Accounting for Affection: Battles Between Aristocratic Mothers and Sons in Eighteenth-Century Rome

Abstract

A rich historiography has explored how European nobles successfully confronted financial difficulties during the early modern period. Less well known is the impact that economic crisis had on the dynamics between family members. This article uses a microhistorical approach to examine how a Roman aristocratic mother and her son conceptualized the crisis facing their family at the turn of the eighteenth century. Through a comparative reading of two histories of the Barberini family, this article uncovers significant differences in the way each imagined the place of authority, affection, and accounting in the governing of an aristocratic family.