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The Politics of Space in Early Modern Rome
Laurie Nussdorfer
Wesleyan University, [email protected]
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THE POLITICS OF SPACE IN EARLY MODERN ROME
Author(s): Laurie Nussdorfer
Source: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 42 (1997), pp. 161-186
Published by: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome
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THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERN ROME
Laurie Nussdorfer
s absolute as the pope in Rome"was a simile that seventeenth-centuryItaliansinvoked
when they wished to express the notion that a ruler could do exactly as he pleased.
Spatiallythe popes of the Counter-Reformation
lived up to this image by carvingout and
clearinggrand ceremonialvistas that invited the admirationof Rome and the world. Their
patronagecontributedto two of the most famousmonumentalpublic spaces in earlymodern
Europe, Michelangelo'sCapitoline plaza in the sixteenth century and Bernini'sSt. Peter's
square in the seventeenth.As the patrons intended, these rhetoricalgestures of absolutist
urbanism-the great "stagesets" of the Counter-Reformation
papacy-have long succeeded
in dazzlingvisitors and scholarswith the magnificentlyarticulatedauthorityof the popes.
But what was the realitybehind this image from the point of view of the urban population
who were the popes' subjects?Therewas more than one actor on the city stage, and authority in Rome was not as easily monopolized as the pontiffs tried to suggest. In this study I
analyzethe political characterof papal absolutismfrom the perspectiveof the Romanpopulation, focusing on the rhetoricaluses of space that this populationarticulated.
The rhetoricof absolutismturned all eyes towardthe prince. But this rhetoricveils the
fact thatthe eyes and attentionof the prince'sdevotedandobedientsubjectswere often turned
elsewhere.Romewas a city of diverseand independentcentersof influence.Despite the relative success of the papacy'sefforts to deny subjects any formal public authority,patrician
families,religiousorders,and foreignembassieswere just some of the groupsthat rivaledthe
popes as foci of private,less formal,attentionand power.Lackingpolitical institutionsthat
gave them an active role in decision making,these and other urbangroupsfound other ways
to advanceor protecttheir interests.The city landscapeitself becamea substitutefor participatory institutions;it was a flexible and accessible rhetoricalresource. When we see how
these city dwellersutilized and gave meaningto urbanspace in their privatebattles for social
prestigeor for controlof particularneighborhoods,we understandmoreclearlywhy the popes
themselvesresortedto such grandiosepublic gestures.Space in Rome was a vehicle for political expression.Here I explore how papalsubjectsused urbanspace as a meansof expression and what their use of space revealsabout the tensions within this particularabsolutist
regime,an elected monarchyrulingan Italianstate and an internationalchurch.
In probingthe politicalmeaningsof "private,"that is, nongovernmental,space in Rome,
we shall see that the city had a great diversityof types of space. Our protagonistsare a wide
rangeof Romanresidents:people of variedgender,class, culture, and nationality.If "space
A
I am grateful for the suggestions of Nicholas Adams,
Patricia Fortini Brown, Elizabeth S. Cohen, Joseph
Connors, Gene Irschick, Burr Litchfield, Michael
Meeker, Pamela Radcliff, Peter Sahlins, and Marla Stone.
I would also like to acknowledge with gratitude the late
Fred Travisano, who drew the map of Rome.
162
LAURIENUSSDORFER
speaks,"as the anthropologistssay,the spaces examinedhere brag, mock, shout, argue,and
throw things.1This study discussesthree questionsraisedby such contention.Whatkinds of
space were fought over in baroqueRome?How did space express or activateconflict?And
what does contestedurbanspace revealabout the natureof this absolutistregime?
I pursue the role of space throughsome typical examples of Romanquarrels:some involving domestic and neighborhoodbattles, others involvingfamily and institutionalrivalries, still others involvingpolitical disagreements,religioustensions, jurisdictionalcontests,
or challengesto governmentalauthority.By examiningthe variedlocales of disputes,I seek
to find out how spaces were chargedwith meaningor activatedin struggle.AlthoughRome
sharedcharacteristicswith other earlymoderncapitals,the regimeto which it gave a setting
markedits urbanpolitical culturein unique ways. In concludingI attemptto connect these
examplesof contested and vocal space with the specificitiesof absolutistgovernmentas the
popes practiced it in Rome. I begin with space that was closest to home, domestic space,
then push into the heartof town, and finallymove outwardto the city'sedge.
1. Neighborhood
andDomesticQuarrels
When we examineurbanquarrelsat the smallestand most privatescale, we immediatelynotice a strongconnectionbetweengenderand space. It is usualto think of conflictin the early
modern city as somethingthat happenedin "publicspace"and to discoverin such conflicts
and spaces that women were largelyabsent. But if we look at the more intimate arenasof
social interaction,the neighborhoodsand houses of seventeenth-centuryRome,womenwere
often protagonistsin spatialcontests.Moreover,space itself was very clearlya genderedconcept in the minds and habits of earlymodern urban people. In a discussion of gender and
topographyin RenaissanceVenice, Dennis Romanohas highlighted the differencesin the
uses and images of space for men and women. Venetianmen claimedthe whole city as permissible terrain,while women took riskswhen they left the vicinity of their home parishes.
The ritualand political center of town, the piazzaof San Marco,was genderedmale, as was
the great Rialto bridge where the heart of Venetiancommercebeat. Female space, by contrast,was parochialand domestic.2
While no similarglobal study has been made of Rome, Venetiangender geographyalmost certainlyhad its counterpartin other Italiancities. Seventeenth-century
Romansources,
whether narrativechroniclesof urbanevents or criminalproceedings,rarelydepict women
in action out of doors. In only one instance, duringthe special period of interregnumafter
the pope's death known as the VacantSee, have I found mention of women as political participantsin crowds,in this case a throngchantingmockingsongs againstthe formerpontiff.3
1 E. T. Hall, The Silent Language (New York 1959),
quoted in Burke, 7. Among the most significant recent
theorists of the rhetoric of urban space is M. de Certeau,
The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley 1984); see esp.
chap. 7, "Walking in the City." For a survey of theoretical work on space and power see D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford 1980). For a brief but
thoughtful treatment of the historical connection between
urban space and politics, see J. Konvitz, The Urban Mil-
lennium: The City-Building Processfrom the Early Middle
Ages to the Present (Carbondale, Ill. 1985) 25-31.
Romano, "Gender and the Urban Geography of Renaissance Venice," Journal of Social History 23 (1989)
339-53.
2D.
[Teodoro Ameyden], "Diario della Citta e Corte di
Roma . . . ," Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 1832, 145.
3
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
163
Althoughwomen were physicallypresentin the streets,they were not present in representations of spatial conflict. In most chronicles or news accounts, all male-authored,the lone
female protagonistsare aristocratsor nuns dying "in the odor of sanctity."They are in enclosed settings and they are pacific, though the holiness of their lives might well become
contentious.The more disputatiousfemales,notablycourtesans,who appearin courtrecords,
despite their status as "publicwomen"who presumablycould move about with greaterease
than most of their sex, preferredto use male agentswhen organizingpersonalvendettasin
the streets. As ElizabethS. Cohen has shown, even women who flouted the generalrules of
genderproprietyin earlymodernRome adheredto genderednotions of urbanspace.4These
examplesleave the impressionthat the most visible arteriesand squaresof the baroque city
were indeed coded as male.
Such a markedgender boundarybetween the visible space "outside"and the invisible
space "inside"would lead us to expect a volatile terrainwith a pronouncedgender dimension at the bordersof "outside"and "inside."And indeed, as Cohen puts it, "the doors and
windows of early modern Rome were exciting places, emotionallyand sexually charged."5
On this smallerurbanscale, criminalproceedingsdocumenttensions that were expressedin
a rich arrayof spatialgestures,often with a sexual component,directed at houses. Noisy or
dirty rituals of "house scorning"and the posting of anonymousinsults on doorwayswere
two forms such conflict took. On a June night in 1608 a crowd, whistling, farting,blowing
horns,andthrowingstones,criedout to a couplelivingin PiazzaSant'Agostino,"procuress...
slut ... we want to put horns on your door."6A quieterrevengemight leave excrement,ink,
or blood on the front portals of artisanhomes or drawphalluses (and horns) there or stick
up handwrittensheets denouncinghusbandsas cuckoldsand wives as whores.7
Interpersonalconflictsbetweenpeople who kneweach otherbroke out at the house door
because of the gender connotationsof domestic space;here was the locus and most vulnerable point of female and male honor.8Rhetoricallythe best way to lower a man'sreputation
was to blackenhis wife's;spatiallythe choicest site for characterassassinationwas their residence. The associationof women with houses made sexual insult targetingfemale behavior
the preferredform of personalattackby both men and women. Althoughwomen were more
often victims than perpetratorsof "house scorning"rites or defamatorylibels, they sometimes commissionedsuch business or even took part themselves.9Markingthe house in this
public mannershamedone's enemybefore the world that counted here, the audienceof the
neighborhood.The meaningfulnessof the space in front of a building is a theme that will
I
E. S. Cohen 1992, 621-23.
5
Ibid., 621.
6
Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), Tribunale Criminale
del Governatore, Processi (1608), busta 67, 194r-v,
quoted ibid., 604-5. For the location of Piazza Sant'Agostino, see fig. 1.
I Examples from ASR, Tribunale Criminale del Governatore, Processi, are cited in E. S. Cohen 1992, 602-3;
Burke, 95, 104; Scrittura e popolo nella Roma barocca,
1585-1721, ed. A. Petrucci (Rome 1982) 25, 33-34.
