All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
|
|
Italian and european siblings in aristocratic families: church and family destiny (16°-19° centuries)
| The paper will present the outputs of a research, which is still in progress and which aims at identifying the specific competences of brothers and sisters within the European aristocratic families between the 16th and 19th centuries, and at analysing the place assigned them in the family sphere and the space materially occupied, before and after the introduction of primogeniture.
The various possibilities of accessing family material and symbolic resources, the main cause of inequality between the firstborn and cadets, have been considered the most important decisive factor in the relationships found between siblings.
Reading correspondence and administrative documents of two noble Sienese families (Sergardi and Chigi) made me understand the need to dwell on the relationships existing between the siblings and, consequently, between the various family branches.
The Chigis and the Sergardis, two important aristocratic Sienese families, left for Rome in the middle of the 15th century to undertake ecclesiastic careers or to dedicate themselves profitably to financial activity. Neither the Chigis, nor the Sergardis permanently left Siena; an important branch of the family always resided here which, through careers and ecclesiastic fortunes, brought fame to the whole family. Quite often, then, the firstborn and cadets had the support of their married sisters.
Taking the viewpoint of the relationships between siblings, in the study of these family histories, the paper aims at:
1) enucleating fields of action of the members of families who, living between Siena and Rome, made choices and ran risks on the basis of information that circulated within the family;
2) providing a suggestive interpretation of the management and consumption of family assets and the division of domestic spaces;
3) reconstruction, through recourse to network analysis, of the circuits of social capital construction of individuals, placed at family service;
4) declining the problem of family membership through the proximity – distance combination.
5) bringing new elements of observation to the topic of intra-family conflicts, linked to the rigid division of assets between firstborn and cadets, especially when considering that the Catholic church (and its prebends) could be a deterrent to the outbreak of such controversies;
6) the choice of studying aristocratic families which presents, lastly, the double advantage of having sources available that are not just quantitative and of comparing the matter of reputation and belonging to the household, elements felt strongly about by European aristocracies.
A comparative research on other European situations appears fecund. Journaux and mémoires of 16th century French aristocrats and 17th and 18th century, that, for completeness of the survey, I would like to integrate with Spanish sources of the same period, allow a more in-depth consideration on the topic of division of destinies between the firstborn and cadets, and on the bonds developed with sisters and on conflict. Was the presence of the Catholic church, in Italy more than anywhere else, capable of softening intra-family controversies?
|
|
|
