what was a typical person's life like in the first half of the 1600s in Rome?

by casestudyhouse22

What was the average citizen's daily life like? What kind of jobs or daily activities were common? How much money did the average person earn annually? Was there much violence by modern standards? Did everyone attend church? I am interested in any social class, but I already know a lot about the papal family and court so I am interested in knowing more about the other, more average people in Rome at this time. I would also welcome reading material suggestions.

AshkenazeeYankee

You aren't the first person to wonder about these things. Gregory Hanlon, from Dalhousie University, compiled a bibleography in sources both primary and secondary on daily life in Early Modern Italy. A copy can be found here: http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.rsa.org/resource/resmgr/files/ghbibliooct252012.pdf

Hanlon has about 700-800 of sources, about half of which are in French or Italian, rather than English.

Looking over his Hanlon's comprehensive bibleography, I think the single book that might come closest to answering your questions would be Van Kessler's Rome, Amsterdam : two growing cities in seventeenth-century Europe, which, as it's title suggests, is a comparative history of those two places in the 1600s.

In that volume, two chapter's in particular will be of interest to you: "The family in Rome : structure and relationships" by Renata Ago and "Religious life in Baroque Rome" by Stefano Andretta.

Andretta talks specifically about the ideals and reality of religous life in the Papal States.