8
E. S. Cohen 1992, 621.
9 Accused of posting written insults were two courtesans and a quarryman's wife; Burke, 107. E. S. Cohen
1992, 615-16, describes two cases of female-initiated
"house scorning." In one the courtesan Agnese de
Incoronatis organized two "house scornings" by male
acquaintances against her enemy Domitilla Corvina and
dressed herself as a man to participate in the second
one; ASR, Tribunale Criminale del Governatore,
Processi (1607), busta 57, 500-506. In the other case, a
unique instance in which a woman attacked a man
through a "house scorning," it was directed at the interior rather than the exterior of his house; ASR,
Tribunale Criminale del Governatore, Processi (1601),
busta 12, 803-1 lv.
164
LAURIENUSSDORFER
reappearwhen we considerthe role of urbanpalacesin the rivalriesof patricianfamilies.It is
worth noting that front doors or walls of modest artisanaldwellings also had special resonance, impartednot by architecturalskill but by the gendered characterof space in early
modernRome.
What lay behind the doors was no less a battleground,as men and women inside houses
fought with each other for freedom and control. Two examples of illicit love recentlyanalyzed by ElizabethS. Cohen and ThomasV. Cohen allow us to look more closely at the spatial dimensionsof these emotionalepisodes. An impassionedyouth writes to his lover that
his mother has moved to block his secret nocturnalexits. She has taken awayhis door key
and denied him access to a particularroom in the house because she thinks he talks to his
lover from that room. The resourcefulyoung man will try to sleep in a differentroom, "under the loggia."He is a virtualprisoner;his motherlocks the door everynight, and she makes
him keep the door to his roomopen at all times so that she can see him and makesure thathe
is not openinghis window.He begs his lover to show herselfat her window.And, while she is
at it, he asks that she "plugup that hole."'0In this domestic arena,conflict between mother
and son focused on getting out.
In another,quasi-Boccaccian,case the issue was getting in. A notary'swife succeededin
having a love affairwith a neighbor,even though her husbandlocked her inside as he left
each day.The house was meantto be an enclosureto insure the honor of husbandand wife,
but it turnedout to be a tissue of apertures;windows,backyards,attic crawlspacesall served
The suitorfirst got the lady'sattentionby throwas waysof piercingits protectiveconfines."1
ing a messageinto the backyardand by speakingto her maid, a key intermediary,from his
balcony.A window providedthe meansto conveya signal.In the crawlspace above the ceiling of a second-storyroom,the protagonistscut a hole between the adjoiningbuildings;soon
the enlarged opening acquired an artfullyplastered cover. When discovered, the lover is
glimpsed midwaythroughthe ceiling, his torso in the crawlspace and his legs danglingbelow. He scramblesto safety,as the angryhusbandpokes the ceiling from below with a spear.
In city living, domestic space was vulnerableto subversionfrom within, as well as assault
fromwithout.People could see andbe seen frombalconies,backyards,courts,and windows.
As the Cohens note, houses shared"frangible"walls."2Domestic space failed to suppressor
containthe conflicts of maritalpartnersand becameinsteadthe theaterof their enactment.
2. FamilyandInstitutional
Rivalries
As we shift from the passionateand episodic quarrelsof kin and neighbors to the studied
architecturalstrategiesof patricianfamiliesandreligiousbodies, the spacein questionchanges
character.It becomes space with a particularsocial or institutionalidentity,a distinctlylocated space. Greatfamiliesand religiousordersbought propertyand put buildingson it, and
10 ASR, Tribunale Criminale del Governatore, Processi
(1602), busta 18, 715-40, transcribed and analyzed by
E. S. Cohen, 'Between Oral and Literate Culture: The
Social Meaning of an Illustrated Love Letter (Rome,
1602)," in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe,
1500-1800, ed. B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse (Ann Arbor,
Mich. 1993) 183.
11E. S. Cohen and T. V. Cohen, "Camillathe Go-Between:
The Politics of Gender in a Roman Household (1559),"
Continuity and Change4 (1989) 61. The court records that
the Cohens analyze are found in ASR, Tribunale del
Governatore, Processi (1559), busta 48, case no. 15.
12
Cohen and Cohen (as n. 11) 60.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
165
in the process often left a lasting mark on the urban landscape. The city townhouses or palazzi
constructed in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries by important native families like the Massimi, the Cenci, and the Altieri, or immigrants like the Barberini, the Pamphili,
the Chigi, and the Corsini, retain the names, and sometimes the descendants, of their original
patrons. The churches and attached residences put up by such new Counter-Reformation
religious orders as the Jesuits, Theatines, Oratorians, and Barnabites, or the reform branches
of older orders like the Carmelites and Capuchines, form part of the visual memory of anyone visiting the city today. In the early modern period, elite families and religious orders
took literal possession of discrete pieces of the urban environment, reshaped them, and made
them into physical signs of their identity. They expressed their family and institutional aspirations in architectural terms that reconfigured the space around them. They made it theirs,
or tried to.
In a study of what he calls the "institutional urbanism" of baroque Rome, Joseph Connors
has drawn attention to the way the large palaces and convents erected in this period transformed their sites.
The partsof Romethat seem unplannedare usuallyplannedaroundthe interestsof powerful individualsor institutions.Operatingover long spansof time, tenaciouslyguarding
principlesof self-interest,fosteredand sometimesharnessedby popes but neverentirely
dominatedby them,largebuildingsbecameenginesof changethatgaveshapeto muchof
the city.'3
Seen from above, the street plan of Rome shows the results of this process; the tangle of
medieval byways clears for a moment in an eccentrically, often brilliantly, designed space
around an imposing architectural compound.
As Connors demonstrates, such spaces often reflect competition between families or orders who hoped to enhance their image and found themselves threatened or thwarted by
rivals in the same neighborhood. Although "status bloodbaths"'14 conducted over urban space
were not at all unique to Rome, the protagonists in these particular dramas owed something
to the special character of the city. They were relatives of popes who suddenly had money to
build on a grand scale, or representatives of Italy's ruling families who needed to have a presence near the papal court, or religious orders that required a headquarters in the Church's
central seat.
In 1610 the Medici grandduke of Tuscany looked out the back of his Palazzo di Firenze
(fig. 1, no. 1) with covetous eyes toward the family palace of the reigning pope, Paul V Borghese
(1605-21). He saw an opportunity to exploit the Borghese's recent efforts to give their residence a more dignified setting by clearing space before it. The year before they had taken
advantage of a Roman law that allowed compulsory purchase of adjoining properties by larger
neighbors for purposes of beautification; they had bought and destroyed a warren of small
buildings to create the neatly geometric Piazza Borghese. They made known their possession
of the space in no uncertain terms: chains kept the public out, and no windows or doors
could be opened onto the piazza. The Medici ruler found this vista so alluring that he at once
13 Connors, 209. For a model study of this type of local
impact by a powerful family, see M. Bevilacqua, II Monte
dei Cenci: Una famiglia romana e il suo insediamento
urbano tra medioevo ed etd barocca (Rome 1988).
14 The phrase is that of Erving Goffman, as applied in
C. Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York
1973) 436.
166
LAURIENUSSDORFER
designed an addition to his palace that would overlook the new square.But the Borghese,
freshlyarrivedat the apex of wealthand social prominenceby their acquisitionof the papacy
five yearsbefore, had no intentionof permittingan establishedprincelydynastyto enjoythe
fruitsof theirlabor.The pope immediatelycounteredMediciplansby buyingpropertyacross
the streetfromhis nephew'spalace and puttingup a wall that would keep anyonefromlooking down on it. As a trumpcard,he suggestedthat whateverpiazzathe Medici might create
on their own would be a good place for a market,a sure kiss of death to aristocraticdecor
and decorum.Papalfamilieshad muscle,at leastwhile theirkinsmanheld office, which made
even princes retreat,and the Medici drewback.'5
In the contest between Borgheseand Medici, one is struckby the eloquenceof voids. In
the tight skein of streetsthat makeRomesuch a denselytexturedurbanfabric,to carveout a
clearingwas a statementof power,a rhetoricthat the Borghesedid not inventbut had learned
from earlierpapal families.However,space spoke in a more preciselyvisualway as well, for
the point of opening it up was to makeit easierto see the palace in the background.'6Owners wished to frame their fa,ades elegantly so as to enhance the aesthetic impact of their
constructionand thus their own prestige.In this context the Medici intention to profit visually from the Piazza Borghesewas not merelyopportunistic,enabling them to enjoy a nice
view,but boldly competitive,permittingthemto challengetheir rivalsfor the spectator'sgaze.
Competitionbetweenreligiousordersalmostinevitablytook on spatialdimensionsin Rome
for therewere more andmoreof themfromthe sixteenthcenturyon and they all wantedto be
in the Tiberbend (ancientCampusMartius),thoughnot all succeeded.For the increasingnumber of new ordersand new branchesof old ordersthat soughtheadquartersnear the papacy,
institutionalvisibilitydemandedcentrallylocated sites;as Connorsnotes, Rome'sdomed skyline still atteststo this insistence.In fact, monasticbodies were sometimesuncomfortablyclose
and quarreledover urbanspace.'7The shapingof the tight little squarein front of the church
of Sant'Agostino(fig. 1, no. 7, and fig. 2) is a narrativeof thwartedmovesby rivalorders.
The Augustinianswere there first and prospered.In the fifteenth centurytheir medieval
church and convent were fashionablyrebuiltin the new Renaissancestyle. In the 1570s the
Counter-Reformation
brought them a new neighbor,the Jesuits, who were given a nearby
palaceand churchfor use as a college for nobles fromGermanHapsburglands. The German
College expandedwith amazingspeed, and by the 1630sit occupied not one but two sides of
the piazzain front of the Augustinianchurch.18To maketheir suffocatingpresenceeven more
oppressiveto the Augustinians,theJesuitsdesignedan aerialbridgeto link theirtwo buildings.
