Constructing Intergenerational Ties: Charity and Welfare in Italy and the Iberian World (16th-19th Centuries)

The project aims at studying the interdependency of charity and welfare State in history, by focusing on two interrelated phenomena: bequests and vacant inheritances in the European and New World Catholic societies (16th-19th c.).

Traditionally, to explain the reasons for charity, historiography has concentrated on religious or political aspects (respectively, the desire for the salvation of souls and the acquisition of local power by benefactors). In our view, such interpretations have not fully understood the phenomenon: from the one hand, charity was profoundly linked to inheriting practices and building of socio-economic bonds between generations; from the other hand, its failure opened to the intervention of the State, so leading to a “welfare before the welfare”.

The project will adopt an innovative approach which allows us to study both perspectives concurrently. The first unit will focus on charity in Europe from the Counter-Reformation to the liquidation of pious legacies that took place in 19th century. The second will tackle the historical role played by State institutions in responding to the needs opened by the possibility of a failure of charity. Sometimes, in fact, inheritance practices and bequests might not work for various reasons, and intergenerational transmission could be in danger. In consequence, a significant amount of vacant inheritances has been managed by early Empires. This process was also associated with the control of mobility, as such assets frequently belonged to migrants. So, if the first unit clarifies what charity is for, the second unit will focus on a parallel and consequent situation: what happens when charity fails?

The results of the project are expected to: 1) propose a new chronology of welfare, dating it back to the early modern period and not, as generally done, to the 19th century. In our view, the first activities connected to welfare carried out by the European States consisted of protecting inter-generational ties; 2) explore charity and State intervention as two interrelated and complementing subjects, contrary to a historiography which studied the topic in evolutionary terms (from the family to the state; from the private to the public; from charity to welfare). Accordingly, archival sources will refer to two important Italian cases as well Spanish and Portuguese ones.

Lastly, the project aims at historically addressing two questions which are crucial today: 1) the crisis of the contemporary welfare State model; 2) the combined effects of the aging and low birth rate of industrialized societies, which affects both the care for the elderly and causes assets to be left without heirs. Therefore, we reasonably expect that the project will have an impact not only on the academic community but contribute also to the debate on the relations between family and public solidarity (which has been at the centre of collective interest during the Covid-19 pandemic).

PRIN 2022 – Finanziamento di Fondazione Opera Pia Mazzucchi, Pruno (LU).