This dissertation examines state formation in sixteenth-century Modena, Italy during a
critical yet under-examined period in the city’s political history. Based on chronicles, letters,
legal sources, family archives, and conventual sources, this case study analyses a decades-long
vendetta between the politically prominent Bellencini and Fontana clans. Focusing on the
collision between a strong nobility and state centralization during the sixteenth century, this
study examines the practice of vendetta among the governing elites. In particular, these violent
practices expose the competing discourses of localized and state authority at a moment when the
Dukes of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio sought to enforce standardization in their politically
fragmented territories. While Modenese defiance of unilateral d’Este reform did not function as
the primary impulse for factional violence, Modenese discontent with the ways in which the Este
effected reform provide an explanation for why vendettas remained difficult to bring under
control. In order to curb vendetta, the dukes needed to account for the strength of regional
interests. An examination of vendettas among Modena’s governing elite and the Este dukes’
inability to pacify them without the cooperation of the local nobility illuminates this negotiation
with the state for power. The contradictions inherent in the simultaneity of vendetta practices and
Modenese state-building allows for a broader picture of how state formation came about. As this
study shows, it was a process of reform and resistance, coercion and cooperation.