15J. A. F.Orbaan, Documenti sul baroccoin Roma (Rome
1920) 172-75, 188, and H. Hibbard, The Architecture of
the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, Memoirs of the American
Academy in Rome 27 (Rome 1962), 138, doc. 56, cited
by Connors, 224-26. For a discussion of palaces built
by papal relatives in the seventeenth century, see P.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and the
Art of the Plan (New York 1990).
16
C. L. Frommel, Der romische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance (Tubingen 1973) 1:14-24; Connors, 227.
Luigi Spezzaferro, in collaboration with Richard Tuttle,
argues that the Farnese are the first to make use of empty
space in a powerful rhetorical manner: "Place Farnese:
Urbanisme et politique," in Le Palais Farnese (Rome
1981), 1.1:113-14.
17 Connors, 260-61. Female religious orders were also
involved in such contests; see, for example, the nuns of
Sant'Anna versus the Barnabites, ibid., 267.
18
In an unusual glimpse of the social meanings attached
to buildings by contemporaries, Giovanni Domenico, one
of the victims of the "house scorning" that occurred in
this square in 1608 (see above), reprimanded his attackers for their noisy behavior so near the church of
Sant'Agostino; he did not seem to think that either the
Augustinian fathers or the student lodgers in the German College as neighbors were owed the same degree of
respect as the church itself; E. S. Cohen 1992, n. 22.
THE POLITICS OF SPACE IN EARLY MODERN ROME
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Fig. 1. Map of Rome (drawingby Fred Travisano).
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168
LAURIENUSSDORFER
SuddenlySant'Agostinolooked as if it had wanderedinto the courtyardof a giganticJesuit
boardingschool.The Augustinianscounterattacked
by buyingup propertyon the one side that
remained,expandingtheirconventthereand addinga new library,the BibliotecaAngelica.In
1659the architectFrancescoBorrominiwas at workfor themon plansfor the spacein frontof
the heavilypressed church,hoping to follow the commonRomanpracticeof providingthe
churchwith a squareas wide as its faqade.'9Borrominidevelopeda numberof gracefulpossibilities,whichwould have createda generousand symmetricalspace,includingone that eliminatedthe Jesuits'aerialbridgeand anotherthat shaveda corneroff theirpropertyand set one
of theirbuildingsback severalyards.Not surprisingly,
the Jesuitsopposed redrawingproperty
lines for the sakeof urbanisticaestheticsthatenhancedAugustinianprestige.Theyblockedthe
improvementsand left their neighborsinelegantlyboxed in their tiny claustrophobicsquare.
The rivalrybetween the two orderscontinuedarchitecturallyratherthan urbanistically,with
both mountingmajorbuildingcampaignsin the mid-eighteenthcentury.It was an ironicfootnote to the contestedspacein frontof Sant'Agostinothat the pope calledon a local Augustinianin 1769to draftthe bull suppressingtheJesuitorderworldwide.20
Thanksto Connors'work,
we now know that the strugglesbetweenthe Jesuitsand Augustiniansfor visualcontrolof the
piazzathey sharedin Romewere almostas old as theirconflictsover theology.
In earlymodernRome,patricianfamiliesand religiousinstitutionsfought over how their
buildings would be framed, and thus over spatial identity and effects, in part because the
heart of the city was so denselyoccupied and in part because they expected people to look.
By the seventeenthcenturythere was not much room to maneuverurbanistically;property
lines were fixed, public land was jealouslyprotectedby civic officials, and recalcitrantneighbors could often maneuveraroundthe laws authorizingtheir destruction.Most makersof
visual statements,papal familiesaside, had to be content with small aggressivegestures.Instead of an entire piazza,they had to be satisfiedwith a cornerthat jutted prominentlyinto
the street, arrestingthe pedestrian'seye, or a doorwaythat lined up axiallywith the portalof
a church, drawingthe attentionof the faithful as they exited after Mass.2'These persistent
and vigorouseffortsby familiesand corporatebodies to markthe city physicallywere not as
flashyor enduringas those of the Borgheseor Medici or even the AugustiniansandJesuits.
But they all resultedfrom a commonassumptionthat there were visual consumersfor such
signs. Rivalryof this type ultimatelydependedon the existence of viewers,real or imagined,
who would makethe space in front of palacesand churchessomethingworth arguingabout.
3. PoliticalDisagreements
Of course, there were plenty of other reasons to argue in Rome, and some that expressed
themselvesin territorialtermsarosefrom the internationalrole that the city playedin European politics. Catholicmonarchskept an eye on what went on at the papal court;beyondthe
bordersof the Papal Statesthe popes had legal powers,financialresources,and propaganda
impact,whichno ambitiousruler,at leastbeforethe eighteenthcentury,could affordto ignore.
Foreign governmentsworked energeticallyto keep their interests alive in Rome;moreover,
19
Connors, 273.
20
Ibid., 279.
21
Ibid.,fig. 19, p. 223; fig. 25, p. 228; p. 254.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
169
they could often count on sympathyfrom a substantialcommunityof their subjectsliving in
the papal capital.
The intersectionof these two features of foreign presence in Rome sometimes proved
volatile. Because Rome was a city hospitable to all Catholics, yet thickly wired with testy
representativesof Europe'smajorstates and "national"or ethnic groups, it became a battleground for distant political conflicts. Europeanwar and revolutiontouched off local violence between foreignerswho either identifiedwith the goals of their countrymenor found
that they could not escape being so identified.
Space operatedin two distinctmodes to conditionthese quarrels.It produced fixed urban "hot spots" that were likely places for tensions to ignite. The churchesassociatedwith
particular"nations,"usuallythroughan ethnicallydefinedreligiousconfraternity,
were a prime
example;everyone from the Croats to the Bretons had one. Second, space was something
activatedby the movementof a resonantpersonage,in this case the ambassadoror envoy of a
foreign power.The route a diplomattook was public news, as was his destinationand turnout. When, in situationsof conflict, he became a target, he gave a mobile "charge"to the
space throughwhich he passed.
Before analyzingsome examplesof foreign contestsplayedout along the Tiber,I should
clarifythe meaning of the presence of non-Romansin Rome. Rome was full of foreigners,
some just passingthroughand manysettled in for generations.In this respectRomewas both
like and unlike other Italiancities. To an importantdegree, all earlymoderntowns grew by
attractingnewcomers,and, in the greatspurt of populationgrowthof the second half of the
sixteenth century,few cities could have been found in Europewith no foreign immigrants.22
In some ways, however,the foreign componentin Rome'spopulationhad unique inflections not found so significantlyelsewhere.Of course,there were the pilgrimswho, especially
during Holy Year celebrations,arrivedin the hundreds of thousands. But less evanescent
"outsiders"were those who had come to work in Rome and who formed "national"communities tied to a sharedplace of worshipthrougha religiousconfraternity.Despite their large
retinues,it was not mainlythe ambassadorsof foreignpowerswho accountedfor the proliferationof more than two dozen nationalchurchesby 1700;the generalconfigurationof upper-classemploymentin the city was a more importantfactor. Since the Middle Ages, the
papal bureaucracyhad included a sizable componentof non-Romanofficials.23From lowly
secretariesin the Roman Curia to lofty cardinalsof the Sacred College, to say nothing of
wealthyfinanciers,men trainedin law and letters from well-establishedfamiliesall over the
peninsulacontinuallymade their way to Rome. On their coattails came fellow countrymen
looking for jobs and using local patronagenetworksto find them. Once ensconced in the
papal capital, foreignersnurtureda commonidentity in nationalbrotherhoodsthat dotted
the city with their churchesor chapels.24
De Vries,European Urbanization 1500-1800 (Cambridge 1984) 141-42, 199-200; J. Delumeau, Vie
economique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitie du
XVIe siecle (Paris 1957-59) 1:188-200.
22 J.
p. Partner, The Pope's Men: The Papal Civil Service in
the Renaissance (Oxford 1990).
23
24
C. B. Piazza, Operepie diRoma descrittesecondo lo stato
presente (Rome 1679) 565-604; M. Maroni Lumbroso and
A. Martini,Le confraterniteromanenelle loro chiese (Rome
1963). Vincenzo Paglia has mapped the locations of Roman confraternities in La pietd dei carcerati:Confraternite
e societd a Roma nei secoli XVI-XVIII (Rome 1980). A
recent article argues that Spanish monarchs consciously
used their foreign churches and confraternities to build a
unified Spanish "nation" in the papal capital; see T.
Dandelet, "Spanish Conquest and Colonization at the
Center of the Old World: The Spanish Nation in Rome,
1555-1625," Journalof ModernHistory 69 (1997) 479-511.
