A Renaissance of Violence: Homicide in Early Modern Italy

Based on a close examination of more than 700 homicide trials, A Renaissance of Violence exposes the deep social instability at the core of the early modern states of North Italy. Following a series of crises in the early seventeenth century, interpersonal violence in the region grew to frightening levels, despite the efforts of courts and governments to reduce social conflict. In this detailed study of violence in early modern Europe, Colin Rose shows how major crises, such as the plague of 1630, reduced the strength of social bonds among both elite and ordinary Italians. As a result, incidents of homicidal violence exploded - in small rural communities, in the crowded urban center and within tightly-knit families. Combining statistical analysis and close reading of homicide patterns, Rose demonstrates how the social contexts of violence, as much as the growth of state power, can contribute to explaining how and why interpersonal violence grew so rapidly in North Italy in the seventeenth century.

Author: Colin Rose
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/17/2019
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.38h x 7.21w x 0.68d
ISBN: 9781108498067

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2020

About the Author
Rose, Colin: - Colin Rose is Assistant Professor of European and Digital History at Brock University, Ontario. He has held fellowships with the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Centre for Criminology and Criminological Studies at the University of Toronto, and the Academy for the Advanced Study of the Renaissance. He is co-editor of Mapping Space, Sense and Movement in Florence: Historical GIS and the Early Modern City (2016) with Nicholas Terpstra, and co-director of the innovative DECIMA web-GIS of Renaissance Florence.