Death of a renaissance record-keeper: The murder of Tomasso da Tortona in Ferrara, 1385

Archivaria

Volumn 44, Issue , 1997, Pages 1-43

  Brown, Richard ^a  

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References (90)

1. Richard Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara 145e1505: A Study in the Socio-Political Implications of Renaissance Spectacle (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1982). p. 41, which refers to a riot over the raising of the comunal income-tax and the murder of the Secretarius Tomasso da Tortona, head of the state chancellery and keeper of the tax records.
2. The standard texts on the history of the Este family and its long association with the City of Ferrara are by Antonio Frizzi, Memorieper la Storia di Ferrara, 5 vols. (Ferrara, 1847-1854).
3. Frizzi, Memorie per la Scoria di Ferrara, 111, pp. 368-372.
4. "Vivat Dominus Marchio et moriatur Dominus Thomasinus proditur, " Anon., Chronicon Estense, in L.A. Muratori, ed., Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab anno Aerae 1000 ad 1500 (Milan, 1739). Vol. 15, Column 509. See also Frizzi, Memorieper la Storia di Ferrara, 111, pp. 371-72.
5. It was not until the reign of Niccolb I11 d'Este (1393-1441) that the secretaries and chancellors ceased to manage both the camera1 records of the signorial household and the documents of the chancellery. The most complete history of the origins of the cancelleria and Ferrarese recordkeeping in general is found in Laurent, The Este and Their Vassals: A Study in Signorial Politics, esp. pp. 57-97. See also Paola di Pietro, "La cancelleria degli Estensi nel period0 ferrarese 1264-1598, " Atti e Memorie delle Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Antiche Provincie Modenesi 10 (1975). pp. 91-99
6. Filippo Valenti, "Note Storiche sulla Cancelleria degli Estensi a Ferrara dalle Origine alla Me& del secolo xvi, " Bulletino dell'Archivio Paleograjico Italiano 2-3 (1956-1957). pp. 35745.
7. Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, p. 41.
8. Chronicon Estense, Column 509.
9. James O'Toole, "The Symbolic Significance of Archives, " American Archivist 56 (1993), pp. 234-55, especially pp. 253-55.
10. See, for example, Luciana Duranti, "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory, " American Archivist 57 (Spring 1994). pp. 3284.
11. Armando Petrucci, Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture, Charles M. Radding, ed. and trans. (New Haven, 1995), especially "The Illusion of Authentic History: Documentary Evidence, " pp. 236-50.
12. Cesare Paoli, P r o g r a m scolastico dipaleograjica latina e di diplomatica 3 (Florence, 1899). p. 18.
13. A useful introduction to the social, economic, and political history of Northern Italy during this period, marked both by its critical examination of the sources and its analytic perspectives, is by Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York, 1979). which also contains comprehensive bibliographic notes on what is inevitably an enormous literature at pp. 345-50, including most of the works available in Italian, English, and German. In addition to Martines, see also J.K. Hyde, Societyand Politics in Medieval Italy: The Evolution of Civic Life, 1000-1350 (New York, 1973) and Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics (London, 1969).
14. Martines, Power and Imagination, p. 22.
15. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
16. For what transpired in Ferrara, beginning with the comparatively early election of Obizzo I1 d'Este assignore in 1264, see Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, pp. 37-130, and Laurent, The Este and Their Vassals, especially pp. 9Ck129. Notably, one of Prince Obizzo's first acts, later confirmed in the revised codification of Ferrarese statute law in 1287 (William Montorsi, ed., Statuta Ferrariae Anno 1287 VI, 60, p. 390) was to outlaw the merchant trade guilds, and he also banished dozens of urban aristocratic families from the city, replacing them with his own noble supporters. Despite Obizzo's tactics, it was not until the 1340s that the Estensi finally stabilized their power with the successful realization of "refeudalization" and the resolution of internal family squabbles.
17. The master-work of Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957), remains the standard text on this general subject, with numerous passages devoted to the writing and thinking of the two great Italian jurists of the period, Baldus de Ubaldus (1327-1400) and Bartolus de Sassoferato (13161357). but see also the equally impressive works by Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages (London, 1965) and Quentin Skinner, The Foundation of Modem Political Thought, 2 vols., Volume One: The Renaissance (Cambridge, 1978).
