RICERCA ITALIANA     

THEORY AND PRAXIS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE BETWEEN LATE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES. HISTORICAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS, WITH COMPUTER PROCESSING

Università degli Studi di Bologna

Abstract

The present research (whose title can be summed up as 'Torrone Project') owes its name to the massive tower of the Palazzo Comunale in Bologna where criminal justice was exerted from 1530 up to 1796. Its jurisdiction expanded over the city and pertaining territory (Legazione). As subject to the Apostolic Legate pro tempore, it succeeded the Tribunal of the Podestà, once inserted in the local, municipal structure. The Torrone was therefore hated by the hostile bolognese Senate, that considered it as an external institution, as a concrete symbol of the pontifical power.
The Torrone records are the most consistent bulk of historical documents still preserved in Italian Archives (at least, regarding legal procedure for crimes exerted by political institutions in early modern era). They are now available to scholars at the State Archive in Bologna. As a total, they consist of about 10000 volumes containing complaints and Court records. Because their mass the papers have been scarcely studied until today.
Tasks of the bolognese research group (Faculty of Modern History) are the sample championing of the complaints made or sent to the Torrone in the years 1671-76 (16000 recs.) and analitic filing of all the trials delivered in the years above indicated (2500).
The final result will provide a systematic knowledge of the proceedings adopted by the Torrone under every point of view. Researchers assume that the considered period of time is relevant because it is a middle segment, well documented and at that time, G. Rinaldi, author of treatises on criminal procedure, acted as chairman in the Court.
The statistical data issued by this unity will be informatically organised by a leading expert in this field, dealing with advanced technologies. All informations will be thus accessible to scholars: names of the parts (plaintiffs and inquired); nature of trials; names of judges, notaries, attorneys, officials, final sentences and so on. Local historians, students of historical demography, anthropology, social culture are supposed to be interested in the rich materials thus provided and finally accessible in a simple DB on line. To conclude under this aspect, the Torrone Project is certainly the first wide-impact project elaborated for a city of great importance as Bologna is in Europe.
The bolognese unity (Law faculty) is particularly charged with the study of the relations between the Court praxis on one side and juridical science on the other. It is well known the deep interest cultivated by glossators and commentators, from the XIIth cent. onward (and widely, in the XVIth), in Bologna, about criminal procedure. A specific attention will be paid to roman-canonical process in its historical development. Such a research will furnish new perspectives in political history as the structure and administration of the Church State is largely concerned.
The unity of Torino and of Roma Tre aims to analyse the judicial organisation in Bologna during the Middle Ages. This diachronic perspective is necessary in order to make clear the most relevant changes in institutional structures from communal to Renaissance and early modern age. Complex relations between politics and law, central and local administration are at stake. Social control and repression of dissenting groups are also in question.
The unity of Parma is interested in the study of linguistic phenomena. The Court rolls and papers, although written in chancery Latin, offer wide and fascinating pieces of vulgar, ordinary language. One can evaluate, thus, the incidence of the cultural, elitist filter intervening to modify a popular, daily way of expression. It is also possible to compare noble and literary expressions of suffering with similar experiences in popular classes.
To conclude, the Torrone Project is conceived as a wide range research connecting various scientific fields, nevertheless seeking a global result of great academic impact. <<<

