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Captive voices: prisoners and prison writings in early modern Italy

Theorizations of punishment and criminality, with some significant exceptions – including Rusche, Kirchheimer, Pashukanis and, to a different extent, Norbert Elias – did not become a large source of debate until the 1970s.1 The works of Rothman, Foucault, Perrot, Ignatieff, Melossi and Palvarini launched a lasting interest in the topic of prisons amongst sociologists, criminologists, philosophers and, eventually, historians.2 While the debate around theoretical nodes emerged, different perspectives contributed to significantly extend the understanding of carceral institutions. Soon enough, the dominant idea of a development of incarceration and punishment as a progress-led historical process was dismantled by revisionist historiography in favor of a more nuanced understanding of confinement. Within this frame, source criticism has become a core issue, since as many scholars have noted, it was indeed rare to find an attempt to analyze prison history through the lenses of prisoners’ experience. Christian De Vito has tried to pave this path with his book Camosci e girachiavi. Storia del carcere in Italia on Italian prisoners after World War II. Following Guido Neppi Modona critique, De Vito resorted to different archival sources (mainly prison registers, but also political pamphlet produced by social movements in the ‘70s), combining the outcomes with law corpora.3

Albeit looking for archives and sources recording daily life on incarcerated people – instead of pure legislative acts – his work does not encompass any source produced by them. At the same time, the genre of “prison writings” while explored by scholars for its literary prerogatives, has not been investigated in its source potential. In itself, “prison writings” is a vast topic, as ample as the history of prison, that begins with the first forms of organized societies, as suggests the hymn of Nungal, the Mesopotamian goddess of prison. Composed roughly between 2000 and 1600 BC, the hymn contains a description of the Egula, the prison, the “house of misdeed”, which separated the righteous from the evil man.

The term “prison writings” encompasses thus a large variety of texts, from the Pauline epistles (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon) to Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae (6th century), from Thomas More’s De tristitia Christi to the poems Bobby Sands wrote on toilet paper and cigarette papers in his cell in Belfast. There are consistent treatises drawing from one’s own experience of imprisonment and dealing with justice, ethics and politics, and fragments that are difficult to systematize. Published texts and private memoirs, preserved in archives: texts written by prisoners and handed over to judges to plead their case, make requests or describe the conditions of their imprisonment.

While the latter category remains little explored, edited texts – whose fortune largely depends on political and cultural circumstances – have been studied for their literary, political or philosophical value.4 Yet not all incarcerated people were animated by ideals, nor were they provided with property of language. Although the literacy rate was in fact growing during the 17th and 18th centuries, the ability to write was still a privilege a limited minority was endowed with. A fact that should not discourage further investigation: hiding away in what Antonio Castillo Gómez has called “the eternal illiteracy of the subaltern classes” would take away the possibility to explore a graphic landscape that exceeds the common understanding of writing corpora in general and of prison writings in particular.5 A scenery made up of symbols, signs and words traced on unconventional supports, with makeshift means, proving in fact the will to write of social segments historically excluded from such praxis. In the case of prisons, one such testimony is wall graffiti.

Writing in prison fulfils in fact a variety of functions. It is memory, dialogue, even furniture, such as the clock drawn in a small cell of Narni inquisitorial prison suggests. In this site, a small facility located in Umbria (Italy) the cell walls are covered with marks. The most frequent symbol is the cross, sketched alone or with some arma Christi (nails and spears). In one case, the whole Golgota scene is reproduced, while in many cases the cross is mounted on the nomen sacrum, IHN. The Marian monogram is another recurring symbol on these walls. Both contractions were to be easily found in any church, monastery or votive plaque along the streets. Another group of symbols that recur on these walls are those referred to the passion of Jesus as set up by the catholic iconography of the cross.

The ladder for instance symbolizes the descent from the cross according to an iconography fixed over the centuries through the interpretation of numerous artists [see Image 1]. The moon and the sun refer to the passion of Christ. Their co-presence evoked the totality of the universe joining the world of men in witnessing the death of Jesus.
The man and the rooster, engraved beside the entrance door, represent the betrayal of Peter, who denied knowing Jesus three times before the rooster crowed. The tree, on the other hand, recalls the transfiguration of the cross into the “tree-source of life for the whole cosmos” occurred after the resurrection.6

Image 1: Prison graffiti on wall, © Anna Clara Basilico.


The fruits of Christ’s passion ripen on the cross, the fruits of salvation, which redeem man from having eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The pelican then was a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice: the animal that rips open its breast to feed its children with its own blood, as the Physiologus reports. These graphic elements belonged to the visual memory of any prisoner, regardless of their social status: they were carried in Good Friday processions, displayed in churches, explained by preachers. It does not surprise, thus, that the very same set appears also on the walls of a cell in Sermoneta (Lazio). [see Image 2]

Image 2: Prison graffiti on wall, © Anna Clara Basilico.