18. For an explanation of the mitade, see Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, pp. 175 and 194, and Sitta, "Saggio sulle istituzioni finanziarie del ducato Estense, " pp. 182-84. By 1496, in an effort to further increase signorial revenue, Ercole finally ordered all of the proceeds of condemnations to be diverted directly to his camera1 treasury, subject to a public mitade amounting to a one-third share as a reward to anyone informing on a citizen leading to a successful prosecution, which abrogated the former comunal share, ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, reg. 36, C. 127r-129r: In favorem camere per condemnationibus applicare Camere ducale. He also legislated a host of new civil offences, principally "moral" crimes such as uttering oaths, "terrible" blasphemy, "illegal" prostitution, etc., all with exhorbitant fines attached. Naturally enough, citations increased dramatically and revenues soared. Meanwhile, as all of the contemporary chroniclers indicate (Caleffini, Zambotti, Zerbinati, Antigini, Mosti, Legnago, et al), the citizens of Ferrara "lived in fear, " wondering if their neighbours were spying on them or were secretly paid informers in the pay of the camera.
19. These kinds of arrangements were typical of the settling of outstanding accounts recorded in the Compusteria, the Registri di mandati of the fattore generale of the camera, and the Registri di cancelleria of the Comune, wherein magistrates, revenue collectors, and other signorial agents commonly accepted lesser sums and payments in goods and services in exchange for pardons andlor the cancellation of civil and criminal proceedings. It is also notable that the Estensi frequently paid their own householders and contractors in comestibles rather than in hard currency, which they conspicuously hoarded for themselves. Even the great architect Biaggio Rossetti, who was responsible for designing and building the famous Addizione Herculea (new town) of Ferrara in the 1490s, had to be content with a salary paid in "wood" for two years, ostensibly because he wished to build a home for his family, but actually because the camera was directed by the signore not to pay any household stipendiari in cash. ASMo, ASE Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1497, reg. 37, c. 42v. Ercole's formal order merely confirmed a state of affairs which had existed since the Venetian War (1482-84). wherein most of his household were reduced to petitioning for their salaries in comestible substitutes, as were eventually the comunal magistrates, police, and notaries. ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1488, reg. 27, c. 151v.
20. Duke Ercole began to sell public offices shortly after his accession in 1471, and by 1486, as observed by the chronicler Caleffini, appointments to government posts were wholly commercialized. Cal, fol. 244v. Significantly, terms in office were for two years only, allowing the Duke to resell positions constantly in what was a thriving and highly lucrative market. The sums paid for these offices were absolutely astronomical by contemporary standards, especially for judicial and police posts, and such were their value that individuals were prepared to invest in their commercial "futures" and enter into onerous arrangements. For example, in 1493, Francesco Albaresani paid over 1000 lire marchesane (LM) two years in advance for civil tenure as a district Captain of Justice in Ferrara 1495-97. ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1493, reg. 33, c. 222v. A similar sum was paid by Paolo da Pizabecari for the office of notary "de li Rebelli de la camera, " interestingly here with a clause of misfortune attached, whereby if the office-holder by reason of sickness or war did not complete his term, his heirs would remain liable to pay any outstanding monies owed the camera in satisfaction of the original agreement. ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1494, reg. 34, c. 14v. Small wonder, therefore, that abuse of office and racketeering was common, considering that these individuals could only expect a salary of 150 LM per annum for positions which cost 1000 LM to obtain. ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1493, reg. 33, c. 222v. For a full account of what transpired, see Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, "Crime and Crime Prevention in Ferrara, " pp. 163-204, and W.L. Gundersheimer, "Crime and Punishment in Ferrara 1440-1500, " in Lauro Martines, ed., Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities (Berkley, 1972), pp. 104-128. That Duke Ercole was devising fiscal plans and spending projections based upon mitade revenues derived from the prosecution of criminals is perfectly clear. He expected certain sums from each office-holder to be turned over to the camera on an annual basis, and assigned quotas specifically to this end. We need go no further than the case of Carlo da Conte, Podestci of Rachano, who was dismissed from his post in March 1496 for failing to fill his quota of delictual fines despite the fact, as da Conte complained, that war, plague, and famine had practically eliminated the local population to the extent that "there was no one left to prosecute. " ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1496, reg. 36, c. 76v.
