Table Of ContentRoman Tales
Roman Tales: A Reader’s Guide to the Art of Microhistory explores both
the social and cultural life of Renaissance Rome and the mind-set and
methods of microhistory.
This book draws the reader deep into eight stories: a Christian-Jewish
picnic plus an ill-aimed stone fight, an embassy-driven attack on Rome’s
police, a magic prophetic mirror, an immured mad hermit, a stolen dwarf,
and the bizarre misadventures of a stolen roll of velvet, a truly odd elope-
ment, and a thieving child who treats his cronies to dinner at the inn. It
meditates on the resources and lacunae that shape the telling of these sto-
ries and, through them, it models an historical method that contrives to
turn the limits of our knowledge into an advantage by writing honestly and
movingly, to bring a dead past back to life, exemplifying and stretching
the genre of microhistory. It also discusses strategies for teaching through
intensive use of old documents, with a particular focus on criminal tribunal
papers.
Engagingly written, Roman Tales outlines the main principles of micro-
historical research and draws the reader outwards towards a wider explo-
ration and discovery of sixteenth-century Rome. It is ideal for researchers
of microhistory, and of medieval and early modern Italy.
Thomas V. Cohen is a professor of history at York University, Canada. His
previous publications include Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (2004).
Microhistories
Series editors: Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon
and István M. Szijártó
The Microhistories series is open to books employing different microhistor-
ical approaches, including global microhistories aimed at grasping world-
wide connections in local research, social history trying to find determining
historical structures through a micro-analysis, and cultural history in the
form of microhistories that relate directly to large or small scale historical
contexts. They are interesting stories that bring the everyday life and culture
of common people of the past close to the readers, without the aspiration
of finding answers to general “big questions” or relating them to the grand
narratives of history. The series is open to publishing both theoretical and
empirical works, but with a focus on empirical monographs which can com-
municate stories from the past and capture the imagination of our readers.
Published
The Revolt of Snowballs: A Microhistory
by Claire Judde De Larivière
A Tale of a Fool? A Microhistorical Study of an
18th-Century Peasant Woman
by Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir
Roman Tales: A Reader’s Guide to the Art of Microhistory
by Thomas V. Cohen
Forthcoming
Who Killed Panayot? Reforming Ottoman Legal Culture
in the 19th century
by Omri Paz
Puritan Family and Community in the English Atlantic World:
“Much Afflicted with Conscience”
by Margaret Manchester
Roman Tales
A Reader’s Guide to the
Art of Microhistory
Thomas V. Cohen
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2019 Thomas V. Cohen
The right of Thomas V. Cohen to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cohen, Thomas V. (Thomas Vance), 1942- author.
Title: Roman tales.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Microhistories | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002905| ISBN 9781138636934 (hardback :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315172965 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Rome (Italy)–Social life and customs–16th century. |
Rome (Italy)–Civilization–16th century.
Classification: LCC DG812.4 .C65 2019 | DDC 945.6/3207–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002905
ISBN: 978-1-138-63693-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17296-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Cenveo® Publisher Services
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Abbreviations vii
1 First thoughts 1
2 If on a summer’s eve a traveller, or two … 16
3 White angel 40
4 The Spanish ambassador’s brawl 62
5 Hermit on trial 82
6 The case of the purloined dwarf 125
7 Black velvet’s odd adventure 142
8 Nicolina runs away 163
9 A boy steals gold 189
Afterword 200
Bibliography 202
Index 209
Acknowledgements
A book of many pieces, long evolving, runs up debts of many kinds,
some so old that I probably omit thanks devoutly owed. Special gratitude
goes to my students, among them the undergraduates over the years who
studied the trials for chapters one, three, four, and seven, and especially
Elizabeth Petrucelli, who back in the 1980s first found and transcribed the
story in chapter eight of truant Nicolina. And I thank my recent graduate
seminar for their work on several stories here, especially Geoff Brooks,
and Virginia Grimaldi for keen general sleuthing and Aaron Miedema
for canny advice on sword and dagger matters too. For the velvet story
in chapter seven, I thank Dottoressa Alessia Meneghin for expert textile
trade advice. Professors Jodi Bilinkoff and Doris Morena helped me track
my hermit across Spain, and Diana Presciutti taught me about miracles in
painting. Dottore Michele de Sivo of the Archivio di Stato di Roma coun-
selled me about police matters and the labyrinth of criminal justice. Serena
di Nepi and Berny Cooperman helped me think about Roman Jews. Frank
Klaassen advised me on magic mirrors. Natalie Zemon Davis made me
clarify a chapter. For the past several years of intense consultation over
translation, Claire Judde de Larivière has been a boon companion in the
microhistorical craft, and, on this book, a source of well-targeted counsel.
Villa i Tatti gave me a berth, a good library, and lively academic company
for much of the writing. My York colleagues in my spunky, talented depart-
ment listened to my Roman stories. The staff at the Archivio di Stato di
Roma, where I find these and many other stories, were, as always, support-
ive and friendly. My two editors, fellow microhistorians István Szijártó and
Sigurður Gylfi Magnusson, permitted and encouraged the whole project
and helped me stay on course. My fellow-Romanist wife, Elizabeth, my
sternest editor and critic, backed me up as ever, and insisted it get finished,
so as to pick up threads of joint projects still pending.
Abbreviations
ASR Archivio di Stato di Roma
BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
GTC Governatore, Tribuinale Criminale
Coinage
quattrino about a fifth of a baiocco
baiocco variable, in accounts, worth one-tenth of a giulio
giulio ten baiocchi, a silver coin
grosso half a giulio
paolo another name for a giulio
testone three-giulio silver coin1
scudo gold coin, worth some 11 giulii
ducat gold coin, near the scudo in value
Note
1. Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust (2009): xi, for most of these values.
1 First thoughts
Microhistory looks very hard at past small things and contrives to tell their
story well. Easily said. But what does this simple statement mean? Every
phrase here demands a second thought. To look very hard: what does that
entail? Small things: what shape has this ‘small’, and what qualifies as
‘thing’? And what is it, indeed, to ‘tell well’? Nothing here is settled matter.
And for good reason, as microhistory is perhaps a practice, merely, not a
discipline, and is thus fluidly canon-free; if so, it settles reluctantly into fixed
habits, if ever.
A practice
Let us begin with the latter terms, discipline and practice, and then roll
back to the former matters: looking hard, small things, and good telling.
A discipline is a scholarly enterprise with solid apparatus behind it. Take
for instance paleobotany, musicology, or cultural studies. These substan-
tial endeavours have their societies, with their councils, annual meetings,
journals, newsletters and blogs, listservs, social media circles, juries, prizes,
and wide-spun networks. An apparatus, both human and institutional,
evaluates scholars’ work, publicises it or chooses not to, and helps channel
rewards, both financial and symbolic, to those who hew to its codes of
good production. A discipline, perforce, disciplines, in senses both bad and
good. By its very nature, it upholds standards of performance, squelching
shoddy work and nudging scholars to do their best. Whether a discipline, in
doing all this, stifles or encourages eccentric ideas and novel methods that
deserve a hearing much depends on its habits, and its openness to noncon-
formist members and procedures. A discipline channels capital, both the
cash it conveys, cascading from granting agencies outside it, and the less
tangible moral capital that lodges inside, in the form of prestige, recogni-
tion, and esteem. This moral capital dwells in the rankings of its journals,
congresses, invited lectures, and awards and in the charisma of host insti-
tutions. A discipline, dispensing capital, shapes its own practices.
