A matter of fact rather than principle: women, work and property in papal Rome...
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Transcript of A matter of fact rather than principle: women, work and property in papal Rome...
A matter of fact rather than principle: women, workand property in papal Rome (eighteenth–nineteenthcenturies)
Angela Groppi
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Abstract
During the last few decades, many studies have documented the considerable partici-pation of women in the economy of past societies, even though women were boundby rules and laws that discriminated against them and denied them the rights ofcitizenship. Thus historians, and especially those in the field of gender history, haveincreasingly recognized the importance of interweaving two realms,those of work andof property. As part of this effort, this article focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Rome and shows that over a long economic period, women’s position wasdefined by a complex interaction between their status as workers and as owners ofproperty.
Keywords
Women, work, guilds, Italy, Rome, dowry, inheritance law.
1 A necessary relationship
This article offers a contribution to the analysis of the role of women in an urbaneconomy of the past. Specifically, it considers female employment and theimportance of women’s activities in the economic life of the family in papalRome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The analysis of this particu-lar economic environment reveals a long-standing economic ‘model’ in whichthe presence of women was of far greater importance than that indicated bystatistics or suggested by the limitations imposed by guild rules or the laws onwomen’s ownership of property.Throughout history there is evidence of signifi-cant ‘camouflaged’ female economic activity that was a result of a complexrelationship between the sphere of work and the sphere of property.
In recent decades numerous studies have revealed the considerable partici-pation of women in the economies of past societies, notwithstanding a back-ground of laws and rules that discriminated against them in terms of rights ofcitizenship, according to a long-term pattern that continues to permeate evencontemporary society.1 Discriminated against in terms of access to work, for a
Journal of Modern Italian Studies ISSN 1354-571X print/ISSN 1469-9583 online © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/1354571011011691 4
Journal of Modern Italian Studies 7(1) 2002: 37–55D
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long period women were in the same position in relation to property owner-ship. Such ownership was an important factor in establishing a person’s econ-omic value, because property and goods left after death have long been theprincipal components in measuring individual wealth (Erickson 1993). Norshould it be overlooked that patrimonial wealth influenced the possibilities forparticipation in commercial and financial activity.
These considerations have encouraged historians, particularly those con-cerned with gender history, to develop an awareness of the relationship betweenwork and property. More specifically, there is now considerable recognition ofthe ways in which relations in the economic sphere have always been con-ditioned by social and cultural contexts in which access to economic resourcesis profoundly differentiated along lines of gender (Groppi 1996b; Hanawalt1999). On the other hand, the most recent studies have revealed the complexityof individual and social trajectories, even in apparently rigid and closed societieslike those of the old regime. Research of this nature has shown that in themanagement of resources, groups and individuals, even in situations of disadvan-tage, have always made use of margins of negotiation that permit the exercise ofchoices and strategies.
Overall, it has been strongly emphasized that it is wrong to confuse the degreeof mobility in a society with its level of openness. The exercise of choice is notthe exclusive preserve of the contemporary world. In every society, even thoseof an apparently rigid past, cultural models that determine the organization andlegitimization of systems of differentiation (and therefore inequality) have alsorevealed fluid margins within which it is possible to establish complex paths ofmobility (Levi 1990). From this perspective, studies attentive to the relationshipbetween norms and social practices have documented a broad and diffuse femalepresence in the working world of pre-industrial society, notwithstanding theformal exclusions of corporative systems.2 Similarly, recent studies of propertyownership have examined the contrast between the legal systems that governedthe transfer of property and the concrete experiences of women. These studieshave indicated considerable female access to patrimonial resources that dependedas much upon the interaction of individual and family strategies with law andcustom as they did upon legal prescriptions (Ago, Palazzi and Pomata 1994; Ago1995a, 1996; Groppi and Houbre 1998).
All of this underlines that a system of inheritance that generally excludedwomen has never been without loopholes. Its function has frequently been con-tradicted by the principle of contractual liberty and by the will of the contrac-tors (Kuehn 1991; Ago 1998). Furthermore, wars, travel, emigration, illness anddeath, by taking men away, all propelled numerous women into positions ofprominence in family affairs,making them protagonists in many economic trans-actions. In this way, just as women took men’s place in the working world duringtimes of war or emigration, they undertook similar replacement functions incontrolling family patrimonies (Merzario 1996).Thus, in the societies of the oldregime, women, even when they were nominally excluded or limited in their
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property rights, could in fact control considerable estates, both as heirs and asadministrators, in modes and styles differentiated according to the lifecycle(Staves 1990). In many cases a woman’s work experience was the founding basisfor the inheritance of a family estate.
It follows that the economic presence of women can only really be under-stood by looking beyond the discriminatory barriers erected by the rigid econ-omic and social roles of a society in which gender inequality was fundamental.If it is always a cardinal rule for the historian not to draw conclusions from super-ficial evidence, in the case of women it is indispensable to go beyond appear-ances and seek to understand the margins of manoeuvre which permittedwomen of the past to establish themselves in a particular social and economicenvironment.