21. "Et niuno era ponito, et li boni erano opressi da li tristi" (And no one was punished, and the "good were oppressed by the "bad). Cal, fol. 275r. Or as Caleffini describes elsewhere, "in questo tempo e tanti zagaduri et ladri et assassini in ferrara che e cossa Incredibile. " Cal, fol. 248v.
22. The irony of the "terrible crime" of visiting a brothel or consorting with a prostitute, regardless of the "public truth" in such matters, resides in the fact that prostitution was, as in many north Italian cities, organized and run under a state monopoly. Ferrarese prostitutes were obliged to register their names with the Ufficio delle Bollerte, to wear the symbol of their profession, and to pay an annual tax to the ducal camera. Statutis Civitatis Ferrarie 1456 V, v, 22, De mulieribus inhoneste viventibus. The Comune proscribed "illegal" prostitution with increasingly heavy penalities, but the distinction between what was legal and illegal eventually became so obscure that the police and civil magistrates took advantage and simply arrested and prosecuted whomever they pleased.
23. DF, p. 184, 11. 7-8. Following this notice are three bischizi (sonnets) vilifying Zampante's memory and explaining how he extorted monies during his career as a public sheriff, p. 194.11. 15-41.
24. The infamous orders concerning "sopping up the gravy" were issued by Duke Borso in preparation for the reception of Lodovico Gonzaga (Marchese of Mantua) at the fortified town of Ficarolo in 1470. ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Carteggio de Rettori Modena e Modenese, busta 2a: Borso d'Este to Luchino Marocelli (Captain of Justice in Ferrara), 24 February 1470. An extraordinary second letter was sent to the Captain of Justice in Ficarolo, which ordered all persons in the public debt and all prisoners awaiting trial for civil and criminal offences to be summarily convicted, with the financial proceeds to be turned over to Mauro dalla Carte, Provisory General of the Borsian court, to help defray the expenses of Gonzaga's reception: "che tu gli faci ragione summariacontra tuti quelli che sono sotoposti ala tua jurisdicione et non solo summaria ma breve et expedita senza strepito et alcuno figura de judicio et remosso. " ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Registri di Cancelleria, Lettere dal 1445 al 1449.
25. The particular details of Ercole's passion for building and collecting valuable objects of art and "noteworthy people" (including the examples cited here) are revealed by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti in his laudatory treatise on the Herculean Golden Age, ostensibly concerned with Ercole's religious works, but ultimately concentrating on the virtue of magnificenza consonant with his creation of a splendid princely court. See Sabadino, De triumphis religionis ad illustrissimum principem Herculem Estensem Ferrariae Ducem, in W.L. Gundersheimer, ed., Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d'Este (Geneva, 1972). MS. text pp. 29-1 14. Ercole's somewhat unusual "collecting mania" (as described by Gundersheimer) represents a highly exaggerated example of what was a burgeoning contemporary interest in the acquisition of "objects" of culture, principally books, manuscripts, and plastic art-which the Duke also pursued in his typically monumental way with the creation of the Biblioteca Estense in 1480-both as a nascent antiquarian pastime and as evidence of a dedicated adaptation of the "new learning" (the values of humanist education and scholarship) in relation to the "arts and graces of life" and the "day-to-day administrative machine" of government. Denys Hay, The Italian Renaissance in its Historical Background (Cambridge, 1979). esp. pp. 155-84. Some aspects of the contemporary obsession with "collecting" purely as an end in itself are explored in an intriguing book by Werner Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly Passion-Psychological Perspectives (Princeton University Press, 1994), especially pp. 175-83 on the activities of the Florentine humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini (I am grateful to Terry Cook for drawing this reference to my attention).
26. Aside from the Addizione Herculea to the old medieval town, which cost an inestimable sum of money, the Barco possibly represents the most conspicuous of the consumptive extravagences of Ercole's sinnoria. See its description in Alfonso Lazzari, "I1 Barco di Ludovico Carbone, " Atti e emo or.
27. An incident which actually caused the Duke to subsequently penalize any individual involved in the theft of garments worn by Ferrarese citizens with "unpardonable death by hanging. " Zam, p. 70, ll. 28-33.