170
LAURIENUSSDORFER
An example of the influence of such sites on the articulation of conflict in Rome comes
from the middle period of the Thirty Years War, after Spain and France began direct military
engagements in 1635. Their Roman churches, the Castilian San Giacomo and the French San
Luigi, then became magnets for political hostility; nor did it help matters that they were only
two blocks apart. One well-known episode occurred in April 1636 in front of the entrance to
San Giacomo on Piazza Navona, Rome's great market square (fig. 1, no. 9). A group of Spaniards taunted and then punched a Frenchman who was standing outside, possibly hoping for
alms. He departed but must have had an idea where to go to find eager listeners for his tale
of woe because an angry band of Frenchmen soon rounded the corner and assaulted the residence attached to San Giacomo. From within, the Spaniards threw stones down on their
attackers, but the Frenchmen multiplied, swelled by Savoyard reinforcements, and ransacked
a glassmaker's shop and the market stalls for objects to launch in return. The fight engulfed
the whole piazza, and, though the arrival of government officials and large numbers of papal
police calmed things temporarily, more Castilians joined the fray after nightfall. Fired by this
riot, high tensions between the two "nations" continued for some time, both around San
Giacomo and at places where chance brought Frenchmen face to face with Spaniards.25
"Hot spots" could be fixed, as in the case of the churches of national confraternities, or
they could be mobile. The persons of ambassadors were mobile, as were their residences for
much of the period. As we shall see, in the later seventeenth century, embassies began to
become a more stable element in the urban landscape, acquiring permanent locations and
influencing their neighborhoods in distinct ways. But before this time the representative of a
foreign power simply rented an available palace. Thus the diplomatic symbols of a foreign
state, both sites and men, floated, and ambassadors were more identifiable in movement than
at rest. They could create zones of potential political conflict simply by riding through the
city streets. One case when such potential was actualized arose in the wake of Portugal's
successful rebellion against Spanish control in 1640. The Portuguese were eager to get papal
approval of their independent existence and sent an envoy, the bishop of Lamego, to Rome
in 1642. The Spanish ambassador, the Marchese de los Velez, hoped to eliminate the irritating presence of the Portuguese representative, however, by ambushing him on his return from
a luncheon meeting with his key ally,the ambassador of France, who was lodging at the Palazzo
di Ceri behind the Trevi fountain (fig. 1, no. 5). The Spaniard sent eighty armed men to trap
the diplomat in the thicket of alleys through which his carriage had to make its way back to
his rented quarters in the Palazzo de Cupis in Piazza Navona. But the French were warned
and came to their guest's rescue with a force of their own, while the papal police followed to
try to keep the factions apart. Shooting broke out as the carriages of the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors headed toward each other on the narrow street in front of the church of
Santa Maria in Via (fig. 1, no. 4), and utter pandemonium ensued. The Portuguese envoy fled
for cover to a tavern, and his wounded Castilian antagonist, carriage smashed and horses
killed, found refuge in the palace of a friendly cardinal. Eventually papal guards escorted
Lamego to his palace and left a troop of five hundred men to protect it.26
Giacinto Gigli, 162; for another contemporary source
see L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, trans. E. Fowler
(New York 1901) 3:374-75. Gigli's diary reveals that the
day before the episode in the Piazza Navona broke out
the pope had dispatched his envoy to try to make peace
between France and Spain.
25
26 Gigli, 210; Pastor, 29:208-9. After 1622 Spanish ambassadors were lodged in the rented Palazzo Monaldeschi
on the Piazza della Trinitadei Monti, which became known
as the Piazza di Spagna after this residence was purchased
by the king of Spain in 1647; M. Barberito, ed., Diario di
Roma by Giacinto Gigli (Rome 1994) 1:243, n. 34.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
171
Diplomats were certainlynot the only people whose physical passage through the city
was volatile. Contemporarydiariesare full of stories of scuffles and riots sparkedby aristocratswho would not give way to each other as precedencedemanded,though tales of deliberate ambushare rarer.What I have emphasizedhere are the spatialand social featuresthat
conditioneda particulartype of contestedspace in papalRome. "National"sites and narrow
streets,immigrantswho retaineda strongsense of collectiveidentityand mobile representations of foreignstates,often proved combustiblewhen combinedwith the passionsof distant
conflicts.
4. ReligiousTensions
Jews were not foreignersin Rome;in fact, they may have been its oldest residents. In the
MiddleAges they playedan activerole in the urbanworld;while not an enormouslyprosperous community,they managedto make a living, raisefamilies,and worshipwithout arousing
much attentionfrom the Christianmajority.In the fifteenth centurythe conditions of familiar and unremarkablecontact slowlybegan to change,and emblematicof new times was the
institution of a Jews' race for the pre-Lentenfestivities of Carnivalin 1466.27The Roman
Jewish communityalreadyhad a traditionalpublic relationshipwith civic authorityat Carnival time;they providedfunds for the annualpre-Lentengamesand rode in the yearlyprocession with representativesof the guilds,feudalvassaltowns, and city districts,concludingwith
an act of homageto the magistrateson the Capitolinehill. TheJews' racemarkeda departure
from this traditionperhaps only in degree:a less decorous exhibition, more intimatelyrelated to spectators,potentiallymore comic and more vulnerable.But it was a new occasion
to markJews publicly as Jews, and it occurredin the context of a widespreadcampaignin
Italy to increasethe distinguishingsigns by whichJews were identified.28This was not neutralin its effects. The first satiricalplaysmockingJews, calledgiudiate,are recordedin Rome
in the fifteenth century;in the sixteenthcenturythe violence of ChristiansagainsttheirJewish neighborsfollowingthe EasterPassionplaysin the Coliseumbecame so regularthat performanceswere prohibited after 1539.29The intensificationof the campaignof differentiation culminatedwith papal ordersthat establishedan official ghetto for RomanJews in 1555
and with a spate of laws to preventmanykinds of ordinarycontact between RomanChristians and Jews.30
The creation of the ghetto (fig. 1, no. 3), a densely textured rectanglenext to the busy
bridges leading to Trastevere,was the most dramaticredrawingof Rome'surbanspace during the early modern period. For the first time an area within the city was defined as set
off, by legally mandatedboundaries, for one social group. Among the heterogeneous mix
of "nations"that circulatedin Rome,Jews alone had to live apart.In the heart of the city
A. Esposito, "Gli Ebrei a Roma tra Quattro e
Cinquecento," Quaderni storici 54 (1983) 815-45;
Boiteux, 783, 750; for the most detailed discussion of
the zone around "piazza giudea" in the period before
the ghetto was established, see Bevilacqua (as n. 13)
40-60.
27
28
D. Owen Hughes, "Distinguishing Signs: Ear-Rings,
Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance
City," Past and Present 112 (1986) 3-59.
29
Boiteux,758, 762.
30 Gigli, 163-64, reports a renewed effort to enforce legislation of the late 1550s in 1636; A. Milano, II Ghetto di
Roma (Rome 1964).
172
LAURIENUSSDORFER
henceforth there was a zone of confinement and alterity,and thus a newly charged set of
boundaries:the walls of the ghetto. The ghetto in the city's center and the Jewish cemetery
on the Aventinehill at its edge (fig. 1, no. 19) were the two nodes that the sixteenth centurymarkedmost intenselyby religiousdifference.3'The "Jews'weed patch" (ortacciodegli
ebrei), as the cemeterywas contemptuouslycalled by the Romans,had its precise counterpart across town in a special burial ground for prostitutes.32Urban space, an irrelevant
factor in the interactionbetweenJews and Christiansbefore the 1550s, would never again
be neutral. Yet if it was new for tensions to express themselves in spatial terms, what was
not new was their stronglytemporalarticulation.Timingwas key in conflicts between Roman Jews and their neighbors, although the time that matteredwas determinedby varied
measures.Here we will look at two types of dispute in two kinds of time, the first during
Carnival,a regularlyoccurringseason fixed by the liturgical calendar,and the second during the Vacant See, an unpredictablylocated period produced by an elected monarchical
regime.
Althoughthey are recordedas earlyas the fifteenthcentury,CarnivalplaysmockingJews
becamemore common,elaborate,and prominentin the course of the seventeenthand early
Thesegiudiate,as the anti-Semiticsatireswere called,were rarelystaged
eighteenthcenturies.33
indoors in the formaltheatersof aristocraticpalaces,but were a subgenreof informalstreet
comedy.During Carnival,the time of year traditionallygiven over to plays and playgoing,it
was customaryto mounttheatricaldisplayson decoratedcarts,or carri,an earlymoderncounterpartto the paradefloat, and move them aroundthe city.At a likely corneror piazza,the
carrowould stop and actorswould amusebystanderswith a performanceon diversethemes.
Often, when Jews were the topic, it was their alien ritualpracticesthat were held up to ridicule: marriagecustoms, circumcision,and especiallyburial,made so visible by the trek out
of town to their cemeteryon the Aventine.34
The de facto institutionalizationof the giudiate
in the course of the seventeenthcenturyshowed up in small details: giudiate scripts were
printed for the first time; artisanguilds, minor theatricalentrepreneurs,and neighborhood
groupstook over the sponsorshipof floats;giudiatemoved indoorsto convertedgranariesor
other low rent proto-theaters.Their increasingpresence may have been due in part to the
generaldevelopmentof new formsof theaterin this period, as well as to the loss of an outlet
for anti-Semiticimpulseswhen the pope put an end to the Jews' Carnivalrace in 1668. The
legal statusof the giudiatewas ambiguous;the producersof a carrodecked out secretlywith
an elaboratearchitecturaldepiction of a synagogue(scola)were arrestedfor indecent words
in 1666, and public performancesof giudiatewere sometimesforbidden. But much else of
3' Boiteux, 779. See also K. Stow, "Sanctity and the Con-
struction of Space, the Roman Ghetto as Sacred Space,"
in Luoghi sacri e spazi della santitd, ed. S. Boesch Gajano
and L. Scaraffia (Turin 1990) 593-608, and F. Barry,'Roman Apartheid? The Counter-Reformation Ghettoes,"
Daidalos (March 1996) 18-31. For a brief but evocative
modern reflection see C. Elling, Rome: The Biography of
Its Architecture from Bernini to Thorvaldsen (Tiubingen
1975) 387-89.
Boiteux, 776. Both cemeteries are shown on the map
of Rome engraved by Giovanni Battista Falda in 1676;
see A. P. Frutaz, Le piante di Roma (Rome 1962) vol. 3,
tav. 357-63. In 1566 Pope Pius V ordered prostitutes
32
into a speciallysegregatedresidentialquarter,alsocalled
the ortaccio,near the tomb of Augustus;the restriction
wasnot as effectivelyenforcedas thataffectingtheJews,
however,and by 1600 the prostitutes'ortaccioextended
over a very broad zone between Porta del Popolo, PiazzaSanSilvestro,andthe Tiber.See E. S. Cohen,"Seen
and Known:Prostitutesin the Cityscapeof Late Sixteenth-CenturyRome,"RenaissanceStudies(forthcoming), and Barry(as n. 31) 19-20.