2 Female proprietorship
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Roman society underwentprofound transformations both in the socio-economic and the political arenas.Among the most important features of the period were the clash between freeexchange and protectionism; the crisis of the corporate system, which wasabolished between 1801 and 1804; and above all the symbolic political fracturesrepresented by the two French invasions (the Roman Republic of 1798–9 andthe Napoleonic domination between 1808 and 1814). In this context, andparticularly in the climate of consolidation and transformation that character-ized the second Restoration, there were several inquiries that constitute one ofthe first bodies of statistics concerning the productive and commercial networksof papal Rome. These provide important information that permits reconstruc-tion of the forms of stratification and social and geographic mobility of Romansociety during this era.
These sources help to establish a panorama of proprietors, rentiers and man-agers, of various artisanal workshops and shops present throughout the districtsof the city. It is possible to reconstruct their geographic origins, their time ofresidence in Rome, their age, sex, marital status and often the size of the familynucleus. There is also information on the numbers and qualifications of theemployees, the technical equipment, and the date the business was founded. It istherefore possible to establish a map of Rome’s productive and commercialactivities, their distribution and their transformation (Groppi 1998b).
In particular, a survey of commercial activities carried out by the police in1827 permits the measurement of different opportunities enjoyed by men andwomen in relation to occupation, access to property, mobility and earnings. Inaddition, it allows further distinctions to be made, for example between nativesand immigrants, Catholics and Jews, and so on.3 The source also indicates thenature of the original activity on the site, and even the name of the previous pro-prietor, as well as many details about any employees.
These statistics, relating to about 6,000 enterprises, unsurprisingly reveal that
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in Rome, as in much of the rest of Europe, nearly all employment opportunitiesfor women were in subordinate positions,particularly for jobs that could be doneat home. Many of these were concentrated in the textile sector (wool, cottonand silk) and in clothing. Among dependent workers, women made up 20.6 percent of the total, while among owners of commercial or manufacturing activi-ties women made up only 13.3 per cent of the total.
At the level of proprietorship, the presence of women may have been low,but it was not concentrated in narrow sectors.Various women figured as ownersof artisanal workshops and manufactures in all sectors, not just those with a tra-ditionally high concentration of women. This lack of segregation is explainedby the fact that women gained access to proprietorship of an enterprise not somuch through the autonomous exercise of a skill but above all through heredi-tary rights. It is no coincidence that the majority of women proprietors werewidows (49.4 per cent, compared with 34.6 per cent for married women and 16per cent for single women), who, according to customs common in other partsof Italy and Europe, inherited an activity from their husband. Similarly, it is nosurprise that widows were the only women responsible for workshops of highstatus, especially those connected with the working of or sale of wood, metalsand gems.
It is also worth noting, as an indication of the relationship between point oforigin and employment opportunities, that while among males who wereRoman the level of ownership of enterprises was 61.1 per cent, among womenthe figure was 79.6 per cent. This tends to confirm that in an environment ofwork organized hierarchically with males at the top, entrance to positions ofresponsibility was easier for women who had a strong foothold in the city. Thisis confirmed by the fact that virtually all of the non-Roman women proprietors– with the exception of two clothing workers, four owners of food shops, onewine shop owner and one dealer in old iron – were widows or married women.For those not born in Rome, the tutelage of a husband, alive or dead,was all themore indispensable.
On the other hand the data reveal that for women it was easier to inheritownership of an enterprise than it was to manage it themselves. Many womenowners of such establishments who had inherited them from a husband or fatherdid not manage them directly, but entrusted them to lessees or husbands, sons orsons-in-law.This was particularly the case when the activity was outside that tra-ditionally considered the preserve of women. For example, a brick kiln in thedistrict of Borgo,which was the property of a widow, one Angela Rosa Danieli,employed twenty-six people, but it was run by a tenant,Vittorio Ciccioriccio.
Overall, the official presence of women running large workshops or factorieswas exiguous. According to a widespread tradition, women, with respect bothto heredity and to work, were above all mediators between men. It is no acci-dent that in the Statistica there was only one activity transmitted from one womanto another. This was the trade of Margherita Calandrini, married with fivechildren and resident in the Colonna district. Calandrini made host wafers, and
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she had inherited the activity twenty-five years earlier from her aunt, who hadmade the wafers at the same address over the latter half of the eighteenth century.
It is also true that among the numerous enterprises owned by men there werea large number of wives, daughters and sisters who assisted their male relativesin directing the business.They helped at the level of production and distribution;they substituted for men who were away or ill; often if there was more than oneworkshop or shop they ran one of them on their own. This information was allwritten under the heading ‘Observations’ in the margins of the Statistica in ques-tion. These observations underline the well-known limits of statistical sourceswhich so often fail to give an accurate picture of the true presence of women inthe world of work. Any attempt to understand the nature of women’s work andits relation to inherited property must go beyond what is stated in ‘official’sources, which almost always suggest that these were negligible.
3 A long-term tradition
The roots of the tradition that legitimized the marginal presence of women ineconomic enterprise,and continued to do so throughout the nineteenth century,are to be found in the ancient guild system and the corporative mentality itengendered. It is necessary to distinguish between ‘marginalized presence’ andmarginality because in fact women were anything but marginal in many econ-omic activities, even those controlled by guilds and corporations. This was notonly because they made significant work contributions under the shadows oftheir fathers, husbands and brothers, but because often, outside the rigidities ofcorporate regulations, they succeeded in establishing their own spheres of auton-omy. When they did so, they often represented threatening competition for thecorporate world, which, as is well known, never succeeded in controlling theentire labour market (Guenzi 1987; Groppi 1996a, 1998a, 2000).