Other elements sketched in Narni are for instance the figures of Saint Nicholas of Bari with the three resurrected children (see image 3). In contrast, the silhouette of “S. Anzelmo”, whose name is engraved at least twice on the west wall, has been lost. Once again, the choice of these two saints is to be linked to the context of the prisoner’s origin. Nicholas was the patron of Collescipoli, a district of Terni, where during the 15th century was erected a church in his honor. The lunettes in the nave, frescoed in 1698 by Tommaso Cardani, depict the miracles of St Nicholas, including the only known attestation of the miracle of the three children in Umbria. The choice of Saint Anselm, however, is more peculiar. Anselm of Aosta – also known as Anselm of Canterbury – enjoyed a late and limited veneration. He might have been formally canonized prior to Becket’s murder in 1170, though no records confirming it have survived. Despite this, he was later recognized among the saints at Canterbury.
Generally, it is believed that his canonization was officially sanctioned by Pope Alexander VI in either 1494 or 1497, following a request by Archbishop Morton. His feast day, observed on April 21 – the anniversary of his death – is commemorated by the Catholic Church, much of the Anglican Communion, and certain High Church Lutheran traditions. The whereabouts of his relics remain uncertain. Between the 15th and the 18th century, his cult spread a bit more in Italy, although not largely. His presence within the cathedral of Narni is the result of such diffusion: here, together with Saint Mark the Evangelist, he contours a 16th century fresco of the Madonna and Child.

Oddly enough, in the last thirty years, these marks spawned a bizarre misinterpretation. After the re-discovery of these cells in the 90s, the belief spread that it was one of the inmates detained here, Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini, who drew these marks. Incarcerated for about two months at the turn of 1759 –1760, Lombardini had been arrested for helping a colleague, Pietro Milli, a guard for the governor of Spoleto, escape from Spoleto’s inquisitorial prisons. While detained, Lombardini wrote on the wall “I, Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini, was incarcerated innocent [this word was crossed out by either a prisoner or a guard] on December 4th 1759” [see Image 3].

Image 3: Prison graffiti on wall, © Anna Clara Basilico.

Albeit his detention was due to such circumstances, a different version of the events spread among visitors, journalists and curious. Being not able to recognize the reference of these signs, they were interpreted as masonry codes. As a result, Lombardini somehow became a symbol of an alleged struggle for freedom against the darkness of a bigot institution such as the Roman Holy Office. Such narrative contributed to spread a huge interest in this site, visited by thousands of people every year.

Until now, the Umbria inquisitorial district has not been examined thoroughly. The scattering of archival sources made such analysis more difficult, somehow endowing or endorsing the above-mentioned narratives. Nevertheless, an accurate survey of the existing files proved it possible to conduct research on the district court. The emerging frame pictures a prison mainly occupied by blasphemers: peasants, clerks, and shepherds denounced for having uttered words contrary to morality, for having insulted Jesus or the Virgin Mary. The offenders often justified themselves by claiming that they had blasphemed under the effects of alcohol, while playing cards for example. Such curses were thus to be intended as were imprecations, not heretical propositions. Very often, their level of literacy was minimal.

The offenders’ lawyer usually recurred to ignorance as mitigating circumstance, and prisoners could not rely on a memoir, or textual graffiti, to defend themselves. In trials they would speak, but to prove their faith they had to resort to means other than the written word. This is where the graphic sign could come to the rescue: stylized, simplified, but unequivocal. Traced not with a brush or charcoal, but by engraving, by a gesture, the sgraffio, which is obstinate and repeated. If in fact the graffitus pictus is characterized by a quick execution, engraving required time and physical effort, often assuming uncomfortable and unnatural postures for a protracted period of time.

When looking at the ceiling of the cell in Narni, thus, it is spontaneous to wonder why a prisoner went to so much trouble to write on top of it the nomen sacrum. How did this sign modify the performative function of the wall? The marks that prisoners leave on the walls appear as a form of dialogue conducted with different mediums: graffiti addressed the accusation, but the sentences took into account graffiti, originating a form of dialogue characterized by different, incommensurable, but perhaps not entirely unrelated languages.

Image 4: Prison graffiti on wall, © Anna Clara Basilico.

These forms of dialogue between prisoner and guards or judges also took place through more nuanced, less explicit levels. In Palermo, where the former inquisitorial prison survived inside Palazzo Steri, the prisoner Paolo Mayorana painted a naval battle in his cell. The accuracy of the painting makes it easy to recognize the battle of Lepanto. [see Image 4] Some historians have argued that the archetype of the sketch was not the battle itself, but a celebratory theatrical performance organized in Messina. Whatever the archetype, what is of worth to be noted is the choice of Mayorana, a wealthy citizen of Messina tried twice for blaspheming while playing cards, to depict on the wall the event that most symbolized the conflict between the Christian and the Muslim worlds. The battle itself had no significant geopolitical repercussions, but the defeat of the Ottoman fleet entered the common narrative as the crest of the victory of (Catholic) Christianity over Islam. If this were to be Mayorana’s communicative intent, the question remains as to who the recipient was. The court, perhaps, which in the Sicilian case was particularly committed to the persecution of renegades. Or perhaps a renegade himself, sharing the cell with Christian prisoners.

