Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500-1750 (review)

In these last thirty years studies on the Papal State during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries have brought to light results with an intensity never experienced before. The institutions and social life that characterized the multiform realities of the Papal State have been the object of much research, especially after the publication of Paolo Prodi's The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls (Bologna, 1982; trans. New York, 1987), which opened the way to this fertile historiographical period.

The existence of Italian regional states in a European context characterized by absolute and centralized monarchies has been strictly connected with the role of the papacy in maintaining balance among the Italian states. The main area of interests for scholars in these last three decades has been the relationships and conflicts among the institutions of the Papal State, an absolute nonhereditary monarchy in which the demands of a state in construction had somehow to go hand in hand with the supra-national nature of religion.

Much attention has been given to the role of the institutions of justice and public order. The works of Irene Fosi on this topic have been substantial and based on an unrivaled range of sources. In La società violenta (Rome, 1985), the author concentrated on the role of the nobility in the origins of banditry, also interpreted as a form of hostile action against the control of the territory by the state. In All'ombra dei Barberini. Fedeltà e servizio nella Roma barocca (1997) she examined the separation of the role of the cardinal-nephew—a position intrinsically linked to the personal nature of power—from that of secretary of state, a position in the framework of an impersonal administration. Moreover, the author has written various essays and edited collections on the papal judicial system.

With this work, the author presents scholars with a general picture of justice at the time of the papacy, which now can be appreciated by American scholars. She also includes additional material on Niccolò Orsini, third count of Nola and Pitigliano (pp. 92-99);conclusions; and an extensive bibliography.

The book presents for the first time an overview of the papal justice system in which the many conflicts are examined vis-à-vis their effects on the organization as well as on the control of the territory and personal conscience. Furthermore, the effects of the multiplicity and overlapping of the innumerable courts throughout the territory—particularly in Rome—are examined, confirming conclusions from numerous studies about this period: The competition among different courts gave justice a functional elasticity that fit the dominant, hegemonic justice of the state to the interests of the elite.

Written in a clear style, which is faithfully maintained in this translation, the book analyzes the principal aspects of reforms, in particular that of 1612. What emerges is that the control on the judiciary was essential to separate personal interests from the administration of justice, corrupt in its conduct and inclined to find a settlement between parties—useful to the tribunals and as an instrument of discipline. This leads the author to claim that it is not possible to speak of "administration,"a concept that evokes coherence and rationality, but rather a justice strongly oriented to become "an instrument of social control and a device for political uniformity" (p. 16). The objective of that justice was extremely difficult to accomplish—controlling the "restless nobles" had to coexist with respecting their privileges; the overcoming of private justice and vendetta led to courts full of informers, law enforcement officials, ex officio procedures, and a vast array of retributive laws and regulations that were used to prosecute nobles only when they represented a threat to the sovereign. Thus, this machinery most often involved only the common people and worked on a double track—as a cruel deterrent and a profitable extrajudiciary activity. There...