Adding to the scholarship of Renata Ago and Laurie Nussdorfer, Eleonora Canepari, in this meticulously researched study, examines the political, economic, and social foundations of power of Rome’s civic nobility. Canepari demonstrates how both new and old members of this civic elite grounded their authority in the occupation of municipal offices at the Capitol and through the development of social and economic ties with social inferiors as “big men” in neighborhoods and in the larger political quarters. Through their role as municipal officials and patrons, the civic nobility carved itself out a space of authority, exclusive of the papal curia and religious office, thus demonstrating the multilayered nature of power in early modern Rome.

Using a panoply of diverse sources, including rolls of Capitoline officeholders, family account books, parish census records, and petitions to the pope and powerful cardinals, Canepari reconstructs the relationship that the civic nobility, the untitled elite of lower ranking than the old Roman baronage or newly titled papal families, had with subordinates, whether urban neighbors or agricultural workers in the countryside. By means of their positions at the Capitol, especially as caporioni (civic officials in charge of matters of justice at the level of the political quarter, or rione), members of the civic nobility wielded influence throughout the neighborhoods near their ancestral palaces as patrons responsible for the redistribution of goods, charity, work, and favors. As landed nobility, this urban elite hired factors to watch over their casali (large farms in the Roman Campagna), employed seasonal workers (especially at harvest time), and sold the fruits of their farms to vendors living within their quarter. In the city, they hired domestic servants, offered credit to neighbors, servants, and buyers of their agricultural products, and sent letters of recommendation and grazia on behalf of their social inferiors. The epicenter of this patronage network was the family’s ancestral home, which Canepari shows, despite losing its defensive function by the fifteenth century, continued to stand as a physical representation of family power and prestige.

The chief contribution of Canepari’s tome is displayed in chapters 4 and 5 wherein she ventures into territory rarely explored by historians of urban elite: the study of economic relationships between elites and commoners. Investigating the account books of prominent civic nobles, Canepari reveals that prominent civic families, such as Santacroce and Velli, maintained regular economic dealings not only with vendors and shopkeepers near their palaces and in their immediate quarter, but also with those beyond their vicinity, in adjoining quarters. Heads of families recurrently sold wine, meat, grain, and vegetables to fruit vendors, grocers (piazzagnoli), innkeepers, and bakers, often taking an initial payment and accepting the rest as credit. In this way, civic elites acted as big men in the redistribution of credit and goods in the city and the maintenance of social relationships hitherto little studied.

The strengths of Canepari’s book are its archival prowess, its sustained analysis of the foundations of the civic elite’s authority, and its exploration of the economic and social relations between elites and commoners. The civic nobles of Rome based their power on a variety of means—topographical, economic, political, and above all social, as the big men of the neighborhood. As for the political base of civic power in Rome, Canepari gives a thorough examination of the open nature of its elite and the ready access to offices at the Capitol. Nevertheless, she ignores the magnified power of the Capitoline officials, especially the caporioni and conservators, during the sede vacante, the time between the death of the pope and the election of his successor. During this time, the conservators competed with the College of Cardinals over law and order in Rome, and the caporioni, with their artisan militias, actively took over the policing of the quarters. The Capitoline elite jealously guarded the ephemeral power that the sede vacante accorded them. Surely, besides a brief taste of real authority, the power that these civic officials acquired must have had more enduring social and political repercussions among their neighbors and clients, well after the election of a new pope. Nevertheless, Canepari offers an important work that should be essential reading for scholars of Rome and early modern urban history.