Cartografie della violenza: violenza e corpi nella competizione per il territorio (il registro delle tolecte degli udinesi del 1350, BCUd, FP, ms. 892/III)

Abstract

Recent studies on political practices and languages in the Middle Ages have highlighted how violence did not play a residual role nor did it represent an antiquated or outdated practice. When considered in the specific context of production, discourses based on and around violence have thus regained their original meaning and become a fundamental heuristic tool for understanding the dynamics of competition and the construction of political spaces. The aim of this contribution is to highlight and publish an interesting dossier of reports produced by the citizens of Udine in 1350 against the members of the castellan faction that had just assasinated the patriarch Betrand of Saint-Geniès. Reports mainly refer to acts of violence and abuse perpetrated by the castellans against the workers and rural employees of the udinese landowners and aristocrats. As I will try to demonstrate, the strategy of the castellan faction seems to have been to reorganise and redefine local territorial spaces through the use of threats and violence in which the peasants of the udinese citizens (and their bodies) were both the target and 'medium' of the language of violence.

Keywords

• late middle ages
• patriarcha of aquileia
• violence
• territory
• power