Vite al bando: Storie di Cingari nella terraferma veneta alla fine del Cinquecento [Banned lives: Stories of Cingari (Gypsies) in Venetian territory at the end of sixteenth century] (review)

Fassanelli's work illustrates the construction of the Gypsy (Cingaro) as criminals in the Venetian Republic (Italy) of the sixteenth century, providing a sharp insight into the historical, epistemological and political implications surrounding the emergence of this image. The book can be placed in a promising field of studies that inquires into the Cingaro figure in the Italian peninsula's ancien régime, a field which has recently generated high-profile works (Piasere 2006, Novi Chavarria 2007, Aresu 2008, Aresu and Piasere 2008).

Twice in a short time-span, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the Venetian state banned the Cingari from all its territories. Specifically, the 1558 declaration concerning Cingari (deliberazione in materia di Cingari), which condemned those contravening the ban to ten years of oars on the triremes, also granted rewards to their captors and, above all, it granted impunity for their killing.

Fassanelli's work is structured around the analysis of two trials against Cingari who were found wandering within Venetian territory. The first trial is of a band (compagnia) of Cingari following the river Adige south of Verona in 1587; the second trial is of a Cingari family that was found settling within the walls of Montagnana, a town near Padua. The first trial clearly highlights what Fassanelli describes as the dimension of the banned life which the Cingari are subjected to; the second trial raises questions about the definitions of the 'Gypsyness' of the defendants.

In the first trial, Zuane, the chief of the Cingari band, responds to the judge's pressing questions over his 'inadmissible presence' within the Venetian territories by describing the route he followed: 'siamo venuti da Salò, et andavimo verso Rovigo; et noi altri non stiamo in questi paesi, noi non vi stiamo ma transitiamo' ['we came from Saló, and proceeded towards Rovigo; and we did not stay in these towns, we did not stay but we rather passed through them']. While from the legislative point of view the ban does not make any difference between stay and transit, Zuane attempts to highlight the discrepancy between these two conditions. In the second trial, the accused responds to Montagnana's Magistrate by offering a different and unexpected viewpoint over his 'Gypsyness'. The accused family claim to be Cingari but to be living according to Christian values and state that having left the band of other Cingari, they want to settle down in Montagnana. In both cases the words of the accused, filtered by the judiciary apparatus, offer an opportunity to examine crucial questions concerning the relationship between the Cingari and the majority society. Both trials ended up confirming that 'banned life' is the only possible existence for the Cingari, with whom the State established what Agamben (1995) considers as a 'state of exception', that is, a paradoxical condition in which the existence of the Cingari is admitted only at the moment in which their presence is proclaimed inadmissible.

The development of the two trials is interpreted in the light of the ongoing relationships between the judiciary procedures undertaken by the system of justice in the Republic of Venice on the one hand and the words of the accused on the other. The interplay between the two highlights the discrepancies and the gaps between these worlds. Starting with the analysis of sixteenth-century legislation promulgated by the Venetian Senate, Fassanelli argues that impunity granted to the killers of Cingari emphasises the criminal character that is attributed as intrinsic to the Cingari (p. 189).

The reconstruction of the status of the Cingari in the Republic of Venice draws on literary productions - especially theatre plays and scholarly studies with their various conjectures about the origins and characteristics of the Gypsies - and, finally, on...