momento,
roteando lo sguardo, la sua prima vittoria; poi continuò:
— Quanto al secondo atto io noterò solo che esso è composto di
parecchie lunghe scene: la chiacchierata con Polonio, in cui Amleto
fa il matto, la conversazione con Rosencrantz e Guildenstern, la
lunga discorsa con i comici. Ma di tutte queste scene la ragione non
si capisce che all’ultimo momento, nel monologo finale, quando
Amleto accusa sè stesso di non saper agire; e dichiara di voler
finalmente far qualche cosa per scoprire il vero. Insomma la
situazione è questa: Amleto è perplesso: non sa se lo spettro gli
abbia raccontato il vero: come accertarsi che quella apparizione non
sia una insidia del demonio? E ricorre all’astuzia degli attori.
Benissimo! Questa è materia tragica davvero. Che atto meraviglioso
poteva darci un poeta grande davvero, che avesse annunciata
prima, e poi, a poco a poco, colorita e svolta questa situazione! Il
divino Shakespeare invece ha trovato il modo di guastar tutto: la
situazione non apparisce agli occhi del lettore che alla fine dell’atto:
e appena apparisce è già subito risoluta in pochi versi, che cascano
insieme con il sipario sul capo del lettore e dello spettatore, come
una mazzata! Dagliela come viene, dicono a Roma! Ed eccoci al
terzo atto — proseguì sfogliando rapidamente molte pagine del libro.
Ma a questo punto mi parve di sentire oscillar leggermente la sedia.
Guardai le tende delle finestre; ondeggiavano come il vento le
movesse, sebbene tutte le finestre fossero chiuse. Il vapore entrava
in mare mosso.
— Il re, la regina, Polonio, Ofelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern —
proseguiva intanto l’avvocato, — confabulano intorno alla follia di
Amleto. Si decide di tentar la prova di Ofelia. Tutti escono, fuori che
Ofelia. Amleto entra, pronunciando il famoso monologo: «To be or
not to be». Bellissima disquisizione filosofica intorno al suicidio, non
c’è che dire: ma io sarei molto curioso di sapere per qual ragione il
poeta l’ha messa in bocca al suo personaggio proprio in questo
punto. Per dipingerne la diuturna malinconia? Concedo che questa
tesi si potrebbe sostenere. Al suicidio Amleto allude nel suo primo
monologo (e l’Alverighi sfogliò a ritroso il libro):
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ’gainst self-slaughter....
Ma allora questo tremendo pensiero dovrebbe ritornare ogni tanto,
nei discorsi, se è sempre lì, presente allo spirito. Invece, dopo il
primo accenno e dopo questa dissertazione, silenzio completo....
Dunque anche questo è un lampo che illumina all’improvviso, per un
momento, la tragedia; e poi, buona notte! Insomma Amleto si ricorda
di esser lui ogni tanto; e qualche volta anche, smemorato come è, si
sbaglia: ed è un altro. Del resto, se saltiamo per un momento la
famosa scena della rappresentazione, un altro esempio curioso della
mania che hanno tutti i personaggi di Shakespeare di filosofare a
vanvera, ce lo somministra il re. Dopo la rappresentazione questa
perla di re delibera di far la festa a Amleto e ne dà l’ordine: dopo la
qual bellissima pensata, si sente preso a un tratto dalla tenerezza e
vuol pregare: ma non può, poverino, chè si sente sullo stomaco quel
peccataccio del fratricidio, e rammarica di averlo commesso, e si
dispera di non sentirsene pentito: poi per consolarsi trangugia anche
lui una buona pozione di filosofia; e disserta sulla preghiera, sul
rimorso, sulla incorruttibile giustizia di Dio: sinchè si decide a
pregare, sperando consolazione e conforto. Intanto i suoi sgherri si
preparano a uccidere Amleto: a questo altro peccatuccio, il re non ci
pensa neppure, nei suoi pentimenti, perchè se lui si pentiva anche di
questo, come faceva a terminare il suo dramma il divino William?
Ma questo ultimo strazio di una opera d’arte a lui cara ebbe la virtù
di risvegliare finalmente nel Cavalcanti il sonnecchiante dialettico.
— Ma no, ma no, — disse con un accento insolitamente concitato —
non è così che si fa la critica di un capolavoro. Lei applica ad Amleto
