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How to Record a Conflict? The Communities of the German Part of the Diocese of Trent during the Late Middle Ages

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Abstract

The paper deals with a close examination of the research on South Tyrol in the Late Middle Ages which has gained new breath from recent investigations conducted as comparisons and seems therefore to have undergone a renaissance. It is principally the concept of the "economy of war" which can be applied either to the development of urban centres or to the more rural type of economy within a particular context such as the Alpine area.
1
How to Record a Conflict?
The Communities of the German Part of the Diocese of Trent
during the Late Middle Ages
by Hannes Obermair
“In this central and centralized humanity …
we must hear the distant roar of battle”.
M. Foucault1
I.
The considerations made in the following deal with a short, but close
examination of the research on South Tyrol in the Late Middle Ages,
which—after a long period of decreasing interest followed by the great
stories of the first part of the twentieth century—has gained new breath
from recent investigations conducted as comparisons and seems therefore
to have undergone a renaissance. In order to give more detail to the
project, the first and more general part is followed by some concrete
examples, which in their turn are followed by general conclusions.
The reflections then attempt to reconnect with themes from the social
history of the Pre-Modern era, which have experienced notable accelera-
tion over the previous years, when one refers to the picture of the often
endemic conflicts. Although for a long time separated from Medieval
Studies where priority was given to modern and contemporary history,
the dimensions of conflict throughout life in the Late Middle Ages are
in fact now demonstrating all their analytical value. It is principally the
concept of the “economy of war”, developed by sociologists and social
Translation by Joy Avery
1 This is an extract from the famous final sentence by M. Foucault, Discipline and
Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York 1991, p. 308.
2
anthropologists2, which can be applied in this context, for example with
regard to the history of the European urban centers or the birth of
the pre-state or state territorial structures3. However, less attention has
been paid to the more rural type of societies until now, for example,
the prevalently agricultural economies within a particular context such
as the Alpine regions. But even here, the ice is beginning to thaw, and
an important historian such as Luigi Lorenzetti has placed the theme
of conflict at the center of his recent investigations on migration from
the Italian Alps, not without underlining the particular quality and
functionality of the economic and social conflicts associated with such
migration4.
II.
It is useful to start with a general overview, before presenting the
geographical area of study. According to a theory, which is relatively
diffuse and substantially agreed upon, social practices of the individual
agents between the Late Middle Ages and the start of the Modern era
were largely conditioned by the social class they belonged to, which in
turn contributed towards forming a social identity. In this way, using
a class-driven approach—to use the Marxist terminology—inevitably,
however, would tend to prevail over the historical perception of a
plurality or social multitude made up of individuals, which has always
been present.
It will therefore be a challenge for historians, at least when their ac-
tions are strongly inspired by the canons of social history, to not dilute
the associated individualities and mentalities into mere groups. In this
sense, the classic studies carried out by Natalie Zemon Davies or Carlo
Ginzburg are exemplary. Both of them have tried to connect an
2 Cf. only R. collins, Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science, London
1975; J.S. coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, Cambridge MA - London 1990.
3 Cf. M. BarBer, The Two Cities. Medieval Europe, 1050-1320, London - New York
2007, and W. Blockmans - a. Holenstein - J. matHieu (eds), Empowering Interactions.
Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe 1300-1900, Farnham -
Burlington VT 2009.
4 L. lorenzetti, Razionalità, cooperazione, conflitti: gli emigranti delle Alpi italiane
(1600-1850), in A. arru - F. ramella - D.l. caglioti (eds), Donne e uomini migranti.
Storie e geografie tra breve e lunga distanza, Roma 2009, pp. 181-209.
3
empirical impetus aimed at individual lives and Pre-Modern biogra-
phies with a more general picture of the historical macroprocess5. Of
course, we must not forget the fundamental contributions made by
the pioneering Anglo-Saxon school coupled with great names such as
Edward P. Thompson or Peter Laslett, who, with their concept of an
“economic moral” and with an epistemological perception of “social
humanism” deeply changed the historiographic approach towards “the
world we have lost”6.
This research, characterized by a strongly sociological method, high-
lighted the fact that the Pre-Modernist social groups were conditioned
by various basic dimensions, made up of different settings: primarily
economic, oriented towards the field of production; the reproductive
sphere, profoundly connected to the question of gender; and finally, the
cultural and “ideological” sphere, where these conditions reflect and
self-represent if taken to a level of cultural, literary and iconographic
representation.
Inserted into this type of superstructure, the dimensions of conflicts
and antagonisms take on a topological dimension, they have a physical
space and belong to a certain place, but this is true obviously not only
for the areas which are the subject of this paper. As far as the so-called
“German part” (deutscher Anteil) of the diocese of Trent in the Middle
Ages and Early Modern Age is concerned, this included an area along
the course of the River Adige between Merano, Bolzano, and Salorno,
which had only a few side valleys such as the Ulten valley, the lower
Sarntal and the Passeier valley, as well as the most southerly stretch
of the Isarco valley as far as the gates of Bolzano7. The current pro-
5 Cf. N.Z. Davies, The Return of Martin Guerre, Cambridge MA 1984, and by the
same author, Women on the Margins. Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, Cambridge MA
1997; C. ginzBurg, Il filo e le tracce. Vero – falso – finto, Milano 2006.