As yet there are no detailed studies of the Roman corporations of the earlymodern period, except for somewhat dated work on the Italian economy moregenerally (Rodocanachi 1894; Morelli 1937; Martini 1965; Fanfani 1943; DalPane 1944). Recently, however, Italian historiography has shown renewed inter-est in the world of corporations.Yet despite some remarkable research (Guenzi,Massa and Piola Caselli 1998;Travaglini 1998; Guenzi, Massa and Moioli 1999),it is still not possible to establish a full picture of the relationship between womenand the various crafts, or to gain a sense of the degree of openness or otherwiseof different occupations over different epochs.
No exclusively female guilds appear to have existed in Rome,unlike the cou-turières and lingères of Paris, or others in various European cities in the latemedieval period (Coffin 1994;Truant 1996;Crowston 2000;Wensky 1982;Rosser1997). Instead, the data confirm a different pattern that was also widespread inEurope, in which women were held at the margins of the corporate system. Evenin corporations that admitted a female presence,women’s numbers were low,theyheld subordinate positions, and they were excluded from the upper echelons of
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the organizational structure. Across all occupations, and throughout the earlymodern period, women’s numbers and status were decidedly inferior to those ofmen. According to established norms,women could not participate in the execu-tive body of a corporation, they were not allowed to participate in the periodicassemblies of the association, and often were not even mentioned in the statutesthat established conditions of membership of a certain craft.
According to a principle that pertained all over Europe, the corporate worldof the city of Popes was dominated by men, who tended to define themselvesthrough their masculinity and through their membership of a homogeneousgroup. Numerous Roman statutes referred simply to ‘men of the craft’,4 takingfor granted the exclusion of women. But even in guilds that admitted both menand women, specific regulations determined the marginalization of the latter.During the course of the eighteenth century, certain Roman corporationsrevised their rules, stiffening policies controlling access to the craft, and accentu-ating the marginal position of women.
On 21 September 1757, a decree signed by Pietro Frangipani, auditor of theSacra Rota and official Apostolic visitor to the Guild of Weavers, ordered thatsilk weavers and lace makers, along with those of linen and wool, should give nomore licences to women. The only exception was to be granted for women silkweavers who could prove that they had worked for more than five years. Suchwomen were to be granted a ‘half-licence’, which obviously limited their rights.Women weavers would no longer be able to maintain more than two looms, andwere to limit themselves to the weaving of only two types of simple fabric, taffetaand a rough mixture of wool and cotton known as castorino. If they disobeyedthese new rules they would have to pay a fine, and upon the third infractionwould lose the right to practise the craft altogether.5
Some years later, it emerged from a Registro de’ maestri e maestre appatentati dal-l’Università de’ sartori that between 10 April 1788 and 8 October 1796, amongforty-eight people examined for entrance to the tailors’ guild, there was not onewoman. The examiners were exclusively men, as were all officers of the confra-ternity. Furthermore, no women were permitted to participate in the periodicmeetings which deliberated over the work practices and rituals of the members.6
Similar situations were to be found in all such work organizations, wherewomen’s presence, if not completely excluded,was extremely limited. That onlya small number of women officially ran an activity controlled by a guild or cor-poration was a fact of life throughout the eighteenth century. Significantly, in acensus of 1776, out of 233 workshops involving tailors and corset- and jacket-makers, only fifteen belonged to women. In 1783 a list of master barber’s shopsrevealed that thirteen were owned by women, but the owners obviously did notpractise the barber’s art themselves. In fact, in all cases the women were widowsof deceased barbers.7 In Rome more generally, women who owned commercialor productive enterprises operating within a corporation were predominantlywidows who had inherited the activity from their husband.
The tailors and barbers provide two examples among many of the way that
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the principle of transmission of goods and maintenance of dowry rights mostoften explained female business proprietorship. This was a principle with whichthe guilds continually had to reckon. An example of this occurred in 1729,whena decree approved by the weavers’ guild introduced statutory norms that pro-hibited the teaching of a craft to women, because it led to ‘many abuses thatprejudiced the craft’.Yet the right to enter into an apprenticeship was maintainedfor wives, daughters, nieces and sisters of master weavers belonging to the cor-poration.8 Overall, the Roman corporations tended to exclude women frompositions of responsibility within the organization.When they found themselvesforced to reckon with a female presence, imposed by blood relationships ordowry obligations, which required special treatment for the family of a member,they did everything possible to limit the woman’s influence.
