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  • Trasgressioni: Seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (XIV-VIII secolo)
  • James A. Brundage
Trasgressioni: Seduzione, concubinato, adulterio, bigamia (XIV-XVIII secolo). Edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi and Diego Quagliono. [Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, Quaderni, Vol. 64: I processi matrimoniali degli archivi ecclesiastici italiani, Vol. III.] (Bologna: Il Mulino. 2005. Pp. 686. €40.00.)

The sixteen contributions in this book originated as papers presented at conferences held between 1998 and 2001 under the auspices of the German Historical Institute in Trent. This is the third volume in a series—a fourth, which will concentrate on marriage tribunals, is reportedly in preparation—that draws much of its historical evidence from the records of late medieval and early modern marriage cases preserved in Italian historical archives. That in itself would make this and the other volumes of the series an interesting and important contribution to the history of Christian marriage and sexual behavior. Records of Italian ecclesiastical courts have hitherto been very little studied so that the material that the authors of the papers in these books used has much new to tell us about the ways in which the normative rules in law books and the doctrinal theories of academic lawyers interacted with the behavior of real people and the practices of courts when they handled some of the most private yet vital areas of personal life in the remote past.

Trasgressioni is divided into two sections. The first part comprises five essays, most of which focus on the development of the normative rules that were supposed to govern sexual behavior between the twelfth century and the nineteenth. Anna Esposito opens the volume with a study of the statutes of the papal states concerning adultery, concubinage, and bigamy between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Giuliano Marchetto follows this with an essay on the rules concerning bigamy in the ius commune. Lucia Ferranti contributes an examination of the law's treatment of consent to concubinage; Andrea Marchisello provides an article on the treatment of adultery by Prospero Farinacci, while Mario Bellabarba's paper, which closes the section, discusses [End Page 99] records of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century adultery cases from the diocesan archives of Trent, a topic that seems oddly out of place among the rest of the studies in this section.

The eleven papers in part two of the book focus on the procedures and practices of Italian authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, confronted with alleged sexual misconduct. Ermanno Orlando's engaging study of mock marriage cases in Padua and Venice is followed by Emlyn Eisenach's analysis of concubinage cases among elite families at Verona from the sixteenth century. Laura Turchi provides a detailed study of the testimony in a dramatic adultery case at Correggio, while Daniela Lombardi compares the treatment of seduction in church courts with that in civil courts, and Sara Luperini examines the differing ways in which ecclesiastical and civil authorities handled concubinage in Pisa and its hinterland. Three further papers in this section concern bigamy cases adjudicated respectively at Naples (Pierroberto Scaramella), the Holy Office (Kim Siebenhüner), and among the Jews of Livorno (Cristina Galasso). The three remaining papers deal respectively with parochial and civil registration of marriages (Silvana Seidel Menchi) and two eighteenth-century prosecutions for seduction at Florence (Alessandra Contini and Georgia Arrivo).

James A. Brundage
University of Kansas (Emeritus)
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