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Recent historians have pinpointed the ways in which legal systems in early modern Europe were improvisational, flexible, and contingent rather than immovable, hierarchical, and gendered. Evidence, Crime, and Forensics in the Early Modern Mediterranean amplifies such findings by looking at law and its consumers in the Mediterranean, broadly imagined, between 1500 and 1750. The volume's essays enhance our awareness of how crimes were defined, evidence was offered, and forensic awareness appeared in secular, inquisitorial, and specially commissioned courts in Spain, Italy, and the Hapsburg Balkans.
This collection threads an important needle: our authors recognize formal chains of command and legal commonplaces but nonetheless emphasize how such factors could be challenged, manipulated, or ignored by illiterate and vulnerable populations. It turns out that ordinary individuals in the early modern Mediterranean did not find themselves limited in their legal options, and their degree of sophistication in court speaks volumes about networks of legal knowledge. Furthermore, in no way does the use of the courts between 1500 and 1750 imply more "rational" ways of seeking justice, since emotions were always firmly on display, even if rage and regret were being deployed for performative reasons.
Evidence, Crime, and Forensics in the Early Modern Mediterranean illustrates the range of questions we can put to archival sources from the early modern Mediterranean, with plentiful insights as to how legal sources can illuminate history from below. This collection will be a welcome addition for undergraduate and graduate courses on European history, as well as a provocative resource for more general audiences.
List of contents
Introduction
Part I: Legal and Intellectual Foundations
Chapter 1
On the Inquisition in Spain
Gretchen D. Starr-LeBeau
Chapter 2
On the Roman Inquisition: Uncertainty and Discretion
Vincenzo Lavenia
Chapter 3
On Forensic Medical Evidence
Bradford A. Bouley
Part II: Urban Violence
Chapter 4
On Homicide in Bologna
Colin Rose
Chapter 5
On homicide, forensic practice, and forensic discourse in Madrid
Blanca Llanes Parra
Chapter 6
On Feuding in Venice
Andrew Vidali
Part III: Gendered Violence
Chapter 7
On Spousal Murders and Honor Killings in Spain
Edward Behrend-Martínez
Chapter 8
On Infanticide in Spain
Jodi Campbell
Chapter 9
On Miscarriage and Assault in Early Modern Rome
John Christopoulos
Part IV: Special Victims
Chapter 10
On Children in Spain
Lu Ann Homza
Chapter 11
On Sex Crimes in Italy
Celeste I. McNamara
Chapter 12
On the Blind and Disabled in Spain
Amanda L. Scott
Chapter 13
On the Undead
Francesco Paolo de Ceglia
About the author
Lu Ann Homza is a professor of history at William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Her books include
Religious Authority in the Spanish Renaissance (2000),
The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: an Anthology of Sources (2006),
Village Infernos and Witches' Advocates: Witch-Hunting in Navarre, 1608-1614 (2022), and
The Child-Witches of Olague (2024).
Amanda L. Scott is an associate professor of history and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State University. She has published articles in, among others,
The Journal of Social History,
Renaissance Quarterly,
The Sixteenth Century Journal, and
Church History. Her previous publications include
The Basque Seroras: Local Religion, Gender, and Power in Northern Iberia, 1550-1800 (2020)
Report
'A beautifully nuanced yet incisive overview of the cultural and social dimensions of law and courts in the early modern Mediterranean. The highly original chapters maintain an impressive balance between theory and practice and offer many valuable insights on the very nature of early modern law in the real world' - Joel F. Harrington, Vanderbilt University.
'Where ordinary folk crossed paths with the tribunals, both the men and women of early modern Spain and Italy and the men of law themselves developed canny ways of gathering, reading, and deploying evidence to deal with crimes and to navigate delinquency's great web of social and institutional concerns. Legal matters had their subtle epistemologies and rhetorics, both official and lay. In this book, skilled scholars explore those modes of legal knowing and disputing, engaging, inter alia, the abuse of children, the authority of disabled witnesses, the credibility of midwives as expert witnesses where miscarriages were provoked by violence, the growing authority of medical expertise, plus awkward peace-making between unequals, seduction and abandonment, infanticide, spousal murder, the Inquisition's evolving take on witchcraft, the elaborate procedures of Bologna's highest court, and, in an Eastern European excursion, villagers' panicky responses to their ungrateful un-dead. This lively collection, rich and varied, is an open-minded, handy tour of current work and an entry point to the many lines of investigation of an archival record as rich and varied as it is piquant and beguiling' - Thomas V. Cohen, York University, Toronto (emeritus).
