Investing the riches of the poor: Servant women and their last wills

American Historical Review

Volumn 109, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 805-826

  Benadusi, Giovanna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 17444376247     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/530557     Document Type: Review

References (149)

1. The works of Doris Sommer, "'Not Just a Personal Story': Women's Testimonios and the Plural Self," in Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography, Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, eds. (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), 107-30,
2. and Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Durham, N.C., 1998), have influenced my rereading of women's testaments.
3. References to non-elite women can be found in Gianna Lumia, "Morire a Siena: Devoluzione testamentaria, legami parenteli e vincoli affettivi in età moderna," Bullettino senese di storia patria 103 (1997): 235, 240;
4. Maria Luisa Lombardo and Mirella Morelli, "Donne e testamenti a Roma nel quattrocento," Archivi e cultura 25-26 (1992-93): 23-130;
5. Giovanni Silini, "Famiglia, società e patrimonio a Lovere negli atti dotali e testamentari (secoli XV-XVI)," Archivio storico bergamasco 21 (1991): 68-126.
6. See also the interesting essays in Dead Giveaways: Indigenous Testaments of Colonial Mesoamerica and the Andes, Susan Kellogg and Matthew Restall, eds. (Salt Lake City, 1998).
7. Not all servants defined themselves according to their profession. It is, however, possible to estimate a larger number of servants' wills by detecting certain characteristics that set these wills apart from others. Lack of a last name and origin in a rural vil lage or small provincial town are usually the first two prerequisites. Other bits of information include the actual place where the testament was drafted, the people who witnessed the drafting, and the presence of the homeowner among the witnesses, especially if addressed with a title. In this way, those last wills that are usually discarded because too short and, at first appearance, meaningless can be rescued from anonymity.
8. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber has noted that the work of domestic servants, nurses, and washers was, for the most part, underestimated since it was connected with the same domestic tasks "naturally" attributed to mothers and wives. She has also emphasized the complexity in understanding the degree to which working women identified themselves for their labor. See "Un salario o l'onore: Come valutare le donne fiorentine del XIV-XV secolo," Quaderni storici 1 (1992): 41-49, esp. 47.
9. For a discussion on feminist theories of the public and the private, see the essays in Joan Landes, ed., Feminism, the Public and the Private (Oxford, 1998),
10. in particular, Landes, "The Public and the Private Sphere: A Feminist Reconsideration," 135-63,
11. and Seyla Benhabib, "Model of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas," 65-99.
12. Archivio di Stato, Florence (hereafter, ASF), Notarile Moderno (hereafter, NM) 8986, Anton Filippo Ruberti, November 9, 1596, fols. 1v-2v.
13. On domestic servants, see Raffaella Sarti, Vita di Casa: Abitare, mangiare, vestire nell'Europa moderna (Bari, 1999);
14. Dennis Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft: Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1600 (Baltimore, 1996);
15. Angelina Arru, Il servo: Storia di una carriera nel settecento (Bologna, 1995);
16. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, "Women Servants in Florence during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 1986), 56-80.
17. Some of the most important works focusing on other European countries are Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore, 1984);
18. Sara Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (Princeton, N.J., 1983);
19. Timothy Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, Essex, 2000);
20. and Gayle Brunelle, "Contractual Kin: Servants and Their Mistresses in Sixteenth-Century Nantes," Journal of Early Modern History 2, no. 4 (1998): 374-94.
21. In fifteenth-century Florence, wages for a servant woman amounted to 8.5 florins a year. In reality, however, wages were often limited to an average of between 5 and 8 florins. Male servants were paid an average of 10 florins. See Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, "Female Celibacy and Service in Florence in the Fifteenth Century," in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985), 176.
22. In Venice, the capitulary of 1595 set the salaries of servant women at 6 ducats a year, while nurses were paid 7 ducats a year. As in Florence, also in Venice male servants fared better. See Dennis Romano, "The Regulation of Domestic Service in Renaissance Venice," Sixteenth Century Journal 4 (1991): 674.
23. See also Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., "Prosperity in the Countryside: The Price That Women Paid," in Cohn, Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, 1996), 162-63;
24. Klapisch-Zuber, "Blood Parents and Milk Parents: Wet Nursing in Florence, 1300-1530," in Women, Family, and Ritual, 132-64;
25. Daniela Lombardi and Flores Reggiani, "Da assistita a serva: Circuiti di reclutamento delle serve attraverso le istituzioni assistenziali (Firenze-Milano XVII-XVIII secoli)," in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., La donna nell'economia, secoli XIII-XVIII (Florence, 1990), 301-19.
