Participants in the 1647 revolt of Naples argued in subsequently published accounts that they were neither rebelling nor acting disobediently, but were defending their privileges. Angela De Benedictis takes this claim seriously. This book, published in Italian in 2013, builds upon an insight of Mario Sbriccoli, who had identified a distinction in Roman and canon law traditions between revolt and lawful resistance. De Benedictis draws upon a similar distinction in the common law literature to reconstruct a set of concepts elaborated as early as the thirteenth century around the topics of “licit resistance” and “the unpunishable multitude” (192). The historiographic consensus among scholars who study popular resistance (Rosario Villari, in particular) posits that, over time, arguments justifying resistance to oppression and tyranny weakened in the face of political discourse that defended state power. The author's critique is that this historiography has relied almost entirely on “authors in the reason of State tradition” (193). She argues that texts drawn from Latin juridical and theological culture display a continued and influential presence of rights-based defenses against accusations of rebellion and lèse majesté.

De Benedictis's defense of her argument begins with a detailed study of a tumult (a neutral, source-based term in her view) in Urbino in 1572–73. This case, like several others discussed in the book, began with a dispute over taxation in which the community's response was declared by the prince to have been rebellious. Two key issues arose during this conflict: first, whether a community that acted as a “single collective protagonist” could be punished (33), and second, whether communities had the right to defend themselves against oppressive action taken by the prince or his officials. These questions recur in each case studied by the author.

The second chapter shows how the arguments used by citizens of Urbino to justify their actions were rooted in a juridical tradition stemming from Roland of Lucca's thirteenth-century commentary on the last three books of Justinian's codex. Roland argued that the prince did not own the private property of his subjects, who could “resist tax officials in the event that these officials seized the property of private citizens” inappropriately, even in the name of the prince (84). In this sense, resisting unjust power was “not only a right recognized under the law, but also a citizen's moral obligation” (85). De Benedictis then traces the development of these concepts by numerous subsequent jurists through the seventeenth century in treatises, consilia, and practicae criminales. Many of these texts were written in response to specific disputes, including a tumult in Trento in 1407, the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence (1478), and an uprising against the city council of Agen (1514) and one in Goncelin (Dauphiné) against enclosure of the commons.

The following three chapters examine several other cases: the Fuenteovejuna rebellion, the Catalan revolt of 1640, the Naples revolt, the 1674 uprising in Messina, the Salt War of Mondovì (1680), and the rejection in 1691 by subjects of their lord, Ferdinand II Gonzaga of Solferino. A consultatio written by the jurist Antonio Gobbi makes it clear not only that the subjects’ actions “had a foundation also in the communis opinio doctorum” about these issues (181), but that a lord who ignored contracts and custom was himself guilty of lèse majesté against the community (184). “What Gobbi maintained as lawful and just had, by 1694, a centuries-long presence,” De Benedictis writes (191).

The author makes a powerful and persuasive argument, but it might have been more effectively presented in a long article than in a book-length study. The pages devoted to detailed summary of accounts of specific tumults seem to be of limited analytical value. Despite the useful second chapter, the overall argument does not become clear until one reaches the conclusion. An earlier presentation of her central claim and its relationship to the historiography would facilitate the reader's ability to weigh the evidence. Engaging with scholars of popular political action, whether historians (Hugues Neveux, John Walter, Ruth MacKay), anthropologists (James C. Scott), or legal anthropologists (Bartolomé Clavero) might have enabled her to broaden the significance of her findings, as might have a discussion of how her work affects our understanding of social contract theory and early Enlightenment political thought.