Stranieri e dominanti. Alcune iniziative di tutela e assistenza alle donne degli spagnoli a Napoli tra Cinque e Seicento,

The most recent historical research is developing around some key concepts in order to revisit the traditional approach to “unity in diversity” or to histoire croisée through transnational and transcultural perspective of a modernity perceived as intellectually polycentric. A breakthrough methodology that is reviewing the parameters needed to study the movement of people and ideas, as well as goods, or the sharing of socio-political, religious, and intellectual spaces by rethinking the identification facilities of “the different” by part of receiving communities, but also the identifiable mechanisms used by "strangers" to be identified as a group or to recognize each other.Many communities, along the ancien régime, can be defined as " border communities" themselves, projected as an outpost of rooting identities from the original homeland to the arriving milieus, they kept their women in great significance and considered their protection as a primary purpose. Pivot of contact activation and of strategic dynamics of interrelation between national groups forced to assimilate to contexts that, despite the rigidity of early modern’s political, religious and social arrangements, allowed, in practice, a gradation of discretion and negotiation producing original results well-established along the time, women’s protection constituted an essential element of aggregation within "foreign" communities.In this perspective, modern age Naples offers interesting opportunities for research. In the capital of the Kingdom up to mid 1600's the rising demographic trend has composed growth and migration and the pious and charitable organizations’ works have formed social, political and ceremonial spaces where the public distinguishing of nations has sometimes been interlaced with faiths, other times with a political and ideological belief, creating rootedness and belonging, strengthening internal solidarity and contributing to the urbanization of the host community. Spaces and institutions designed to accommodate the female component of the national community turned into a sign of women’s cultural and social function in the families’ rooting processes elsewhere from home, but also as the evidence of their strategic role in the dynamics of construction of new homelands.The dissertation plans to examine the network of charitable initiatives for their women established in Naples between the XVIth and XVIIth century by the Spanish community, dominant foreigners.

Le istituzioni spagnole per la tutela delle donne a Napoli in epoca vicereale sono l’argomento di questo saggio che indaga, attraverso la concessione del privilegio dell’assistenza, le dinamiche di protezione nazionale e i canali di costruzione delle identità multiple tracciabili tanto nel tessuto sociale della capitale del Regno e che nella comunità degli stranieri definiti “dominanti” in quanto rappresentanti della Corona e della potenza imperiale della monarchia degli Austrias. La ricerca si inscrive nel filone di studi che sta evidenziando lo spessore politico delle strutture assistenziali e sanitarie, legali e religiose disseminate nei territori della Monarqía ponendole in connessione con le procedure di delimitazione delle cittadinanze e di costruzione identitaria delle nazioni intese come appartenenze politiche e culturali. Rovesciando la prospettiva storiografica che ha attraversato questo fecondo campo di lavoro con la lente del consolidamento della fedeltà dei ceti dominanti nei reinos e della progettazione politica della rete transnazionale delle élite, la ricerca, svolta su fonti inedite e con il conforto della letteratura scientifica internazionale, ha voluto sviluppare una visione bottom-up evidenziando prassi di negoziazione e un panorama dinamico della organizzazione sociale nella Napoli degli spagnoli e di costruzione di reti di contatto più che margini di esclusione