Principal Investigator

Andrea Padovani Università degli Studi di BOLOGNA

Research Objectives

The above mentioned project can be summed up in its main goals as follows.
First, the research intends to study analytically a Court, such as the Torrone of Bologna, which was anyway the most important one, as a criminal Court, in the Church State during the modern Ages. Such task has never been attempted before, at least in Italy. A champion filing of its papers will be made ready concerning the years 1671-76. Moreover, a detailed indexing will consider all trials prepared and concluded in the same period of time: at least, 2.500 trials.
Consequently, scholars will get a thorough knowledge about the real functioning of the Torrone under every point of view. There is no doubt that the rich material can be usefully employed by social historians, economists and demographers as well. Of course, the most important goal of the research is related to criminal procedure in its effectiveness. The complex relations between judicial praxis and coeve doctrine is at stroke. Possible overlapping (or disagreement) is under question. Such a problem becomes an interesting one in Bologna where the University is still an influental institution.
A convincing conclusion, on this point, can be reached only by means of a deep analysys conducted over court rolls.
Of course, again, we reasonibly assume that it is necessary to premisea study about the bolognese judicial administration active in Middle Ages. The most important changes from the autonomous commune to the roman government will become clear. In this perspective, history of law, institutional history and politics are - generally speaking - involved as well.
We further assume that such a research cannot avoid a linguistic approach. Vulgar tongue used byexamined people on one side, court latin used by inquiring judges and notaries on the other, are interestingly interwoven. Moreover, their wuays of expression can be compared to the most refined ones employed by coeval poets and men of letters (in Bologna or elsewhere).
It is also interesting to test the feelings perceived by humble people confronting themselves with a strong repressive apparate. A new sens of human personality, a new consciousness are probably emerging in the light of modern times.
To conclude, all the material thus available will be at disposal of researchers on line. New and reliable technics have been prepared by the staff of CIRSFID, an interdepartment centre of research which is part of the Law Faculty of the University of Bologna. Experts in Law, History and Informatics grant a successful treetment and diffusion of the data achieved in the course of the research. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

