Mendigos - History Lab https://historylab.es Fri, 20 May 2022 07:41:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://historylab.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-icono-historylab-32x32.jpg Mendigos - History Lab https://historylab.es 32 32 Stop of gypsies in a rural inn https://historylab.es/stop-of-gypsies-in-a-rural-inn/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stop-of-gypsies-in-a-rural-inn Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:31:28 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/alto-de-gitanos-en-una-posada-rural/ Gypsies in Italy 17th century

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]]> The image of the Gypsies projected by Pieter van Laer, known as “il Bamboccio” (1599-1642), can be better understood if we understand the situation of the Roma who inhabited Italy. As early as the mid-16th century, their expulsion had become widespread throughout the country. The reasons given by the governor of the Papal States in 1552 for “scandal, disorder and robbery” may serve as a justification. Various projects of assimilation to “Christian” ways of life were attempted in various states, especially in Rome in 1631 because of the moral obligation that came with being the head of the Catholic world. As none of the attempts were successful, the custom of lumping them together with “idiots and vagabonds” became widespread. The Gypsies were expelled by legislation, persecuted as criminals by the various police forces and despised by society as a whole, but this does not mean that they had disappeared. As far as possible, they persisted in their ways of life and tried to remain unnoticed. They became part of the lower classes and a kind of osmosis generated by their miserable living conditions unified their outward appearance. Tattered shoes, worn or tattered clothes, lack of colour, utensils on their backs: they represent the spitting image of begging. One of the initiatives that were legislated from the beginning to achieve their social dissolution was thus achieved: the prohibition of identifying clothing. And probably an incipient sedentarisation was also achieved, which led them to inhabit the most humble places in the towns.

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]]> Meeting of beggars https://historylab.es/meeting-of-beggars/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=meeting-of-beggars Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:14 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/reunion-de-mendigos/ Costumbrismo and social reality around begging in the 18th century, represented by Sasso

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]]> This scene shows in different shots a social gathering of beggars on the outskirts of what could presumably be understood as a liturgical space where they would seek, through the charity of Christian parishioners, to obtain some coin for their sustenance. In the centre of the composition is one of them, dressed as best he can, teaching the word of God as he appears with a crucifix hanging around his neck, which he holds in his right hand before the attention of a small group of five beggars and the attentive gaze of one of them in the foreground. The image allows us to reconstruct the practices of begging in the Modern Age and the daily life of this unprivileged social group, traditionally absent from scholarly historical texts.

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