Virtually all the guild statutes contain specific chapters dedicated to the pro-cedures to be adopted when a master died without male heirs or with heirs tooyoung to take over, but leaving a widow and daughters. All of them recognizedthe need to respect the principle that after death an estate had to pass to thelegitimate heirs, including women in the absence of male heirs. But the mechan-isms that regulated the hereditary lines of females were not the same as those formales. Even if the principles of property inheritance imposed limits on mascu-line hegemony over a craft, in the end this revealed itself to be stronger than thewill of the testator: all the statutes contained mechanisms that limited a woman’stitle over an enterprise, either by limiting the volume of business it was allowedto handle, or by making a widow into a temporary administrator of an estate,while awaiting inheritance by a son or a second husband.9
Pietro Frangipani’s decree of 21 September 1757 on weavers declared thatlicences could only be transmitted de plano, that is without new taxes or newexams, from father to son. Where a member died leaving no sons but a widow,she could have the licence transferred to her name only after a formal requestand after payment of a tax. In any case no woman weaver could ever own morethan two looms.10
The statutes of the wool weavers approved in 1758 were even more restric-tive of widows’ rights, and reveal a worsening attitude to women. They prohib-ited females from involvement in the craft,even if they were members’daughters,on the pretext that ‘women are incapable of lifting the weights involved in ourtrade’. If a master were to die leaving a widow or daughters but no sons, the rulesspecified that the president, consuls and chamberlain of the guild must ‘choosean expert person to run the enterprise’. The ownership of the business couldpass to a woman, but the running of it had to stay with a man. In any case thewidow’s proprietorship was only tolerated until the daughters either married orwent into a monastery (implying that the mother assumed the paternal role insupplying a dowry). Alternatively, the widow’s ownership ceased when shemarried again, at which point the new husband was obliged to obtain a licencefor the craft. In cases where there were young sons, the tutelage of the widowlasted until the elder of these reached 18 years of age.11
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Similarly, the rules imposed by the guild of barbers allowed a widow to inherita barber’s shop, but it had to be run by a licensed male barber. If the widow thenmarried someone who was not a barber she would be forced to sell the shopwithin three months of the date of marriage, and lost the right to let the shopor even to enter into partnership with a licensed barber.12 It is evident that theguilds, though forced to respect the principle of inheritance of an estate, soughtin every way possible to circumscribe the rights of widows, above all in cases ofa second marriage.
Equally evident, on the other hand, is the will of widows to defend their pre-rogatives. In numerous cases widows challenged the rules of the corporations,even by going to court to defend their rights. The various tribunals of the citywere frequently called to arbitrate over conflicts fuelled by the corporations’desire to control and limit property rights that women were very often notwilling to give up.
In November 1775 the tailors’ guild took one Margherita Boni Pester tocourt, trying to force her to close the tailor’s shop she had inherited from herhusband, since she had married again. The guild was trying to enforce the prin-ciple that prohibited widows of master tailors from continuing a business if theyremarried.13 Some decades earlier, in March 1735, the booksellers’ guild founditself obliged to refer to the Pope in order to assert its rights against a widow. Ina supplication they asked the Pope to intervene via the governor of Rome toenforce a court injunction against the widow of the bookseller GabrielePiazzani, ordering her to cease operating the bookshop since she had married ahaberdasher.14
Occasionally the perseverance of certain women in defending their heredi-tary rights enabled them to win against the claims of corporations. In July 1780Geltrude Fiocchi, widow of the gold-leaf artist Giovanni Calamari, succeededin a case against the corporation of gold-leafers of Rome, winning the right tocontinue in business at the workshop that had belonged to her husband. Thestatutes of the guild allowed a widow with no sons to continue to operate a shopfor a maximum of six months after the death of a husband. This was consideredsufficient time for her to sell the merchandise in the shop and recover the valueof her dowry, which was assumed to have been invested in the enterprise. Gel-trude obtained the right to continue operating the workshop for another twoyears, thanks largely to the statements of witnesses, among them her parish priest.They claimed that they had seen her working alongside her husband as a gold-leafer for over thirty years, and testified that she was an extremely good worker.Indeed, she had kept the shop open when her husband had been away or ill.15
Geltrude owed her legal success mainly to her wide network of protectors.16
At the same time, it is clear that the widow strongly desired recognition of herskills, claiming that the professionalism she had acquired over long years workingat her husband’s side represented her only chance to continue living an hon-ourable life. In a supplication to the Pope written by her lawyer,Geltrude beggedto be permitted to ‘continue this profession, in order to procure honourably food
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and clothing, and distance herself from an idle life, given that she has no otherabilities’.17
Just as the poor women who sought to relieve themselves from the financialclaims of the guilds underlined the benefits of their work to their family, soGeltrude’s recourse to other stereotypes of gender were helpful in her attemptto negotiate a position in the labour market of the city (Groppi 2000). Since shehad no dependants, Geltrude Fiocchi could not claim, as did numerous seam-stresses, that she was working only for the benefit of her family, according to theproper duties of a woman in the domestic sphere. But she did emphasize a dutythat the society of the time regarded as of primary importance for a woman: tosafeguard female honour as a guarantee of broader family and communitystandards.
Notwithstanding the restrictions that controlled it, the main factor in femaleproprietorship of enterprises in early modern Rome was clearly the principle ofhereditary transmission.18 But it is also true that the guilds’ policies of discrimi-nation against women over the centuries amounted to a coercive mechanism thattended to limit individual testamentary liberty and property rights. Beyond themere exercise of practices of exclusion and limitation, these mechanisms alsohelped to establish a mentality that denied female autonomy in the economicrealm. This explains why officially recognized female management of commer-cial enterprises was exceptional throughout the nineteenth century. In realitynumerous women were involved in such activities, but the mental habits of along period of corporate regulation impeded or at least discouraged their officialrecognition.
