Godparenthood and Social Networks in an Italian Rural Community: Nonantola

The rural town of Nonantola, near the city of Modena, is home to one of the few kinds of common lands surviving to this day in northern Italy: the partecipanza agraria. Since the Middle Ages, this institution, which acquired its current characteristics after centuries of transformation, has deeply influenced the way in which the people of Nonantola interacted among themselves and with their lands. Created as a common endowment for all the inhabitants of the town, the partecipanza caused social conflict due to uncertainties about the ownership of the rights to use the land and legitimate ways to exert these rights. At the end of the sixteenth century, institutional innovations were introduced to appease the conflicting parties and to clarify the rights and their transmission. These innovations, whilst making the rights of use of the commons inheritable, also established a risk of women losing them should they marry outside the group of rights-holders. As a result, there are reasons to expect that the institutional innovation modified not only the way in which the commons were managed, but also the local system of marriage alliances.