Domestic violence in late-medieval Bologna

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    Abstract

    The aim of this paper is to suggest that married life in Renaissance Italy was much more violent than the current historiography allows. A survey of recent prominent works on marriage shows that violence, if mentioned at all, is briefly alluded to as a possibility, but rarely examined as a reality. This paper uses the voluminous records of the criminal court in Bologna to remedy this. A quantitative approach first of all exposes the strikingly high rate of wife-murder in Bologna, along with the associated wife-battering. A possible explanation for this is made, using the notion of a 'Mediterranean honour code'. The judicial records also reveal, however, that domestic violence was not the exclusive province of husbands, and a qualitative approach - drawing on notions of female subjectivity and the sex-gender system - is used to explore the trials of three violent women.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)527-543
    JournalRenaissance Studies
    Volume18
    Issue number4
    Publication statusPublished - 2004

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