538 claudio povolo
that collided with the old world of custom, which had one of its most
important moments in the celebration of festival rites.55
this phenomenon is clearly apparent in the 1770s and 1780s, but its
origins went back to the transformations of the 17th century, which can be
seen clearly in the activity of the courts in charge of maintaining that pub-
lic order and which was so clearly different from the peace-based order
that had so deeply marked medieval and early modern society with cul-
tural values such as honor and friendship. the shift, or really the definitive
end, occurred in the last two decades of the 17th century, when, in a series
of extraordinarily important laws, the council of ten more firmly took
control over certain violent crimes, such as murder or wounding some-
one, crimes that had for centuries been under the jurisdiction of local
courts, or, in Venice itself of the criminal Quarantia.56 control of the most
violent manifestations of feud were thus removed from local courts and
the ancient mechanisms that had regulated them for centuries. this series
of new laws was certainly undertaken in response to petitions from below
and in the wake of a new cultural sensibility57—a sensibility disposed to
perceive differently the core values of honor and friendship and, conse-
quently, also custom.58
A Closing SceneThe Night of the Locusts
bergamo, the upper town, the night between 2 and 3 october 1793. there
were many witnesses to the extraordinary spectacle on the tumultuous
and unforgettable night when the former podestà ottavio trento took his
inglorious leave of the city at the end of his term of office. but giuseppe
recuperati, the bishop’s chancellor, could testify even at a distance of
many months, that he still vividly remembered what happened then.
he had watched with attention the opening skirmishes in that pitiless
but memorable drama: trento’s descent down the great Pretorio stair-
case, thoughtfully attended by his successor nicolò corner; their passage
55 daniel fabre, “famiglie. il privato contro la consuetudine,” in P. ariès and g. duby,
eds., La vita privata dal Rinascimento all’Illuminismo (rome/bari, 1987), pp. 447–51.
56 Povolo, Retoriche giudiziarie, pp. 23–32.
57 dinges, The Use of Justice, pp. 171–73.
58 see the discussion of this term in herman roodenburg, “social control Viewed from
below: new Perspectives,” in roodenburg and spiernburg, eds., Social Control in Europe,
1: 151–55; and in Povolo, Uno sguardo, pp. xliii–lix.