6 E.P. tHompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth 1975;
P. laslett, The World We Have Lost, Further Explored, London 2005.
7 The “German part”—this expression may be attributed to the early Modern
period—has been widely studied in monographs, from an ecclesiastic point of view,
in the large manual by K. atz - A. scHatz, Der deutsche Anteil des Bistums Trient,
5 vols, Bozen 1903-1910. See also E. curzel, Le pievi trentine. Trasformazioni e
continuità nell’organizzazione territoriale della cura d’anime dalle origini al XIII secolo
(Centro per le scienze religiose in Trento. Series maior, 5), Bologna 1999, pp. 210-264.
The region in question in relation to its geographical and political situation, during the
interwar period, was also called “Bozner Land”, see R. von kleBelsBerg, Das Bozner
Land (Alpenlandschaften, 4), Wien - Leipzig 1930.
4
vincial capital was even then an important intersection of roads with
a fork in the transalpine stretch with reached either the upper Adige
valley crossing the Venosta valley and going over the Reschen pass,
the Swabian territories, or reached the Renon way or also directly the
Isarco valley by means of the “Kuntersweg” which was instituted in
the 1300s, crossing the Inntal and Austrian and Bavarian territories via
the Brenner pass8.
In order to define this micro-region in even more detail, the Überetsch
follows the river Adige on the right-hand side from Bolzano upwards
towards the small vale of Salorno, where the river is squeezed into a
tight stretch, which also represented a language barrier between the
territories, which spoke either Romance languages or German from
the 1500s onwards. Not to forget Bolzano, either the area of Jenesien
with its so-called Tschögglberg or the area of Deutschnofen with its
Regglberg, well settled and populated at least from the 1200s on and
linked by a dense network of roads between them and in the direction
of the central towns, where Bolzano and Merano played an important
role, as they also functioned as central market towns for their respective
hinterlands, and were thus connected with the larger centers along the
edges of the Alps9.
To complicate the geopolitical situation described here, all of the area
in question belonged ecclesiastically speaking to Trent, while politically,
it was an integral part of the dominions of the Tyrolean counts; in fact
it was the hinge and determining factor in their politics from the times
of Count Meinhard II in the second half of the thirteenth century. With
the acquisition of Tyrol by the Habsburgs in 1363, the “German part”
of the diocese of Trent became a further bastion of political, military,
and economic activity on the part of the Habsburgs towards the lower
Adige valley, towards Trent itself and also towards the more southerly
regions of northern Italy. The fortification of the Sigmundskron castle
at Bolzano by Duke Sigismund in the last quarter of the 1400s bears
architectural witness: the castle is not by chance one of the largest for-
8 For information on the case of Bolzano, see the reflections by A. BonolDi, Dimen-
sioni spaziali dell’azione mercantile: alcune riflessioni sul caso delle fiere di Bolzano, in
M.-C. scHöpFer pFaFFen - F. vannotti (eds.), Unternehmen, Handelshäuser und Wirt-
schaftsmigration im Alpenraum, Brig 2014, pp. 99-127.
9 A. BonolDi, La fiera e il dazio: economia e politica commerciale nel Tirolo del secondo
Settecento, Trento 1999, pp. 20 ss.
5
tified complexes along the Alps10. Austrian politics in the Late Middle
Ages were substantially oriented along an east-west axis, and Tyrol was
a decisive anchor in order to connect the Austrian territories in the
Swabian Vorlande with the lower Austrian hinterland11. In this manner,
the area around Bolzano could be described as a balcony overlooking
Italy, from whence it was necessary to control the traffic along the Bren-
ner, but also to gain military access, if and when it became necessary,
to the plains of the Po, Veneto and Lombardy.
It would, however, be too banal to say that the area around Bolzano, as
a hybrid micro-region, was in any way other in terms of social formation
than the greater picture of the Trentino-Tyrolean regions or the Alpine
areas overall (as has been wonderfully analyzed by Jon Mathieu, this
area was characterized by a precariously urban demographic and was
therefore a Pre-Modern ecosystem of its own kind12).
Obviously, an interesting element could be, in any case, the way in
which the southern part of Tyrol belonged to models thus far described
as differing and often contrasting in terms of political and ecclesiastical
organization. As it was the most northerly part of the diocese of Trent,
which from the thirteenth century constantly belonged to the political
orders linked to the county of Tyrol and the Empire, to the Habsburgs
and Austrian order of society, these imposed their own models of how
society should be constituted. In some ways, it is from this that a kind
of “half-caste” situation arose, which raises many questions: does be-
longing to different types of society herald conflicts, or better still, do
they give their particular color to the conflicts? And further: even if
conflicts arise individually, do they follow a determined, more general
logic, related to some territorial specificity13?
10 L. anDergassen - H. stampFer, Schloss Sigmundskron: Bischofsburg und landesfürst-
liches Bollwerk (Burgen, 11), Regensburg 2014.