Moreover, the juridical culture of the era also imposed numerous obstacles towomen’s management of family wealth, and therefore also limited women’sactivities in the commercial world. At the end of the eighteenth century oneAntonia Petrucci, wife of Bartolomeo Nelli, a candle maker who owned severalshops in Rome but had become mentally ill, was not allowed to run the busi-nesses without the special decree of a judge. This was the case despite the factthat Antonia had many years of experience as a candle maker and it was underher direction that the family’s two young sons had kept the operation going afterBartolomeo fell ill. Antonia managed to obtain the necessary decree on 17 July1797 after her sons had made a formal declaration before a notary of the courttestifying to Antonia’s ability and declaring that they had had difficulty in findinganother suitably qualified person to take their mother’s place.19 The procedureby which Antonia achieved her success was hardly simple. The sons had had tomake a supplication to the Pope, because earlier the judge had decided that hewas not qualified to adjudicate in this exceptional case of a woman wanting totake over her husband’s business while he was still alive.
The judge concerned, a member of the Curia of the Campidoglio,was com-petent to make a decree of ‘voluntary jurisdiction’ in contracts involving womenand minors, according to the Roman statutes and the Apostolic constitution,Romanae curiae praestantiam, of 21 December 1744.20 These procedures required
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that every economic transaction involving women or minors had to be author-ized by a judge, before a notary and two witnesses (who had to be close relatives),after the nomination of a ‘suitable guardian’. The guardian’s job was to help thewoman with the legal work because of her presumed imbecillitas sexus (‘weak-ness’), which threatened to compromise her juridical capacity (Feci 1998).According to a ritualized formula, the judge ordered the guardian three times to‘be a good guardian to the woman . . . do not leave her undefended, do every-thing you can to her advantage, because by law, and according to the Statute ofRome you are obliged to do your best for her’.21
It was one thing to authorize a woman to administer her estate once she wasa widow, but it was quite another to allow her to direct and run the assets of ahusband who was still alive. It was only after the intervention of the Pope himselfthat the judge nominated Antonia ‘guardian of the infirm Bartolomeo Nelli andadministrator of his estate . . . with the presence and consent of his two sons’.The same judge ordered Antonia to be particularly vigilant in keeping the books,so that she could explain all activity to her husband should he regain his sanity.Finally, the judge ordered, as a guarantee of Antonia’s good administration, thatshe mortgage her dowry for the duration of her administration of her husband’sestate.22 Thus, albeit with a certain effort, the law managed to overcome the con-tradiction between Antonia’s real economic role and its legal invisibility, a situ-ation that threatened the future of a business. It is worth noting that in cities likeGenoa and Venice, which had a much stronger commercial tradition, womenwere able to sign legal contracts in the absence of their father or husband,without the need for special legal authorization as in Rome (Ungari 1970;Groppi 1996a).
4 Between ownership and business
The case of Antonia Petrucci underlines once again the well-known centralityof the dowry in societies and economies of the past. The dowry, as a form offemale participation in the activities of a newly formed family, was often a deter-mining element in the founding or consolidation of a commercial enterprise. Insome cases dowries became an instrument that guaranteed official recognition ofa woman’s commercial abilities in the world of business (Groppi 1996b; Groppiand Houbre 1998).
For centuries the dowry represented a nexus between the realms of assets andwork, and in Italy until the early twentieth century dowries were regulated bystatutes and laws. An essential element of marriage, many poor young womencould only obtain one through their own labour, which was often carried out insome charitable institution (Groppi 1994). However modest it may have been,the dowry often provided the means for a new couple to establish some degreeof economic independence, whether they lived in the city or the country. It wasa means to establish or solidify some productive or commercial enterprise. Often
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it lay at the base of significant economic transactions in which,over the centuries,women were either directly or indirectly involved.
In the sixteenth century numerous daughters of weavers from Florence orLucca brought to their marriages, in addition to a trousseau and a sum of money,a loom that became the economic foundation of the new family. Such a loomwas no small thing: to obtain one many weavers were forced to work for a masterweaver without pay for up to two years. Among Genoese spinners, the dowrywas frequently offered as security to a merchant in a transaction involving thepurchase of primary materials. In sixteenth-century Lucca, in the world of com-merce, young couples often invested dowries in order to start a shop (Berengo1965; Di Ciommo 1974; Ghiara 1983; Gozzini 1984; Marcello 1993). Thesepatterns were continued for many centuries. Almost everywhere in Italy untilthe beginning of the nineteenth century, the origins of many small artisanalworkshops and even large-scale commercial activities were tightly bound upwith brides’ dowries, often paid by both lay and religious charitable institutions.In the case of early nineteenth-century Florence dowries were very often thefoundation of economic autonomy for small shopkeepers and artisans (Gozzini1984, 1989).
A woman’s assets, introduced into marriage under the form of a dowry,became a determining element in guaranteeing the survival of a new family bycontributing to the growth of an economic activity. A man’s assets, in the formof inherited goods, usually came later in the family’s life-cycle. The fact that thelaw provided specific mechanisms for the management of dowries protectedthem from carelessness or bad management on the part of the husband, and madethem particularly precious. Creditors could not make claims upon dowries incases of economic failure or unfortunate investment by the husband, and thisprotected not only the woman to whom the dowry belonged but her entirefamily (Ago 1996).
