Presentation of the book “Civil blood: Vendetta violence and the civic elites in early modern Italy”

In sixteenth-century Italy, vendetta—as inimical, familial, and sustained retaliatory violence—constituted not a breakdown of order but a central political practice of the civic elites that shaped the composite state. This book presentation for “Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy” (Cornell University Press 2025) examines how vendettas fundamentally influenced the legal and political evolution of Italian city-states. This targeted violence, meticulously orchestrated and executed by noble families, transcended mere conflict. It functioned as a potent, albeit unofficial, mechanism for the attainment of justice, the defense of civic honor, and the conduct of high-stakes political negotiation within and between urban centers. These persistent, often inter-generational, cycles of violence actively cultivated a distinctive political culture, characterized by a fundamental and escalating tension with the nascent centralizing authorities. Examining chronicles, diplomatic correspondence, statutory law, gride, and legal cases, the presentation reveals a paradox: the very violence that threatened public peace simultaneously served as a potent political instrument for elites to assert power and influence the consolidation of centralized sovereignty. The presentation will explore how vendetta was not a vestige of a primitive past but an active force that profoundly shaped the legal and political development of the Italian city-states.

The author talks with Umberto Cecchinato (University of Trento / FBK-ISIG).

AMANDA MADDEN | George Mason University / Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM)

Scientific coordination:
Massimo Rospocher (FBK-ISIG)
Sandra Toffolo (FBK-ISIG)

Cycle of seminars: “Tavola ovale di storia moderna”

The initiative is valid for the purposes of the right/duty to fulfill the obligation of teachers to keep up to date as provided for in the current contractual agreements of the school sector.

The talk will be held in English.
The presentation will be in-person in the FBK Aula Riunione ISIG while seats last and online.
Registration by December 3, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. is required in order to arrange the connection.

Speakers

• Amanda Madden - Guest Speaker

  George Mason University / Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM)

  Amanda Madden is Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia and faculty affiliate at RRCHNM. Her research focuses on early modern Italian history, with an emphasis on social history and the history of crime and violence utilizing digital methodologies, particularly historical GIS and digital spatial history. Current projects include "Modeling and Mapping Violence in Early Modern Italy, 1500-1700", and "The La Sfera Project." In the Fall Semester of 2024, she was a visiting scholar at the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, where she worked on the Delmas Foundation-funded project, "Mapping Urban Violence in Venice and the Terraferma, 1500-1700." This work has informed her current book project: a spatial history of gender and crime in early modern Italy that examines the iterative changes in crime and policing, space, and gender that reconfigured the early modern state.

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