11 H. DopscH, Die Länder und das Reich. Der Ostalpenraum im Hochmittelalter (Öster-
reichische Geschichte), Wien 1999; J. WHaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire,
vol. 1: From Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648, Oxford - New York
2012, pp. 49 ss.
12 J. matHieu, History of the Alps 1500-1900. Environment, Development, and Society,
Morgantown WV 2009.
13 For a reflection on the hybrid status and in some opinions ‘half-caste’ Bolzano re-
gion, see from the point of view of sources from late medieval writings, H. oBermair,
The Use of Records in Medieval Towns: The Case of Bolzano, South Tyrol, in
6
In order to answer this question, it is useful to trace a short overview
of the state of research on this region. It underwent considerable accel-
eration in terms of the nationalisms it created, most importantly on the
part of the German-speaking Tyrolean historiography and motivated by
the fragmentation of old Tyrol following the Austrian defeat during the
World War I. Great operas of erudition were born from nationalistic
yearnings, although they were characterized in varying degrees by a
revanchist spirit and were therefore strongly ideologically disciplined.
By this I mean the “grandfathers” of Austrian-Tyrolean research14,
who were also distinguished in the sector of research concerning lo-
cal communities and their conflicts, Otto Stolz, Hermann Wopfner,
Franz Huter, as well as Nikolaus Grass, who were not without a type
of “völkisch” vein, intended to legitimise Deutschtum—which was at
risk in that period as a result of Italian nationalism and fascism—by
returning in a rather emphatic way to old medieval forms of society15.
Such societies were often idealized by these authors as a social reality,
which was still solid and “pure”, invalidated neither by the modern
world, nor by ethnic commixtures, and inserted in a Land whose
institutional and social situation was never challenged16. Although
completely ahistorical, this one-dimensional, strongly identitarian vision
with a firm official footing, had a long-lasting retarding effect towards
a kind of modern medievalism in the Trentino-Tyrol regions, no longer
M. mostert - a. aDamska (eds), Writing and Administration of Medieval Towns.
Medieval Urban Literacy 1 (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 27), Turnhout 2014,
pp. 49-68.
14 For an efficient typology, see A. müller, Alte Herren/Alte Meister. Über Ego-Histoire
in der österreichischen Geschichtswissenschaft. Eine Quellenkunde, in “Österreichische
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften”, 4, 1993, pp. 120-133. For a particular nar-
rative of the Tyrolean historiography in the early 1900s, see L. cole, “Für Gott, Kaiser
und Vaterland”. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860-1914
(Studien zur Historischen Sozialwissenschaft, 28), Frankfurt - New York 2000, pp. 13-
23.
15 An important monography on this topic is that by W. oBerkrome, Volksgeschichte.
Methodische Innovation und völkische Ideologisierung in der deutschen Geschichtswis-
senschaft 1918-1945 (Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 101), Göttingen
1999; on the Austrian-Tyrolean historiography in the interwar period, see in particular
pp. 73-80.
16 The high point of this historiography was reached in O. stolz, Die Ausbreitung des
Deutschtums in Südtirol im Lichte der Urkunden, 5 vols, München - Berlin 1928-1934.
The publication was co-financed by the revisionist foundation “Stiftung für deutsche
Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung”, Leipzig.
7
connected to territorial structures considered to exist almost a priori of
any historiographical considerations.
This Tyrolean type of medievalism sui generis or an imagined or imag-
inary medieval period, constructed in the light of and with the ends of
an extremely politicized present17, was efficiently deconstructed only in
the last two decades by a younger generation of regional researchers
who, not denying the cognitive contribution the said historians could
still offer, brought to light also the political paroxysms, often connect-
ed to rising patriotism, if not to Pan-Germanic nationalism or even
pro-Nazism18.
It was only around the year 2000 and later that some interesting analytical
approaches of great depth emerged, which have begun the rewriting of
the pages of medieval Tyrol in critical terms. Here I mean in particular
researchers such as Brigitte Rath, Volker Stamm, Karin Pattis, Martin
Schennach, Christian Hagen, Gertrud Zeindl, Giuseppe Albertoni, or
Stefan Sonderegger. They have obviously approached the topic from
differing angle, some from a more economic-historical point of view
(Stamm even began with a discussion of West African societies)19, some
more with an eye to the production of documental material concern-
ing urban societies (as with Hagen)20, and those who looked at the
demographic situation (Pattis and Zeindl)21, some looked at criminal
history (Rath and Schennach)22, some at the institutional structures of
17 On the concept of “medievalism” see T. pugH - a.J. Weisl, Medievalisms. Making
the Past in the Present, Abingdon 2013.
18 L. cole, ‘Fern von Europa’? The Peculiarities of Tirolian Historiography, in “Zeitge-
schichte”, 23, 1996, pp. 181-204; Nationalismus und Geschichtsschreibung – Nazionalismo
e storiografia, in “Geschichte und Region/Storia e regione”, 5, 1996.
19 V. stamm, Soziale Zwischengruppen in der mittelalterlichen Agrargesellschaft, in
“Historische Zeitschrift”, 291, 2010, 1, pp. 1-22.
