Autore
Colombo, Emanuele C.

Titolo
Carità a parenti. La povertà vergognosa a Torino nel Settecento
Periodico
Quaderni storici
Anno: 2024 - Volume: 176 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 437 - Pagina finale: 460

The article deals with the shameful poor in the 18th century Turin. This form of poverty is a socio-legal device used by families to make it possible a vertical hereditary transmission based on male primogeniture, liquidating the ambitions of other branches by providing dowries to the women of the kinship over the long term. The legal devices prescribing dowries through forms of charity are typically perpetual. The ideology of the shameful poor holds that the condition of being poor is determined by a relative impoverishment, if compared to a previous situation. According to this cultural perspective, the loss of assets does not lead to absolute poverty but thwarts reaching social needs, usually pursued by noble families. In Turin, however, other members of social groups still in formation during the 18th century, such as state servants and professionals, also define themselves as shamefully poor in an imitation game with nobility. Shameful poverty helps to specify and define what these groups are. Charity and shameful poverty are intrinsically linked, and it is not coincidental that urban confraternities specializing in the shameful poor in Italy (institutions like the Compagnia San Paolo in Turin, the Congregazione di Loreto in Milan, or the Congrega della Carità Apostolica in Brescia) are also specialists in providing dowries to poor young women. The particular characterization of shameful poverty as relative poverty allows kin of wealthy and noble families to qualify themselves as "poor".



SICI: 0301-6307(2024)176:2<437:CAPLPV>2.0.ZU;2-9
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.1408/116988
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.1408/116988

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