28. DF, p. 199.11. 30-32.
29. Zam, p. 30, ll. 16-19.
30. Despite the steady rise and extension of comunal taxes during the second half of the fifteenth century, the official appropriation of signorial shares (mitade) in the proceeds of civil and criminal condemnations, and the scheme of selling civil offices with all its associated payoffs and revenue-generating deals, the annual entrate (income credits) of the ducal camera remained constantly insufficient to support princely consumption on the Estensi scale. Signorial agents regularly scoured the countryside and the great houses searching for financial "donors" using the tactics of forced gifts, wherein noble families were obliged to make "presents" of private possessions which would be subsequently placed in pawn as signorial security against bank drafts, and especially forced loans, in which individuals were coerced into handing over cash in exchange for virtually useless signorial IOUs. In fact, forced loans from the nobility were an essential component of Estensi fiscal policy. Typical of the lists of sponsors to be found in the cameral registers are the "impresto de Reggio" and "impresto de Modena" in 1475, when a chancellor was sent "a Modena et Reggio per sua S. atorli impresto. et de commissione de epso nostro S. missi in bancho de Baldassera de Giovanni mercandante. " ASMo, ASE, Registri di Camera, Mandati, 1474-75, reg. 18, cc. 157r-157v. It was also usual for the Estensi to finance state ceremonials in this way, as in 1502, when Ercole underwrote some of the expenses for the reception of Lucrezia Borgia by tapping noble resources. See for example the records of the chancellor Leonello Recepta, who canvassed the nobility in Reggio on Ercole's behalf to the tune of 15000 golden ducats (an enormous sum). ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Carteggio di Referendari, Consiglieri, Cancellieri e Segretari, Leonello Recepta Cancelliere 1501-1509, busta 4, "Impresto de Reggio, " 25 March 1501. The consequences of being caught in this signorial "net" were fiscally devastating to many noble families, some of whom were unable to recover.
31. It is difficult to summarize here the extraordinary lengths to which the Estensi went to maintain their local and international image as magnificenti. One of the most telling examples concerns the famous triangolare, an enormous diamond which was Duke Ercole's personal trove and signorial emblem (the exterior of Ercole's most famous delizie was completely fashioned with multiple diamond-shaped stone studs, hence the name Palauo dei Diamenti), which he was finally forced to pawn with the Gondi money-lending consortium of Florence (a half-pawn was also consigned to the Medici Bank) during the height of the Venetian War. Just to borrow back this jewel for one week to wear it on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Isabella to the Marchese Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, Ercole promised the Gondi all of the revenue from the salt mines of Commachio for a period of ten years. ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Minutario Cronologico: Lettere Sciolte, busta 3, 1487-93, Ercole d'Este ad Salinarum Mutine, 26 December 1489. For the complete story of these and other similar circumstances, see Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, pp. 37-60.
32. "Comi boni padri famiglia, " as explained by Michele Savonarola, De felici progressu Borsii Estensi ad Marchionatum Ferrariae liber, BEM, Fondo Estense, MS. Latin cod. 215, Alpha W 2, p. 15 (I am quoting here from the "vulgar" [Italian] translation of the Borsian presentation copy preserved in the Biblioteca Classense di Ravenna, cod. ital., no. 302, at fol. 34v).
33. The list of "sacrificed officialdom" is a very long one. See Brown, The Politics ofMagnificence in Ferrara, "The Image of Responsible Government, " pp. 61-13 1.
34. The Marxist historian Antonio Piromalli, La Cultura a Ferrara a1 tempo di Ludovico Ariosto (Rome, 1954). and in "Societa ferrarese e mondo morale dal Pistoia all' Ariosto, " Italianistica 3 (1974). pp. 6CO-618, perhaps made more of this opposition than he ought to have by concentrating on the satirical sonnets of Antonio Camelli da Pistoia and others, which were periodically found tacked to church doors and public buildings during Ercole's reign, and which clearly indicate popular dissatisfaction with conditions under Este rule. The run of events, however, does not, I think, support the widespread popular animosity towards the Este family which he contends. Nevertheless, I would not disagree with his general conclusion that Duke Ercole perpetrated "una mediocrita umana" in Ferrara, contrary to what was written about the Herculean "Golden Age" during the late nineteenth century, a traditional Ferrarese historiography which naturally found great favour among fascist historians of the 1920s and 1930s. and to a certain extent has since formed the historical view of the local medieval and Renaissance period (including the recent perspectives offered by Gundersheimer in Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism), despite the important correctives offered by writers such as Montorsi, Farnetti, Zucchini, Lombardi and especially Franceschini in the 1960s and 1970s.
