Brothers, sisters and the rearrangements of property on the Sicilian island of Stromboli in the nineteenth century

Abstract

This article focuses on property relationships among siblings, especially on sales and exchanges of land, houses and other items, on the small Sicilian island of Stromboli in the Aeolian archipelago during the nineteenth century. Stromboli's economy incorporated farming and seafaring activities. The ‘modular structure’ of houses and wealth was characterised by partible inheritance, with equal inheritance shares or endowments for both sons and daughters, which was permitted under the Civil Code of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Siblings therefore had the possibility of exchanging, assembling and disposing of shares through sales. For this reason sibling relations had a strong impact on the market for land and houses in Stromboli, and kin structures and the market operated as complementary rather than separate or antagonistic spheres.

Keywords:

• market
• transmission of property
• dowry
• will
• history of the family
• Aeolian Islands

Notes

 1. Levi, L'eredità immateriale.

 2. Derouet, “Parenté et marché foncier,” 368.

 3. Kasdagli, “Dowry and inheritance”; Kasdaglli, Land and Marriage Settlements; Kasdagli, “Family and Inheritance in the Cyclades”.

 4. Karouzou, “Systèmes d'héritage et formation de la propriété familiale.”

 5. Cervantes, “Herencia igualitaria y fragmentación territorial.”

 6. Fazio, “Famiglia, matrimonio, trasmissione della proprietà.”

 7. Derouet, “Parenté et marché foncier.” The retrait lignager was “le droit que possédait une personne d'intervenir dans la vente d'un bien immobilier, en se substituant à l'acheteur dans la transaction déjà réalisée, au nom de la parénté qui l'unissait au vendeur”, 338.

 8. Franghiadis, “Dowry, Capital Accumulation and Social Reproduction.”

 9. Adornato, Due millenni di storia eoliana; Arena, Bibliografia generale delle isole Eolie; Todesco, Atlante dei beni etno-antropologici eoliani; Campis, Disegno historico o siano l'abbozzate historie.

10. Appendix to Von Österreich, Die Liparischen Inseln, VIII, Stromboli. Déodat de Dolomieu (Viaggio alle Isole Lipari: 146), who visited the island in 1781, wrote that only 200 people lived in Stromboli, a very small number indeed; the number of 800 in 1780, reported by Iacolino in his notes to the edition of the manuscript of Pietro Campis, Disegno historico o siano l'abbozzate historie is more plausible.

11. Saija, L'emigrazione italiana transoceanica; Macdonald, A Sociological Study of Emigration; Macdonald, “Migration from 1958 Italy”; J. S. Macdonald and B. Macdonald, “Chain Migration”.

12. Von Österreich, Die Liparischen Inseln, VII, Stromboli, 6.

13. Fazio, Parentela e mercato nell'isola di Stromboli, 129–30.

14. Fazio, Parentela e mercato nell'isola di Stromboli, 133–5.

15. Caminiti, “L'emigrazione eoliana,” 303.

16. Fazio, Parentela e mercato nell'isola di Stromboli, 133–5. In Canon Law, consanguinity (cognatio naturalis, i.e. blood relationship) and affinity (a relationship arising from the carnal intercourse of a man and a woman; its degree coincides with that of blood relationship) are diriment impediments to marriage including the fourth degree of kinship.

17. Moroni, “Struttura ed evoluzione della consanguineità.”

18. Delille, Famiglia e proprietà, 326–38.

19. This is not the total of notarial acts involving transmission of property drafted during this period in Stromboli, because the deeds of two of the public notaries active in these same years in the Aeolian Islands, who died after 1870, had not yet been deposited when I was completing my research in the State Archive of Messina, and were still held at the District Notary Archives of Messina, where they could not be freely consulted. These acts have been at last deposited in 2006 and can be freely consulted since 2007. So I have been able to record on my database information from 61 deeds involving transmission of property (wills, dowries, sales and other property disposals) from the records of Notary Angelo Florio, 1829–61, vol. 2472–92, and Notary Angelo Florio Pajno, 1860–1, vol. 3318–19, in the State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari.

20. This is a common practice in the Sicilian countryside, which disguises a peculiar system of credit: the lender, who wanted to guarantee his loan, purchased from the debtor a small piece of land, or a house, whose price would be lower than the market price, because it included an interest rate on the loan.

21. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili.

22. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili, Libro III, Tit. I Delle successioni, and Tit. II Delle donazioni tra vivi, e de' testamenti.

23. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili, art. 667.

24. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili Libro III, Tit. II, cap. III, sez. I.

25. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili art. 835.

26. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili, artt. 837, 838, 839.

27. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili Libro III, Tit. I, cap. VI art. 734.

28. Codice per lo Regno delle Due Sicilie, Parte prima, Leggi civili Libro III, Tit. I, cap. IV sez. II.

29. Fazio, “Trasmissione della proprietà, reti di credito e integrazione sociale”; Fazio, “Le donne nelle campagne siciliane”; Fazio, “Famiglia, matrimonio, trasmissione della proprietà”; Fazio, “Essendo la medesima assoluta padrona di disporne.”

30. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio Pajno, vol. 3320, n. 42, 20.5.1862.

31. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2473, n. 216, 1.12.1830.

32. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2475, 53, 24.4.1830.

33. According to Clavero, in Antidora, the religious principle of antidora (counter-giving) ruled in the medieval and early-modern period the Catholic economic sphere. Money had to be given kindly, and graciously repaid by moral obligation (gratitude).

34. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2474, n. 138, 3.7.1832.

35. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2492, n. n., 6.8.1868.

36. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2477, 25.2.1834.

37. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2488, 22.11.1860.

38. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio, vol. 2480 n. 100, 23.8.1841.

39. From the papers of the matrimonial and notarial records of Stromboli we know that Gaetano Renna married Eugenia Famularo in the first years of nineteenth century, and from that marriage were born five daughters (Caterina, Provvidenza, Clementina, Giuseppa, Marianna) and two sons, Giuseppe and Giovanni. Once widowed, was married again to Marianna Ristuccia, and had from her four sons (Mariano, Andrea, Francesco, Antonio) and a daughter, Eugenia. See Fazio, Parentela e mercato nell'isola di Stromboli, 154–5.

40. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio Pajno, 3319, 18-6-1861.

41. Famularo, La casa rurale.

42. Von Österreich, Die Liparischen Inseln, VII, Stromboli, 8–9.

43. State Archive of Messina, Fondo Notarile Messina, Notai di Lipari, Notary Angelo Florio Pajno, vol. 3318, 1.10.1860; Fondo Stato Civile, Comuni della provincia, Lipari, vol. 596, n. 44, 3.8.1863.

44. Delille, Famiglia e proprietà, 253–66.

45. Episcopal Archive of Lipari, Dispense, bb. 21–25 (1822–1844). The inventory of the records is published in Ferlito, “I fondi dell'archivio diocesano”.