20 C. Hagen, Fürstliche Herrschaft und kommunale Teilhabe. Die Städte der Grafschaft
Tirol im Spätmittelalter (Veröffentlichungen des Südtiroler Landesarchivs, 34), Innsbruck
2015.
21 K. pattis, Neustift zur Zeit des Bauernaufstandes 1525. Wirtschaftliche, soziale und
religiöse Hintergründe, Brixen 2012; G. zeinDl, Meran im Mittelalter – eine Tiroler
Stadt im Spiegel ihrer Steuern (Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien, 57), Innsbruck 2009.
22 B. ratH, “... und wolt das Schwert durch in stossen.” Zur physischen Gewalt in
Südtirol um 1500, in “L’Homme”, 7, 1996, 2, pp. 56-70; M.P. scHennacH, Gesetz und
Herrschaft. Die Entstehung des Gesetzgebungsstaates am Beispiel Tirols (Forschungen
zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, 28), Köln - Weimar - Wien 2010.
8
the big religions and their particular management of power (Albertoni
and Sonderegger)23. These authors, some of them still young, have re-
visited the south Tyrolean question without ideological preconceptions,
using more conceptual and analytical methods, thus giving new
life to old topics which seemed to be more or less dead. And it is also
thanks to their contributions that a history of conflicts at a community
level in the Pre-Modern era in the Alpine regions can now be revisited
on the basis of research options, which no longer neglect a general
planning of historical studies, reconnecting instead to the great schools
in this field24.
III.
In order to give more solidity to the question and debate we are looking
at here, to throw some light on the micro-regional conflictuality, and
to reconstruct the related dynamics, I would like to introduce in the
following some material examples taken from the late 1300s, from the
early 1400s and from the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth
centuries. I will only touch on these periods in an effort to finally draw
some conclusions for our debate:
– I propose to use a rural statute, known as a “Weistum”, which pro-
vides a picture of the situation of a community in the early 1400s;
to examine some witness statements from a rural setting in Gries,
Bolzano, dating back to 1367 and connected with a dispute over
property;
lastly, to analyze court protocols from Bolzano in the years around
1500, to see how, and using what type of statistics, the “criminal
facts” are registered and “metabolized” by the institutions.
23 G. alBertoni, Die Herrschaft des Bischofs. Macht und Gesellschaft zwischen Etsch
und Inn im Mittelalter, Bozen 2003; S. sonDeregger,“... der Zins ist abgelon ...” Aus-
handeln von Schadensteilungen zwischen Grundherren und Bauern in schwierigen Zeiten
der Landwirtschaft, in R. kiessling - W. scHeFFknecHt (eds), Umweltgeschichte in der
Region (Forum Suevicum, 9), Konstanz 2012, pp. 139-157 (drawing on examples from
neighboring Switzerland).
24 A similar evaluation seems to be reached, referring to modern Trentino in a recent
note by M. BellaBarBa - g.m. varanini, L’età medievale, l’età moderna, in “Studi
trentini. Storia”, 94, 2015, 1, pp. 9-14.
9
Statutory sources are generally excellent in terms of facilitating the ob-
servation of social dynamics and antagonisms25. In fact, they usually are
not so much an expression of a free propellant force of the communities
able to give themselves rulings autonomously, to concentrate around
an autonomous statutory nucleus, as would form within a community
and therefore an expression of their own federalizing forces. This was
the somewhat social-romantic interpretation of the “rulings”, which, at
least in German-speaking areas (to limit ourselves to those) had rather
illustrious ancestors—the Brothers Grimm with their “Rechtsalter-
tümer”26—and then an important, positively positioned, although critical
reconsideration by Peter Blickle and his school with the concept of
“communalism”27. He, in his turn, was doubly associated with Otto
Brunner, whose nostalgic tenor was the example which had already
been bitterly criticized by Fernand Braudel who, however, recognized
Brunner’s exceptionally penetrating, analytical research methods28. The
harmonizing approach to the statutory sphere then entered a period of
crisis as a result of the detailed research by Gadi Algazi29 and André
Holenstein30 after the 1990s, or still in the Anglo-Saxon area where the
concept of the “medieval market morality” (James Davis) introduced
a fundamental sociological and substantially materialistic criterion to
25 The study by P. Blickle is always very useful in relation to the German-speaking
regions, Deutsche ländliche Rechtsquellen. Probleme und Wege der Weistumsforschung,
Stuttgart 1977. For the Tyrolean regions, see the immense edition by I. zingerle -
k.t. inama-sternegg - J. egger (eds), Die Tirolischen Weisthümer (Österreichische
Weisthümer, 5/1-4), 4 vols, Wien 1875-1891. For the Italian context, see A. cortonesi -
F. viola (eds), Le comunità rurali e i loro statuti (secoli XII-XV), (Rivista Storica del
Lazio, 13-14, 21-22) 2 vols, Roma 2006.
26 For a contextualisation of the works of the Grimm Brothers, see J. leerssen, Lit-
erary Historicism: Romanticism, Philologists, and the Presence of the Past, in “Modern
Language Quarterly”, 65, 2004, 2, pp. 221-244.
