La resilienza di Franceschina Orio (original) (raw)

2020, Saggio pubblicato in: D. Novarese et al., Oltre l'università. Storia, istituzioni, diritto e società. Studi per Andrea Romano, Bologna, Il Mulino, pp. 371-386.

The essay focuses on the events surrounding the young Venetian noblewoman Franceschina Orio between 1587 and 1591. On 30th November 1587 Sebastiano Valier, Franceschina's husband, was killed at Oriago by Vettor Calergi in an armed clash caused by previous enmities. The sentence passed by the Council of Ten on the following 8th January outlawed Calergi from all the territories of the Republic, sentencing him to capital punishment and offering a bounty of one thousand ducats. However, he would be set free within ten years if he made peace with the offender's relatives. Endowed with considerable wealth and, above all, related by his mother's side to the influential Emo noble family, Vettor Calergi tried in the following years to make peace with the family of the murdered. The Valiers at first refused to do so, despite his attempts made with the assistance of influential members of the Venetian aristocracy. Finally, thanks above all to the mediation of the Emo family, Sebastiano Valier's brothers and mother agreed to grant peace. But they only agreed if Calergi was willing to pay the huge sum of five thousand ducats for the construction of the new prisons. This was a paradoxical proposal, even underlined by the explicit statement that they demanded no personal compensation. The final outcome of the quarrel took place before the Council of Ten, where the tensions between the Valier brothers and the young widow became evident. Franceschina Orio opposed the proposal, claiming her rights and above all those of her son Giulio, born of her union with Sebastiano Valier. Her resilience finally prevailed and she succeeded in persuading the Council of Ten to assign the large sum to her son.