26. ASF, NM 8986, Anton Filippo Ruberti, February 17, 1612, fols. 80r-v.
27. ASF, NM 8986, Anton Filippo Ruberti, April 13, 1615, fols. 108v-109v.
28. e siècles (Paris, 1979);
29. e siècles (Paris, 1978).
30. Italian and American scholars have also studied testaments to understand changing attitudes toward charity, piety, and patronage, in particular during times of plague. See Paolo Preto, Peste e società a Venezia, 1575 (Vicenza, 1978);
31. Alessandro Pastore, "Testamenti in tempo di peste: La pratica notarile a Bologna nel 1630," Società e storia 16 (1982): 263-97;
32. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., Death and Property in Siena, 1205-1800: Strategies for the Afterlife (Baltimore, 1988);
33. and Cohn, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore, 1992).
34. A different approach is that of Sandra Cavallo, who has linked legacies in wills and forms of charity to uncover institutional and secular understanding and organization of poverty in early modern Italy. Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541-1789 (Cambridge, 1995).
35. Joan Thirsk, "The European Debate on Customs of Inheritance, 1500-1700," in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800, Jack Goody, Thirsk, and E. P. Thompson, eds. (Cambridge, 1976), 177-91.
36. This phenomenon has been observed for sixteenth-century Tuscan elites by Richard Goldthwaite, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence: A Study of Four Families (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 171-72;
37. Francis W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Princeton, 1977), 136-40;
38. Judith Brown, In the Shadow of Florence: Provincial Society in Renaissance Pescia (Oxford, 1982), 40-41;
39. Cohn, Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death, 353 n. 135.
40. For the seventeenth century, see R. B. Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton, 1986);
41. and Giovanna Benadusi, A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State (Baltimore, 1996).
42. Scholars who study medieval and Renaissance Florence have argued forcefully that devolution of property was strongly in favor of the patrilineal lineage. See Isabelle Chabot, "Risorse e diritti patrimoniali," in Angela Groppi, ed., Il lavoro delle donne (Rome-Bari, 1996), 47-70;
43. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., "Last Wills: Family, Women, and the Black Death in Central Italy," in Women in the Streets, 39-56;
44. Thomas Kuchn, Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1991);
45. Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual.
46. For Siena, see Lumia, "Morire a Siena," 103-285.
47. Sandra Cavallo, "Che cosa trasmettono le donne? Proprietà domestica e confine del 'personale' tra Sei e Settecento," in Le ricchezze delle donne in età moderna: Diritti patrimoniali e poteri famigliari (XIV-XIX sec.), Giulia Calvi and Isabelle Chabot, eds. (Rome, 1998);
48. Renata Ago, Maura Palazzi, and Gianna Pomata, "Premessa," Quaderni storici 86 (1994): 293-98;
49. Ago, "Ruoli familiari e statuto giuridico," Quaderni storici 1 (1995): 111-33;
50. and "Oltre la dote: I beni femminili," in Groppi, Il lavoro delle donne, 164-82;
51. Lumia, "Morire a Siena," 231-72;
52. Julius Kirshner, "Material for a Gilded Cage: Non-Dotal Assets in Florence (1300-1500)," in The Family in Italy from Antiquity to the Present, Richard Saller and David Kertzer, eds. (New Haven, Conn., 1991), 184-207;
53. Maria Antonietta Visceglia, "Corpo e sepoltura nei testamenti della nobiltà napoletana (XVI-XVIII secolo)," Quaderni storici 2 (1982);
54. Stanley Chojnacki, "Patrician Women in Early Renaissance Venice," Studies in the Renaissance 21 (1974): 176-203;
55. Linda Guzzetti and Antje Zieman, "Women in the Fourteenth-Century Venetian Scuole" Renaissance Quarterly 4 (2002): 1151-95, in particular 1171-78.
56. In cities such as Florence, Arezzo, and Perugia, Cohn argues that the weight placed on the male line in property descent combined with a strong concern over the preservation of the testator's earthly memory and the consequent rejection of mendicant ideals of charity to impose harsher restrains on women's ability to control property. In these cities, women redacted very few wills. When they did, they appropriated and transmitted the normative hierarchies of their families' ethos. Women thus favored the male line and excluded themselves and other female kin from legitimate participation in the success of their families' lineage. For this reason, according to Cohn, in Florence, Arezzo, and Perugia, women drafted last wills with the single purpose of reconfirming husbands the universal heirs of their properties, both dotal and nondotal. Contrary to patterns in these cities, in Pisa, where fathers favored their daughters over distant kinsmen, women not only testated at a much higher rate but also exhibited more freedom in deciding their testamentarial legacies and heirs. The strength of the male line as reflected in the inheritance regulations and conventional cultural practices of some central Italian cities, then, influenced and determined women's freedom to express their feelings, desires, and choices through testamentary procedures. Cohn, Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death, 195-201;
57. "Last Wills," 53-54.