le regole della poetica di Aristotele, i canoni della tragedia greca.
Secondo Aristotele, lo so, le tragedie di Shakespeare
apparterrebbero al genere peggiore, l’episodico, come Aristotele lo
chiama: ma io protesto che è arbitrario e prepotente applicare i
canoni fatti per un’arte ad un’altra, posteriore, diversa, maturata in
altro tempo. No: l’arte non è una sola, mai: prende forme diverse:
muta di continuo: è antichissima e sempre nuova. Ci fu il dramma
greco; ebbe le sue regole; voleva unità d’azione, semplicità di
intrecci, rapidità di svolgimenti, graduazione di effetti, proporzione di
parti.... E dei caratteri semplici, evidenti, perspicui, da vederci
attraverso come a un cristallo. Ma perchè abbiamo la fortuna di
possedere dei capolavori immortali in questo genere d’arte, non ci
sarà arte fuori di quei capolavori? Shakespeare descrive le passioni
violente, i caratteri squilibrati, le anime barcollanti nella sublime
vertigine dell’infinito. Tutti quelli che lei chiama difetti, bisogna
considerarli da questo punto di vista, e allora son pregi, e che pregi!
Sicuro: le sue imagini sono spesso contorte e strane, ma perchè egli
vuol dipingere stati d’animo convulsi e tempestosi. Lei dice che nel
secondo atto la situazione è risoluta ad un tratto, in pochi versi, alla
fine, senza preparazione adeguata; ma certo, perchè tale per
l’appunto è l’arte di Shakespeare: non ha sfumature: scoppia ogni
tanto in un gran lampo improvviso che sfolgora in grembo all’infinito
e si spegne; è pieno di sorprese e sussulti....
— Come l’America, — pensai, ricordando i discorsi della signora.
— Il poeta che vuol dipingere le grandi bufere dell’anima —
continuava il Cavalcanti — non può scrivere come Virgilio o come
Racine. La prima scena del primo atto è inutile, dice lei; anzi
all’opposto: il lettore ha già visto lo spettro, ha già tremato e quindi
aspetta con ansia maggiore che lo spettro ricomparisca, non più a
degli estranei ma al figlio. In un dramma greco questa scena
sarebbe ridondante, siam d’accordo: ma in un’arte come quella di
Shakespeare la ridondanza è necessaria; non è un difetto, è un
pregio. Lei dice che i personaggi ragionano a vanvera.... E quante
volte non ragioniamo noi a vanvera nella vita? Nella vita c’è forse
solo l’ordine, la simmetria, la pace, la misura? No: c’è anche il
turbine, la guerra, il caos, la montagna, il ghiacciaio.... Non lo
dimentichi; l’ammirazione di Shakespeare si è diffusa insieme con la
passione dell’alpinismo e non per caso!
Non avevo mai sentito il dolce Cavalcanti parlar con tanta foga.
L’ultima parte però del suo discorso non era stata ascoltata con
attenzione così piena come la prima; perchè il pubblico incominciava
a sentir le oscillazioni della nave, a agitarsi e a distrarsi. Mi
domandai un momento se le ondate del mare non spazzerebbero
via, dal salone, tra poco, filosofia e filosofanti. L’Alverighi intanto che,
strano a dirsi, aveva ascoltato questo discorso sorridendo con
palese compiacimento, chiuse il libro che aveva innanzi, lo gettò in
disparte, e:
— Alla fine! — esclamò. — Ce n’è voluto: ma ci siamo. Benissimo!
Lei ha ripetuto a proposito di Shakespeare proprio quello che io
avevo detto di New-York. Se ne ricorda? Che la natura non è fatta a
squadra: e che perciò lo sproporzionato, l’ineguale, il violento
possono e debbono essere ragione di bellezza, come sono forza
della vita.... New-York è a petto delle architetture classiche proprio
ciò che Shakespeare è a petto di Sofocle. Non si potrebbe ammirar
l’uno e spregiar l’altra senza peccare di incoerenza. Quindi quando
lei mi obiettò che l’armonia, la proporzione....
Ma il Cavalcanti non lo lasciò continuare.
— Adagio! Lei corre troppo! — interruppe reciso. — Chi nega che ci
sia un’anima di nuova bellezza anche nel disordine selvaggio di
New-York? Io no. Ma io non voglio per questo negare, come fa lei, la
bellezza delle vecchie città dell’Europa. Per questa via non la seguo.
La bellezza non è una sola; è multiforme; anzi è una cosa infinita. Io
penso che lo spirito umano è capace di creare infinite bellezze; e
