Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna

Blanshei, Sarah Rubin

doi:10.1353/jsh/16.1.121

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Evidence based on coroners' rolls in fourteenth-century Oxford and London result in estimates in the order of twenty-five to 110 homicides per 100,000 (Hanawalt 1976;Hammer 1978), while estimates for other areas of England typically vary between eight and twenty-five homicides per 100,000. In the south of Europe, data from judicial archives in Florence (Becker 1976;Cohn 1980), Venice (Ruggiero 1980), Bologna (Blanshei 1982), and Valencia (Garcia 1991) yield estimates between a low of ten and a high of 150 homicides per 100,000. And studies on an extensive sample of urban jurisdictions in what are now Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and northern France again result in estimates between a low of six and a high of about 100 homicides per 100,000 of the population.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although somewhat less thoroughly covered than the other areas, Italy is the fifth region with a series of studies that permit empirically based extrapolations. Studies of medieval and renaissance cities include Bologna (Blanshei 1981(Blanshei , 1982, Florence (Becker 1976), and Venice (Ruggiero 1978(Ruggiero , 1980. Romani (1980) has examined court records in late sixteenth-century Mantova, and a fascinating study by Blastenbrei (1995) analyzes wounding reports by medical professionals and judicial records in late sixteenth-century Rome.…”

Section: A Sources: History Of Homicide Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

Eisner¹

2003

Crime and Justice

396

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tResearch on the history of crime from the thirteenth century until the end of the twentieth has burgeoned and has greatly increased understanding of historical trends in crime and crime control. Serious interpersonal violence decreased remarkably in Europe between the mid-sixteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Different long-term trajectories in the decline of homicide can be distinguished between various European regions. Age and sex patterns in serious violent offending, however, have changed very little over several centuries. The long-term decline in homicide rates seems to go along with a disproportionate decline in elite homicide and a drop in male-to-male conflicts in public space. A range of theoretical explanations for the longterm decline have been offered, including the effects of the civilizing process, strengthening state powers, the Protestant Reformation, and modern individualism, but most theorizing has been post hoc.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Sources: History Of Homicide Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

Eisner¹

2003

Crime and Justice

396

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The secular pattern in Italy, however, diverges decisively from the trend found for northern Europe. There exist isolated estimates for a number of Italian cities, such as Bologna (Blanshei 1982), Florence (Becker 1976), Mantova (Romani 1980) and Venice (Ruggiero 1978), whereby Florence shows the absolute highest homicide rate with 150 homicides per population of 100,000 in the fourteenth century. Blastenbrei (1995) provides homicide rates of 30 to 80 per 100,000 for Rome in the sixteenth century.…”

Section: Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal Violence. The Long-term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective

Eisner¹

2001

British Journal of Criminology

277

159

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present paper examines secular trends of homicide rates by means of a systematic re-analysis of all available quantitative studies on pre-modern homicide. The results confirm, first, that homicide rates have declined in Europe over several centuries. Second, the empirical evidence shows, that unequivocal decline began in the early seventeenth century. Third, the data indicate that the secular decline begins with the pioneers of the modernization process, England and Holland, and slowly encompasses further regions. These findings corroborate much of the civilizing process framework proposed by Norbert Elias. Yet, the diffusion of self-control was sustained not only by compliance to the state monopoly of power but by a variety of disciplining institutional arrangements. This includes, for example, the early expansion of schools, particularly in Northern Europe, the rise of religious reform movements, and the organization of work in manufacturing. Second, while social disciplining certainly is the central feature of the early modern period, it also served to push forward the rise of the specifically modern individualism that Durkheim sees as the cause of the decline of individual-level violence. About 20 years ago, in an article that has become highly acclaimed among historians of crime, Ted Robert Gurr (1981: 295) examined empirical evidence on secular trends in lethal criminal violence. Gurr primarily reviewed a number of historical studies on homicide in medieval and early modern England, each based on detailed analyses of records for specific periods and specific jurisdictions. While not originally concerned with computing homicide rates, the studies did provide counts that could be used for estimating the rates. Gurr plotted the some 20 estimates for the period from about 1200 to 1800 on a graph, added the London homicide rates for the modern period, and fitted an elegant S-shaped trend curve to the data points. It starts at about 20 homicides per 100,000 population in the high and late Middle Ages and ends after an extended downswing at about one homicide per 100,000 in the twentieth century. Gurr interpreted this secular trend as 'a manifestation of cultural change in Western society, especially the growing sensitization to violence and the development of increased internal and external control on aggressive behavior' (Gurr 1981; also see Gurr 1989). Since then, an impressive amount of research in the history of crime and criminal justice has greatly enlarged knowledge about historical manifestations of lethal violence. It has shown that the history of violence has to be firmly situated in the context of social and cultural history and the long-term development of the core institutions of modern 618

show abstract

“…Bologna in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also saw a distinct politicization of justice with effects on the places, spaces, and rituals of execution. 56 The quasi-signorial Bentivoglio family gained power at a time when political assassinations were common, and only narrowly averted ouster in a 1488 conspiracy headed by their former allies, the Malvezzi. The five decades which followed witnessed an unprecedented number of assassinations and politically motivated executions, particularly after the ouster of the Bentivoglio in 1506, and it appears likely that even the conforteria of S. Maria della Morte ceased operation for a time, though we cannot tell when this may have happened.…”

Section: The Prisoner's Body As Political Objectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Body Politics: The Criminal Body between Public and Private

Terpstra¹

2015

Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The theatrical capital punishments of the early modern period blurred distinctions between private and public and between object and subject in their treatment of the prisoner’s body. Where did these rituals originate? Italian confraternities devised distinctive forms of offering spiritual comfort to the condemned through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that mediated new uses of the prisoner’s body in civic religious ritual, in literature, and in the justice system itself over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Almost all changes of the later period were incremental adaptations that deliberately projected a continuity of tradition, with place, space, and ritual carrying critical symbolic resonances. Considering how confraternal comforting rituals employed the prisoner’s body as a sacramental object, as an artistic and literary object, and as a political object can peel back the early modern layering of new religious, cultural, and political meanings in execution rituals. Using the two cities of Florence and Bologna as examples of the process, this essay demonstrates that the layerings did not develop in a clear sequence, but accumulated in a paradoxical interrelation governed by local political conditions.

show abstract

Crime and Law Enforcement in Medieval Bologna

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal Violence. The Long-term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective

Body Politics: The Criminal Body between Public and Private

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About