On Vittoria Fiorelli, Prestigio
e servizio. Linguaggi e modelli di distinzione sociale nella successione delle
generazioni aristocratiche. Mediterraneo e Atlantico, XVIII-XX secolo,
Napoli, Editoriale Scientifica, 2024, 192 pp.
The book’s major problem lies here: the category of “service” is naturalized, treated as a given and never truly questioned. Instead of showing the fractures, conflicts, and ambiguities that could have made the contradiction between prestige and service fruitful, the author limits herself to describing their coexistence as if it were a self-evident historical truth. The result is a discourse that does not dismantle aristocratic myths, but ends up reinforcing them, celebrating them in a substantially uncritical manner.
Added to this is the excessive breadth of the geographical and chronological scope: from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Such a wide scale would have required adequate depth and a conceptual architecture capable of sustaining the weight of the analysis. Instead, the narrative proceeds by suggestion, with scattered and insufficiently problematized examples, leaving the reader with the impression of an unfinished mosaic.
This impression is already anticipated by the reading of the table of contents, surprisingly brief and fragmentary. The three sections (“La Croce Azzurra tra prestigio e servizio”, “Una famiglia tra due mari”, “Tracce di storia globale tra Mediterraneo e Atlantico”) bring together heterogeneous topics, ranging from nursing care to nineteenth-century music, from female languages of the Restoration to aristocratic flights to Mexico. Making the composite nature of the volume even more evident, one of the chapters (“A sue spese. Prime impressioni su un’impresa per le donne”) is curiously attributed to a scholar of whom there is no other trace in the volume, which otherwise appears to be the work of the sole author named on the cover.
Moreover, the promise of an analysis of “languages” and “models of social distinction” is often reduced to the use of a repetitive vocabulary: prestige, service, transmission, coherence. What is missing is the critical moment: an inquiry into how these categories were contested, contradicted, or even ridiculed in actual practices. The history of the élites itself is presented as a reassuring continuum, in which “service” unfailingly guarantees the reproduction of prestige, as if nothing could ever disrupt this mechanism.
From a methodological standpoint, finally, the volume suffers from a certain opacity: the relationship between primary sources and secondary literature is unclear, as is the way in which the reference corpus was constructed. In-depth case studies are lacking, while generalizations abound, risking the transformation of historical reconstruction into a mere rhetorical exercise. In the end, Prestigio e servizio presents itself as a book elegant in its packaging, but weak in substance.
Behind the ambition to connect both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the eighteenth and the twentieth century, lies a fragile conceptual framework, which slips more toward the self-celebration of aristocracies than toward their critical analysis. The title, in particular, remains like an empty shell: “prestige” triumphs, “service” becomes a cliché; the reader comes away with the feeling of having witnessed an exercise in style rather than a work of historical research.
Another striking aspect of the book is the total lack of engagement with women’s history. This is at the very least singular, especially for a city like Naples, which for the early modern period can rely on the vast and precious holdings preserved in the repositories of the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, as well as, for several decades now, on the reordering and enhancement of series of inestimable historical value, such as those recovered in the Archivio storico diocesano di Napoli. Women occupy an enormous space in these materials, also in relation to some of the historical problems examined in Vittoria Fiorelli’s book.
It is impossible here to refer to all these issues, central to the daily life of one of the largest European cities of the early modern age. Though they have long been illustrated in works that opened new research perspectives in the civic history of modern Italy, they are unfortunately ignored in the new book. We are thinking in particular of the leading role played in Naples in the treatment of many illnesses, especially between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, by female physicians, healers, and peasant women, as well as practices widespread among aristocratic women themselves, the foremothers of the protagonists of Prestigio e servizio.
For the former, the monumental research devoted in 1990 by Giovanni Romeo to the witch hunts in Counter-Reformation Italy has documented everywhere, incontrovertibly, the circulation of beliefs and magical activities of every kind, and not only among the most humble women[1]. They were also widespread among the aristocratic women of the viceregal capital.
The case of Brigida Cini, illustrated by the same scholar in a 1993 book, remains to this day an illuminating example. In January 1573 the sorrowful confessions of the elderly woman, a Waldensian close to death, introduce us to the anxieties and doubts of a noblewoman deeply marked by the doubts of a generation overwhelmed by the crisis that was reshaping the religious balances of the whole of Europe[2].
Other, far more “traditional,” contradictions of the Neapolitan aristocracy have recently emerged from a careful investigation carried out in the Lucanian archives. A trial opened in 1593 by the episcopal court of Melfi, but closely followed by the supreme inquisitors, brought to light the serious responsibilities of a deacon in the heavy practices that had followed, in the residence of Lady Vittoria, an otherwise unknown Neapolitan aristocrat, perhaps a high-ranking courtesan, the baptism of a hangman’s noose, significantly called Mai morì.
The lady of the house had in fact demanded that the clergyman also baptize a magnet, an object characteristic of magical practices in early modern Italy… In vain, however, did the Cardinal of Santa Severina, disturbed by the gravity of the case, ask the Archbishop of Naples, the elderly Annibale di Capua, to investigate the unknown woman[3]. It is also—and perhaps above all—these comparisons that leave one deeply perplexed in the face of a publication that contributes very little to advancing the important historiographical questions it raises.
[1] Reference is made to Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma,
Firenze, Sansoni, 1990.
[2] See G. Romeo, Aspettando il boia. Condannati a morte, confortatori e
inquisitori nella Napoli della Controriforma, Firenze, Sansoni, 1993, pp.
274-277.
[3] See F. V. Romano, Magia, stregoneria e “superstizione” nel Viceregno di Napoli. Le diocesi di Melfi, Tricarico e Vieste tra Cinquecento e Settecento, Roma, Bulzoni, 2024, pp. 146-156.
Editorial Note: We received this review from a young scholar and, after careful reading, we decided to publish it in full. This decision stems from the intrinsic value of the submitted text, which offers original, solid, and well-documented critical insights, in line with our editorial approach and with the spirit of open discussion we wish to continue fostering. Out of respect for, and with the author’s consent, however, we do not indicate their name. This choice does not arise from a taste for mystery, but from a more concrete awareness—shaped by some disheartening past experiences—that an honest critical judgment, even when supported by sound arguments, may provoke disproportionate, irritated, or vindictive reactions within an academic environment that is increasingly fragile, self-referential, and inclined toward cautious reciprocity. We therefore prefer to protect those who have the courage to exercise that freedom of criticism which should, in theory, form the very foundation of the historian’s craft. This is neither an isolated case nor a polemical gesture: it is a small act of intellectual hygiene.
The original Italian version of this review is published at:
https://www.cantierestoricofilologico.it/2026/01/tra-prestigio-e-servizio-categorie.html
https://www.cantierestoricofilologico.it/2026/01/tra-prestigio-e-servizio-categorie.html
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