perciò non bisogna imporgli condizioni, barriere, restrizioni o regole
arbitrarie; ma sforzarsi invece di acquistare una infinita capacità di
capire e ammirare, come infinita è la capacità di creare. Io ammiro
Sofocle e Shakespeare, Shakespeare e Molière, Rossini e Wagner,
senza sforzo, anzi raddoppiandomi dall’uno all’altro il piacere. Lei
sorride? Lo so: noi Americani saremmo i provinciali della cultura
moderna, perchè restiamo così, a bocca aperta, dinanzi a ogni cosa
bella. Ebbene vi dirò allora che in questo almeno gli Europei
avrebbero molto, ma molto da imparare da noi. Io venero l’Europa
come madre e maestra: ma non capisco perchè essa si ostini a voler
empire di discordie e di guerra anche le regioni dei cieli, anche
l’eterna serenità dell’Olimpo.... Per qual ragione non può essa
affermare o ammirare una verità o una bellezza senza negarne o
spregiarne un’altra? Come accade che ogni scienziato, filosofo,
letterato o artista che sia, nel vecchio mondo, appena gusta i frutti
dell’albero sacro, si crede l’unico; e smania di fare il deserto intorno
a sè; e vuol dondolarsi nell’infinito, da solo, a cavalcioni del piccolo
frammento del tutto che è suo; e diventa un dio iroso e crudele, che
cerca di annientare e nega tutto ciò che è fuori di lui: il potere, di cui
non fa parte; la ricchezza, se non la possiede; la tradizione, se è un
uomo nuovo; la scienza, se è un artista o un filosofo; la filosofia e
l’arte, se è uno scienziato; la giovinezza, quando è vecchio: il futuro,
poichè egli vive nel presente? Perchè laggiù ogni ingegno, appena è
fatto adulto, vuol provare a sè e agli altri la sua forza nascente,
facendo una strage? Precipitarsi su quanti accanto a lui lavorano lo
stesso campo, come su nemici mortali? Assalire le dottrine tutte che
divergono dalle proprie, le scuole a cui non è ascritto, le tendenze da
cui dissente, come se la varietà fosse un pericolo mortale nel regno
del pensiero e della bellezza? No: noi Americani pensiamo che la
verità è un tesoro nascosto, come l’oro della Vecchia Montagna che
abbiamo visitata con l’amico Ferrero, nella dura roccia della
ignoranza; che ogni uomo non può raccoglierne se non qualche
pagliuzza con fatica infinita: perchè dunque rischiare di perdere l’oro,
per rissare intorno al miglior modo di estrarlo, come voi fate? Noi
vogliamo che lo spirito umano adorni il mondo con quanta maggiore
bellezza può; e troppo della bellezza rispettiamo ogni forma — diteci
pur barbari per questo, o orgogliosi Europei — per non sentirci tenuti
a lasciar tutte le arti e tutte le opere del genio umano esser belle a
modo loro; per osar di sforzarle a una bellezza impossibile e di
nostro capriccio. Se questa è barbarie, d’esser barbari noi siamo
fieri, o uomini del vecchio mondo!
La filosofia aveva per un istante sedati i moti del mare. E tutti
prorompemmo, Europei e Americani, in applausi e grida di bravo!
Questo soffio di profondo, sincero, universale amore del vero e del
bello, che spirava dall’America, dal Brasile, dalla città adagiata in
grembo alla foresta vergine, ci aveva tutti commossi. Ma gli applausi
e le grida avevano interrotta la conversazione; e due camerieri, che
da qualche tempo aspettavano in disparte, ne approfittarono, per
entrar nel circolo, posare sul tavolo dell’oratore due vassoi carichi di
bicchieri e accingersi a cavare i turaccioli di parecchie bottiglie di
Champagne. Chi offriva era il signor Vazquez, un amico dell’Alverighi
che viaggiava con lui. Era costui un uomo di cinquanta anni, piccolo
e grassoccio; e apparteneva a quel ceto di ricchi possidenti
argentini, intelligenti, industriosi, intraprendenti, che l’Europa così
poco conosce e che da mezzo secolo, prevalendosi abilmente della
copiosa immigrazione e del rincaro delle terre, vanno gettando un
mantello di floride coltivazioni sull’immenso corpo della repubblica,
ancor quasi ignudo mezzo secolo fa. Il Vazquez nella provincia di
Mendoza possedeva terre accanto a quelle dell’Alverighi: e andava