A. G. Bragaglia,Storia del teatro popolareromano
(Rome1958), 247-65; Boiteux, 757-59, 780-82.
33
34
Boiteux,757-58.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
173
dubious decency was toleratedby the government,and it fell to the Jewish communityto
protest-cart by cart and script by script-these sacrilegiousmasqueradesand to demand
their interdiction.35
Spatiallythe mobile Carnivalentertainmentsqualifyas objects that "charged"the corners at which they pausedand the streetsthroughwhich they moved. Like the statelypalaces
of elite families,they acquiredmeaningonly becausepeople looked at them, but unlikethose
buildings they created audiences,turningpedestrianstemporarilyinto viewers and uniting
them in scorn at the religious outsiders in their midst. In general, the carts' itinerariesfocused on and aroundthe privilegedCarnivalroute par excellence, the Corso, the main street
where the races took place from Rome'snortherngate at the Porta del Popolo to the foot of
the Capitolinehill. This choice may have served to increase the audience and avoid more
provocativeareas,such as the bordersof the ghetto, severalblocks southwestof the Corso.
When a giudiatamocking a Jewish funeral did pass close to the ghetto in 1609, the Jews
retaliatedby throwinghousehold objects at those involved;more than a hundredJews were
arrestedafter this incident.36The carridid not usuallysparkphysicalcombat betweenJews
and Christians,however;the insistentappealsof theJewishcommunityto papalofficialswere
the most commonform of opposition.
In a sociological sense, space may also help explain the popularityof the giudiatewith
specific quartersand trades. MartineBoiteux makes the point that it was the riverinedistrictsnearestthe ghetto, and vendors,like the fishmongers,whose marketwas adjacentto it,
who most assiduouslypromotedthese derisivedisplays.37
But if proximitydid indeed breed a
desire for the psychologicaldistancingof mockery,it was a taste keyed to indulgenceat Carnival, the holidaywhen appetitesof all sorts were celebratedand indulged.38
The other period of time in which Jews and Christianscontested space was during the
VacantSee, that necessarybut unpredictableintervalwhen Romehad no pope. Since Rome's
was an elective ratherthan a dynasticmonarchy,an interregnumwas a perennialexpectation
in urbanpoliticallife. The VacantSee was a period legendaryfor its lawlessness,as the city's
busiest tribunals, the papal courts, could not function when there was no pontiff.39The civic
magistrateswho tried to keep order under these conditionsoften had to issue public edicts
forbiddingharassmentof Jews, who were a vulnerablegroup duringsuch times. The ghetto,
with its great gates locked at night, was potentially a source of protection for the community,
but it was also an enticement.
In the Vacant See of 1644, for example, the records of charges brought before district
judges called caporioni reveal an irritating kind of meddling with ghetto residents by the artisan patrols deputed to police the city's fourteen wards or rioni (fig. 3). These patrols functioned only during the Vacant See, and on the first day the capotoro who headed the band
35
Ibid., 775-76, 780.
Avvisi di Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb.
lat. 1077 (28 Feb. 1609), cited ibid., 758.
teenth Century," Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988)
209-21.
36
37
Ibid., 780-82.
For an interesting Jewish parallel to the Christian ludic
season, and its influence on behavior, see T. V. Cohen,
"The Case of the Mysterious Coil of Rope: Street Life
and Jewish Persona in Rome in the Middle of the Six-
38
The 1562 bull of Pius IV, "In eligendis," laid down
the rules that governed the conduct of the Vacant See
during the early modern period: Bullarium diplomatum
et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum pontificum, 25
vols. (Turin 1857-72), vol. 7 (1862) 230-36. See also L.
Nussdorfer, "The Vacant See: Ritual and Protest in Early
Modern Rome," Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987)
173-89.
39
174
LAURIE NUSSDORFER
Fig. 3. An artisanrione patrol makingits nighttime roundsduringthe VacantSee
(from conclaveplan of 1669 engravedby G. B. Faldaand publishedby G. G. De Rossi in Antoine Lafr?re,
Speculum romanaemagnificentiae[Rome 157-h, MarquandLibraryof Art and Archaeology,
Departmentof RareBooks and SpecialCollections,Princeton UniversityLibrary).
from the rione of Regola, which adjoined the ghetto at Piazza Giudea, was anxious to demonstrate his rights over ghetto territory. From Piazza Giudea he had his drummer alert the
quarter to the rule that everyone had to put a lamp in the window at night as a crime deterrent. He ordered the Jews at the main gate of the ghetto to remove its bolt so that his troop
could freely enter by day or night. That this was not viewed favorably by the Jews was attested later that day when the officer found a Jewish locksmith putting the bolt back on,
which he then confiscated. The capotoro and his band seem to have taken full advantage of
their access to the ghetto to make punctilious arrests, such as that of a certain Salamone,
"(wanderingat night without a light." Coming upon "a quantity of Jews gathered together in
a conventicle," the capotoro had them seized, then brought charges against the onlooker, described as "thatJewish banker,")who yelled at the patrol from his window, "Cunning thieves!
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
175
This is how you lead poor men to the slaughter!"The officer repeatedthe words to the district official he served, "so that justicewould be done."40
In the annals of Christianmistreatmentof Jews, these are perhaps minor annoyances,
but they show how the creationof a segregatedurban enclave for a religious minorityencouraged attempts to violate it. The ghetto was a temptationto those who, like the local
artisansof the rione guard,wantedto satisfyan expandedsense of their own power and actually had the chance to do it during the VacantSee. Spatialprivilegewas part of a political
grammarexplored furtherin the next section. Only duringthe interregnum,however,was it
somethingthe normallyhumbleRomancraftsmancould appropriateand safelyuse againsta
social group that was even more lowly than his.
5. Jurisdictional
Contests
Sometimescontests over space in papal Rome were reallystrugglesover rights. After all, if
MichelFoucaultis correct,territoryis less a geographicalnotion than a juridicopoliticalone;
it is "theareacontrolledby a certainkind of power."41 Holders of bits of power mayseem to
be quarrelingover space, when they are in fact fighting over authority.This notion of territory seems particularlyrelevantto an absolutistregime,which posited an unchallengedsovereign at the head of the state, but attachedhim or her to a social body composed of multiple, overlapping,competingcorpusclesof privilege.In Rome,as in the rest of ancienregime
Urban space
Europe, the legal landscapewas a patchworkof differentkinds of authority.42
was subject to a wide varietyof juridicalclaims, and disputed juridicopoliticalclaims expressedthemselvesas spatialconflicts.
One of the most interestingintellectualdevelopmentsof the seventeenthcenturyintersects preciselywith these issues of jurisdictionand territory:the elaborationof the notion of
diplomaticimmunityand extraterritoriality.43
As we sawin an earliersection, ambassadorsto
the papal court did not commonlyhave fixed abodes before the mid-seventeenthcentury.
When they began to settle down geographicallyafter 1650, however,they did so within the
rapidlyknit mesh of new legal thinkingabout their rights.Accordingto this thinking,immunity was not limited to the buildinghousingthe diplomat'sphysicalpersonbut stretchedout
over adjacentstreets. The resultwas the subtractingof whole areasof the city from Roman
authoritiesand their concession,in effect, to the crownsof whateverforeigngovernmentwas
being represented diplomatically.Thus, to take two of the most prominent examples, a
"quartieredi Francia"and a "quartieredi Spagna"establishedthemselvesfirst juridically
and then spatially(fig. 1, vicinityof nos. 13, 14). In 1687 when Pope Innocent XI was trying
to abolish these privileges,a documentwas drawnup that listed the exact streets, squares,
churches, and palaces in the neighborhoodof the French ambassador'sresidence, at that
40
The cases heard by the caporioni are kept in ASR,
Tribunale del Senatore, Processi, vol. 147 (1644), buste
134, 143. On the rioni see below, n. 46.
M. Foucault, "Questions on Geography," in Powerl
Knowledge, ed. C. Gordon (New York 1980) 68.
41
See L. Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban
VIII (Princeton 1992) chap. 4.
42
Neveu, 482. See also Niccol6 del Re, Monsignor
Governatore di Roma (Rome 1972) 44. Ecclesiastical
immunity offered a much older model for seventeenthcentury diplomats. In Rome churches served as sanctuaries that were off-limits to judicial officers, a fact that
led to occasional contests over space; for an example
from 1676 see Specchio di Roma barocca: Una guida
inedita del XVII secolo, ed. J. Connors and L. Rice (Rome
1990) 118-20.
43
176
LAURIENUSSDORFER
time the PalazzoFarnese(fig. 1, no. 13), which were subjectto his jurisdiction."According
to the doctrineof extraterritoriality,
no armedpolice agent (sbirro)or soldier could enterand
no judicialwarrantscould be executedwithinthis rathersubstantialambit.Criminalssought
by papalpolice simplycrossedthe streetleadingto Ponte Sisto (fig. 1, no. 12) and theywere,
untouchably,in "France,"althoughpolice sometimesdid touch these bordersand ended up
scufflingwith Frenchguards,or their Spanishequivalents,over a suspect they had pursued.
