Download PDF | Cecilia Cristellon (auth.) - Marriage, the Church, and its Judges in Renaissance Venice, 1420-1545-Palgrave Macmillan (2017).
295 Pages
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Canon law is a system of regulations binding throughout Christendom. The judge who decides a case in an English ecclesiastical tribunal and an episcopal vicar who presides over an Italian court are acting within the same juridical framework found in Spain, France, and the former lands of the Holy Roman Empire. This institutional continuity – which was not called into question even by the Protestant Reformation – has guaranteed European nations a rich and systematic set of documentation that sheds light on many crucial areas of social life and that is astonishing in its continuity. Preserved in massive quantities in ecclesiastical archives (or, outside of Italy, in the public archives that have inherited them), the cause records of the bishops’ tribunals allow us to reconstruct and analyze, from a comparative viewpoint and over several centuries, the most important of the components of social life: the matrimonial alliance.
The terrain thus opened up to scholarly investigation is of unparalleled fecundity, not only for the sheer quantity of the series and their spatial ramifications (not all of them, as yet, accessible to researchers) but also for the polyphonic character of these cause records, which captures social phenomena not in a static phase but in the dynamic one of conflict and presents them from the diverse and contradictory viewpoints of the protagonists and their attendant figures. The Centre of Italo-Germanic Historical Studies, which publishes Cecilia Cristellon’s monograph in one of its series, has promoted a cycle of studies that has enabled Italy to regain much of the territory previously lost in exploring of this category of sources – the Italian ones excelling both in quantity and quality over the rest of Europe – and to host a series of conferences that have opened up new channels of international scholarly communication. By now that cycle has produced a series of volumes (nine in number) and an equally substantial number of journal articles that make the Centre an internationally recognized authority in the study of marriage, both from the viewpoint of the social sciences and legal studies. In the series of publications that are the lasting result of this cycle as well as four other collaborative research projects, Cecilia Cristellon’s monograph represents a high point.
For the first time, an Italian matrimonial tribunal has been subjected to an investigation that is both analytical and systematic – not through documentary surveys, not by selecting this or that phenomenon, not for periods restricted to a few years, but for 125 years in that crucial period that runs from the beginnings of serial documentation in Venice to the momentous changes marked by the convocation of the Council of Trent. What Anne Lefebvre Teillard did for French ecclesiastical tribunals, Richard Helmholz for English ones, and Charles Donahue Jr. did for five medieval tribunals in French-speaking territories and in England (which he studied in comparative fashion), Cristellon now does for an Italian tribunal, one that has bequeathed us a documentary patrimony immeasurably richer than any of those studied hitherto. The extraordinary explorative energy that this labor demanded, the intellectual courage that underlies the endeavor, and the tenacity shown in overcoming difficulties both technical and otherwise make the final result one of the highest excellence. This book is set to become a point of reference for all future research on the structure and praxis of the matrimonial tribunals and on the emotional tempests and affective equilibriums that the matrimonial experience upsets or produces.
The character of the primary research and the freshness of the sources that are here interrogated for the first time manifest themselves in results that resist summarizing in a simple and univocal conclusion: despite the clear normative and procedural parallels that this book reveals with other parts of Europe – I am thinking especially of France – the Italian case reveals deep and fundamental divergences regarding the social role of the tribunals, their presence in the community (the numbers of cases heard), the judges’ authority and culture, their interaction with the surrounding society, and the social features of the “tribunals’ clients.” Such divergences pose a real challenge to future research, because they confront it with new and unforeseen questions. For students of history, institutions, and law, Cecilia Cristellon now supplies, along with a clear outline of its procedure, a systematic analysis of the reference parameters and moral values that underlay the decisions of one ecclesiastical tribunal on the cusp between the medieval and the early modern world. “One” tribunal? The patriarchal tribunal of Venice is not comparable to the other Italian tribunals. A strong research team of 30–40 scholars, who for a decade have regularly met to compare their experiences working in 11 different ecclesiastical archives throughout the country, has concluded that the tribunal of Venice represents a special case in Italy. The Venetian matrimonialia stand out in the Italian landscape for the documentary density of individual cases, for the evocative power of court transcripts, and for the immediacy of lived experience that the notaries’ pens managed to capture.
