I confini della solidarietà. Pratiche e istituzioni caritative in Valtellina nel tardo medioevo
English summary
Little is known about the forms of charity practiced in the Late Middle Ages in rural areas of Italy that did not have hospital foundations or monti di pietà. This contribution attempts to extend current knowledge on the topic by examining charitable practices in a mountain valley in Lombardy (Valtellina), involving the periodic distribution of bread, cheese, wine, chestnuts, salt – and far more rarely, cloth – to the poor (pauperes Christi) on important ceremonial occasions. These donations were managed directly or supervised by the rural commune and financed by bequests of either a sum of money or a periodic income, endowed for this specific purpose. Analysis of the typical clause used in wills to provide for charitable rituals of this kind – the legacy ad pias causas or pro anima – leads us to identify a number of variables: for example, whether the funds were to be used to dispense food or to carry out some other work of mercy; who was to administer the donation (the testator’s heirs or communal officials); where the ceremony was to take place (the home of the benefactor, the village square, a halt in a religious procession and so on); on what occasion (the funeral or Masses for the soul of the bestower, the feast day of the local patron saint, other dates of religious or secular importance); the duration of the bequest (for a limited number of years or perpetual). A further crucial choice concerned the beneficiaries of the donation: the poor without further qualification, the poor of the commune, the contrada or the parish, or alternatively all the inhabitants of one of the last–mentioned institutions or all those present at a particular ceremony; the criterion could be geographical (pauperes de Grosio, pauperes loci de Morbegnio) or institutional (pauperes communis de Raxura, pauperes contrate de Pongiera). In a further step of our analysis, we examine these variables in relation to the social identity of the benefactors (gender, membership or non– of the higher social classes or the nobility, birthplace), the different sub–periods within the overall time span under study, and finally, the various local contexts.
This procedure in turn leads us to identify significantly different visions of community life, of which charitable donations were a key aspect. Firstly, we find that the views of men and women, natives (vicini), outsiders (forenses), citizens (cives) and nobles were based on different principles. At the same time, it appears that in Valtellina more so than elsewhere, the diversity of perspectives and expectations differentiating local society, converged to some degree around a common model of community life: the decline in power of the local aristocracy, the difficulty encountered by the cives resident in the valley in maintaining their link with Como and its institutions, the opportunities for integration offered to outsiders and even the ritual inclusion of women in the charitable ceremonies, all discouraged the spread of charitable practices other than at the level of the commune or contrada. Thus Valtellina was not characterized by isolated minority groupings based on internal mutual assistance, such a group of agnates, a professional category or a social class, which elsewhere coexisted with, or substituted, residential status in identifying particular categories of poor people (i.e., kinsmen, colleagues or deceased nobles, instead of one’s neighbours) and sensitizing donors to their needs. In sum, the various social groups, though often hesitant and sometimes downright unenthusiastic, essentially adhered to the practice of charity at a community level. The unifying dimension of communitarian charitable donations was further enhanced when the designated beneficiaries were not only the poor but all the inhabitants of a commune or village, or all community members present at the ceremony at which the food was to be solemnly distributed. Thus the model of a flow of riches from the most wealthy to the most needy, which would have emphasized the distance between the opposite ends of the social spectrum, gave way to both the ideal and the practice of mutual exchange and reciprocity, similar to the logic of gift.
While on the one hand the gaps between benefactors and beneficiaries or between different groups within the community did not deeply divide local society, an increasingly discriminatory dividing line came to enclose the community and its needy. During the 15th century in particular, communities became closed in on themselves to the extent that testators were led to benefice more and more exclusively the poor living nearest to them, that is to say, those resident in their own commune and later in their own contrada; in this way, vagrants and pilgrims came to be overlooked.
While the choice of the pauperes Christi upon whom to bequeath part of one’s income became increasingly selective, charitable practices began to vary markedly from one place to another: local customs, specific to a particolar commune or contrada, were established that guided benefactors in choosing the format of the donation ceremony and identifying the particular set of needy to be invited to it. Thus, each commune developed its own distinctive sense of charity, strongly influenced by local social experience: the unity, divisions or imbalances characterizing the community determined the benefactors’ choice of how to exercise his generosity, whether towards certain categories of poor or towards all his neighbours, and whether by means of individual donations or on an institutionally–organized basis.
Translation: Clare O’Sullivan
