Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the influence of legal anthropology upon early modern history. It suggests that historians need to return to worrying over some of the questions about what precisely defines the legal and how it relates to the broader world of the dynamic, processual enforcement of norms. The book discusses the interventions of the Florentine authorities into the internal feuding of Pistoia provides a compelling example of how certain types of conflict became sites for political intervention and the innovation of new forms of civic government. It argues that pragmatic ambitions towards retaining international neutrality sat uneasily alongside ambitions to supreme authority. The book shows the frustrations that even saints-to-be could face when they became caught up in local conflicts. It also explores the fraught place of justice and capital punishment during the French Wars of Religion.