La città e i poveri: Milano e le terre lombarde dal Rinascimento all'età spagnola ed. by Danilo Zardin (review)

La citta e i poveri: Milano e le terre lombarde dal Rinascimento all'eta spagnola. Edited by Danilo Zardin. [Edizioni Universitarie Jaca, Vol. 100.] (Milan:Jaca Book. 1995. Pp. 431.) This volume contains, besides the introduction by the editor, fifteen papers first presented at a conference in Milan in 1992. It is a particularly felicitous achievement for at least three reasons. First, it has the advantage of focusing on a specific locality, a locality extraordinarily rich in historical sources, and of approaching it from a variety of perspectives. This assures depth in coverage and also helps forestall facile generalizations from just one kind of evidence. Second, it is a good example of integration of the study of religion, literature, economics, and politics. Third, although the contributors are with the exception of Brian Pullan not well known outside Italy, they are all skilled practitioners of our metier, beginning with the editor, Danilo Zardin, who provides a fine overview of the volume in his introduction. The importance of the subject can hardly be overestimated, for it is still with us in our cities today. Sad to say, there is little indication that we handle it better than did early modern Italians. Even given the greater complexity of the urban situation today, there is some indication that we handle it worse. In any case, the subject has also been of keen interest historiographically ever since Pullan's groundbreaking Rich and Poor in Venice (1971), in which he challenged the sharp contrast historians drew between Protestant and Catholic poor relief. As the dean of such studies, Pullan's contribution on "poverty," "charity," and "new forms of social assistance" from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century is, therefore, of special interest and weight. He cautions against drawing too firm a line of demarcation between late medieval and early modern attitudes and practices in these regards and also against doing the same between Protestants and Catholics. Nonetheless, differences there were, and in the latter case he points specifically to the continuation of confraternities within Catholic territories, once again vindicating recent scholarship on the utterly crucial but long-forgotten role these institutions played in almost every aspect of Catholic culture. Confraternities appear passim in any number of articles, for, besides being an institution in their own right, they funded or otherwise supported other institutions or themselves developed into different ones. For that reason Angelo Bianchi's article on the Somascans is especially illuminating. From what amounted originally to a confraternity gathered around Gerolamo Miani that created the first orphanages, as distinct from foundling homes, it devolved into a religious order. …