In Rome as in other parts of Italy, the dowry formed the origin of manyenterprises. It was used to buy workspace, tools, primary materials and otheressential elements in the launching of a business.When in November 1793 Gio-vacchino Mortola, proprietor of a grocery and pasta workshop valued at 1,000scudi, needed a loan of 400 scudi to acquire the primary materials (wheat, oil,legumes, etc.) to increase the turnover of his business, his wife Maria Annadecided to help him. She offered as a guarantee to the creditor five certificatesof bonds. This represented half the bonds assigned to her husband as a dowry atthe time of marriage, and represented her paternal inheritance. But Maria Annaknew that because she was a woman the legal act could not be sworn by her ifshe had not first taken a number of legal steps required by common law and theStatute of Rome.
As we saw in the case of Antonia Petrucci, financial transactions that involvedwomen had to take place in the presence of a judge who had to nominate a maleguardian. Thus Maria Anna appeared before the judge of the Curia di Campi-doglio and in the presence of the nominated guardian declared her will to help
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her husband with the cession of title to her bonds. Maria Anna referred to herown personal involvement in the workshop as proof that she knew what she wasdoing. Before the judge she affirmed that she was more than careful about thevalue of the workshop, because she worked there personally. Two witnessestestified that they had always seen Mortola working alongside both his wife andhis mother.23 It becomes clear that the legal case was a game, in which femalepowerlessness was more a formality than a reality. The apparently exclusive roleof men as economic protagonists has for a long time camouflaged the import-ance of women’s roles, both as providers of capital and as workers.
5 Family enterprises
The true nature of the economic contribution of women often remains hiddenbehind the statistics on marital status which dominate the fiscal and parochialdocumentation normally used to analyse the societies of the past. This is as trueof Rome as it is anywhere else. In the Roman parish registers, the principalsource used to study the population of Rome (Sbrana et al. 1977), women aremostly identified as mothers, daughters, wives and widows, while for the mostpart any details about their occupations are ignored.This omission occurred evenmore frequently when a woman worked with her husband in a family business.
In recent years it has been underlined that such cases were less common thanpreviously assumed, in what Maxine Berg has defined as the ‘myth of the familyeconomy’ (Berg 1987). Many studies have shown how women’s work was notnecessarily a mere complement to the work of the male head of the family. Suchwork was often part of an autonomous experience,not just for women who livedalone but also for many married women (Gozzini 1984;Earle 1989;Sharpe 1991;Palazzi 1997). This is not to deny the element of working collaboration withinthe nucleus of the family: the economic solidarity between married couples issomething that deserves further study, but it should be recognized that often thewoman’s contribution assured the well-being and sometimes even the survivalof the family nucleus.
In 1777 the journeymen tailors of Rome sent a supplication to the Popeprotesting against his instruction of 24 April, which forbade those without alicence from making new clothes in their own homes.24 Their demand for theright to work in their own homes, against the claims of the master tailors, showsa recognition of the indispensable contribution of women. They wrote to PiusVI that
among the tailors there are members over 60 years of age whose sight is weak,but who can work at home with the help of their wives and daughters; if theywere to abandon this work at home, in order not to disobey Your Holiness,they would perish, because if they had to work in formal workshops,withoutthe help of their wives and daughters, they would earn next to nothing.25
Testimony from parish priests indicates that this dependence on women was a
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widespread phenomenon. A statement by the priest of S. Salvatore dated 29 May1777 referred to one Francesco Balbiani, aged 60, and resident in the parish formore than ten years, mentioning that he supported himself working as a tailorfrom his own home, assisted by his wife. More specifically, the priest wrote thatbecause Francesco was old and short-sighted, ‘he would not be able to workwithout the help of his wife’.26
There is also evidence of female entrepreneurship that paralleled and com-plemented the activity of the head of the family, often revealing itself as an indis-pensable element in the success of the overall enterprise. One figure in particularmade frequent appearances in the records of the Roman textile economy at atime when, under Pius VI, the government made attempts to boost the manu-facturing base of the Papal States. This was Maria Mondelli, wife of the textileentrepreneur Angelo Luci, and, like her husband, originally from Todi inUmbria.
We first encounter Maria Mondelli in Rome in July 1784, in the companyof Giovanni Cristiano De Miller, a key figure in the Roman economy of the era(Dal Pane 1959). The occasion was an experiment that compared an old-stylecotton spinning wheel with a new model with fourteen spindles invented by theFrenchman François Aubert. A Neapolitan spinner, Antonia Cardamona, spunfor an hour and a quarter on the old wheel, creating a yarn that was ‘somewhatthick but good’. For the same period Maria Mondelli used the new machine,creating a yarn that was ‘much finer and more beautiful’. The experiment wasrepeated on 4 August, this time with Maria spinning at a machine with thirtyspindles.
Later, Maria, together with her husband and brother, was sent to Civitavec-chia to teach spinning to the female orphans of the Conservatory of DivineProvidence. Maria stayed there until 28 February 1785, when, in her capacity asdirector and master spinner, she pronounced that the girls ‘were as skilled asanyone; nothing remains to be taught to them, they are fully capable’.27 Aftertheir return to Rome, on 14 March 1785, Maria, her husband and her brotherreceived 100 scudi for their instruction of the orphans in the art of spinning withthe new machines. Some time later, the husband and wife team were paid forfurther instruction at the Monastery of the Orsoline, and between 1786 and1788 Maria Mondelli received a regular stipend of 6 scudi per month from theApostolic Chamber for her spinning instruction in Rome, while several of herformer pupils were in turn sent to teach in other parts of the Papal States.28
Maria’s career clearly indicates recognition of her professionalism: she waspaid by an institutional organ of the government, owned a spinning machinewith sixteen spindles, and certified the professional skills of her many appren-tices. It is also clear that her professional career was a fundamental element in thesuccess of her husband, Angelo Luci. Angelo was one of the most importantfabric entrepreneurs of the era, supported by the Apostolic Chamber, which atthe end of his long career bestowed upon him a monthly pension of 8 scudi.Not only was Maria competent in the operation of the new style of spinning
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machine, then starting to be used on a large scale, but her gender itself allowedher to play an important role in the instruction of girls and young women clois-tered in religious institutions. Male knowhow would never have been able toenter such institutions without the mediation of a woman.