27 P. Blickle, Kommunalismus. Skizzen einer gesellschaftlichen Organisationsform,
München 2000.
28 O. Brunner, Land and Lordship. Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria,
Philadelphia PA 1992. For an authoritative critique, see F. BrauDel, On a Concept of
Social History, in F. BrauDel, On History, Chicago 1980, pp. 120-131.
29 G. algazi, Herrengewalt und Gewalt der Herren im späten Mittelalter. Herrschaft,
Gegenseitigkeit und Sprachgebrauch (Historische Studien, 17), Frankfurt - New York
1996.
30 A. Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen. Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung
(800-1800), (Quellen und Forschungen zur Agrargeschichte, 36) Stuttgart - New York
1991.
10
explain the formation of the regulating structures and apparatus, based
on the above-mentioned “moral economy” formulated by Edward
P. Thompson31.
I think it would be useful to look more closely at a statutory source
dating from 1403 relating to Salorno, a town halfway along the road
between Bolzano and Trent, and a real crossroads between the two
cultural models. Diderot in his Encyclopédie describes the village in the
late 1700s with clear and precise words: “Salurn … [un] gros bourg aux
confins d’Allemagne e d’Italie, dans le Tirol, auprès du Trentin, dont il
fait la separation”32. A fulcrum, therefore, in terms of both “culture”
and “politics”, at least in the perception of the French encyclopae-
dists, who were united in the clique around Baron Paul Henri Thiry
d’Holbach during the period of the Enlightenment. From the
thirteenth century on, Salorno had been one of the last Tyrolean
judiciary districts and bastions, in the area bordering on the Prince-
bishopric of Trent. It therefore also became a workshop of Habsburg
power, as, in 1363, they came to settle in this station, which directly
overlooks Trent.
The statutory text was redacted in the presence of some 11 jurors
(gesworen), all of them male, who were representatives of the commu-
nity and who met in the house of a woman: “in der stuben des hauss
frawen Claren genannt die Rallin” [in the living room of the house
of a certain Clara Rall]33. It was the so-called “Röll’sche Behausung”,
which was located east of the parish church in Salorno, in the middle
of the town, almost as if to denote a common space imbued with social
relationships, physically identifiable in a determined geographical place,
which immediately also becomes an anthropological space. At this point,
it is appropriate to only look at the research, although centered on
neo-liberalism, carried out by the sociologist David Harvey for whom
the category of “space” is never neutral, but always the result or prod-
uct of social struggles, and which therefore becomes absolute, relative,
31 J. Davis, Medieval Market Morality. Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace,
1200-1500, Cambridge 2012.
32 Encyclopédie, vol. 14, Paris 1765, p. 586.
33 For an edition with detailed comments, see H. oBermair, Soziale Produktion von
Recht? Das Weistum des Gerichts Salurn in Südtirol von 1403, in “Concilium Medii
Aevi”, 4, 2001, pp. 179-208.
11
and common space34. This is also valid for the structures existing in the
late Middle Ages: the completely male panel of jurors means a strong
mobilization of social capital, which customarily became a judicial
structure and in which the sex of a person was a determining factor
in structured social activities35.
The preamble gives a good indication of the upper-class intentions
found in the text: “was der gemeinschaft des gerichts wider von der
herschaft beschehen sol” [what the community can expect from the
powers that be]. It would be simple to attribute the semantic basis of
the “gemeinschaft” to a social concept aimed at an associative com-
munity along the same line as expressed by Tönnies, located before
the territorial powers36. Such power is incarnated here by the Tyrolean
counts and Austrian dukes, who are directly apostrophised in the text
as “lieber herr” [dear Lord]. The common laws were to be negotiated
with them, yet they were substantially put under discussion by the
centralised territorial law, the so-called “Landrecht”, which in 1404—or
just one year later—was to have its first reformulation carried out by
the Habsburgs37. The motivation behind this draft was, in addition to
the local contingencies, a potential contrast between the microcosm of
the community and the macrocosm of the territory.
We can find a trace of this: there is talk of masi (hóff—farms where the
workers were paid in kind) which were managed by settlers (pawlewt),
but here incorrectly (“die man unrichtiglichen arbait”), perhaps in terms
of not paying the tithes or under-use of the land. Such settlers could
be substituted by the authorities (herschaft) by force (“mit gewalt”).
Literally, this meant violence, but we can without doubt compare this
practice to today’s monopoly of power. In this way, the text legitimiz-
34 For this concept, see D. Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference,
Cambridge MA 1996.
35 W.C. BroWn, Charters as Weapons. On the Role Played by Early Medieval Dispute
Records in the Disputes They Record, in “Journal of Medieval History”, 28, 2002, 3,
pp. 227-248.
36 A critical and reflective use of concepts developed by Tönnies is considered pos-
sible by P. von moos, Fehltritt, Fauxpas und andere Transgressionen im Mittelalter, in
P. von moos (ed.), Der Fehltritt: Vergehen und Versehen in der Vormoderne (Norm
und Struktur, 15), Köln 2001, pp. 82-83.
