Civil Blood

<p><b><i>Civil Blood</i></b><b> is a study of the practice of vendetta among the civic elites in sixteenth-century Italy and illustrates the complex and integral role that vendetta violence played in civic life and state formation on the winding path to state centralization.</b> At many temporal geographic and political points in early modern Italy vendetta appears to have not only disrupted but also constituted the processes by which the modern state emerged. </p><p>Amanda G. Madden examines vendetta as both central to politics and as an engine of change and illustrates the degree to which key phenomena of the period--state centralization growing bureaucracies institutional reforms and the process of state formation--were interpenetrated by and not simply opposed to ongoing factional violence among civic elites. </p><p>Madden further illuminates in <i>Civil Blood</i> how elites utilized violent enmities to maintain a grip on political control and negotiated with the duke concerning political power and civic prerogatives. As a result ruling elites not only defined their own place in governance but also shaped the function and definition of government.</p>