About This Book
A rich social chronicle of Palermo more than a century earlier, offering detailed descriptions of public festivals and carnival customs, theatrical and musical entertainments, popular and aristocratic celebrations, religious ceremonies and confraternities, monastic life and female religious profession, legal practices including courts, prisons, executions and the role of the executioner, outbreaks of famine and vagrancy, the press and public notices, medical practice and charitable care, learned societies and university life, schools and student customs, and practical appendices on weights and coinage; chapters combine vivid scene descriptions, institutional history, and anecdotal reports to reconstruct urban culture.