Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy

Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy
Author: David Michael D'Andrea
Publisher: University Rochester Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781580462396

A compelling examination of how a religious brotherhood administered charity in its local community and acted as mediator between provincial elites and the early modern state. Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy explores the often subtle and sometimes harsh realities of life on the Venetian mainland. Focusing on the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti and its Ospedale, the book addressesa number of well-established and newly articulated historiographical questions: the governance of territorial states, the civic and religious role of confraternities, the status of women and marginalized groups, and popular religious devotion. Adapting the objectives and methods of microhistory, D'Andrea has written neither a traditional history of political subjugation nor a straightforward survey of poor relief. Instead, thematic chapters survey the activities of a powerful religious brotherhood [Santa Maria dei Battuti] and document the interconnected local, regional, and international factors that fashioned the social world of Venetian subjects. Grounded in previously unexplored archival material, the book is an innovative study of the nexus between local religion and Venetian territorial power, providing scholars with this first scholarly monograph of the city that served as the keystone of Venice's mainland empire. This original approach to the critical relationship between provincial powers and the central government also contributes to other important areas of historical inquiry, including the history of popular religion, poor relief, medicine, and education. David D'Andrea is Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University.

Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas

Early Modern Confraternities in Europe and the Americas
Author: Christopher F. Black
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2006
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780754651741

Scholars have long recognized the significant role that confraternities, or lay brotherhoods, played in the religious life of medieval and early modern Catholicism. Taking a broad chronological and geographical approach, this collection of essays addresses the varied and fluid nature of confraternities and their relationship to wider society.

Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance

Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance
Author: Nicholas Terpstra
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2020-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421429330

In the early development of the modern Italian state, individual orphanages were a reflection of the intertwining of politics and charity. Nearly half of the children who lived in the cities of the late Italian Renaissance were under fifteen years of age. Grinding poverty, unstable families, and the death of a parent could make caring for these young children a burden. Many were abandoned, others orphaned. At a time when political rulers fashioned themselves as the "fathers" of society, these cast-off children presented a very immediate challenge and opportunity. In Bologna and Florence, government and private institutions pioneered orphanages to care for the growing number of homeless children. Nicholas Terpstra discusses the founding and management of these institutions, the procedures for placing children into them, the children's daily routine and education, and finally their departure from these homes. He explores the role of the city-state and considers why Bologna and Florence took different paths in operating the orphanages. Terpstra finds that Bologna's orphanages were better run, looked after the children more effectively, and were more successful in returning their wards to society as productive members of the city's economy. Florence's orphanages were larger and harsher, and made little attempt to reintegrate children into society. Based on extensive archival research and individual stories, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance demonstrates how gender and class shaped individual orphanages in each city's network and how politics, charity, and economics intertwined in the development of the early modern state.

Listening to Confraternities

Listening to Confraternities
Author: Tess Knighton
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2024-11-20
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9004702776

Listening to Confraternities offers new perspectives on the contribution of guild and devotional confraternities to the urban phonosphere based on original research and an interdisciplinary approach. Historians of art, architecture, culture, sound, music and the senses consider the ways in which, through their devotional practices, confraternities acted as patrons of music, created their identity through sound and were involved in the everyday musical experience of major cities in early modern Europe. Confraternities have been studied from many different angles, but only rarely as acoustic communities that communicated through sound and whose musical activities delimited the urban spaces in which they were active. Contributors: Nicholas Terpstra, Emanuela Vai, Ana López Suero, Henry Drummond, Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita, Ferrán Escrivà-Llorca, Noel O’Regan, Magnus Williamson, Xavier Torres Sans, Erika Honisch, Alexander Fisher, Konrad Eisenbichler, Daniele Filippi, Dylan Reid, Elisa Lessa, Antonio Ruiz Caballero, Juan Ruiz Jiménez, Sergi González González, and Tess Knighton.