37 M.P. scHennacH, Gesetz und Herrschaft, pp. 219-220.
12
es the tendency of the central powers to control the small pieces of
land, which made up the primary sector of the Pre-Modern economy.
Optimizing these settlements meant guaranteeing any surplus produce
from the fertile lands of the Adige Valley, which was in large part des-
tined to go to the authorities, by means of using the territorial courts
and, more directly, their representatives. The fact that friction arose
between the settlers and the state authorities on the subject of land
owning and management is no great surprise. The town of Salorno
was therefore the site of a potential conflict with diverging aims, or
rather between the permanently precarious situation of the settlers
on one hand and the stability of the income of the authorities on the
other, which were used to guarantee a large part of the gross domestic
product of the territories38. Such conflicts persisted and lasted, in
cyclical patterns, for all of the early Modern period, giving rise to,
for example, the peasant’s revolt of 1525 which plainly lays bare the
contradictions in the living conditions of the previous regimes in the
Alpine area39.
The second example leads us to the topic of “memory”, connected to
the cycle of generations, a resource in the resolution of conflicts con-
nected to rural economies, rooted in primary production, and strongly
anchored in models of subsistence farming.
The year is 1367. In a document drawn up in Bolzano, in the main
Kornplatz—or Corn Square (“in foro bladi ubi iudicium regitur”) by
the imperial notary Willehalmus, son of the late Otto, a certain Jaco-
bus Zässegleiger brings a case to the public courts against the lord,
Rendlinus de Turri, who was a member of the important Niedertor family
of Bolzano40. The case was brought before the public court, before the
ruling judge Hainricus Gurre, who in his turn was the substitute for
38 For a wide comparison on this antagonism, see T. iversen - J.r. myking (eds),
Land, Lords and Peasants. Peasants rights to control land in the Middle Ages and the
Early Modern Period – Norway, Scandinavia and the Alpine Region, Trondheim 2005.
39 For the regional situation, see H. oBermair, Logiche sociali della rivolta tradizionalista.
Bolzano e l’impatto della “Guerra dei contadini” del 1525, in “Studi Trentini. Storia”,
92, 2013, 1, pp. 185-194. For a more general context, see D. miller, Armies of the
German Peasants’ War 1524-1526, Oxford 2003.
40 For more information on such families, see M. BitscHnau, Burg und Adel zwischen
1050 und 1300. Grundlagen zu ihrer Erforschung (Mitteilungen der Kommission für
Burgenforschung, 1), Wien 1983, no. 447, pp. 389-390.
13
Franziscus de Rafenstain, the judge of Gries, which was the pertinent
Tyrolean judicial district41.
There are some 16 documented testimonials relating to this case, includ-
ing both ministerial documents but also, for the main part from people
from the bourgeoisie and rural areas, and even from the surrounding area
as a presence from Kastelruth in the Isarco valley underlines, and finally
from the judge. This fact means that we can talk of a real Pre-Modern
“concentration of difference” (Robert Park) which can be observed
here: the Alpine town in particular, given its precarious characteristics,
presents itself as represented by different lifestyles which intersect each
other in a, geographically speaking, very reduced, anthropized space42.
The subject of the dispute, whose existence was already confirmed in
earlier documents, was the tithe or half of it, which derived from two
agricultural units (curie terre) whose locations are accurately given. It
was the wine-growing settlement of Gries (near Zeslar-Rundenstein)
and the profits of the object in dispute were mainly a certain amount
of wine and occasionally of meat. In view of this legal argument, which
was booked to take place over two weeks, the defense brings forward
some 19 witnesses whose statements are abundantly documented. These
were mainly witnesses from the peasant class from around Gries and
from the fertile plateau of Jenesien; for example, there were Chunradus
Werner, Jacobus in der Grube, and Heinricus Wiser.
Their statements all offer the same structure: one records a period of
30 to 40 years (occasionally also between 15 and 26 years) and this
knowledge is documented. The semantic basis of the statements is
“N.N. dixit et protestatus est, quod recordaret circa triginta annos”
etc. I do not intend to go into the details of the testimonies, which
are of no interest here, but I would like to point out the connection
between conflict and memory. The technical, legal term for this type of
memory is encapsulated in the word “recordari” or records, and this
41 This document is to be found in the ample archival sources of the Ospedale di
S. Spirito di Bolzano and is published in H. oBermair, Bozen Süd – Bolzano Nord.
Schriftlichkeit und urkundliche Überlieferung der Stadt Bozen bis 1500, vol. 1, Bozen
2005, no. 741, pp. 361-362.
42 On the particular typology of Alpine towns, see in addition to J. matHieu, History
of the Alps, K. BranDstätter, Die Alpenstadt – Annäherung an einen Begriff, in “Tiroler
Heimat”, 67, 2003, pp. 261-287.
14
opens up a vast spiral of associations that can be anchored in ancient
times “rerum recordatio et memoria”, a trope often used by Cicero43.