58. e siècle)," Clio, histoire, femmes et sociétés 7 (1998): 51-72.
59. Chabot also disputes that women enjoyed more freedom over their property on the basis that their possessions had limited material value. This argument, as some scholars present it, compares the degree of women's control to the lack of statutory limitations over their properties. See Preto, Peste e società, 98-108;
60. L. Deleidi, "Donne milanesi della prima metà del cinquecento: La memoria degli atti notarili," Società e storia 64 (1994): 279-314;
61. Giuliana Vitale, "Affettività e patrimonio attraverso i testamenti femminili medievali," in Donne tra memoria e storia, Laura Capobianco, ed. (Naples, 1993), 107-31.
62. While Kirshner sees the space for women's maneuverability within the context of Roman law and Kuehn considers the practice of law, Chojnacki focuses on the day-to-day relationships of wives and husbands within marriage. The three scholars question the idea of "patrilineal imperatives" that inevitably subordinated women. Florentine statutes did not clearly and absolutely take away women's rights concerning inheritance, especially when there was no close male kin. Julius Kirshner, "'Maritus Lucretur Dotem Uxoris Sue Premortue' in Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Centuries Florence," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 77 (1991): 111-55;
63. and "Material for a Gilded Cage," 184-207;
64. Thomas Kuehn, "Some Ambiguities of Female Inheritance Ideology in the Renaissance," in Law, Family and Women, 238-57;
65. Stanley Chojnacki, in his numerous studies on Venetian women now collected in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore, 2000).
66. See also Giulia Calvi, "Diritti e legami: Madri, figli, stato in Toscana (XVI-XVIII secolo)," Quaderni storici 86 (1994): 487-510.
67. In "Introduction: Family and State, Women and Men," in Women and Men, 5, Chojnacki asserts that Venetian patrician women "possessed the resources and determination to act on their own" in part because the rise in the value of dowries during the sixteenth century had given women greater economic and social leverage, but also because both women and men were instrumental in preserving and consolidating family wealth.
68. Cohn, "Last Wills," 39-56.
69. Martha Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550 (Chicago, 1998), 152-67;
70. Renata Ago, "Donne, doni e public relations tra le famiglie dell'aristocrazia romana del XVII secolo," in Cavaciocchi, La donna nell'economia, 175-94;
71. and Ago, "Ruoli familiari e statuti giuridici," Quaderni storici 88 (1995): 111-33.
72. See also Thomas Kuehn, "Understanding Gender Inequalities in Renaissance Florence: Personhood and Gifts of Maternal Inheritance by Women," Journal of Women's History 8 (1996): 65-72.
73. Howell, Marriage Exchange, 153.
74. Howell, Marriage Exchange, 228.
75. For similar bequests, see Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 204.
76. In 1660, Antonia Torrigiani from Pescia stipulated that the monies she left her daughters should augment rather than constitute the dowries already given by their fathers; ASF, NM 12524, Giuliano Ceci, fols. 22v-24v. See Giovanna Benadusi, "Equilibri di potere nelle famiglie toscane tra sei e settecento," in Calvi and Chabot, Le ricchezze delle donne, 78-92.
77. Howell's study of fifteenth-century Douai, in the Low Countries, highlights the difference between men and women's selection of beneficiaries. As was the case in seventeenth-century Siena, women chose other women more often than men did. Marriage Exchange, 162-67;
78. and Samuel K. Cohn, "Women and the Counter-Reformation in Siena: Authority and Property in the Family," in Women in the Streets, 57-75.
79. On the aspiration of women to incorporate their legacy into that of their husbands, see in particular Giulia Calvi, "Maddalena Nerli and Cosimo Tornabuoni: A Couple's Narrative of Family History in Early Modern Florence," Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992): 312-39;
80. and also Calvi, Il contratto morale: Madri e figli nella Toscana moderna (Bari, 1994);
81. Benadusi, "Equilibri di potere nelle famiglie toscane tra sei e settecento," 78-92;
82. Tommaso Astarita, The Continuity of Feudal Power: The Caracciolo di Brienza in Spanish Naples (Cambridge, 1992), 175-201.
83. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 204;
84. see also Christine Churches, "Women and Property in Early Modern England: A Case Study," Social History 23 (1998): 165-80.
