The Black Widows of of The Eternal City offers, for the first time,
a book-length study of an infamous cause célèbre in
seventeenth-century Rome, how it resonated then and has continued
to resonate: the 1659 investigation and prosecution of Gironima
Spana and dozens of Roman widows, who shared a particularly
effective poison to murder their husbands. This notorious case has
been frequently discussed over 350 years, but the earliest writers
concentrated more on fortifying their reading constituency’s
shared attitudes than accurately narrating facts. Subsequent
authors remained largely content to follow their predecessors or
keen to improve upon them. Most recent writers and bloggers were
unaware that their earlier sources were generally unconcerned with
a correct portrayal of real events. In the present study, Craig A.
Monson takes advantage of a recent discovery—the 1,450-page
notary’s transcript of the 1659 investigation. It is
supplemented here by many ancillary archival sources, unknown to
all previous writers. Since the story of Gironima Spana and the
would-be widows is partially about what people believed to be true,
however, this investigation also juxtaposes some of the
“alternative facts” from earlier, sensational accounts with
what the notary’s transcript and other, more reliable archival
documents reveal. Written in a style that avoids arcane idioms and
specialist jargon, the book can potentially speak to students and
general readers interested in seventeenth-century social history
and gender issues. It rewrites the life story of Gironima Spana
(largely unknown until now), who has dominated all earlier
accounts, usually in caricatures that reiterate the tropes of
witchcraft. It also concentrates on the dozen other widows whose
stories could be the most recovered from archival sources
and whom Spana had totally eclipsed in earlier accounts. Most were
women “of a very ordinary sort” (prostitutes; beggars; wives of
butchers, barbers, dyers, lineners, innkeepers), the kinds of women
commonly lost to history. The book seeks to explain why some women
were hanged (only six, in fact, most of whom may not have directly
poisoned anyone), while dozens of others who did poison their
husbands escaped the gallows and, in some cases, were not even
interrogated. It also reveals what happened to these other alleged
perpetrators, whose fates have remained unknown until now.
Other purported culprits, about whom less complete pictures emerge,
are briefly discussed in an appendix. The study incorporates
illustrations of archival manuscripts to demonstrate the challenges
of deciphering them and illustrates “scenes of the crime” and
other important locations, identified on seventeenth-century,
bird’s eye-perspective views of Rome and in modern photographs.
It also includes GPS coordinates for any who might wish to revisit
the sites.
General
Imprint: |
The University of Michigan Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2020 |
Authors: |
Craig A. Monson
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 22mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
258 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-472-13204-1 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
0-472-13204-0 |
Barcode: |
9780472132041 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!