The classicist Jan Assmann dedicated his concept of cultural memo-
ry44 to a subtle reconsideration of the assumption made by Maurice
Halbwachs who brought to light how the past, in traditionalist societ-
ies, was generally constructed in the function of a respective present
and its contingent necessities. Assmann added the analytical distinction
between the generalized collective long-term memory and a short-
term communicative memory, which included at the most three or
four generations. Owing to the “floating gap” of memory, this is only
succeeded by a cultural memory of myths and ceremonies, which is
highly stylized.
Such a communicative memory is what pervades the legal statements
taken before the court of Bolzano, which are connected to a recent past.
It is linked to the statements made by the witnesses (“presentes”), who
are regularly indicated in the notarial documents with name, occupation
and community of origin45. These are the indirect ingredients of the
codified memory, and they are what provide the snapshot of the conflict
itself, turning it from a “heated” event to a “cold” element which has
been registered, conserved, and which has more or less lain dormant.
Thus, the judicial interrogation of the year 1367 reproduces a deter-
mined life cycle. Speaking in a sociological sense, the generation cycle
as a non-standard unit of temporal measurement indicates the average
duration of the generative cycle, which ensues between the birth of
parents and the birth of their children, and this passage can be indi-
cated, in more traditional societies, to be of between 20 and 25 years.
The Bolzano document retraces this cycle, but also looks at a conception
of the recent past and therefore a determined perception of historical
43 cicero, Laelius sive de amicitia. Ad usum scholarum, ed. by J.B. mayer, Kempten
1831, cap. 27, p. 416.
44 J. assmann, La memoria culturale. Scrittura, ricordo e identità politica nelle grandi
civiltà antiche, Torino 19972.
45 For the peculiar characteristics of the late medieval Bolzano notarial profession see
H. oBermair, Il notariato nello sviluppo della città e del suburbio di Bolzano nei secoli
XII-XVI, in A. giorgi et al. (eds), Il notariato nell’arco alpino. Produzione e conservazione
delle carte notarili tra Medioevo e Età moderna (Studi storici sul notariato italiano, 16),
Milano 2014, pp. 293-322.
15
times as “futures past”46. It is substantially the medieval vision of the
past, still present in a group culture, which re-evokes a cycle of one or
two generations, which is available to their collective memory. It would
be difficult to deduce from a similar collective memory the degree of
“historical” consciousness, which was present in European populations
in the late Middle Ages. For them, the historical dimension represented
either the theological horizons of monotheist Christian religion, with its
clear points of arrival and departure, both of these points transcending
the historical secular horizons, or a dimension which was experienced
for a long time, which was envisioned as an eternal present whose
slow waves passed down from parent to child and to their children’s
children, almost in unbroken contemporaneity, but always expressed
in the same basic material conditions.
The third and last example leads us to a source taken from criminal
circles. It is the first Gerichtsprotokollbuch or protocol register kept
by the legal system in Bolzano dated between the years 1495-1517.
From the second half of the fifteenth century on, the district included
all of the area surrounding Bolzano together with Gries and had full
competence in criminal court cases47.
The codex consisting of approximately 120 pages, which is preserved
at the Provincial Archives of Bolzano, was the subject of an important
and detailed analysis by Brigitte Rath at the University of Vienna48.
She has published some detailed extracts from this codex from an
original, but equally tactful, feminist point of view49. The author
brought to light the interconnections between “crime” and the
notion of an infraction, fully following the indications of the label-
ling approach or the ascribing, relative and socially and ideologically
constructed quality of the criminal action and not of its essential
46 On the concept of the past as “futures past” see R. koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft.
Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt a.M. 1979, pp. 17-37.
47 O. stolz, Politisch-historische Landesbeschreibung von Südtirol (Schlern-Schriften,
40), Innsbruck 1937, p. 268.
48 B. ratH, Aspekte geschlechtsspezifischer Kriminalität in Bozen um 1500, Ph.D. thesis
Vienna, 2002.
49 B. ratH, und wolt das Schwert; B. ratH, Familienstand und geschlechtsspezifische
Kriminalität in Bozen im 16. Jahrhundert, in S. clementi (ed.), Der ledige Un-Wille.
Zur Geschichte lediger Frauen in der Neuzeit, Wien - Bozen 1998, pp. 257-268.
16
nature50. Rath did this on the basis of a statistical analysis of the
criminal events, which emerged from the proceedings registered in the
Bolzano protocol. If the criminal framework can be associated with
the wider field of conflictuality, the data which emerged from Rath’s
analysis gives a snapshot also of the social dimensions of the society
of Bolzano from both an economical point of view and one of gender.
In around 20 years, approximately 350 crimes were counted at the
level of legal proceedings.
Of these, 228 (= 65.8%) referred to crimes committed against property.
There were 74 crimes of violence (= 21.3%), there were 21 crimes
against public order and morals (this also includes sex crimes and is the
equivalent of 6%), 3 against religion (= 0.8%) and 20 against govern-
mental authority (= 5.7%). A total of 50 people were condemned, of
which some 41 (= 82%) were men. Seen in this way, the gap between
the two sexes is extremely noticeable. The distribution of the types of
crime does not vary significantly between men and women, where only
the rate of violent crime is much higher for men.
