Note sulla legislazione suntuaria nel Regno di Napoli (XVI-XVIII secc.)

The article deals with the sumptuary laws set in the kingdom of Naples from the second half of the XVI to the end of the XVIII century. During this long period, Southern Italy was under the Spanish rule until 1707, the Austrian ruled until 1734, and then became an independent state under the Bourbons. Sumptuary law is, like everywhere else, a way of the central authority to impose a social order: in the south of Italy this goal is pursued by formally disciplining social representation of both aristocracy and middle classes; this “egalitarian” approach derives from the political purpose of fighting aristocratic resistance to the establishment of a strong central power. Nonetheless, the aims of sumptuary law are various, according to the social, economic and political conjuncture. During the XVI century the religious inspiration of the catholic condemnation of luxury prevails. During the XVII century the economic and social purpose of limiting waste of human and monetary resources , necessary to the state for military and economic uses, prevail. The mercantilist aim of reducing the import of luxuries gets more and more important as well. Beyond the formal dictate of sumptuary laws lays a social and cultural transformation in the idea of luxury and in the boundary between private and the public sphere. The disappearance of sumptuary law in the XVIII century is considered a consequence of the erosion of a substantial definition of luxury, and of the affirmation of the private sphere as the base of a society where consumption hasn’t the political function of inertly representing a social and political order anymore, but is the expression of the formal freedom of the individual, whose only unwritten law is the fashion. Key words: sumptuary law, luxury, Kingdom of Naples