Proof of Angelo’s need for an expert female partner came in 1792 uponMaria’s death (at the age of 33, possibly in childbirth). Within a few months,Angelo married one Maria Bocchini, an expert spinner and weaver of 22 years,who had learnt her skills in the Apostolic Hospice of S. Michele, where she hadlived for ten years.29 It is worth noting that a search of the parish registers wouldnever have revealed anything of the first Maria’s illustrious career. A search ofthe registries of S. Salvatore in Onda, the last place Maria lived, shows that onlyAngelo figures as a weaver. Maria was mentioned solely in her capacity as wife,along with four daughters and a servant.30
The story of Maria Mondelli is not an isolated case. The significance ofwomen’s work also emerges in the new climate that was encouraged by the econ-omic policies put into place at the time of Pius VI. In 1787 the Reverenda cameraapostolica sent six Roman weavers to Turin to learn about the Dutch looms thathad recently begun to be used there. Among them were Filippo Scalvanti andhis wife Caterina, who was also designated as a weaver. Upon their return a yearlater, Filippo and Caterina, along with another weaver named Benedetto Cris-tiani, toured the Papal States to teach the skills they had learnt in Turin. Theyeach received 10 scudi per month, paid by the Camera apostolica. Additionally,each instructor received a bonus of 15 scudi for each pupil judged to have per-fected the art of weaving on the Dutch looms.31 In 1794 the husband and wifeteam found themselves in Rieti, at the loom factory owned by the MarquisPotenziani. Caterina was paid to teach ‘regular weaving on fine looms’, whileanother instructor, Anna Bini, a former pupil of Maria Mondelli, had occupiedthe post for the two preceding years.
6 Conclusions
These cases of women’s work are all examples of the complex presence ofwomen in an urban economy of the old regime. It is a presence that dependedupon a delicate equilibrium between reality and representation, both as propri-etors and as workers. In reality, in papal Rome between the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, many women were involved in a broad range of commercialactivities, in a culture that permitted and even favoured that presence, while atthe same time shying away from social recognition of it. Notwithstanding themany legal and normative restrictions that limited women’s hereditary and prop-erty rights, women were often at the centre of economic transactions that werecrucial in determining the professional success of men. Through such trans-actions women often succeeded in expressing their legal will, even if this had tobe done in the shadow of a guardian. Court cases were like a game, in which
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women’s right to work or own property was sometimes conceded, but only asan exception.
In the long run, the culture and praxis of guild culture meant that the econ-omic participation of women was frequently invisible and rarely recognized. Itmeant that for Roman women of the time ownership of an enterprise was mucheasier to inherit than to obtain through a working career. At the same time theefforts of the pontifical government to develop the textile economy, particularlyunder Pius VI, began to erode the corporate spirit and encouraged the develop-ment of female professionalism in the industry. In the 1780s and 1790s theCamera apostolica, in promoting new spinning techniques, increased the possi-bilities for women to have careers, not just under the tutelage of men, but alsowith a certain autonomy. In January 1786 Annunziata Zecchini sent a supplica-tion to Treasurer Ruffo, asking to be granted a spinning machine of twentyspindles ‘in order to earn a living’, given that she was an orphan, and with theold spinning wheel could not earn more than 2 baiocchi a day. She undertook topay for the machine at the rate of 1 scudo per month. Once she had obtainedthe machine and learnt to use it, she was sent to Subiaco and Filettino to teachcotton spinning to the young women of the area. Anna Bini, student of MariaMondelli, had a similar story: she too obtained a machine with twenty spindles,and began to tour the various villages of the Papal States teaching the fine art ofcotton spinning.32
The protection of the state, in providing the sponsorship women oftenneeded to establish their presence in the world of work, in the end favoured thelegitimization of female professionalism, a higher profile of ownership forwomen workers, and a greater level of visibility for, and recognition of, femalecompetence.
Notes
1 Citizenship was one of the central themes of Annarita Buttafuoco’s work; see inparticular Buttafuoco (1997). On rights of citizenship for women in the early modernera see Cerutti et al. (1995); Bellavitis (2001).
2 The literature on this subject is vast. For an overview of the situation in Italy betweenthe medieval and contemporary periods see the various essays in Groppi (1996a).
3 Archivio di Stato di Roma (ASR), Miscellanea statistica,Titolo IV – Industria, bb. 22and 23,‘Statistica di tutti i negozi; spaccj, e botteghe classificata e divisa nelle diverseArti e mestieri; a forma delle istruzioni ricevute con biglietto della Direzione generaledi polizia del 10 maggio 1827,n. 5378’. Numerous recent studies have underlined theimportance of the distinction between natives and immigrants for an understandingof the gendered nature of the economy. For example see Sewell (1985); Rosental(1990, 1999); Arru (1992). On the presence of Jews in the Roman labour market ofthe period see Groppi (1998a) and Cafficro (1998), in addition to the classic study byBerliner (1992 [1893]).
