The Network of Hospitals in the Kingdom of Naples at the Time of the Bourbons

Social, economic and demographic studies on hospitals in the Italian South in the modern age mainly describe an urban healthcare model included within a broader network of social support. Like other charitable institutions, the large southern Italian hospitals, which historians have characterized as multifunctional centers of power, were called upon to provide healthcare and aid, and finance public and private credit, participating actively both in the social life and in the economic, political and financial life of the towns of the Kingdom of Naples. They did not play this role, however, only within the urban healthcare model. Actually, an underexplored aspect of hospitals' role in the modern age is how this network functioned in peripheral areas remarking on the role and importance of hospitals and hospices only in passing. To locate these hospitals, I decided to use a fiscal source, the Nota dei luoghi pii laicali e misti, drawn up in 1788 for the eleven Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples. This source is closely linked to the work carried out by the Tribunale Misto, created after the Concordate of 1741. It includes all institutions charged with the upkeep of the Tribunale Misto, i.e., all lay and mixed pious institutions not founded or funded by the Crown, including chapels, congregations, pawnshops, hospitals, and hospices.