During the past Thirty years the History of Justice has become a very important topic for people to study premodern political systems. As for the Middle Ages, some Law Historians as P. Costa, M. Sbriccoli and A. M. Hespanha have seen in the iurisdictio the most important factor for the exercise of power in this age; other scholars, as M. Bellomo, E. Cortese and E. Conte, have focused on the role of juridical culture as a device to strenghten medieval political systems.
Beyond these works on doctrinal texts, also researches on judicial evidence have taken recently a different direction, pointing no more at an idealtypical “History of Criminality” – as it happened in the ‘70s –, rather at the strategies adopted by the governments to settle the disputes.
A contribution to this new “History of Justice” has arrived from different directions; social sciences and, in particular, juridical anthropology have lended important concepts to the historians of justice, as the works of J. Chiffoleau, F. Bougard, C. Gauvard in France, X. Rousseau in Belgium, P. Wormwald and C. Wickham in Great Britain, D. Nirenberg in USA, have showed. In Italy, the works of A. Padoa Schioppa, M. Sbriccoli, M. Vallerani, Jean-C. Maire Vigueur and Andrea Zorzi have focused on the Communes. Between the XIIth and the XIVth century, as a result of new political requests, the Italian cities of central and northern Italy created a new juridical system supported by the doctores legum, which brought to a big and complex record production.
Despite that, studies on Criminal Justice just today maintain, principally off of his link with the legal praxis. The arising in the late medieval Comuni, of criminal Courts of Justice, attest the strict nexus between praxis and theory. Especially was in Bologna, the famous ‘Tribunale del Torrone’.
Until today, the Torrone Archives have been studied partially, under the chronological perspective and thematic as well. One can be reassured on this point, just reviewing the bibliography following the report of the bolognese unity (Faculty of Modern History). Themes concerning social history – such as the local organisation of the guilds assisting condemned to death; the devastating impact of pestilence in the years 1630-31; the violent world of noblemen; family dramas (and infanticide in particular); the social status of the wrongdoers – have been the object of few scientific contributions. Anyway, it is sure that up-to-date no scholar has devoted himself to a precise and punctual examination of the Court in its functioning, its composition, its rites, its actual procedures compared to contemporary legal science. The Torrone (as named because it was placed in the big tower of the Public Palace) went on making justice since 1530 to 1796 and the Legazione of Bologna, including the city as well as the country area (which was nearly the equal-area of nowadays Province of Bologna) was under its jurisdiction. On average, each year 3000/4000 charges were sent to the Court of criminal justice and 400/600 of them were brought to trial: so, including victims, defendants and witnesses every year 10/15.000 people or so entered the courthouse when the population was growing from about 200.000 to about 300.000 people. The Archives of Torrone are the widest among the surviving italian criminal archives of early modern age; now they are kept in Bologna State Archives and all their sizes are easy to consult. The most of them goes to make up the charges and the trials recording. They are about 10.000 registers where over 1.000.000 charges and 120.000 trials are recorded. Since 1560 the registers sequence has few gaps and on the whole all the preserved registers are in good condition. Now the registers of the criminal court of Torrone have a brief account: for each register in fact are noted a) the name of the notary who wrote it; b) where were committed the crimes brought to trial (in the city or in the country); c) the trials arrangement by date. The ‘Torrone Project’ is, therefore, relevant in its task, dealing with a systematic filing of all the rolls, and papers then produced by the Court in a coherent and continuous period of time. The goal is, as far as one can see, radically new under every point of view.
The Torrone, ruled by the Cardinal Legate pro tempore who acted for the Pope, took the place of the court of podestà which instead depended on the ruling class of the city; so the bolognese Senate always opposed to Torrone and challenged the decisions taken by h judges because of it embodied the hateful papal power. The recent historiography has dealt under different points of view with this topic of the reinforcement of the political power and of the control on the jurisdictional activity. There are studies on several situations in the XIV and XV centuries, mostly about Tuscany, Venetian and Lombard towns, but with reference to this field we can state that other situations such as the Church and the Estensi states have been less studied. In general those studies have partly mitigated the strong hues of a picture widespread in 1950- 60s, assuming that, as the Signorie were established a kind of state justice emerged, stricter but righter and less influenced by the different opposing factions. From recent researches a different scene emerges: justice was the object of ideological manifestos, but was bridled in several jurisdictions and organisations of the late Middle Ages. Local and central judges came soon into conflict causing a large amount of disorders in the general system. Researches on the central government enlighten the contradictory efforts to control justice. This the main interest of our project: on the one hand studies on the procedures and beliefs of the process (Sbriccoli, Padoa Schioppa, Marchetti) insist on the gaining awareness about the superiority of the public justice and the inquisitorial procedure in comparison with other forms; on the other hand some more specific inquiries insist on the flexibility of systems and the different ways of administering justice by the political power. We are thinking that this delicate process of making justice through the prince’s cabinet and the petition is centred in the attempt to create a twin channel of the ordinary justice depending on an absolute and independent will like the one of the late medieval lords. We should deepen the knowledge of the way this system developed and of the coexistence of this double level of public justice.
Dependently from the general theme of the present research, particularly grounding in the Cinquecento-Seicento Bolognese milieu with its distinctive Tribunal of the Great Tower [Tribunale del Torrone]) our specific literary division presents a new scrutiny of some established literary works (e. g. the Decameron and the Documenti d’Amore by Francesco da Barberino) and a philological and critical restoration of a number of a long time forgotten ones. A distinctive feature of the man of letters was in those times a sort of curiosity regarding to the powers and the limits of the various types of special (e. g. poetical, juridical, pedagogical, religious) speech: Seicento variety vs Cinquecento uniqueness. Bolognese writers and artists look ideally at two alternative capitals, post-Renaissance and pre-Baroque Rome, under Pope’s protection, and Florence as the bulwark of a modern and precious linguistic Classicism observing nevertheless the forms of the ‘comic’ and ‘realistic’ theatre of the world (e. g. the really monstrous “La Fiera” [“The Fair”] in 25 acts by Michelangelo Buonarroti jr.). Which entails to pay attention to the ‘sister arts’, music and visual arts, as well as to a gradually renewed perception of some recognizable debts with the pre-Renaissance past (e. g. a no-Bembistic Boccaccio, or Francesco da Barberino who was supposed an illustrious ancestor of Barberini pope and patrons). While the juridical and literary speech gradually promotes a new art of critics (e. g. G. B. Manzini, a Bolognese writer and pedagogist, and the great B. Gracián). <<<