High rates of interpersonal violence in Renaissance Italy were not signs of backwardness, requiring repression in order for the conditions of modernity to be set: quite the opposite. Italy, the most economically advanced and urbanised region of Europe, was the first to experience the negative consequences of social mobility and social differentiation. Notaries, accountants and lawyers were not modern bureaucratic functionaries. In order to be accepted as gentlemen they also had to act like gentlemen. The creation of a more amorphous social elite forced Italians to rethink the rules regulating social conduct, codifying the laws of civility and the duel, and elaborating the art of peacemaking. None of this stopped the violence however. Renaissance ideals of glory triumphed over the pious trappings of chivalry. Fighting was liberating, permitting any man, whatever his status, to win fame. Duelling became endemic, a corollary to and consequence of vendetta. The rest of this chapter outlines the contours of the new Renaissance masculine culture.

The conclusion summarises the main findings of the book. The erosion of medieval hierarchies and systems of mediation made competition for material resources and status rivalries more intense after 1500. Enmity is rooted in a sense of injustice and there was a growth in distrust between those who gained from and those who lost out to the burgeoning of state power. The law shaped enmity and mediated violence, but it did not repress them altogether. Enmity was a major threat to public order because its scale and intensity was related to the struggle for social and political capital. Most significant in generating the rise in elite violence was social change and the development of a caste code in which retaliation was seen as socially acceptable and politically necessary. The social elite were the most avid consumers of the law, and they used the courts alongside violence to uphold their honour and enforce their rights: rising rates of litigation in the sixteenth century were part of the same process of contention as rising rates of homicide. And just as violence declined in the eighteenth century, so did rates of litigation. The law promoted arbitration and reconciliation at every stage of the process. But the desire of the parties to fulfil their obligations and make use of the myriad institutions of mediation was dependent on social and political circumstance.

This chapter argues that the growth of litigation after 1550 is not an indicator of a decline of enmity among the social elite. In fact, the opposite is the case: social change generated new enmities which were fought using legal writs. The late sixteenth-century explosion of violence was not an indicator of ‘backwardness’ but a consequence of status anxiety as Renaissance ideas about merit and worth challenged traditional ideas about hierarchy and virtue. In the sixteenth century a great deal of conflict was generated by anxiety over reputation and the requirement to prove one’s status and place in the social order. The literature on the culture of enmity in Germany is arguably the richest in any European language. This is largely because south-west Germany and the Rhineland were the epicentres of the European witch craze. The ubiquitous recourse to magic was not just to snare a lover or restore health but also to take revenge. The records generated by witch hunts shed light on village disputes and the politics of enmity more widely. This chapter sets out to establish the parameters of the culture of enmity, to discuss some of its rituals and practices, and to show the ways in which the social elite attempted to distinguish itself from ordinary folk by adopting new forms of dispute resolution.

The Introduction outlines the historigraphical, conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the work. The concept of enmity allows us to rethink some common assumptions about the emergence of the European state, the law, violence and innate emotions. I am concerned with real people and their experience. Enmity is rooted in the ubiquitous nature of competition and rivalry between individuals and groups. Enmity is distinguished by the intensification of antagonism in which another group or person is perceived as threatening and must be countered by force. It is a relationship legitimised by a narrative which seeks to demonise the other, who is characterised as evil or subversive or a threat to one’s existence. The movement is not all one-way. We can make allies out of enemies or return to a healthy sense of rivalry. Enmity represents a particular threat to democracy whose flourishing relies on a healthy civil society and sense of social trust. In the period 1500-1700 the distinction between public and private enemies was more blurred than it is today because of the frequency of civil conflict. The transformation of social relations in the West was not the culmination of an ineluctable process, either of state formation or of the repression of instinct.

This chapter sets out the problem of disorder faced by Louis XIV and assesses the success and failure of his attempts to deal with it. The law, at least, was not the hammer of royal absolutism. The law continued to privilege reconciliation and arbitration over punishment. Under Louis XIV there were significant attempts to rationalise the system but negotiated justice prevailed until 1789. The high rates of violence that characterised France between 1560 and 1660 do not mean that France was a lawless society. The chapter argues that some of the problems that had beset France in the mid-seventeenth century reappeared around 1700. This was followed after 1725 by the remarkable efflorescence of French civil society. It concludes by suggesting that this social equilibrium was not overthrown by Revolution in 1789, but that the Ancien Régime system of social control was already under strain by the 1780s and that rocketing levels of interpersonal violence were indicative of the ways in which the political and constitutional crisis were impacting everyday social relations.

German practice in the sixteenth century was catching up with the more centralised systems that had existed in France and Italy since the fourteenth century - punishment was in theory severe but in practice the system was governed by the ubiquity of pardons and out-of-court settlements. The significance of the reforms was to give the state greater purview over private settlements. Sovereign authority was enhanced by the exercise of grace through pardons and remissions. But there were some peculiar features about the peace in the feud in Germany. This chapter sets out the traditional practices of Sühne, its interaction with the law and the church, and some reasons for its decline in the seventeenth century. Like other northern Europeans, Germans did not develop the sophisticated ethico-political treatises that the problem of violence encouraged in Italy, and the domain was largely left to moralising sermons. But during this period, educated Germans were exposed to new stoic ideas about peace. German ego-documents are especially rich in their ruminations on quarrels and the ups and downs of litigation and peacemaking.