35. For details of the Pio Conspiracy against Duke Borso, see Antonio Cappelli, "La congiura dei Pio, Signore di Carpi, contro Borso d'Este, Marchese di Ferrara, Duca di Modena, scritta nel 1469 da Carlo da San Giorgio bolognese, con agiunta di ossewazioni e documenti, " Atti della Deputazione di Storia patria per le Provincie Modenesi 2 (1864). pp. 367-416. The Pazzi Conspiracy of 1476 against Duke Ercole and its aftermath, which included a series of especially brutal public executions coupled with a "monstrous" mutilation of the corpses in the piazza, is related in the three main contemporary chronicles: DF, p. 91.11. 12-32.92.11. 1-36.
36. This is the observation of the Mantuan Ambassador Bernardino Prosperi, doubtless an individual hardened to the cruelty of signorial justice, writing to Isabella d'Este Gonzaga upon the beheading of two young men in the piazza in 1491: "Ma in vero Sra. mia sel caso de Mes Zilfreddo fo atroce et crudele, il vedere decapitare quisiti dui gioventi e stato una cosa de fare piagere uno saro. " ASMan, Archivio Gonzaga, busta 1233, Bernardino Prosperi to Isabella d'Este, 10 October 1491. Ercole once described his personal commitment to public executions to his elder brother Duke Borso as follows: "La corte prochedera col pie del piombo ["with feet of lead, " i.e., "hanging"] contra loro et punirli second0 li statuti per quanto meritano et per la restitutione de le robe o del precio. " ASMo, ASE, Casa e Stato, Carteggio Fra Principi Estensi (a) Principi Regnanti, busta 67, Ercole to Borso d'Este, 24 October 1465. Judging from what-. subsequently transpired during Ercole's reign, which witnessed an unprecedented number of spectacular public execution ceremonies in the piazza (previously, Ferrarese criminals were executed outside the city), it is not to be doubted that he meant every word. See Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, "The Spectacle of the Scaffold, " pp. 234-82.
37. Cronaca Antigini, BCAF, Coll. Antonelli, no. 257, fol. 27r.
38. Libro de' Giustiziati in Ferrara 1441-1557, BCAF MS. Classe I, no. 404, fol. lor. See also Zam, p. 200.11. 24-30.
39. A remarkable incunable exists in the Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea di Ferrara (citation above note 37) which provides a notarial description of every public execution in Ferrara during the years of its coverage, and includes a painted depiction (at the central spine, fols. 17v-18r, known as "I1 Supplizio") of a scaffold spectacle which has all the "players" on stage at the "moment of truth. " It recalls all of the horror evoked by Johan Huizinga in his famous chapter on "The Violent Tenor of Life" in The Waning of the Middle Ages coupled with the graphic brutality of Breughel's later sixteenth-century pictorial allegories. The overall effect is positively "freezing. "
40. As detailed in Cal, "Como fu per essere impichato Agostino de ferro, " fol56v. Locally founded in 1366, the pious Confraternity of S. Maria or the Battuti della Morte (Confraternitas batutorum nigrorum Sancte Marie Albe a mom nuncupati) was a religious organization entrusted with the tasks of hearing confessions, comforting the condemned on the scaffold by offering prayers for histher soul, and later interring the cadaver in consecrated ground, which had been customarily left to rot where it fell or else flung into the river Po by soldiers of the garrison. The Barturi initially operated out of the Church of S. Giacomo Apostolo close by the comunal gibbet, which was initially set in a swampy wasteland known as the Prato della Trappola near the fortressed bridge of the Caste1 Tedaldo, but when the scene of capital punishment shifted to the city centre (piazza) during Ercole's signoria, they constructed a new chapel and dedicated a cemetery beside the hospital of Santa Anna facing the eastern moat, and built a confraternal oratory immediately east of the square (S. Maria Annunziata) with endowments from artisans, merchants, and several prominent Ferrarese citizens. The Battuti wore long flowing black robes and were completely masked with facial visors topped with pointed caps depicted with white "skull and crossed bones. " It is difficult to imagine any solace being derived by the condemned with the presence of these sinister figues loomingly gathered on the execution podium bearing their relics and crosses. Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, pp. 222-23.
