Ties of Solidarity: Charity in Rural Communities in the Prince-Bishopric of Trent (Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries)

The purpose of the chapter is to examine the welfare support networks in rural communities in the territory of the episcopal principality of Trent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which have peculiar characteristics compared to those found in urban settings. In these modest communities, men and women used to leave each member of the community a donative. Benefiting from the generosity of the testators, therefore, were not particular categories of the needy, such as widows, the elderly, and the incapacitated, but rather all the inhabitants of the community according to a logic of egalitarian charity. Another noteworthy element is the fact that the collective charities were managed by community representatives, who were responsible for keeping records, distributing the charities to the inhabitants, and ordering requiem masses arranged by the testator. The solidaristic and inclusive dimension of community charities is also manifested in the type of donations. Most of them were food items, such as bread, oil, and salt. These items had a strong religious and symbolic significance and represented valuable material aid for people living in a subsistence economy. Collective charities can, therefore, be considered an example of both social and religious practices of integration and redistribution of resources within communities.