con lui in Europa per trovar mezzi a irrigarle e nel tempo stesso per
tentare di aprire spacci di carne agghiacciata nei paesi dell’Europa
continentale, che ancora si cibano di sola carne paesana.
All’irrompere dei camerieri entro il nostro circolo parecchi si levarono
in piedi; si alzò pure l’Alverighi e venne in mezzo a noi, mentre i
camerieri incominciavano a mescere; ma lì fu subito aggredito di
fronte, saettato da destra, bersagliato a sinistra.... La signora
Feldmann gli dichiarò che aveva capito abbastanza bene, ma che la
scena dello spettro, recitata da Mounet Sully alla Comédie
Française, era meravigliosa; l’ammiraglio diceva che, a posto o fuori
di posto, il famoso monologo era uno dei più bei squarci di poesia; la
Gina difese Ofelia; il Cavalcanti cercò di spiegare con nuovi
argomenti le contradizioni di Amleto.... E tutti parlavano con
veemenza, quasi come chi ritorce un’offesa personale.
— L’ammirazione di Shakespeare è proprio ormai una religione
universale — pensai.
Invano infatti il bersagliato critico cercava di rispondere a tutti, chè
tutti parlavano ad una volta, l’uno troncando spesso con una nuova
obiezione la risposta fatta all’altro. Stanco alla fine l’Alverighi si
svincolò da quella ressa e voltosi al Vazquez alzò un poco il
bicchiere che teneva in mano:
— È proprio squisito — dicendo in spagnuolo — questo vino.
Sorridendo il Vazquez mostrò di gradire il complimento: ma uno dei
mercanti astigiani che, forse attratto dall’odore del vino, era
comparso allora allora in mezzo a noi insieme con il dottore,
rivolgendo il discorso in italiano all’Alverighi:
— È eccellente — concesse. — Non lo nego: io conosco però del
Canelli che non ha nulla da invidiare a questo.... Lei non ci crede?
Già, perchè è un vino italiano! Ma glielo vorrei servire con una
fiammante etichetta francese....
— Tutti i popoli — disse con fare sprezzante l’Alverighi — vogliono
ora fabbricar dello Champagne: anche gli Argentini! È il solo prodotto
cattivo dell’agricoltura argentina.
— Insieme con la carne in gelo — aggiunse imprudentemente il
dottore.
Non l’avesse mai detto! Chè subito il Vazquez e l’Alverighi
protestarono la carne agghiacciata essere la migliore del mondo; e
se ne accese una discussione, che in pochi minuti divampò furiosa.
Anche Shakespeare fu messo in disparte! E chi sa quanto tempo la
nuova discussione avrebbe durato, se per fortuna ed in buon
momento, inflettendosi d’improvviso a babordo, la nave non avesse
fatto barcollare i disputanti e ruzzolar dal tavolo sul pavimento due
bicchieri. Al rumore che fecero i cristalli infrangendosi ci voltammo
tutti; l’ammiraglio uscì per dare un’occhiata al tempo; il mercante
astigiano e qualcun altro lo seguì; la signora Feldmann ritornò a
sedersi; gli altri a poco a poco la imitarono, tranne l’Alverighi che
rimase in piedi, appoggiato e mezzo seduto sul tavolo, con le braccia
conserte; e dopochè l’ammiraglio ritornando ci ebbe annunciato che
ne avremmo sino all’alba, la discussione ricominciò per iniziativa del
Rosetti, che sino ad allora non aveva aperto bocca.
— Io desidererei sapere — egli disse — una cosa: se lei ammira, sì
o no, «Amleto». Perchè questa è la sola cosa che non ho capita. Ieri
lei ha sostenuto che New-York è la più bella città del mondo; questa
sera ci dice che la sua architettura può essere raffrontata a un
dramma shakespeariano; ma dopo aver fatto una critica spietata di
questo dramma. Se «Amleto» è un brutto dramma, anche New-York
dovrebbe essere una brutta città, mi pare....
Il Rosetti, che aveva davvero capita l’argomentazione dell’Alverighi,
la colpiva in una congiuntura vitale. Ma l’Alverighi sorrise con un fare
sicuro, come chi ha pronta la risposta:
— Benissimo, ci siamo — egli disse, incrociando le braccia. — Lei
ha ragione: questo è il punto capitale. Il signor Cavalcanti cita come
esempio l’americano che ammira le due forme opposte dell’arte,
quando ci sono, mentre l’europeo ne ammira una e disprezza l’altra;
io penso invece che ciascuno deve esser libero di far quel che gli
