Adopting a «topographical» approach to the analysis of social and cultural practices, the author tries to understand how local spaces and places were and are perpetually produced and re-produced. The ...identification of the local processes through which sources are generated allow him to analyze them as transcriptions of the practical uses of institutions by the people as well as by the elites. A number of these uses is identified as far as the production of places is concerned: in particular, people used (and use right now) hamlets, chapels and Motherhoods of the Holy Spirit' to build temporary territorial coalitions in order to cope with the demands of seigniorial, Church and State authorities. The whole process is Illustrated through the 'territorial history' of an industrial valley in the Piedmontese Alps from the fourteenth to the late twentieth century.
1. Annoncée par de nombreux signes théoriques, la décennie 1980 semble avoir été dominée par le paradigme de la pratique. Et en effet, dans plusieurs secteurs de la recherche historique est apparue ...une tendance commune à aborder l’étude de la diversité ethnographique et de la pluralité des effets du changement social à travers les comportements concrets des sujets et protagonistes. Mais je n’oserais pas pour autant affirmer que nous sommes face à une victoire tout à la fois du pluralisme et d...
This article tries to interpret ritual acts as syntagms of a political discourse. The first Savoy saint, the Blessed Amadeus IX, a fifteenth-century nephew of the antipope Amadeus VIII-Felix V, was ...not created by a process from above. As the geography and structure of the sources clearly show, peasants and urban neighbourhoods, canons and antiquaries, local landlords and the ducal entourage elaborated, between XVI and XVII century, the myth of a benevolent territorial prince respectful of customs and of political contract with his subjects. All the actors shared a common assumption: it was the consumption of thedevotion (e.g. the single ritual acts in his honor) from the Piedmontese laity and clergy to create, or to continually re-create, a holy image of kingship to which the House of Savoy was still aspiring. In this light it is revealing to scrutinize the surviving iconography of the Blessed: during XVII century he was more and more represented as a member of a royal dinasty instead as a young charitable squire. The author supposes that for this reason the Blessed Amadeus eventually failed to become a popular symbol of regal sanctity.
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