Village Justice: Community, Family, and Popular Culture in Early Modern Italy by Tommaso Astarita (review)

book reviews341 reformer's Tory background, the impact of the Georgia mission, his differences with Whitefield, his relations with the Moravians. Some readers wUl no doubt find his assessments of Dutch and German Pietists to be informative; others may find them provocative—as in how Pietists derived their inspiration almost exclusively from their reading such classics as Thomas à Kempis and other "preReformation spiritual writings" (p. 129). German and Scandinavian readers may find his contentions about the widespread influence of Puritan tracts (already considered dated in England by the late seventeenth century) on their eighteenth-century ancestors to be somewhat exaggerated. (A Puritan influence , addsWard,greatly facilitated by the Hanoverian monarchy.) Elsewhere the author offers succinct analyses of developments within the CathoUc Church, being especiaUy good at describing the Habsburgs and their ecclesiastical poUcies by placing in proper economic context the concerns as weU as the lasting achievements (mainly in education and parish reorganization) of both Maria Theresa andJoseph II. Those attracted to French history wiU find his treatment of the GalUcan Church too brief. But the sheer volume of topics from Russian Orthodoxy under Peter and his successors to the labyrinthine history of southeastern Europe under Turkish rule and the complexities of reUgious affairs in Poland demands limits to the perplexing areas Ward feels compeUed to consider . One of his goals here is to whet appetites, not to satisfy them, and the author , ever so careful when formulating his own generalizations, repeatedly recommends the need for caution. Four decades have passed since G. R. Cragg's highly readable The Church and the Age ofReason, 1648-1789 (the "Penguin History of the Church," vol. 4) first appeared. Professor Ward's contribution may serve to remind students how many of the generalizations freely imparted by Cragg and others in earUer years can no longer be reiterated with quite the same confidence. There remains much that is "substantially unknown territory" in the reUgious history of the Ancien Régime. David C. Miller Kansas City, Missouri Village Justice: Community, Family, and Popular Culture in Early Modern Italy. By Tommaso Astarita. [The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, 117th Series, No. 3] (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999- Pp. xxv, 305. $45.00.) In 1710, in the Calabrian vUlage of Pentidattilo, a woman was charged with poisoning her husband, with the help of two accomplices. It is the resulting trial that provides the starting point for Astarita's fascinating and, at times, dramatic study of baronial justice in the kingdom of Naples. The book expertly mixes microhistory (the case itself) and judicial study in the tradition of other ItaHan historians like Guido Ruggiero, Edward Muir,John Bracken, and Michael 342BOOK REVIEWS Rocke. It weaves together a detaUed description of the workings of feudal justice ,vUlage IUe in aU its different facets Oand ownership, economy,governance), and local culture. Each of these three features merits elaboration. First of aU, feudal justice, so widespread throughout the states of early modern Italy, has been surprisingly understudied, and it is much to Astarita's credit that he has helped to remedy this. His expertise in one particular baronial family, the Caracciolo di Brienza, has served him weU; but he has also read a number of legal treatises in order to compare the theory and practice of feudal justice in the kingdom, during a time of significant change. Secondly, he focuses on the kind of small town/viUage that was so prevalent in the kingdom, but is not so well known to scholars as the "agrotown." His significant finding is that the former type of community was not so isolated, poor, and immobUe as the southern ItaUan stereotype would suggest. Moreover, there was a kind of equality within the vUlage: there were no obstacles to vertical social contacts between villagers of different status , and there was some movement between social levels from one generation to the next. The poor had a recognized and secure place; the only really marginal vUlagers were those without connections, such as outsiders. Astarita makes fruitful and judicious use of notarial records to help paint this portrait, a source from which social and cultural historians aU too often shy away (the records...