The family status of the wrongdoers is very revealing. As far as the
sources permit positive interpretation, it was normally single people and
in general, they were of no fixed abode. Both of these conditions were
the general circumstances for young people. In many of these cases it
was a sort of Lumpenproletariat, the Pre-Modern underclass, economi-
cally and socially disadvantaged, which found itself in a perennial state
of existential precariousness.
This means that the bonds were often very weak between people who
moved about the area and who were not yet settled in terms of prop-
erty or family, and the more settled population. Such mobility would
certainly have lowered the threshold for infraction of the existing
norms. On the other hand, the more settled, more ancestral population
would in their turn have been more in favor of reporting to the au-
thorities persons whom they deemed to be potentially dangerous only
because of their mobility and instability. Therefore, one could say that
50 For the state of research on pre-Modern crime in a historical-anthropological
perspective, see R. HaBermas (ed.), Verbrechen im Blick. Perspektiven der neuzeitlichen
Kriminalitätsgeschichte, Frankfurt a.M. 2009.
17
there was a construction of social antagonism based on matters to do
with property51.
IV.
As has been seen, the method of representing forms of conflictuality
present within communities have been represented in different ways and
on different levels in the written documentation which has been passed
down to us from that period and that region. Finally, to complete the
presentation of the cases discussed, and to reach a final consideration,
we can formulate three questions, or concluding observations:
1) The putting into writing, or the act of actual and tangible registration,
presents itself as the deciding element of objectivisation of the conflict-
ing elements, because it is the document and its performative essence,
which is not only the documentation but also the channeling, creating
and sometimes even resolving of the conflict. There exists therefore an
“analytical bridge/bond” between the writing and the conflict. Alter-
natively, to use the words of John L. Austin: How to do things with
words—every utterance of words is in reality a practical action.
2) But how strong is the imprinting by these texts on the practice? Or
is it practice that shapes the texts? Are there contradicting tendencies,
with ambiguous perceptions, or contrasts between the medium and
the sphere of social activity? Or is one thing unthinkable without the
other, and both intersect with each other indistinguishably? Certainly,
the texts would be opaque without the practice, but the practice in
its turn conforms to the legal and economic parameters existing at the
time. The relationship between the two is bi-directional, and includes
the liminal and interactive area between the oral and the written.
3) In his classic sociological discussion on space and difference, Georg
Simmel insisted on the fact that a certain amount of discord and diver-
51 A similar conclusion relating to England between the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies in reference to the wide sphere of parish economies is reached by R.C. palmer,
Selling the Church. The English Parish in Law, Commerce, and Religion, 1350-1550,
Chapel Hill NC - London 2002, pp. 112-142. For Bolzano-Gries see also V. stamm,
Grundbesitz in einer spätmittelalterlichen Marktgemeinde: Land und Leute in Gries bei
Bozen (Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Beihefte, 222), Stuttgart
2013.
18
sity, and conflict relating to a group or to a community, both internal
and external, has the effect that elements for finding solutions are dis-
covered and put in place, which have the effect of further compacting
the group or the community52. This affirmation could be of assistance
in a reconsideration and understanding of the nature of conflict and
the antagonistic moment, not so much as a dysfunctional element, but
rather as an important dynamic resource for the societies of the Late
Middle Ages and Early Modern period.
52 G. simmel, Das Ende des Streits, in “Die neue Rundschau”, June 6, 1905, pp. 746-
753.
Article
Full-text available
Article
Full-text available
The paper analyses blood feud as a legal custom of the system of conflict resolution in Inner Austria during the transition from the Late Middle Ages to the early modern period. Based on legal customs, common law, and early modern criminal law the analysis is applied to a case of blood (homicide) settlement in Upper Carniola (Gorenjska) in the 17th century. Two things in particular emerge: the long survival of this legal custom and the tendency of blood feud for peace. Both put Inner Austria in these matters firmly within the broader European legal context. Key words: blood feud, legal custom, confl ict resolution, peacemaking, Carinthia, Carniola, Styria, Bled, Late Middle Ages, early Modern Period
Article
Common ideas on medieval agrarian societies, which are also shared by many historians, are shaped by the perception that these communities were basically formed of two antagonistic blocks, bondmen and lords. The influence of our major sources on this depiction is obvious – they privileged the perspective of the then ruling groups anxious to consolidate their domination. But a thorough review of all available sources reveals some fractures in this pattern of interpretation. People come then forth, who cannot be subsumed under either of these categories. Their position was not similar to that of bondmen, and they did not belong to the class of the lords. One of their distinguishing features was that they disposed of varying ways of access to land. Not always did they depend on land allocations by the lords. They also owned land, they leased it, or they took it as a fief. Thus, relations of domination and of dependence were diversified. Being a personal subject of a lord did not necessarily mean to farm his land as a tenant, i. e. to depend economically on him. Even persons born unfree were able to acquire a socially elevated position, and their status was not exclusively defined by their servile condition.
On the concept of the past as " futures past
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und wolt das Schwert durch in stossen
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