Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy
Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy
NZD$59.95
inc GSTThrough its examination of a city marginal to the Italian tradition of communes and city-states during the post-Renaissance period, the book offers an extended reassessment of what has been regarded as the typical Italian model of welfare. Acts of charity have often been interpreted either within a functionalist framework or merely as responses to the needs of the poor by reference to the elusive field of changing mentalités. This book seeks instead to illuminate the reasons for individuals' involvement in charity. Analysis of the relationships of power, and conflict within the actors' personal and political milieux, reveals that tensions within the social elites were a crucial factor in motivating charitable giving and even in shaping perceptions of the deserving poor. Special attention is paid to the symbolic and direct aims of charity, rather than to its explicit interventions. This focus on subjectivity also throws new light on the link between gender and charitable activity.
- Provides new insights on post-Renaissance Italy, which remains under-investigated in English scholarship
- Gives fresh evidence for the comparison between the English and the continental systems of poor relief and charity
- Focuses on the details and lives of individuals, their life stories and motivations, rather than on 'social determinants'
Product details
May 1995Paperback
9780521483339
300 pages
228 × 151 × 17 mm
0.434kg
17 b/w illus.
Available
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Sixteenth-century municipal plans for poor relief
- 2. Civic charity in the age of state formation
- 3. Motivations for charity
- 4 Charity and gender
- 5. Hospitals and poor relief in the age of absolutism
- 6. The state system of relief
- Conclusion
- Bibliography.