Even when crime was not an issue, however,this space was "hot." The volatile truth
about jurisdictionwas that it could neverbe sufficientlydefined and could be preservedonly
at the cost of constantvigilancepreciselybecauseit was aboutpower.In 1688 when an honor
troop of the pope's personalsoldiers,the famousSwiss Guard, accompanieda group of cardinals to Mass at the English College, which was located in the "quartieredi Francia,"the
Frenchambassadorangrilyprotestedto the pope.45Frenchsovereignty,at its ratherexposed
outpost between the Campodei Fiori and the Tiber,had sufferedan affront:armedmen had
violated its flanks. Battles over privilegedspace were a form of political negotiation,in this
case between the pope and France,which could only be endlesslyrepeated,since they could
dramatizebut not decide the questionof who was stronger.
Jurisdictionaldisputewas touchedoff not only by specialplacesbut also by specialtimes.
The VacantSee was an especiallypotent stimulusto conflict for it createda temporalenclave
in which Romanshad an unequaledopportunityto stretchtheir bits of power.The removal
of the pope throughdeath reconfiguredauthorityin the city, creatingan enhancedsense of
their rights among a proliferationof holders of jurisdiction.In the same rione-basedartisan
patrols that we saw pressingtheir claimsinto the ghetto, for example,we see equal aggressivenessto defend theirturffromeach other.46Often the resultswere bloody,since craftsmen
were not usuallyallowed to handle weapons and the police duties they assumedduringthe
VacantSee were one of the few opportunitiesthey had to bear arms. Usually scuffles between patrolserupted at the alwaysill-definedrione boundariesthat overlappedan existing
public square;in other words, it was not the entire perimeterof a district that was volatile,
but those points along it that intersectedsome smallor medium-sizedpiazza.Thus it was the
space between the two rioni of Regolaand Parione,in front of the Monte della Pieta or governmentpawn bank, that saw a fight between districtsin 164447(fig. 4). The patrols of the
The French ambassador settled down in the Palazzo
Farnese soon after Queen Christina of Sweden left it in
1659; Neveu, 476. The 1687 map of the French quarter
published ibid., 483, includes the area between the
present-day Via dei Pettinari (former Via di Ponte Sisto)
and Via delle Grotte on the south to Via di Montoro on
the north and between the Tiber River on the west and
the Campo dei Fiori on the east (fig. 1). See also Specchio
diRoma barocca (as n. 43) 47-49.
On the Spanish quarter see L. Kociemski, "Un
fattaccio di cronaca del Seicento," Strenna dei romanisti
23 (1962) 184-87, and Pastor, 32:342-46.
44
46 The rioni were thirteen (later fourteen) medieval urban districts that had electoral, festive, and military functions, to which were added police and judicial duties
during the Vacant See. They were administered by the
lay gentlemen who also controlled the municipal government on the Capitol. Although in the early modern
period they had to compete with parishes as units of local administration, they continued to serve as meaningful territorial entities in a wide variety of contexts, from
lay charity and public instruction to guild elections. See
Nussdorfer, Civic Politics (as n. 42), passim.
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Conclavi (1644), 279r-v,
298r; Gigli, 258; Archivio Storico Capitolino, Credenzone I, vol. 6 (16 Aug. 1644). Rione boundaries were
not formally recognized until 1744; before that time the
authorities on their location were the capotori, the artisan captains of the district patrols who led this and other
battles.
4
Neveu, 500-501. This episode took place during the
period between 1687 and 1689 when Pope Innocent XI's
struggle with Louis XIV over his envoy's jurisdiction was
at its peak; F. de Bojani, "L'affaire du quartier a Rome
du XVIIe siecle. Louis XIV et le Saint-Siege," Revue
d'histoire diplomatique 22 (1908) 372-78.
45
177
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
'L;
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Fig. 4. The rioni patrolsof
Regola and Parione came
!to blows in the piazza (X
in center of plan) in front
of the Monte della Pietd
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See
1644 (afterRome 1748:
of The Pianta Grandedi
Roma of Giambattista
in Facsimile
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Noll
N.Y 1984]).
[Highmount,
1,
neighboring rioni both entered the square at the same time, exchanged gunfire, and left two
men dead. Despite attempts to discipline the amateur troops, such incidents recurred in 1644
and in other Vacant Sees.
This behavior at rione boundaries seems to have had more to do with the desire to exercise rights that existed uniquely during the interregnum than with preexisting animosities.
The same protectiveness about jurisdiction was demonstrated by the upper-class district officials, or caporioni, who could act as judges only in the Vacant See. Though a caporione was
not necessarily even a resident of the rione for which he was responsible, he became scrupulously attentive to his boundaries, refusing, for example, to allow a warrant issued by the
caporione of an adjacent district to be executed in his domain.48The interregnum remapped
authority in papal Rome, giving fresh energy to many of those corpuscles of privilege that
were normally fairly passive. I have discussed lower- and upper-class laymen in these examples
because laymen in particular profited from the juridical peculiarities of the Vacant See. As
new and unfamiliar contenders for power entered the lists, they articulated their expanded
perception of their rights in contests over space, the territorial idiom in which so much that
was important in early modern politics was argued.
Giacinto Gigli was the punctilious official involved in
this incident; Archivio Storico Capitolino, Credenzone
XI, vol. 14, 132v.
48
178
LAURIENUSSDORFER
6. Challengesto Government
Stone-throwing youths have something to tell us about urban space and papal absolutism.
This section discusses two occasions on which Romans took up stones to defend themselves
because the papal government could not insure their safety. These are examples of popular
action that indirectly acquire a political dimension because they comment on and are in dialogue with the authority of the state. The space contested in these examples is, in the broadest sense, Rome, understood as a network of streets and squares that contain people. It is
urban space not just fought "in" and "over,"but at times active symbolically and tactically in
its own right. Some of the spatial themes we have encountered earlier recur in these incidents, such as the "charging" of particular buildings or piazzas, but some novel aspects also
appear. Events could alter and rearrange the ways city residents constructed urban space.
Here we see how space was made meaningful, negatively and positively, to young men of the
popular classes and how they activated certain meanings for political ends. The final example
shows how space that had become significant in one context could carry its associations into
different contexts. I begin with the two episodes, one in 1650 and one in 1736, and then look
back at the circumstances of popular culture that informed them.
In the summer of 1650, recruiters for man-hungry Spanish armies, intent on filling their
quotas and unconcerned about how they did it, descended on Rome.49It became dangerous
to be out in the streets, especially at twilight or high noon when they were likely to be deserted, because any young man risked being kidnapped. Sometimes the illegal recruiters, or
ingaggiatori, used guile, for example, engaging a delivery boy to carry vegetables from the
market to the house of the Spanish ambassador and then locking him up. At other times they
used force, simply halting pedestrians or carriages and seizing their occupants. The reigning
pope, Innocent X (1644-55), seemed complicitous with the abductors, in part because his
niece was married to a Roman nobleman, Prince Niccolo Ludovisi, who held a Spanish military command, and in part because he took no action. As one contemporary wrote that summer, when the pope was told of the bitter popular outcry against the Spaniards, "he answered
that we have to be patient, nothing can be done, and the Spaniards need help."50
Angry over their treatment by the Spaniards and unable to stir a response from the government, gangs of Roman youths who happened upon a kidnapping in progress sometimes
were able to free their compatriot by pelting the agents with rocks. Three Spaniards laid
hands on a streetsweeper in Piazza San Silvestro (fig. 1, no. 8) one noon, and a passerby who
went to his defense was soon joined by boys hurling stones. Two of the Spaniards fled in the
direction of the ambassador's palace, but one took refuge in the church on the piazza, where
he was pursued by the youths who continued to throw stones at the church doors. The Spanish ambassador's whole retinue then returned, brandishing swords against the boys, when
"suddenly a great number of stone throwers (sassaioli) big and small, more than three hundred, appeared and while they threw stones chanted slogans against the Spaniards."''5The
boys quickly got the upper hand.
Upon hearing that Spaniards were involved, their enemy, the French ambassador, who in
1650 was residing not far away in the Barberini palace at the Quattro Fontane, armed his
49
Gigli, 367-71; Pastor, 30:183.
50
Gigli, 369.
51 Ibid.,
370.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
179
servantsand headed for the square,joined by the retainersof the most powerfulpro-French
cardinalsand nobles in the city. Artisansin the nearbystreets shut up their shops and also
ran to the Piazza San Silvestro.Papal troops in the fortressacross the river,alerted by the
sight of the people of the Borgo quarter(fig. 1, no. 11) armedand readyto cross the bridge
to join the crowdin the piazza,haltedtheirpassagewith artillery.The inhabitantsof Trastevere
(fig. 1, no. 17), the other districtconnectedby bridge to the main part of the city,were similarlyblockedby the pope'sCorsicanguards.Despite these precautions,a huge throng-which
is probablyhow we should translatethe figureof twentythousandgiven by our source-was
now gatheredoutside the churchwherethe Spaniardwas still trapped.Theybegan to rumble
with plans to set fire to the palace of the pope's nephew Prince Ludovisi and to that of the
Spanishambassador.Finally,severalcompaniesof papal cavalryand police succeededin dispersingthem.Althoughnothinghappenedexcept the temporarycreationof a largeand threatening crowd, the incident seemed to leave Romansfeeling more confident. They had scared
the recruiters,and they remindedthem of it by chantingtheir menacingverses whenever
they caughtsight of a Spaniard.52
The episode revealsan interestingdifferenceof opinion between the papal government
and its subjectsabout urbanspace andwhat kinds of actionsshould be toleratedin it. To the
pope, systematicaggressionagainstRomansby the agents of a foreign crown was permissible, though collective popularretaliationwas not. InnocentX seems not to have regarded
the city at large as his sacrosanctjurisdiction,and, given the tissue of privilegedauthorities
in Rome, he probablyhad good reasonnot to. Nor did he seem to regardthe persons of his
subjectsas symbols of his authority;it was no affrontto papal dignity that Romansshould
disappearinto Spanishholds. In some fundamentalsense, then, neither the streets nor the
people in them were his. When he put his troops into service, it was to protect what were
essentiallypowerfulindividualinterests-his own familyand the representativeof a foreign
state-and their embodimentin buildings.