41. Possibly the greatest of the "stage-managed" events-according to several chroniclers, Ercole was actually feigning sickness to gain the sympathy of the crowd and had planted "rabble-rousing agents" in the city to stir things up-which resulted in the dismissal of public officials and their exile from the city by the signore, as well as a massive destruction of public records, the details of the Trotti expulsion from Ferrara are described at considerable length in Cal, Partita del traditore de Paulantonio dn ferrara pure adi novembre 1482, fols. 170r-170v. There is evidence that some members of the Trotti faction were in fact conspiring against Duke Ercole with the Venetian Visdomino (Giovanni Vittore Contarini) resident in Ferrara in exchange for lands and titles, certainly the lesser sons of the extended Ariosto clan (Brunaro and Francesco di Rinaldo).
42. Whenever the Este actually got serious about fighting crime, notably during the 1480s and 1490s. they appointed "commissione speciale, " what amounted to noble vigilante groups with extraordinary civil powers to summon, arrest, prosecute, and condemn "malefactors. " This was of course tantamount to admitting that the regular police forces and civil justices would not prosecute anyone unless there was some profit to be gained, or that they could not be trusted to enforce the law. In fact, this was perfectly true.
43. All of these events, including the setting of the records destruction bonfire, are detailed in Cal, fols. 58r-60-.
44. Zam, p. 12, 11. 24-27, p. 13, 11. 1-3. Most Ferrarese chronicles mention the official "manifestation of joy, " but the anonymous Cronaca di Ferrara, BCAF, Coll. Antonelli no. 255, more fully reveals the violence, looting, and burning which attended the celebrations at fol. 39r. including the fact that the public notaries' benches were also destroyed, which meant that there was no one officially present to transcribe "records" of crimes or take down complaints and evidence.
45. ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Registri di Cancelleria, Herculis Iepistolarum registrum, sez. C, 1476, reg. 4, c. lOlr
46. Zam, p. 13,116-9.
47. ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Registri di Cancelleria, Herculis Iepistolarum registrum, sez. C, 1476, reg. 4, cc. 1 lor, 132r. It is interesting to note that a letter was also sent to the Podesta of San Felicia in advance of the "birth instructing him to take precautions to safeguard the local Jewish community (especially in case it was a boy)," indicating that Ercole fully expected violence against the Jews and their property as part of the "spontaneous acts" to celebrate the prospect of a legitimate male heir.
48. Typically, much of the legislation was devoted to the regulation of "mascarading" (permission to "disguise" was formally given by the prince every year on the eve of Epiphany), which provided criminals and mischief-makers with an obvious "cover, " but there were also measures taken to limit the number of individuals who could congregate together after dark, and prohibitions against post-curfew movement about the city without lanterns or tapers.
49. For example, Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modem Europe (London, 1978).
50. Roger Caillois, L'Homme et le Sacre' (Paris, 1938). Chap. 3, "ThCorie de la f6te".
51. The most complete study of this subject that I know of is by M. Gary Dickson, Patterns of European Sanctity: the Cult of Saints in the Later Middle Ages (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1975, 2 vols).
52. For a reconstruction of the "Calendar of the Festival Year in Ferrara c. 1500, " see Brown, The Politics of Magnifience in Ferrara, Appendix B.
53. The notion of "invented tradition" and its relation to pseudo-historical commemoration in public ritual, state ceremonial, and popular holiday behavior is most extensively treated in an important series of six essays-by Eric Hobsbawm, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Prys Morgan, David Cannadine, Bernard S. Cohn, and Terence Ranger-edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition (Past and Present Publications, London, 1983). Since the appearance of this collection, a rich range of literature has emerged to explore the interconnections between invented tradition, public ceremonies and commemorations (statues, historic sites, etc.), heritage, and memory. See for example, David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985).