85. This trend persisted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; see Angelina Arru, "Uomini e donne nel mercato del lavoro servile," in Groppi, Il lavoro delle donne, 245-68.
86. Klapisch-Zuber, "Women Servants in Florence during the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," 56-80;
87. Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 137-50;
88. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 193, 210.
89. Brunelle has recently supported this view with evidence from the disputes that mistresses and servants brought before the municipal council of Nantes during the 1570s; "Contractual Kin," 389.
90. Romano has found several cases in which Venetian masters prosecuted servants but only nine cases in which servants brought charges against their masters. While in most cases, masters brought their servants to court on charges involving the breaking of contracts, servants charged their masters with beating. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 64-73, 221-22.
91. See also Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies, 66.
92. Both Brunelle and Romano have argued that the relationship between servants and masters was often the product of ambiguous dynamics embracing at the same time loyalty and disloyalty, obedience and disobedience. Brunelle, "Contractual Kin";
93. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft.
94. ASF, NM 16509, Bastiano Balsimini, February 6, 1662, fols. 33r-35r, September 15, 1662, 37r-v.
95. According to Cohn, in Siena during the Counter-Reformation, there was a dramatic increase in women's last wills and in the amount of property they received from their husbands. He attributes this increase to the Tridentine reforms: "The culture of the Counter-Reformation changed the ways in which both men and women imagined the afterlife and lived in the present ... In the charged atmosphere of seventeenth century spiritual fear, obsession and expectations, men ... relied much more heavily than during the sixteenth century on the terrestrial intercession of their wives to say prayers and masses ... [T]he wife had become ... the spiritual smiths of the household." Cohn, "Women and the Counter-Reformation in Siena," 73-74.
96. See also Cohn, Death and Property in Siena.
97. On this issue, Cavallo has suggested a more nuanced reading by placing forms of charity within the specific circumstances which produced them; Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy.
98. ASF, NM 4435, Angelo Lauri, fol. 13r.
99. ASF, NM 10112, Antonio Rosgialli, April 29, 1650, fols. 17r-18v.
100. Romano, "Regulation of Domestic Service," 674.
101. ASF, NM 4435, Angelo Lauri, 1587, fol. 32v.
102. ASF, NM 8986, Anton Filippo Ruberti, September 13, 1602, fols. 25r-29r.
103. On the gift as social value, see Marcel Mauss, The Gift (London, 1990).
104. Howell has discussed the interconnectedness between the meanings of wealth once it is exchanged and the impact of exchanged wealth in redefining social relations; Marriage Exchange, 137-38.
105. See also Ago, "Donne, doni e public relations," 175-94;
106. Kuehn, "Understanding Gender Inequalities in Renaissance Florence," 58-80.
107. Romano mentions the practice of drafting testaments by servants but focuses mainly on the instructions they left to their masters about funeral expenses. He also writes about cases of servants who left gifts to their masters, which he interprets as tokens of affection and gratitude. Housecraft and Statecraft, 182-87, 204.
108. Women of the Venetian patriciate undoubtedly displayed the same strong sense of entitlement over their possessions, as shown by Chojnacki in Women and Men in Renaissance Venice; for Pisa, Cohn has calculated that women redacted wills as often as men, as opposed to a much smaller ratio in both Florence and Arezzo;
109. "Last Wills," 51-55.
110. My analysis is based on a sample of 140 last wills of elite women of Arezzo. Also, in sixteenth-century Siena, women did not place any limitations on their legacies. See Lumia, "Morire a Siena," 108.
111. To date, I have looked at 130 last wills by elite women from Sansepolcro. See Benadusi, "Equilibri di potere nelle famiglie toscane tra sei e settecento," 78-92.
112. Cohn argues that the Counter-Reformation ideals of new Catholic devotion offered Sienese women increased possibilities to control their possessions by channeling them into charitable legacies. At this time, Sienese women began drafting wills at an unprecedented rate. "Women and the Counter-Reformation in Siena," 57-75.
113. According to Cohn, this trend was stronger in Arezzo, Florence, and Perugia than in Pisa, Siena, and Assisi. "Last Wills."
114. Romano has argued that in Venice, toward the end of the sixteenth century, the legislation regulating domestic service indicated a change in masters' perception of servants: "The elite came to perceive servants as arrogant, disobedient, even as evil. They spoke of the 'tyranny' of servants within households." Romano attributes this change to a growing fear among elites of lower classes as well as to changes in elites' self-perception. In particular, servants became a symbol of masters' status and hence of "their own honor and prestige." "Ironically"-Romano concludes-"it was masters who ... placed themselves at their servants' mercy, for the honor servants could bestow, they could also jeopardize through the displays of disobedience." "Regulation of Domestic Service," 676-77. A similar trend began in Florence toward the end of the fifteenth century, when the status of servant women deteriorated as male servants became more popular.