piace: ammirarne una sola, tutte e due, nessuna. Ieri sera ho
sostenuto che New-York è la più bella città del mondo, così, per
spirito di contradizione: ma riconosco che chi voglia può sostener
l’opposto con argomenti egualmente buoni.
E qui si volse al Cavalcanti.
— Io le chiesi ieri sera in nome di qual principio o criterio lei poteva
affermare che New-York è brutta. Orbene: ci vuol poco a vedere che
questo principio o criterio non c’è: che di un’opera d’arte si può
dimostrare quel che si vuole, che è bella e che è brutta, che è un
capolavoro ed un orrore. Per esempio: uno scrittore è limpido e
chiaro? Se lo voglio vilipendere, lo accuserò di essere superficiale,
dozzinale e giornalista. Uno scrittore è oscuro? Dirò che è profondo,
trascendente, pieno di sensi arcani, se lo voglio ammirare.
Viceversa: se un poeta, se un romanziere, se un musico profondo
quanto l’Oceano che traversiamo, mi è a noia, chi mi potrà impedire
di accusarlo di esser pesante, oscuro, involuto? Il carattere di Amleto
è oscuro e contradditorio, dico io. Ma che!, mi risponde lei. È
profondo. La prima scena di «Amleto» è superflua, io dicevo, anzi
dannosa, perchè smorza l’effetto della scena seguente, in cui lo
spettro del padre apparisce al figlio. Lei mi ha risposto: anzi
l’accresce, preparandola: è quindi necessaria. L’ultima scena del
secondo atto è difettosa, perchè, aggiungevo io, non è preparata.
Anzi, mi ha replicato lei, perchè non preparata, sorprende e quindi
commuove maggiormente il lettore. Nel ragionamento mio la
preparazione una volta era un difetto e una volta un pregio: nel suo
invece inversamente era un difetto e un pregio l’impreparazione. Ieri
sera ci accapigliammo per New-York e Parigi, come stasera per
«Amleto»: ma è chiaro che in tutte le arti, l’armonia della
composizione, la studiata proporzione delle parti può esser tacciata
di compassata freddezza: viceversa, un’arte impetuosa, traboccante,
ineguale può esser giudicata barbarica, lutulenta, grossolana.
Petrarca e Victor Hugo: Racine e Shakespeare: Parigi e New-York.
Insomma chiunque abbia un po’ di cervello non è mai a corto di
buone ragioni per dimostrare che quel che gli piace è bello e quel
che gli dispiace è brutto. Ne vuole una ultima prova? Ho qui la
traduzione dello Shakespeare fatta dal Rusconi; alla fine di ogni
tragedia c’è il giudizio degli Schlegel: stia a sentir che cosa dicono di
«Amleto».
— Roba vecchia, gli Schlegel! — interruppe il Cavalcanti. — Se lei
cerca il vero Shakespeare negli Schlegel!
— Poco importa — replicò l’Alverighi. — Ogni critico che
sopraggiunge crede di esser lui il primo a capire e a scoprire il suo
autore; per me valgon tutti egualmente, cioè zero; ma in questo caso
c’è un fatto che non è una opinione: ed è che gli Schlegel sono stati i
grandi impresari della gloria di Shakespeare in Europa, un secolo fa.
Stia dunque a sentire quel che dicono cotesti signori. «L’Amleto è
unico nella sua specie: è la tragedia del pensiero. Ispirata da
meditazioni profonde e non mai compiute» (cioè, direi io, senza capo
nè coda) «sul destino umano e sulla buia confusione degli
avvenimenti terrestri, essa eccita le medesime meditazioni
nell’animo dello spettatore. Un’opera tanto difficile somiglia a quelle
equazioni irrazionali che non si possono mai sciogliere, e in cui resta
sempre una frazione di grandezza sconosciuta». Non esprimerebbe
lo stesso pensiero, ma nella forma inversa, chi dicesse che la
tragedia è spropositata, incomprensibile e assurda? Continuiamo.
«Nessun pensatore che lo esamini potrà concordare interamente
con quelli che lo precedettero nella sua maniera di considerare il
senso di ciascuna parte e la loro congiuntura». In altre parole:
oscurità e imprecisione. «Ciò che sopratutto deve recar meraviglia è,
come un’opera, ove son tanti disegni nascosti e la cui base giace in
tanta profondità, sembri fatta, a prima giunta, per piacere alle
moltitudini». Un nemico direbbe che «Amleto» è un drammaccio da
arena diurna, lardellato a caso di tirate filosofiche. E lo dice anche il