54. Brown, The Politics ofMagnificence in Ferrara, pp. 12-13.372-77.
55. ASMo, ASE, Casa e Stato, Carteggio Fra Principi Estensi, (b) Principi Non-Regnanti, busta 131, Eleonora d'Aragona to Ercole d'Este, 24 April 1479.
56. In his efforts to obtain greater state control over public religious devotions (and inevitably, the substantial revenues associated with them), on two occasions Ercole strayed into very dangerous territory by actually ignoring the Pope's official appointments to local dioceses and selecting bishops more amenable to the prince's "temporal guidance. " The Estensi usually succeeded in providing their own candidates to minor benefices and, by mustering their substantial curial influence in Rome, managed to maintain the management of some of the more prestigious and lucrative ecclesiastical offices.
57. For instance, one bewildered citizen relates how he was seized by officials of the ducal camera for failing to pay the cost of a licence and flung into prison.
58. ASMo, ASE, CMPDE, Carteggio di referendari, Consiglieri, Cancellieri e Segretari, busta 4, Siverio Sivieri to Eleonora d'Aragona, 21 January 1493.
59. Brown, The Politics of Magnificence in Ferrara, pp. 372-77.
60. These annual ceremonies are described at length in Zam et al, the most significant passages of which are reproduced in Brown, The Politics ofMagnificence in Ferrara, pp. 246-47 and 377-81.
61. "Whim" is the operative word. Just to celebrate his return to Ferrara after a lengthy absence, for example, Duke Ercole decided to "free prisoners and grant pardons. " As usual, the Duke called for the list of the condemnati in advance in order to make some selective decisions upon who should qualify for amnesty based on the nature of the cases established in the pardon petititons. ASMo, ASE, Casa e Stato, Carteggio Fra Principi Estensi (a) Principi Regnanti, busta 68, Ercole d'Este to Eleonora d'Aragona, 22 June 1487.
62. The most obvious example is Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, 1987). See my review of this book in Richard Brown, "The Value of 'Narrativity' in the Appraisal of Historical Documents: Foundation for a Theory of Archival Hermeneutics, " Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991). pp. 152-56.
63. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Allan Lane, trans. (London, 1977). esp. pp. 54-57.
64. G.R. Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government (Cambridge, 1953), p. 427.
65. In this regard, given certain claims concerning the juridical foundation ofarchivy in the Middle Ages and its centrality to the writings of medieval jurists, one would at least expect to find references to this phenomenon in Kantorowicz (The King's Two Bodies), Ullmann (A History of Political Thought: The Middle Ages), or Skinner (The Foundation of Modern Political Thought), but curiously there is not a single one.
66. Duranti, "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory, " p. 331.
67. Duranti, "The Odyssey of Records Managers, " p. 47.
68. Duranti reminds us that the Roman Empire established two legal concepts regarding archives which continue to have significance today. Roman law established archives as places of "perpetual memory" and "public faith. " Duranti defines perpetual memory as a consistent, enduring, and stable documentation of past events. She defines public faith to mean entrusting the documents that recorded this perpetual memory into reliable hands, generally a state-run archives. That these concepts exist, and that the concepts continue to have importance, is a point of some significance. But Duranti's further statements, that Roman law, including these two archival concepts, "constituted the core" of medieval legal writing, entered the statutes of "most" medieval states, eventually became the "common civil law" of all Europe, (and one assumes North America as well), and ultimately formed "the basis for [European] spiritual and cultural unity" stretches an interesting observation about archival history beyond reasonable interpretation.