The extraordinary quality of the Venetian case records the reflection, in documents, of an institutional reality which the reader will find illustrated in detail in the following pages – that is to say the particular political, social, and cultural physiognomy of the Venetian church. For the Venetian patriciate’s reluctance to appeal to Rome in cases of spiritual matter, for the role as a court of appeal that the patriarchal tribunal procured from Rome in relation to the other episcopal tribunals of the Republic of St. Mark, for the high theological and theologico-canonical competence of the patriarchs and their extremely close links – though never subordinate – with the ruling class, for the linguistic expertise that a solid humanistic education conferred on its officials and clerks, the Venetian tribunal stood out in the landscape of protoRenaissance and Renaissance Italy as a lively center of political, juridical, theological, and literary culture (and it will shine more brightly still when some extremely industrious scholar, possibly the author of this book herself, subjects those extraordinary documents that are the decisions of the courts – personally composed by the patriarchs – to a rigorous analysis of Kulturgeschichte).
The fact that the first systematic investigation of an ecclesiastical tribunal should be centered on Venice is one of those fortuitous events whose providential character is perceived only a posteriori by the scholars concerned. This monograph is the result of a choice made many years ago, the wisdom of which could have been grasped neither by Cecilia Cristellon (who at that time was completing her higher education) nor the writer of these lines (who was then the coordinator of a national research project financed by the Ministry of Universities and Research) nor the other scholars engaged in the project. The favor of Clio has ensured that the only Italian archive of matrimonialia that has been explored in systematic fashion thus far should also be the one that is most exciting for scholars,the one that most boldly challenges the reader’s literary sensibility and most strongly appeals to his or her empathy: where else do we find a clerk who records the blushes of a hermaphrodite or the bold replies of an interrogated female witness (p. 233)?
The happy result of Cecilia Cristellon’s undertaking has been aided by the presence of a supremely professional archivist, Francesca Cavazzana Romanelli, as the scholarly director of the Archivio Storico del Patriarcato, by the flexibility of the archive’s opening hours, by the competence and courtesy of its staff, and by the generous spirit with which the archive has been, and still is, run. Cecilia Cristellon’s is an austere book. She has worked on material endowed with immense seductive power. Stories of passion and deception, incantation of love and violence, sensuality and patrimonial interests, intrigues and kidnappings, false identities, family strategies, and the pride of a patriciate class unequalled in Europe for its riches and prestige: the fascination that emanates from these documents and holds the researcher rooted to the desk is not without its risks. Some historians who have examined these records, including the present writer, have failed to resist the temptation of storytelling, and in some cases have abandoned themselves to the pure pleasure of telling a story for its own sake, or else have selected from the ocean of stories those that support a preconceived thesis.
Not so with the author of this book. Cristellon rigorously follows the scheme of her four chapters, which are arranged primarily according to institutional topics: the tribunal and its procedure; testimony as a juridical problem and as an expression of social networks; the figure and role of the judge; and the substance, form, and perception of consent. She pursues this scheme without deviations, developing in the course of this study a sobriety of language and clarity in argumentation that mark her as a scholar endowed with great maturity of judgment and one who has achieved her own personal style.
Possibly as a result of this rigor, the monograph that emerges confronts the specialist and non-specialist with thrilling results. Among these I might mention the portrait of the judge as confessor (chap. 4, § 4) and the theme of “conscience” as a parameter in the interrogation especially of young women (chap. 4, §§ 7–8). These are previously unexplored areas of research, pages in which the originality of this young scholar attains what in my view is a truly remarkable level of penetration. Her ability to enter into syntony with the documents produces pages of vibrant density. In this austere book, which makes no attempt to flatter the reader, the buried voices that the author has for many years compressed into brief entries (so as to supply the reader with a quantitative picture) and the diverse stories she has turned her eyes away from (to be able to classify them into categories) erupt on every page. It is everyday experience that gives life and tension to this reconstruction.
