sehepunkte 26 (2026), Nr. 1

Luigi Provero: La pratica dei luoghi

Luigi Provero is a major expert in the history of medieval Piemonte, to which he has dedicated three influential books, one on the marchesi of Vasto and later Saluzzo, one on peasant testimonies in court cases in the 13th century, and now this new work, which takes the wide plain around Saluzzo in the south of Piemonte, bordered on the west by the Alps, and constructs as close to a microhistory as the documentation for his chosen three centuries makes possible. As he notes at the start, the concept of microhistory has often been misused, to simply mean a narrowly focussed local study; but Provero, who is from Turin and has worked with some of the major early theorists of microhistory across his academic career (not least Angelo Torre, whose interest in the social and cultural construction of localities, through practice, is similar to Provero's), knows well that the point of microhistory was always to use detailed studies, often of unusual phenomena, to illuminate much larger questions from new angles, if possible from below. Here the phenomena are less unusual, and the documentation, unlike in his court-case book, does not permit a study from below, but the angles are certainly new.

Part 1 of the book (19-127) is in a sense scene-setting for the denser analysis in the rest of the book. It gives an account, with many parallels elsewhere in Italy, of a steady build-up of new monastic foundations from the early 11th century onwards, and their geographical logic. (The reader will need Google maps to fully understand this; throughout, Provero provides local maps, but never ones with a wider focus.) He shows how monasteries and their micropolitics reflected changes in the infrastructure of power under the century's dominant Arduinici marquises of Turin, Olderico Manfredi (d. 1034) and Adelaide (d. 1091, after whom the march was split up), and, at 71-91, the different opportunities available to areas closer to river communications, for it is clear that the monasteries exported much of their agrarian production when they could, to cities further down the Po river network. This section of the book is summarised by the crucial chapter 5, 93-127, which gives us an elegant structural analysis of 'i poli della società e del potere' (including religious and commercial poles too).

Part 2 (131-267), focussed on the 12th and 13th centuries, when western Piemonte was divided between Savoy in the north and Saluzzo in the south - Provero discusses the second of these - is the heart of the book. Here, Provero uses the documentation of the three main Cistercian monasteries of the Saluzzese, Staffarda, Casanova and Rifreddo, to give us a close analysis of different monastic strategies. Staffarda, which was richer and closer to the marquises of Saluzzo, was tougher in its local dealings than the other two, and less linked to village communities; villages were however relatively marginalised by all three, and Provero stresses that neither of the first two, and also few of the monastic granges, were actually situated in villages. Provero is circumscribed by the fact that monastic documentation is almost all we have in this period, and that, in particular, we have almost no documented transactions between lay figures. But his documentation is rich for the monasteries themselves and the patterns of donations to them; and the spatial dimensions of the dealings between them and local aristocrats and local communities allows him to develop what is one of his main interests in this book: the construction of local space.

This is particularly visible in two chapters. First, 7 (161-73), on the relations between Casanova and its neighbouring villages, in particular Carmagnola, where Provero teases out the local geography to show how far, and when, aristocrats and village élites committed themselves to the politics and patronage of their 'vicino prezioso, ma anche ingombrante' (170). There follows 8 (175-204), in which we turn to Staffarda and its long court case, dense in illuminating detail, in 1209 against the small-scale lords of Moretta over rights over the large forest between them, along the upper Po river. Staffarda was engaged in the clearance of part of this forest - although never all of it - and this resulted in a continual changing of the nomenclature of different places in the former forest; this fascinates Provero, for he can show how these changes, and the clearer delimitation of boundaries between places, allowed Staffarda steadily to refine its claims over different areas against others.

He follows these chapters up with other smaller case studies, aimed at showing the same games of delimitation and segmentation, between each of these monasteries and local powers, whether lesser aristocrats or local military élites. Among other things here, Provero argues, as he has done before, that in these situations the concept of 'land market' is a dubious one (218-22); he also shows how complex the interactions were between different spaces of power even inside villages, as in his unpicking of the local political geography of the village of Revello (237-45). What becomes clear is that every village was different in its relationship with the closest monastery; the local activities of rural communes (and non-élite actors in general) are less visible in Provero's discussions, but this is certainly the result of the limits of the documentation. What his emphasis on the construction of local names and boundaries does, however, is to displace the weight of the evidence, which privileges élites, as much as he can towards collective identities and practices; this, in methodological terms, is one of the greatest successes of the book.

The third part (271-369) widens the lans to the Saluzzese in general, following some of the strands of the power of the marquises of Saluzzo (and also the bishop of Turin, 343-69) seen in geographical terms. This is less closely related to the microhistorical interests shown in part 2, but the section on marchesal itineraries (273-97) clearly shows how the detail of their movements demonstrated power relations: local lords went to Saluzzo and other foci of marchesal power to recognise their own subordination; the marquises went to Asti and the political foci of the powerful counts of Savoy for the same reason; but when marquises went to villages it was marchesal domination which was being stressed. And I particularly liked the careful analysis of the internal geography of the developing town of Saluzzo (319-41), which matches that of the village of Revello discussed earlier, but was more complex and is better-documented: this will stand as a model analysis of the internal spacing of a 'quasi-città', as Italian historiography terms rising non-episcopal urban centres.

This attractive book is dense in local detail, but it should be; and inside his careful local reconstructions Provero never loses sight of his wider interpretative and methodological aims, that to 'connettere in prospettiva dinamica lo spazio politico locale e le articolazioni su scale regionale' and to delineate the 'processi di produzione dei luoghi' (371). The book is a model study, which will be read by anyone who is interested in the relationship between politics, local social practices, and space.