4 See, for example, Archivio storico capitolino (ASC), Camera capitolina, Cred. XI, t.34, Statuti, capitoli e costituzioni dell’Università ed Arte de Candelottari di Roma, 31 May1606 (manuscript copy of 1703), which refers to ‘men of the craft’; see also Archiviosegreto vaticano (ASV), Misc., Arm. IV–V, t. 56, Statuta ordinationes et facultates
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universitatis marciariorum urbis, Rome,Typographia Camerae Apostolicae, 1623, whichnominated the ‘men of the University’.
5 This decree is reported in ASR, Camerale II, Arti e mestieri, b. 7,Traduzzione del brevedella Santità di N.S. Clemente XIV felicemente regnante, fatta per uso, e comodo de’ Maestri eLavoranti Tessitori, n.p., n.d.
6 Archivio storico del Vicariato di Roma (ASVR), Confraternita dei sarti nella Chiesadi S. Omobono, b. 6; for a study of similar cases elsewhere in Italy see Massa (1995);Laudani (1996).
7 ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, ufficio 33, b. 623, c. 612 et seq., Visitatio apothecarummagistrorum sartorum pro Universitate sartorum Urbis, held between 31 May and 20 July1776; Elenco de’ maestri Barbieri di Roma appatentati, appendix to Statuti, ordini ecostituzioni dell’Università e Collegio de’ Barbieri di Roma, Rome 1783, Stamperia dellaRev. Camera Apostolica (ASR, Biblioteca, Statuti, 606).
8 Appendices to the Copia degli statuti dei tessitor i of 1574 (ASC, Camera capitolina,Cred. XI, t. 42).
9 Similar provisions applied elsewhere in Italy. See Massa (1995); cf. also Honeyman andGoodman (1991).
10 ASR, Camerale II, Arti e mestieri, b. 7, Traduzzione del breve della Santità di N.S.Clemente XIV felicemente regnante, fatta per uso, e comodo de’ Maestri e Lavoranti Tessitori,n.p., n.d.
11 ASR, Biblioteca, Statuti 395/4, Statuti del nobil Colleggio dell’arte della lana di Romaapprovati, e confermati dalla Santità di N. S. Papa Clemente XIII, Rome, 1759, ChaptersXXXV and XXXVI.
12 ASR, Biblioteca, Statuti 606, Statuti, ordini, e costituzioni dell’Università, e Collegio de’Barbieri di Roma, Rome, 1783, Stamperia della Rev. Camera apostolica. Similar ruleswere to be found in the statutes of numerous other guilds.
13 ASR, Tribunale civile del Senatore, b. 2422, uff. 28, Broliardus actorum . . . , notaioInnocenzo Antonio Ricci.
14 ASV, Segreteria dei memoriali, reg. 78, c. 945rv.15 ASR, Camerale III Arti e mestieri, b. 13.16 ibid., letter from the Vice-Regent to the Cardinal Chamberlain, 14 July 1780.17 ibid., Supplication to Pius VI by Geltrude Fiocchi, Roman widow.18 It was only after the annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy, in 1870, that
Roman women obtained equality of hereditary rights, as expressed in the Italian civilcode of 1865.
19 ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, ufficio 27, notaio Mannucci.20 Sanctissimi Domini nostri Benedicti papae XIV Bullarium, t. 1,Venetiis, 1768, pp. 209–15.21 The same formula recurs in legal transactions preserved from various notarial studios
of the city: ASR, Trenta notai capitolini.22 ibid., ufficio 27, notaio Mannucci.23 ASR, Trenta notai capitolini, uff. 30, b. 660, cc. 228 et seq.24 ASR, Camerale III Arti e mestieri, b. 34, Chirografo Della Santità di Nostro Signore Pio
Papa Sesto felicemente regnante sopra La fissazione del numero delle Botteghe de’ maestriSartori, Bustari, e Giupponari di Roma [. . .], Rome, Stamperia della Rev. CameraApostolica, 1777.
25 ASR, Camerale II, Arti e mestieri, b. 34, Supplica a Pio VI per i lavoranti sartori, n.d.[June 1777].
26 ibid.27 ASR, Camerale II, Commercio e industria, b. 1, fasc. 15.28 ibid., fasc. 2 and 4.29 ASR,Trenta notai capitolini, uff. 30, b. 658, c. 106 et seq., dowry papers of 13 January
1793; ibid., Ospizio Apostolico di S. Michele, bb. 361 and 362.
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30 ASVR, S. Salvatore in Onda, Stati delle anime 1791 and 1792.31 ASR, Camerale II, Commercio e industria, b. 2, fasc. 4, Memoria delli dipartimenti ed
incumbenze delle quali ha avuto l’incarico il cav. Gio. Cristiano De Miller dagli Eminent.misignori Cardinali Pallotta, e Ruffo, in tempo del respettivo loro tesorierato con approvazione dellaSantità di N.S., n.d. [1794].
32 ASR, Camerale II, Commercio e industria, b. 1, fasc. 2 and 17.
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