Managing violence in a precarious Renaissance city

^{Bildquelle: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Das Martyrium des hl. Matthäus, ca. 1599/1600.}

Private violence – physical, verbal, and metaphoric -- was deeply woven into the social culture Renaissance Rome. Although authorities tried to restrain and channel it, it sat well with the prevailing honour ethic and served what anthropology calls “self-help” – the informal disciplining of human relations by both men and women. Therefore, conflict-resolution via mediation and private arbitration, widespread skills, invited collaboration between social bodies and the public authorities, who underwrote the peace pacts and, whenever they were broken, scooped up the fines.

Eingeladen sind Gäste wie auch Angehörige der Universität der Bundeswehr.

Elizabeth S. Cohen is professor emerita at York University, Toronto. Her research interests are gender history, womens' history as well as social and cultural history.

Thomas V. Cohen, professor emeritus at York University, works on Renaissance Italy, Rome especially, and that city’s rural hinterland. His current main project is a book on a rebellious village high in mountains east of Rome.