nostro critico, sul finire del giudizio, ma a modo di elogio, perchè a lui
questo pasticcio indigesto di fattacci sanguinari e di filosofia fuori di
posto, gli piace! «Il poeta si perde con il suo eroe in un labirinto di
pensieri che non hanno nè capo nè fine, e il cielo medesimo sdegna
di rispondere, per mezzo degli avvenimenti, alle domande che gli
vengono rivolte.... I colpevoli è vero, sono alla fine puniti, ma solo
per una specie di caso....» Cioè le azioni e i discorsi sono nel
dramma egualmente incoerenti ed assurdi. Chi si contenta, gode!
E chiuse il libro di colpo.
Il Cavalcanti tacque un istante, quasi per accertarsi che l’Alverighi
aveva finito; e quindi:
— Ebbene? E ne conchiude?.... — interrogò, breve e tranquillo.
— Che cosa conchiudo? — replicò un po’ impazientito l’Alverighi. —
Ma quante volte lo devo ripetere? Ne conchiudo che quella che noi
chiamiamo la bellezza delle cose non è una loro qualità intrinseca
ma una nostra opinione; e che quindi non c’è autorità al mondo che
possa decidere se New-York è bella o è brutta....
Il Cavalcanti si strinse nelle spalle e:
— Perchè i nostri ragionamenti sul bello — disse — sono fallaci? Ma
lei dimentica, mi pare, che l’arte è un sentimento, non una idea o
una teoria.
Volgendo a caso in quel momento gli occhi, vidi la signora Feldmann
che, appoggiato il gomito destro sul ginocchio, reclinata la fronte
sulla palma della mano, le aveva fatta del braccio colonna; e
l’ammiraglio la guardava. Intanto il Cavalcanti continuava.
— Non le è mai capitato, vedendo un quadro, ascoltando una
musica, leggendo una poesia, osservando un paesaggio,
impreparato, non prevenuto, sgombro da ogni preconcetto, di
sentirsi prorompere dal fondo dell’anima il grido: quanto è bello! Non
ha anche lei provata, davanti al camposanto di Pisa, al colonnato di
San Pietro, guardando l’«Amor sacro e profano», leggendo una lirica
di Victor Hugo, una gioia, una delizia, un rapimento, quasi un breve
delirio di piacere, pronto, impensato, intimo, spontaneo, liberissimo?
Ma la bellezza, è quella; è quel non so che, che nelle opere d’arte, in
certi oggetti della natura, ha la virtù di suscitare in noi,
immediatamente, questo fremito di piacere. Lei stesso del resto
dicendo che bello è quel che piace, non ha forse ammesso che la
piacevolezza è l’essenza dell’arte? Lei mi chiederà perchè questi
oggetti e queste opere hanno questa virtù. Mistero! In che consiste
propriamente questo piacere? Mistero! Ma il piacere che noi
proviamo non è una illusione; chiunque ne può far fede: è una delle
poche cose di cui noi possiamo esser sicuri, appunto perchè è un
sentimento: perchè noi non conosciamo la vita se non in quanto la
sentiamo.... Il ragionamento può chiarire o annebbiare il sentimento
del bello, come ogni altro sentimento; non può nè generarlo nè
spegnerlo. Ragionate quanto volete; il piacere che io sento davanti
alla Venere di Milo, lo sentirò sempre. E sinchè lo sentirò se altri
ragiona, argomenta, sofistica il pro ed il contro intorno alla bellezza
di Venere, pazienza! La autorità, io la porto dentro di me, infallibile!
Lei è un filosofo; e non occorre che queste cose gliele spieghi a
lungo....
— Io non sono un filosofo, sono un uomo che non ha tempo da
perdere, neppure a bordo del «Cordova» — replicò un po’ brusco
l’Alverighi. — E perciò, senza tante circonlocuzioni, le dico: siamo
d’accordo: il bello è un quid che ci dà un piacere, quasi direi per
immediato contatto.... Ma che piacere è questo piacere? «That is the
question», come dice proprio Amleto; e io non mi contento di
rispondere, come fa lei: mistero! Io mi domando: è forse quel piacere
che nasce dal bisogno? No. Un bisogno innato o acquistato per
abitudine è anch’esso un quid che genera piacere e dolore: piacere
quando è soddisfatto; dolore quando non è soddisfatto. Ora l’arte ci
dà piacere quando la possiamo godere, ma non soffriamo invece,
quando ci manca: quindi non è un bisogno; e per questo anzi gli
uomini la amano tanto, perchè può esser fonte di piacere sempre, di
dolore mai. Non le pare?