69. My principal concern here is with the distortion of medieval and Renaissance history through a selective "mining" of references coupled with a priori statements concerning archives and archival theory, which together tend to exaggerate the prominence and role-and isolation-of archivy in the contemporary remembering complex at the expense of other intellectual and cultural developments. In addition, if the record-keeping and records destruction activities in Ferrara are any indication of archival practice in northern Italy during the period of the Renaissance, one is bound to question the concepts of "perpetual memory" and "public faith as the exclusive guiding and binding principles which either prescribed the preservation or disposal of documents. As we have seen, there were also socio-cultural, political, and other, far more mercenary and self-serving records disposition "principles" at work in the local chancellery, some of which had a profound impact on the "stability" and "public truth" of what eventually survived in the archives for the information of posterity. In Ferrara, it was perfectly acceptable for the police, magistrates, notaries, tax-collectors, and record-keepers (et al) to erase, fix, tamper with, and rewrite the official operational documents of government for any number of ulterior motives and purposes. I must say that these frequent and gross documentary manipulations do not accord particularly well with the attributes of perpetual memory and public faith-truth ostensibly assigned to official records deposited in the archives as "prescribed" in Roman civil law, which are purported to have governed their impartiality and authenticity (and disposition-preservation) at this time. In their criticism of Professor Duranti's perspective on "archival accountability" based on classical European archival thought, Boles and Greene go much further than merely questioning her historical reading(s) and interpretations. In a significant and timely defence-in my opinion-of American appraisal theory against the so-called "universality of Roman archival theory, " they also make a major contribution to the modem archival profession by articulating the utility and legitimacy of what could be called local domain archival principles and practices. I have not the space here to comment on their arguments and perspectives, which have, I think, considerable relevance to the different operational circumstances, environments, and problems currently confronting archives around the world. Of course, as we have collectively learned through many information exchanges, there is also some substantial common ground (electronic records treatment, rules for arrangement and description, access to information and privacy, etc.). But does this entail a single, eternal-universal theoretical "beat" to archivy to which all archival drummers must continue necessarily to drum? And did this single, exclusive, and monotonous theoretical "beat" of archival drumming begin in the Renaissance or immediately before in passages from antiquity to the "Middle Age?'In the case of both the former and latter resonances, somehow I think not. There were-and are-many different archival drum-beats.
70. See also in this regard the recent study by Lawrence J. McCrank, "Documenting Reconquest and Reform: The Growth of Archives in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, " American Archivist 56 (Spring 1993). pp. 256-31 1.
71. Hay, Annalists and Historians, pp. 87-168.
72. The "leap" from historical to archival diplomatic has recently been the subject of some interesting debate between Tom Nesmith and Heather MacNeil over "our very different histories, " i.e., about the differences between the history of history and the history of archivy, or "the essential autonomy of archival science from other disciplines, including history" (MacNeil, "Archival Studies in the Canadian Grain: The Search for a Canadian Archival Tradition, " Archivaria 37, pp. 134-49, esp. pp. 144-47, analyzing and criticizing Nesmith, "Introduction: Archival Studies in English-speaking Canada and the North American Rediscovery of Provenance, " in T. Nesmith, ed., Canadian Archival Studies and the Rediscovery of Provenance, pp. 1-28.
73. Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science, " pp. 7-27.
74. For the broader historical context and the significance of both Petrarch and Valla's documentary "decodings, " see Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London, 1969). especially on the "criticism of documents" and the "rise of historical explanation, " pp. 50-104.
75. Hugh Taylor, "Information Ecology and the Archives of the 1980s, " Archivaria 18 (Summer 1984) pp. 25-37.
76. Hay, Annalists and Historians, p. 153.
77. Elio Lodolini, "The War of Independence of Archivists, " Archivaria 28 (Summer 1989). pp. 36-47.
78. For the career of Prisciani, see A. Rotondo, "Pellegrino Prisciani (1435-c.15 18, " Rinascimento 11 (1960). pp. 69-1 10.
79. Hay, Annalists and Historians, p. 166.
80. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
81. Petrucci, "The Illusion of Authentic History: Documentary Evidence, " p. 237.
82. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
83. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
84. Paola di Pietro, I "Catastri delle Investiture" dell'Archivio Segreto Estense-osservazioni su alcune tipologie contrattuali (Tesi di laurea, Universith degli studi di Bologna, 1974).
85. Davis, Fiction in the Archives, especially pp. 7-35 ("The Time of Storytelling").
86. Petrucci, "The Illusion of Authentic History: Documentary Evidence, " pp. 246-47.
87. Duranti, "The Concept of Appraisal and Archival Theory, " p. 334.
88. As revealed by Denis Winter in Haig's Command: A Reassessment (London, 1991). which unearths a systematic government cover-up through the deliberate falsification of official history and the destruction of archival documents. See the recent review of this book by Tim Cook in Archivaria 43 (Spring 1997) pp. 193-97.
89. Petrucci, "The Illusion of Authentic History: Documentary Evidence, " pp. 239-40.
90. Brown, "Reassessing the Historical Shunt, " pp. 5-7.