Social Support Systems in Rural Italy

Giovanni Gregorini is full Professor of Economic History and head of the Department of History and Philology at Catholic University of Milan, Italy, where he teaches Economic History and Business History. Luciano Maffi is a Lecturer in History of Economic Thought at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy. He also teaches Economic History at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. Marco Rochini is a Research Fellow in History of Christianity at the University of Turin, Italy. He also teaches History of Christianity at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan and at the Faculty of Theology of Northern Italy (Venegono Inferiore, Varese).

1. Between formality and informality: aiding strategies for the needy. The social support systems in Northern Italy.- 2. Between social support and establishment of social identities: the system of giving in the diocese of Tortona in the XVIII century.- 3. Social support systems in medieval Piedmont: The farming system of the hospital Sant'Andrea di Vercelli.- 4. Organising charity. Social support structures in the Genoese Domain during the Modern age.- 5. The ritual capital. Supporting economy in Spanish Lombardy countryside.- 6. Social support systems in imperial fiefs.- 7. Rural microcredit in the sharecropping northern provinces of the papal states (XVI-XIX cent.).- 8. Instruments and strategies of the social support system in the Brescia rural area during the XVIII century.- 9. Charity, healthcare and brotherhoods. Cases from the Venetian Terraferma in the Renaissance period.- 10. At a distance. Forms of social support in Friuli during the Modern age.- 11. Collective charities in the rural communities of Trentino (XVII-XVIII centuries).- 12. The role of Italian parishes in the Modern age "systems of giving".