Bradford A. Bouley, "The Barberini Butchers: Meat, Murder, and Warfare in Early Modern Italy" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

New Books in Economic and Business History · Jul 18, 2026 · 44m

In 1644 four norcini or pork butchers were accused of killing not pigs, but seven of their fellow citizens, stripping the meat from the bones, then combining it with pig to make sausages, which were then sold to Romans from their shop behind the Pantheon. In the multiple pamphlets describing this supposed crime, the authors of this accusation blamed residents of Rome themselves, who had become so obsessed with meat that they turned a blind eye to such horrendous acts. This fabricated story points to an underlying reality—that in the early seventeenth century, a series of popes dramatically…