115. See Klapisch-Zuber, "Female Celibacy and Service in Florence," 176-77.
116. Howell, Marriage Exchange, 132-38.
117. In Arezzo, 1 scudo was worth 4 lire and 5 soldi.
118. At this point, I have only found the testament that Antonio Pacinelli drafted on his deathbed. At this time, Vittoria Magi, his wife, was still alive, and so were their three daughters and two sons, all minors. ASF, NM 9407, Giovanmaria Vestitelli, September 24, 1610, fols. 7v-9v.
119. ASF, NM 16509, Bastiano Balsimini, June 14, 1677, fols. 100v-101v.
120. ASF, NM 6806, Giovan Battista Borghetti, May 29, 1589, fols. 13r-14r.
121. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 182-83.
122. Archivio di Stato, Arezzo, Liber Statutorum Aretii (Firenze, 1580)
123. "De Dotis Promissione, ac Restitutione," 137-39.
124. Others have previously suggested that masters and mistresses bequeathed wages for their servants, but they have not elaborated on the implications of such a practice for structuring their relationships. See Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Peasant Women's Contribution to the Home Economy in Late Medieval England," in Women and Work, 6;
125. Lumia mentions the case of a servant woman who, in her last will, indicated that her possessions were the fruit of her labor; "Morire a Siena," 235.
126. According to Romano, servants loaned money to masters when these were short of cash. In other cases, however, servants asked masters to keep their salaries in a safe place. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 146-47.
127. See also Klapisch-Zuber, "Women Servants in Florence," 71-72.
128. For France, Brunelle reconfirmed the lack of written contracts for domestic servants already noticed by studies on French domestic service; "Contractual Kin," 377.
129. ASF, NM 10810, Camillo Marsuppini, April 6, 1638, fols. 97r-v.
130. ASF, NM 16509, Bastiano Balsimini, February 6, 1662, fol. 33v.
131. ASF, NM 6806, Giovan Battista Borghetti, April 28, 1594, fols. 52r-56r.
132. ASF, NM 8986, Anton Filippo Ruberti, November 24, 1614, fols. 98r-99r; NM 4437, Angelo Lauri, March 20, 1613, fols. 9r-10r.
133. ASF, NM 10110, Antonio Rosgiatli, November 20, 1614, fols. 38r-41v.
134. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 135-38;
135. Brunelle, "Contractual Kin."
136. Klapisch-Zuber, "Female Celibacy and Service in Florence," 174.
137. Both Romano and Brunelle argue that mistresses gained control over their servants by withholding the dowries they owed them: Brunelle, "Contractual Kin," 381;
138. Romano, Housecraft and Statecraft, 136-38.
139. Thomas Kuehn, "Law, Death, and Heirs in the Renaissance: Repudiation of Inheritance in Florence," Renaissance Quarterly 3 (1992): 484-516.
140. Angelina Arru has discussed the case of a nineteenth-century Roman servant who took her master's heirs to court on charges that they had not fulfilled her master's legacy to her; "Uomini e donne nel mercato del lavoro servile," 247-51.
141. Traditionally, research has merged in a single interpretation the pious bequests by testators from upper and lower classes. Since focus has been placed on reading testaments during time of plague and other natural catastrophes, these legacies have been interpreted as part of changes in the religious and pious behavior of testators. Pastore, "Testamenti in tempo di peste," 291-95.
142. It has been argued that dishonor can only occur between social equals. This view of honor is closely linked to the individual but often also to the family and hence related to issues concerning sexuality, chivalry, and property. See John G. Péristiany, ed., Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago, 1966);
143. David D. Gilmore, ed., Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean (Washington, D.C., 1987);
144. Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago, 1994);
145. Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, Calif., 1999);
146. Donald Weinstein, The Captain's Concubine: Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany (Baltimore, 2000).
147. Ariela J. Gross has suggested a different understanding of honor linked to work and labor relationships between masters and servants. In her view, dishonor is deeply linked to social inequality. See Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (Princeton, N.J., 2000).
148. Brunelle emphatically argues that in sixteenth-century Nantes servants "seem to have been inclined to view themselves as autonomous wage earners"; "Contractual Kin," 388.
149. We do not know the profession of Antonio Pacinelli, but we know that his father, Sir Cosimo Pacinelli, was a notary; ASF, NM 6806, Giovan Battista Borghetti, May 29, 1589, fol. 13r.