On the other hand, to the Romans,both those who filled Piazza San Silvestroand the
many who stayed home, the basic safety of persons was crucial. When their streets made
themvulnerable,they complainedand then rapidlytook mattersinto their own hands.Physical intimidationwas their tactic, alwaysspontaneous,at first small-scaleand finallymassive.
Althoughthe setting for this particularconfrontationwas a product of chance, the fact that
it was a piazzaconformsto the now familiarpatternfor unrulybehavior.Its centrallocation
made it easy to drawsupportfrom all zones except, thanksto militaryintervention,the two
districtson the far side of the Tiber.But the choice of targets-the recruiters,their diplomat
patron,and the pope's nephew-is instructive.The protagonistsin this conflict seem to have
sharedthe papalattitudethat safe streetswerenot the government'sconcern,but theirs.They
seem not to have expected protectionbut ratherto have hoped for punishmentof the culprits and to have felt perfectlylegitimatein inflictingit themselves.Assumingthat all young
men were vulnerable,that the threatcame from specific persons, and that force would work
againstthem, they turned out swiftlyand in large numbers,once a dramaticshowdownwas
under way.Their tactics were effective, in part, because the young stone throwershad created a dramaticshowdown. As we shall see, the circulationof bands of sassaioli, or stonethrowingboys, was anythingbut fortuitous;they were becoming an identifiable feature of
popular youth culture in early modernRome. This episode highlightsthe circumstancesin
52
Ibid., 370-71.
180
LAURIENUSSDORFER
which they could offer services of value to the larger community,circumstancesthat were
repeatedwith uncannysimilarityin 1736.
In the spring of that year the sassaioli took up their stones against Spanishmilitaryrecruiters.This time, however,a chanceconflagrationled to somethingmuch bigger and more
sustained,violent, and inventivethanin 1650. In a "tumult"that affectedmanypartsof Rome
and lasted for severaldays,significantpiazzas,secrethideouts, and desertedexpanseson the
city'sedge were activatedby thousandsof youths. This episode alertsus to some important
processesof changefor the regime.The papacywas weakerinternationallyand domestically
than it had been in the mid-seventeenthcentury.Foreign powers flexed their muscle more
openlyin Romeand in the entireterritoryof the PapalStates.Papaltroops were not as quick
to respondto the challengefrom the Romanpopulace;they failed to block movementacross
the bridges and could not stop the spreadof riotous actions.In consequence,young Roman
stone throwerswere more convincingcontendersfor control of urban space in 1736 than
they had been in 1650.
Beginningwith the warof the Spanishsuccessionin 1700 and continuingwith the dynastic wars that followed it, the popes were unableto keep rivalarmiesfrom marchingthrough
their lands, billeting on their people, and of courseseizingtheir subjectsfor militaryservice.
Romanswere particularlyvulnerableduring the 1730s, the decade of strugglebetween the
AustrianHapsburgsand the Bourbonsof Spain and Franceover the Polish succession,because the SpanishBourbons,engagedon one front in Lombardyin the north, also seized the
Kingdomof Naples in the south and needed to shuttle troops between the two regions. In
the eyes of the new Bourbonking of Naples (CharlesIV of Naples), the Papal Stateswere no
more than a source of food and men on the route between Naples and Lombardy.In the
countrysidehis ill-paid troops looted and pillaged;in the towns they scavengedfor soldiers.
The reigningpope, ClementXII Corsini(1730-40), could do little againstthe troops of
King CharlesIV, so he gave them transitpermits and allowed them to be quarteredwith
helpless ruralcommunitiesratherthan uncomfortablyclose in Rome. Nevertheless,despite
papal edicts prohibitingmilitaryrecruitingby foreign governments,"Spanish"ingaggiatori,
as the Bourbon agents were called by Romans,were operatingwith virtualimpunityin the
city in the springof 1736. As in 1650, any solitaryyouth was potentialprey for these unscrupulous recruiters.53
Once again Romanshad to find their own means of self-defense,building slowly from
individualacts of resistanceto a determined,collective use of force. Public insults and isolated acts of insubordinationwere the firstsignsof growingagitation.One day a crowdjeered
SpanishofficerspassingthroughPiazzaColonna(fig. 1, no. 16) with a new recruitand threatened them with rocks;later some road workersfreed a victim as he was led throughthe piazzaof the Maddalena.54
Matterscameto a head on the weekend of 23 Marchwhen a woman
whose son had been seized by Spanishofficers in the Campo dei Fiori (fig. 1, no. 10) a few
hours earlieraccosted one of them and he roughedher up. In the ensuing scuffle a crowd
gathered,and the Spanishofficer thoughtit prudentto retireto a house next to the Farnese
3 F. Valesio, 5:849-53.
Despite his Italian mother and
duchies, King Charles IV of Naples, his troops, and his
agents were uniformly perceived by Romans as "Spaniards," whatever their actual ethnicity. Romans of all
classes did not distinguish between the Neapolitan and
Spanish Bourbons; in their eyes both represented the
political interests of "Spain."
54Ibid., 5:849.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
181
palace,which had now passed from the hands of the FrenchBourbonsto the SpanishBourbons.
The crowd grew larger,swelled by stone-throwingyouths from the district,Regola, and
from Trastevereacross the bridge. One young man whose brother had been abducted the
night before arrivedwith two hatchetsand began choppingdown the door of the house into
which the Spanishofficer had fled. When an officer appearedat the window with a pistol, a
well-aimedrock knocked it out of his hand. The angrymob broke into the house, sackedit,
liberatedtwo men they found inside, and then searchedneighboringhouses for other Roman
captives. Papal police eventuallyarrivedand dispersedthe huge crowd that had filled the
Piazza Farnese, but not before a window in the palace was broken and a rock was thrown at
the Spanish coat-of-arms on the Farnese palace." The youths, however, left the square in
high spirits, carrying one of the freed men crowned with a laurel wreath and shouting "Viva
Trastevere!"56A noteworthy feature of these events was the lively sense of district loyalty and
pride shown in such scenes. These feelings were closely linked to the culture of stone throwing in early modern Rome.
In this incident a single Spanish agent had again been the focus of the crowd's attention,
but this time he had not escaped into the protective confines of a church. The stone throwers
had made it possible to attack his shelter effectively and to gain the satisfaction of releasing
his victims. Moreover, apparently knowledgeable about where other captives might be hidden, these rioters had immediately followed up their success with more searches, as had youths
in other parts of the city. The clues are indirect, but they point to good communications
among the participants.
There were other signs of concerted and politically informed action. One group, for example, went looking for support; they headed for the palaces of the cardinals sympathetic to
the Austrian Hapsburgs, cheering hopefully, "Long live the emperor! " as they asked for weapons. They told the imperial ambassador that they were two thousand strong, all under thirty
years of age.57Their slogan was certainly politically astute; they clearly knew that their best
hope of help against the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons was their enemy, Austria. However, the cry, "Long live the emperor! " may not have been entirely innocent of local connotations, although its potentially antipapal overtones were not developed. Protesters did move
threateningly on the palace of the pope's family, however, for his nephew Bartolomeo Corsini
was one of King Charles IV's highest officers.58As in 1650 the residence of a papal kinsman
with close ties to the enemy was a target of frustrated popular wrath.
But perhaps the most startling fact about the episode is that it did not end there. That
night rioters kept up their search for weapons and captives, stoning hideouts and any individual who threatened them with a gun. Most remarkably, twelve hundred determined stalwarts encamped together in Trastevere and another hundred slept in the Campo Vaccino, the
former Roman Forum (fig. 1, nos. 17, 2). This ominous horde on the abandoned fields at two
edges of the built-up city (abitato) made the papal authorities very nervous. Clement XII put
out a new edict prohibiting military recruiting in Rome. "But," as one surprised observer
The "arme dell'infante di Spagna che e sopra il
portone" is how Valesio describes it ibid., 5:850. However, Pastor (34:376) cites documents that claim the "insult" to the coat-of-arms was never proved.
55
56
Valesio, 5:850. See also Venturi, 98-100.
57Valesio, 5:852.
Pastor, 34:365-67; Venturi, 96; for popular hostility
to Bartolomeo Corsini, see Valesio, 5:863.
58
182
LAURIE NUSSDORFER
wrote, "that was not enough."59Two days passed and the twelve hundred remained waiting
in Trastevere.
Finally, the pope opened talks with them by sending two Roman noblemen, one associated with the imperial Hapsburg cause and the other a representative of the lay civic government, to find out what they wanted. The youths asked for amnesty for everything they had
done during the "tumult." This too turned out to be a shrewd move, for Spain was later to
try to pressure Clement to extradite the alleged ringleaders. The negotiators took the request
for pardon to the pope, and he granted it at once. Promising "on their word as Romans" to
do no further violence, the young men returned to their homes, continuing to cheer the emperor.60Although the story was over for the Roman stone throwers, the "tumult" troubled
the papacy for some time to come. The Spanish Bourbons remembered that rock thrown at
their coat of arms on the Palazzo Farnese and demanded "satisfaction" for the insult. When
they did not receive it, they broke off diplomatic relations with the pope.61
In thinking about what the events of 1736 reveal about the political implications of space,
one is struck by the new prominence of the "edge" as opposed to the "center." Mostly, the
space that counted in early modern Rome was the central built-up area, or abitato. Thus far
in our analysis the extensive areas of green outside the abitato but still within the ancient
walls have been a silent frame to the more articulate "downtown" locations. In the eyes of
most of those contending for power and prestige, this peripheral space was neutral or "backstage." It became rather less neutral when occupied by twelve hundred young men for several days. The large open tracts that it afforded were a distinct practical advantage to the
stone throwers, for where else could twelve hundred or so youths camp out? But the truth
was that what was coded "periphery" to quarreling spouses, religious orders, ethnic groups,
and patricians was not so coded to boys of the popular classes of Rome. This space was "hot"
to them for it was here that they were accustomed to fight for power and prestige.