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Cultures of Conflict Resolution in Early

Modern Europe 1st Edition Stephen

Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain 1st

Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe Material

Genealogical Knowledge in the Making Tools Practices

Early Modern Europe 1450 1789 Cambridge History of

Sartorial Politics in Early Modern Europe Fashioning

Food, Religion and Communities in Early Modern Europe

Forms of Association Making Publics in Early Modern

Psychologically Informed Mediation Studies in Conflict

Stephen Cummins and Laura Kounine

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2016 Stephen Cummins, Laura Kounine and the Contributors

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

ISBN 9781472411556 (hbk)

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: Confronting Conflict in Early Modern Europe  1

Part I Rethinking Disputes and Settlements

1 Rethinking Disputes and Settlements: How Historians Can Use

2 At the Crossroads of Feud and Law: Settling Disputes in Early

Part II Mediation, Reconciliation, Coexistence

3 ‘Types’ of Peacemakers: Exploring the Authority and Self-

4 Mediation and Reconciliation among Seventeenth-Century

5 Containing Confessional Conflict in the Military: The Holy

6 Colonial Conflicts: Factional Disputes in Two Portuguese

Part III Law, Courts and Conflict

7 Contesting Public Executions in Paris Towards the End of the

8 Contested Coexistence: Lay–Clerical Disputes and their

9 The Witch on Trial: Narratives of Conflict and Community in

10 Forgiving Crimes in Early Modern Naples  255

1 Detail of Vassalieu dit Nicolay, Map of Paris, 1609 185

2 Detail of Figure représentant le supplice & exécution de l’arrest

1 Appeals to and death sentences confirmed by the Parlement of

Tara Alberts (PhD Cambridge) is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the

Stuart Carroll (PhD London) is Professor of Early Modern History at the

Marco Cavarzere (PhD Scuola Normale Superiore) is Alexander-von-Humboldt

Stephen Cummins (PhD Cambridge) is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for

Gabriella Erdélyi ‘(PhD Eötvös Loránd University) is Senior Research Fellow in

Tom Hamilton (DPhil Oxford) is Junior Research Fellow in History at Trinity

Christian Kühner (PhD Freiburg/EHESS) is Lecturer in Early Modern

Christian Schneider is a PhD fellow in History at the University of Durham.

This volume developed from a conference held at St John’s College, Cambridge,

Some of the most persistent and largest-scale accounts of change in European

people. Critiques of the civilizing process still have to confront evidence of

This volume opened up numerous avenues of research and has been an

connections between local disputes and transnational legal networks.24 This

Then we move to a section entitled ‘Mediation, Reconciliation, Coexistence’,

Antichi, Valerio, ‘Giustizia consuetudinaria e giustizia d’apparato nello Stato

Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2000).

——— The Civilizing Process: State Formation and Civilization (Oxford:

——— ‘Pratiche sociali di perdono nell’Italia della Controriforma’, in Francesca

Vallerani, Massimo, Medieval Public Justice (Washington, DC, 2012).

An anthropological approach to law inquires into the context of enforceable

surroundings, it also encompasses law-like activities and processes of establishing

From Bossy to Today: The Legal Anthropologist’s Perspective

ethnographic moment had been shaped by history and/or power relations.

List of Figures and Tables vii

Introduction: Confronting Conflict in Early Modern Europe 1

10 Forgiving Crimes in Early Modern Naples 255

1 Detail of Vassalieu dit Nicolay, Map of Paris, 1609 185