Patrons and Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640-1760

Four generations of the aristocratic Barberini family and its "vassals" clashed over how the early modern Roman countryside should be governed. Villagers sometimes cultivated noble interference, but they frequently resisted it through the strategies of adversarial literacy, political ways of reading and writing that challenged noble hegemony in the village.Caroline Castiglione is the author of 'Patrons and Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640-1760', published 2005 under ISBN 9780195173864 and ISBN 0195173864.