Translated from the original French by Thomas Cohen, Claire Judde de Larivière's The Revolt of Snowballs begins with a bizarre event. In 1511, the Venetian government sent a new podesta to govern its subjects on the island of Murano. Instead of carrying out the usual public ritual to welcome a new podesta, the local residents bombarded their previous governor with snowballs, running him off the island in a hail of icy projectiles and mocking chants. Unlike in other regions of late medieval Europe, violent protest was rare in the Lagoon (4). The Snowball Revolt may seem like a singular expression of social unrest, a rowdy outbreak of “carnivalesque rituality,” but Larivière persuasively argues for a more complex political understanding of the Revolt of Snowballs (113).
Larivière's eight chapters take the reader through layers of context and clues that reveal the deeper meanings of this unusual display of communal disapproval. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce readers to the island's social and political world, alternatively expanding and narrowing the scale of analysis to situate the revolt within its economic, environmental, and administrative contexts. Once reframed, the Snowball Revolt brings to light the political power and participation of actors who might otherwise go unremarked in the historical record. Although subject to Venetian dominion, the people of Murano maintained degrees of independence. Larivière shows us an empowered, savvy community in which all members—from fishermen and gondoliers to public officials and guildsmen—played crucial roles in governance, justice, and political action.
The remaining chapters embed the Snowball Revolt in further contextual layers. Chapter 3 unpacks the culture of civic ritual in Venice and the larger Lagoon, focusing on the ritualized transfer of power between podestàs, old and new, that devolved into the rowdy Snowball Revolt. Chapter 4 assesses the impact of recent events like the Italian Wars, climate change, and the Carnival season upon simmering tensions unleashed in the Snowball Revolt. Finally, chapters 5 through 8 trace Venice's official investigation of the revolt and its ringleaders, which produced the court records that enabled Larivière to study this event so deeply. Larivière presents Murano as a “very judicialized space” in which the Muranese people (popolo) regularly interacted with Venetian law, asserting their local autonomy despite submission to Venetian authority (83). The popolo's diverse modes of participation in civic rituals and local politics similarly showcase their ability to learn and navigate systems of power and knowledge. A cross-section of the community regularly participated in public affairs through guild and local government elections, the selection of priests, and public demonstrations like the Snowball Revolt. Above all, Larivière emphasizes the collective agency and competency of the Muranese popolo, arguing that “subaltern agents … are neither peripheral, nor informal, nor secondary. Rather, they are the indispensable links that make the political order work” (42).
Through its microhistorical approach, shifting between broad and narrow scales of analysis, Larivière's slim volume packs a powerful punch. Readers from diverse backgrounds will find that The Revolt of Snowballs explores broad questions about the nature of power, identity, and community in the premodern world. For Larivière, these abstract concepts are made meaningful by diving down to the granular level of ordinary people and taking seriously the influence they wielded within their community. Working with tiny clues, or “reality's minutest motes,” Larivière reconstructs a Muranese social world too “complexly dense” to fit into dichotomous social models like elite/popular and rich/poor (5, 53).
However, scholars in the fields of social and cultural history may desire more explicit analysis of how Larivière's findings engage with previous scholarship on Italian legal cultures or social dynamics. Larivière's goal to engage a broader audience resulted in lean endnotes, with historiographic references largely confined to a thematic bibliography (vii–viii). The result is an engaging narrative, appealing to history majors and specialists alike, but a more robust bibliographic essay with annotations would have been welcome. Overall, this excellent study has much to offer scholars of various subjects, including cultural studies, law and governance, and social identity.