In fact, inquisitorial prisons only provided for a gender distinction in the organization of space. Prisoners from different social backgrounds, accused of different crimes, shared the same cell, giving rise to a fascinating complex of interpersonal relations. If in a peripherical context such as Narni there seems to be no trace of foreign prisoners, except for a few mentions concerning some groups of Jews from Ancona and Sinigallia, Palermo swarmed with Greeks, Ottomans, Spaniards. Slave trade and privateering brought to the island women and men from Hungary, Anatolia, Greece and North Africa and there were moriscos who arrived after the expulsion decrees of 1609-12. After blasphemers, renegades were the second most persecuted group by Palermo’s inquisitorial court. However, no explicit trace of their presence remains on the walls. There are no graffiti in languages other than Sicilian, Italian and Latin (the only exceptions are a few words in Spanish and two graffiti in Hebrew).

If some graffiti could serve as implicit forms of communication, many of them had instead a clear interlocutory intent. On the walls of two cells in Palermo one can find information on how to communicate with other inmates – referring to a spatiality produced through graffiti. There are graffiti inviting prisoners to interact on the walls, warning about what happens in prison and giving advice on how to avoid punishment. The language, together with paleographic features, allows hypothesis on the social status of the writers. The case of Palermo, for instance, shows a great prominence of literate men, to be linked to the repression of Academies that characterized the 17th century, while the walls of Narni talk about a much more popular prison population.

The act of writing, to use the term coined by Beatrice Fraenkel, served from time to time to demonstrate, with the means at one’s disposal, one’s orthodoxy and devotion, but it was also an exercise of self-remembrance: some kept old habits (such as writing poems), others left less ambitious marks. Prisoners who could, preferred to write down short formulas containing a date and a place over the simple signature. They were, in fact, attesting their presence hic et nunc. Such will, in prison, was not to be taken for granted, but the mark of infamy could only undermine the social position of those who had one to defend. That might not have been the case of Giacomo Adonio, Antonio Pisante or Giuseppe Andrea Lombardini in Narni, as well as of John Andrews or Giovanni Battista Guido in Palermo. Within the fourteen existing cells in Palermo, only thirteen signatures are still visible. A whole number of reasons could explain such scarcity, which nevertheless seems to affect more broadly the approach to writing in this site. Personal information is generally missing in Palermo.

Why this reluctance? The case of Palermo seems to suggest a relationship between reticence and social class. The forced proximity of people from different social backgrounds was one of the most innovative features of inquisitorial prison, which led to frequent remonstrations. Scholars and academics perceived the cohabitation with slaves, corsairs, footboys and craftsmen particularly humiliating. In his autograph defense, friar Ippolito Maria of Aydone complained to the Spanish inquisitor Luis Cotoner about his cellmates, John Andrews and Mahamet alias Gabriel Tudesco. He denounced that he was locked up with “a heretic and renegade pirate, John Andrews the Englishman, and with Gabriel Tudesco, Moor traitor”, who were mocking him and his faith, eventually threatening him with death.
In other coeval secular prisons, the space was organized based on social classes. The architectural hierarchies of the floors reflected the social order: on the ground floor were the poorest, held in large common rooms, where they could receive alms from the windows. On the intermediate floors were better accommodations, intended for those who could afford a rent, and on the upper floors were the individual cells of the nobility, free to stroll along the corridors. Both the Spanish and the Roman holy offices overturned this perspective, resorting to a cellular prison where prisoners of all social statuses, origins and faith were to live together in small groups. The analysis of this forced proximity is fascinating, since it allows to explore the interaction between subjects and worlds that used to be otherwise alien. As a matter of fact, prisons were a space of encounter, the quality of which has still to be thoroughly examined.

Cite this article as: Anna Clara Basilicó, Captive voices: prisoners and prison writings in early modern Italy, in Vigilanzkulturen, 25.03.2025, https://vigilanz.hypotheses.org/?p=11192

Mehr zur Autorin Anna Clara Basilicó


  1. G. Rusche and O. Kirchheimer, Punishment and social structure, 1939; E. Pashukanis, The general theory of law and Marxism, 1924; N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, 2 voll., [1939] 1969-1982. ↩︎
  2. D. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum, 1966; M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1975; M. Perrot, L’Impossible prison: recherches sur le système pénitentiaire au XIX siècle, 1980; M. Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, 1978; D. Melossi e M. Palvarini, Carcere e fabbrica. Alle origini del sistema penitenziario, 1977. ↩︎
  3. C. De Vito, Camosci e girachiavi. Storia del carcere in Italia, 2009. ↩︎
  4. See for instance the contributes to W. Sherman and W. Sheils (eds.), Prison writings in early modern England, 2009. ↩︎
  5. Castillo Gómez 2002, 165. ↩︎
  6. B. Ulianich, La croce. Iconografia e interpretazione, 2007, vol. 1, 21. ↩︎

OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Anna Clara Basilicò (25. März 2025). Captive voices: prisoners and prison writings in early modern Italy. Vigilanzkulturen. Abgerufen am 24. April 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/13k7s


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