Neighborhood-based bands of sassaioli had for some time routinely battled with rocks in
the large open areas on the edge of the built-up area of the city (fig. 5). Large-scale organized
stone-fights show up in news accounts by the late sixteenth century and in literary sources by
the seventeenth.62 There is also slight evidence that by 1736 rivalries were based on a rough
four-way division of the city into two groupings from across the Tiber, Borgo and Trastevere,
and two from the main part of the city, the trident focused on Piazza del Popolo to the north
and the Monti district to the east63 (fig. 1). Whatever the precise spatial configuration of
loyalties during normal times, however, in the conflict with the Spanish recruiters the boys
joined forces and repaired to the sites of their stone-fighting contests. This was their turf,
and it was terrain on which they had often stood and fought each other. Space endowed with
agonistic significance in the context of popular youth culture acquired new meanings for the
young men and for their anxious observers during these events. It became a place of refuge
59
Valesio, 5:852.
60
Ibid.,5:852-53.
61
Pastor, 34:376; Valesio, 5:865, 867-70; Venturi, 100.
Bragaglia (as n. 33) 85; P. Romano, La sassaiola (Rome
1943) 30; F. Trinchieri Camiz, "The Roman 'Studio' of
Francesco Villamena," Burlington Magazine 136 (1994)
510 n. In the 1601 incident reported by Camiz, pro62
French and pro-Spanish stone throwers came to blows
as they celebrated rival dynastic births. My thanks to
Robert Davis for this reference. In his first colloquy,
Giovanni Battista Ferrari discusses the Roman "lapidatio," Collocutiones J. B. Ferrarii (Siena 1652) 4-10. See
also the comic epic by Giovanni Camillio Peresio, II
maggio romanesco (Ferrara 1688) 79-80.
Venturi, 99, quotes a pamphlet of 1736 naming the
four factions.
63
THE POLITICS OF SPACE IN EARLY MODERN ROME
183
j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AN,,
Xp4XA~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A
4..
(sassaiola) betweenmenfromthe rioni
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~6
Fig.5. A nineteenth-century
printof a stone-fight
of Trastevereand Monti in the Roman Forum (afterBartolomeoPinelli).
to one group, a source of dangerto the other.But it carriedwith it some of the power of the
old meaningsas well. This was space associatedwith aggressionand solidarity,which helped
to keep the protesters'spirits high in the confrontationwith Spain and the papal government. Quite apartfrom anythingelse they accomplished,by stayingtogether and securinga
pardon for their conduct, the lower-classyouths involved in the "tumult"provided an unprecedentedexampleof informalpopularpoliticalorganizationin Rome.They had achieved
it by activatinga networkof loyaltiesthatwere forgedin long-standinglocal combatbetween
rivalgangs of stone throwers,and then turningthese bonds from "intramural"to "extramural"sport. And they used it to reclaimthe city streetsfrom predatoryforeigners.
7. Conclusion:Specificitiesof Regime and Place
Some theoristshave arguedthat space as a discursivecategoryoriginatesin militaryor strategic thought;to talk in spatialtermsis thus to talk about the effects of power.4 If we look at
our arrayof examples of contested space in Rome and ask,
(twhat were the effects of setting?"
we see a potent and flexible medium indeed. Urban space displayed, publicized, concealed,
64
See Foucault and his interlocutors (as n. 41) 69-70.
184
LAURIENUSSDORFER
dominated,excluded, enclosed, separated,trapped,and protected. How could city dwellers
ignore a resourcethat did so manypowerfulthings?
The kinds of space that incited conflict in papal Rome had varyingqualities.Contested
space could be space associatedwith ritual,especiallyfestivity;space set off for a particular
social group who were defined as outsiders;space that was placed under differentpolitical
authorities;space around "charged"persons, and especiallyspace around "charged"buildings. Most frequentlyit was this last categorythatgavethe urbanlandscapeits punch.Houses,
palaces, and churchesacquiredmeaningthroughtheir associationwith notions like female
virtue, familyprestige,institutionalhonor,nationalidentity,and legal immunity;these were
values importantenough to fight about. Space was also made volatile by time, both sacred
and secular.
Piazzaswere repeatedlythe settings of disputes in papal Rome. One wonders what the
expressive vehicles of social tension would have been if this city had had a linear grid of
uniformfaqadesinstead of an organicskein of forking routes and irregularjunctures.Foreign "quarters,"the ghetto, and the abandonedareaswithin the city walls were also topographicalfeaturesthat gave a particularinflectionto conflict in earlymodernRome.
Of course, some of the contests over space that occurredin Romewould have had their
counterpartsin other cities and indeed in other epochs. There is nothing unique to seventeenth-centuryRome about fights over domestic space among family members,nor about
hostility towardneighbors,nor even about the struggleof elite familiesto outdo each other
visually.Other towns also saw quarrelsbetween residentsof differentnationalextractionas
well as violence and ridiculedirectedat Jews by their Christiancompatriots.Nor was Rome
the only earlymodern capitalto witness jurisdictionalsquabblesbetween foreign diplomats
and local authorities,or perhapseven stone-fights.
Nevertheless,even such ubiquitousconflicts were expressedin ways that had a distinctively Romanflavor.Peter Burke remindsus that the practice of posting written insults on
doors mayhaveowed somethingto the exampleof Rome'sfamous"talkingstatue"Pasquino,
upon whom "pasquinades,"anonymoussatiricalcritiques of the government,were left to
amusepassersby.MartineBoiteux claimsthat certainforms of the Carnivalmockeryof Jews
were a specificallyRomanphenomenon.65
The Jews' traditionalhomage to the civic "Senate
and RomanPeople," for example, was surelydictated by a local script. The thicknesswith
whichthe citywas strewnwith "national"churchesreflectedits continuingwelcometo Catholic pilgrimsas well as the large foreign componentin the papal bureaucracy;there maywell
have been more foreignersin Rome, as people so often said.
Therewere also certainkinds of conflict that occurredin Rome preciselybecause it was
the seat of the head of the CatholicChurchand because the office of its rulerwas an elected
ratherthan dynasticposition. These are the conteststhat were peculiarto the city and to the
regime.The rivalrybetween religiousorderswas not absentelsewhere,but it was more acute
in Rome, where the way the order presenteditself had importantrepercussionsfor the kind
of supportit could count on from the Churchhierarchy.The same need to look after affairs
at the papal court and in the Curiarequiredrepresentativesof the great princelyhouses of
Italyand the envoysof Europe'sCatholicmonarchsto be in Rome and to commandattention
there. Not everyone concentratedin this small and public arena got along, and not all of
them were happywith the way a given pope treatedtheir interests.
65Burke, 109; Boiteux, 772.
THE POLITICSOF SPACEIN EARLYMODERNROME
185
The elective characterof papalmonarchymeantRomanscould periodicallyexpect to be
without a rulerand with new power.This interregnumof unpredictabletiming and duration
was structuredrituallyand legally in such a way as to give lay officials in the city rare and
highly prized claimsto authority.The VacantSee offered the possibilityof going beyond ordinaryboundaries.It offered Romansuniquejurisdictionalstakes,which they never tired of
fightingover.
The fact that new pontiffs carriedtheir families to power in Rome also gave a special
inflection to urban conflicts. These familieswere at once show-offs and scapegoats.Papal
.kinsmenacquiredhuge fortunesand enormousinfluenceovernightand rushedto turn their
windfallinto social status by building city palacesthat dwarfedthose of the hereditaryaristocracy.But the buildingsthat jostled and elbowed out their neighborsto proclaimthe new
princelyrankof their ownerswere symbolsof corruptionand betrayalto an angrypopulace.
It was not the pope but his relativeswho drew the blame for policies the Romansdid not
like. They attackedthe familypalace,not the Vatican.
Finally,by the eighteenth centurythe militaryweaknessof the papacy became another
factor shapingthe contests of the capital.The reasonsfor the long-termdecline of the international stature of the papal governmentwere rooted in more than two hundred years of
largeaspirationsand smallresources.In these centuriesthe duties and ambitionsof the early
modernpopes maywell have been heavierand granderthan those of merelytemporalrulers;
in anycase their peculiaramplitudefinallyresultedin a governmentso bankruptthat it could
not defend its bordersat all. In a Romein which stone-throwingyouths fought off agentsof
foreign armies,the absolutiststate seemed to have evacuatedits capitalcity altogether.
It had not, of course, and if we stand back and surveyabsolutismin general,the case of
Rome illustratesa broaderpoint about the tenacityof the regimeand its fit with cities. The
monarch'smonopolyof formalpowerdenied to subjectsanyauthorizedrole in decisionmaking. By providingno accessibleinstitutionalspace for the play of opinion and interest,absolutist governmentvirtuallyassuredthe searchfor alternativesites. The city offered itself as a
thickly textured social and symbolicenvironmentin which a broad arrayof conflicts could
be visualizedand dramatized.A regimethat restrictedpolitical participationso tightly necessarilythrust the processes of articulationand negotiationthat we think of as politics into
the streets and squares.Thus, by its very logic, earlymodern papal governmentguaranteed
that Romewould be a politicallychargedlandscape.
186
LAURIENUSSDORFER
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