The Making of the Italian Ruling Class? Inter-regional Marriage in Early Modern Elites

This paper explores elite marriage patterns and familial letters to trace the extent and limits of cultural and social affinities across the Italian peninsula in the 16^th century.   The familiar picture of Italian elites marrying within their own cities (geographic endogamy) must be tempered when we consider data showing the upper nobility married many of its offspring to nobles from elsewhere in Italy, and occasionally, Spain.  This practice accelerated after 1500 and continued at least through the early seventeenth century, as nobles imitated a practice previously limited to sovereign families, whose attentions meanwhile turned to international matches.  Italian marriage markets centered in Rome, where families "from away" that aspired to high ecclesiastical office sought a Roman bride as a necessary step on the career ladder.  What sort of social world did these unions create?  This research mines family correspondence of the Roman baronial aristocracy, particularly that between women and their distant natal kin, to reveal assumptions about language, manners and morals.  A shared noble culture, with women as its most intimate transmitters, made moving among the courts and households of the various Italian cities relatively easy. 

Recent studies on the Risorgimento have turned from social and economic explanations to debate regarding a shared cultural identity that pre-dated unification (Banti, Riall).  This paper argues that inter-regional marriage, and the correspondence it generated, had a hand in shaping and limiting that "Italy before Italy."  The paper concludes by examining the double erasure in Risorgimento memories of this small but important group's shared culture.