Download or read book History from Crime written by Edward Muir and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "How were popular attitudes toward death and life revealed in the illegal seventeenth-century practice of baptizing dead babies? What can be learned about the nature of government and economy in early modern Genoa by studying the methods of Renaissance counterfeiters? Why were certain forms of magic and witchcraft redefined by the Enlightenment as murder? In the latest volume of Selections from Quaderni Storici, Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero bring together a distinguished group of scholars to explore the social and political history of early modern Italy through the study of criminal records. Like other volumes in the series, History from Crime demonstrates how a sophisticated analysis of documents once thought beneath scholarly notice can offer stunning new insights into the past. The authors show, for example, how the practice of keeping concubines by priests in early modern Siena reveals the contours of religious and social perceptions of the time. An analysis of the dynamics of rural feuds helps redefine the structures of power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And a new look at the political values and norms of Renaissance Florence is provided by an examination of selected cases of political corruption." --