The Capital of Privileges

Piero Ventura

The Capital of Privileges: Spanish Government, Bureaucracy and Citizenship in Sixteenth-Century Naples

Authors

Piero Ventura

University of Naples Federico II

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0234-6622

Keywords:

Kingdom of Naples, Spanish rule, XVI - XVII Century, Bureaucracy, Privileges, Citizenship

Synopsis

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press.

Series: Clio. Essays in History, Archaeology and Art History.

Pages: 318.

Language: Italian.

NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-22335

Abstract: The book illustrates the reconstruction of the system of granting Neapolitan citizenship during the sixteenth century. In particular, the role played by the ‘Regia Camera della Sommaria’, the highest tax magistrature of the Kingdom of Naples, in the evaluation of requests and in the assignment of the citizenship licenses, which allowed access to the substantial tax and jurisdictional privileges of the capital city.

The policy of the Spanish government with respect to these privileges is based on prudence and attention to the political and social balance of a fundamental and complex capital as Naples is. The ‘Sommaria’, however, manages in establishing a system of control and government of privileges, which makes the Neapolitan citizenship for a large part a product of the state; also subtracting expertise in the field to the city's municipal government.

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Author Biography

Piero Ventura, University of Naples Federico II

He teaches Early Modern History and Urban History of the Modern Age at the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Naples "Federico II".

His research topics concern social and political history between the 16th and 18th centuries, with particular attention to the Kingdom of Naples and the urban dimension in Italy.

He is the author of essays published in collective volumes and italian and international academic journals and of the monograph: L’arciconfraternita dello Spirito Santo dei napoletani a Roma tra XVI e XVIII secolo, Roma, Aracne, 2009 (The archconfraternity of the Holy Spirit of the Neapolitans in Rome between the 16th and 18th centuries, Rome, Aracne, 2009).