Malleable Anatomies

Malleable Anatomies
Author: Lucia Dacome
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2017-06-02
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0191055808

Malleable Anatomies offers an account of the early stages of the practice of anatomical modelling in mid-eighteenth-century Italy. It investigates the 'mania' for anatomical displays that swept the Italian peninsula, and traces the fashioning of anatomical models as important social, cultural, and political as well as medical tools. Over the course of the eighteenth century, anatomical specimens offered particularly accurate insights into the inner body. Being coloured, soft, malleable, and often life-size, they promised to foster anatomical knowledge for different audiences in a delightful way. But how did anatomical models and preparations inscribe and mediate bodily knowledge? How did they change the way in which anatomical knowledge was created and communicated? And how did they affect the lives of those involved in their production, display, viewing, and handling? Examining the circumstances surrounding the creation and early viewing of anatomical displays in Bologna and Naples, Malleable Anatomies addresses these questions by reconstructing how anatomical modelling developed at the intersection of medical discourse, religious ritual, antiquarian and artistic cultures, and Grand Tour display. While doing so, it investigates the development of anatomical modelling in the context of the diverse worlds of visual and material practices that characterized the representation and display of the body in mid-eighteenth-century Italy. Drawing attention to the artisanal dimension of anatomical practice, and to the role of women as both makers and users of anatomical models, it considers how anatomical specimens lay at the centre of a composite world of social interactions, which led to the fashioning of modellers as anatomical celebrities. Moreover, it examines how anatomical displays transformed the proverbially gruesome practice of anatomy into an enthralling experience that engaged audiences' senses.

The Devout Hand

The Devout Hand
Author: Patricia Rocco
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2017-11-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0773552197

After the Counter-Reformation, the Papal State of Bologna became a hub for the flourishing of female artistic talent. The eighteenth-century biographer Luigi Crespi recorded over twenty-eight women artists working in the city, although many of these, until recently, were ignored by modern art criticism, despite the fame they attained during their lifetimes. What were the factors that contributed to Bologna’s unique confluence of women with art, science, and religion? The Devout Hand explores the work of two generations of Italian women artists in Bologna, from Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614), whose career emerged during the aftermath of the Counter Reformation, to her brilliant successor, Elisabetta Sirani (1638–1665), who organized the first school for women artists. Patricia Rocco further sheds light on Sirani’s students and colleagues, including the little-known engraver Veronica Fontana and the innovative but understudied etcher Giuseppe Maria Mitelli. Combining analysis of iconography, patronage, gender, and reception studies, Rocco integrates painting, popular prints, book illustration, and embroidery to open a wider lens onto the relationship between women, virtue, and the visual arts during a period of religious crisis and reform. A reminder of the lasting power of images, The Devout Hand highlights women’s active role in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Christian reform and artistic production.

The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265-c.1400

The Transformation of the Laity in Bergamo, 1265-c.1400
Author: Roisin Cossar
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2006-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047410084

This book examines the tension between social mores and religious activities among the laity in the Italian diocese of Bergamo during the later Middle Ages (1265-c.1400), employing a range of archival sources to illuminate the complexity of late medieval religious culture.

Charity, Philanthropy and Reform

Charity, Philanthropy and Reform
Author: Hugh Cunningham
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 274
Release: 1998-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1349266817

The essays in this volume explore continuities and changes in the role of philanthropic organizations in Europe and North America in the period around the French Revolution. They aim to make connections between research on the early modern and late modern periods, and to analyze policies towards poverty in different countries within Europe and across the Atlantic. Cunningham and Innes highlight the new role for voluntary organizations emerging in the late eighteenth century and draws out the implications of this for received accounts of the development of welfare states.

Constructing Mission History

Constructing Mission History
Author: Stanley H. Skreslet
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2023-01-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506481892

Challenging other narratives of mission history, Skreslet offers a new speech-act theory approach to the modern roots of World Christianity that differentiates between what a missionary might intend to communicate and the effects of what has been said or actions taken both in the moment and over time.