The book has hundreds of personalities. Clara Marcello, Elisabeth di Pietro di Fiandra, Hieronimo Mudazzo, Margherita de Amicis… each and every one of them is at the center of a dramatic story that the author has rapidly evoked in a few lines or even – as with Elisabeth di Pietro di Fiandra, Giandomenico Ceti, Andrea Filocampo, Teodoro di Giovanni … – condensed into a phrase or note. These figures, brought into sharp focus before sinking back into the shadows of a choral ensemble, animate the drier material with the sharpness of their profiles, with an incisive phrase or an impulsive reply. A special instrument was needed to orchestrate these remote voices. This book, which will be returned to again and again as a point of reference, is a document of profound and vibrant humanity. Silvana Seidel Mench.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the editor at Il Mulino – FBK for permission to publish the English version of my book for Palgrave Macmillan. This work was developed as a part of the project “I processi matrimoniali degli archivi ecclesiastici italiani” (“Marriage cases of the Italian Ecclesiastical Archives”), coordinated by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quaglioni at the University of Trent (2001–2005). I am indebted to the organizers of the seminar and to the scholars who participated in it for the exceptional opportunity for intellectual exchange which they offered me. The Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia directed by don Diego Sartorelli and before him by don Bruno Bertoli and don Gianni Bridi provided an ideal working environment, for which I am very grateful. To Francesca Cavazzana Romanelli, the scientific supervisor of special projects at the same archive, and to the archivists Manuela Barausse, Laura Levantino, and David Trivellato, as to Paola Benussi of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia go my sincere thanks for their professionalism, availability, cooperation, and friendship over the years.
The book was developed from a doctoral dissertation conducted at the European University Institute in Fiesole under the kind supervision of Gerard Delille and owes much to the later recommendations for reflection in the final phase by Anthony Molho. Various institutions have supported the research that forms this project with research contracts and fellowships: the University of Trent, the Fondazione Michele Pellegrino in Turin, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the University of Pisa, and the Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz. To their directors, as to all the personnel at their libraries, I would Acknowledgments xiv like to express my most sincere gratitude. Likewise, I thank the prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives monsignor Sergio Pagano and the personnel there, the former director of the Archivio Storico Diocesano of Padua monsignor Claudio Bellinati, the director of the Archivio Storico of the Diocese of Verona don Franco Segala, the personnel of the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, and Dr. Giuseppe Ellero of the Archivio dell’Istituto di Ricovero e Educazione in Venice. Stanley Chojnacki, Giovanni Ciappelli, Charles Donahue Jr., Emlyn Eisenach, Daniela Lombardi, Luca Faoro, Chiara La Rocca, Julius Kirshner, Sara McDougall, Laura Prosperi, Mark Adrian Roberts, Kirsi Salonen, Ludwig Schmugge, and Heide Wunder were all, in various phases of this research, valuable interlocutors. Richard Helmholz, a font of inspiration for all scholars of matrimonialia, has greatly encouraged my work with his characteristic kindness. To Regina and the late Rosanne Schwartz, William Davis, and Edward Muir I would like to express thanks that go beyond the professional sphere. I am particularly grateful to Fernando Chavarría Múgica and Ermanno Orlando for their repeated readings and our open, gracious, and constant dialogue. Ottavia Niccoli read the entire manuscript and enabled me to improve it with her advice. Anne Jacobson Schutte never denied me prompt counsel.
I wish to thank Jenny McCall, Emily Russel, Rowan Milligan and their associates at Palgrave Macmillan for their accuracy, and their efficiency, as well as the anonymous reviewer for useful commentary. My work has continually taken me to various countries and cities. To my parents I owe the precious sensation of always having a home to return to for me and for my family. Among the many debts of gratitude I have contracted with Silvana Seidel Menchi, I wish to mention specifically the most rare virtue in a teacher and thank her for the discretion with which she has followed my research, allowing me to become a historian. I am profoundly grateful to Edward Muir for encouraging and supporting the translation of this book into English. To have such a brilliant scholar and friendly colleague as Celeste McNamara as its translator was an honor and a great pleasure. Having Charles Keenan revise the text with great competence and sensibility was a true privilege. I would like to thank both warmly for their very precise and fine work. Alexey never left me on my own. This book is dedicated to him.
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