Download or read book A Convent Tale written by P. Renee Baernstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Power often operates in strange and surprising ways. With A Convent Tale, Renee Baernstein uncovers some of the nuanced methods cloistered women devised to exert their agency. In the tradition of Simon Schama and Steven Ozment, Baernstein uses the compelling story of a single clan, the Sfondrati, to refashion our understanding of the early modern period. Showing the nuns as neither helpless victims nor valiant rebels, but reasonable beings maneuvering as best they could within limits set by class, gender and culture. Baernstein writes against the tendency to depict women as inactive pawns, and shows that even within the convent walls, nuns were empowered by ties with their (often earthly) families and actively involved in the politics of the period. Both a major contribution to scholarship on gender, family and religion in early modern Europe, and a colorful well-told tale of Renaissance intrigue, A Convent Tale is sure to attract a wide range of academic and general readers.
Download or read book Liturgy Sanctity and History in Tridentine Italy written by Simon Ditchfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-28 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new interpretation of what the Catholic Reform meant at local diocesan level c.1550-1700.
Download or read book The Conquest of the Soul written by Wietse De Boer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2001 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carlo Borromeo earned sainthood by attempting to turn Milan into a holy city. This book is the first to interpret his program of penitential discipline as an effort to reshape Lombard society by reaching into the souls of its inhabitants.
Download or read book Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni written by PamelaM. Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A social history of reception, this study focuses on sacred art and Catholicism in Rome during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The five altarpieces examined here were painted by artists who are admired today - Caravaggio, Guercino, and Guido Reni - and by the less renowned but once influential Tommaso Laureti and Andrea Commodi. By shifting attention from artistic intentionality to reception, Pamela Jones reintegrates these altarpieces into the urban fabric of early modern Rome, allowing us to see the five paintings anew through the eyes of their original audiences, both women and men, rich and poor, pious and impious. Because Italian churchmen relied, after the Council of Trent, on public altarpieces more than any other type of contemporary painting in their attempts to reform and inspire Catholic society, it is on altarpieces that Pamela Jones centers her inquiry. Through detailed study of evidence in many genres - including not only painting, prints, and art criticism, but also cheap pamphlets, drama, sermons, devotional tracts, rules of religious orders, pilgrimages, rituals, diaries, and letters - Jones shows how various beholders made meaning of the altarpieces in their aesthetic, devotional, social, and charitable dimensions. This study presents early modern Catholicism and its art in an entirely new light by addressing the responses of members of all social classes - not just elites - to art created for the public. It also provides a more accurate view of the range of religious ideas that circulated in early modern Rome by bringing to bear both officially sanctioned religious art and literature and unauthorized but widely disseminated cheap pamphlets and prints that were published without the mandatory religious permission. On this basis, Jones helps to illuminate further the insurmountable problems churchmen faced when attempting to channel the power of sacred art to elicit orthodox responses.
Download or read book A New History of Penance written by Abigail Firey and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the third and sixteenth centuries, penance (the acts or gestures performed to atone for transgression, usually with an interest in the salvation of the penitent’s soul) was a crucial mode of participation in both society and the cosmos. Penance was incorporated into political and legal negotiations, it erupted in improvisational social dramas, it was subject to experimentation and innovation, and it saturated western culture with images of contrition, suffering, and reconciliation. During the late antique, medieval, and early modern periods, rituals for the correction of human errors became both sophisticated and popular. Creativity in penitential expression reflects the range and complexity of social and spiritual situations in which penance was vital. Using hitherto unconsidered source materials, the contributors chart new views on how in western culture, human conduct was modulated and directed in patterns shaped by the fearsome yet embraced practices of penance. Contributors are R. Emmet McLaughlin, Rob Meens, Kevin Uhalde, Claudia Rapp, Dominique Iogna-Prat, Abigail Firey, Karen Wagner, Joseph Goering, H. Ansgar Kelly, Torstein Jørgensen, Wietse de Boer, Ronald K. Rittgers, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, and Jodi Bilinkoff.
Download or read book The World of Maria Gaetana Agnesi Mathematician of God written by Massimo Mazzotti and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-12-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating true story of mathematician Maria Agnesi. She is best known for her curve, the witch of Agnesi, which appears in almost all high school and undergraduate math books. She was a child prodigy who frequented the salon circuit, discussing mathematics, philosophy, history, and music in multiple languages. She wrote one of the first vernacular textbooks on calculus and was appointed chair of mathematics at the university in Bologna. In later years, however, she became a prominent figure within the Catholic Enlightenment, gave up academics, and devoted herself to the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the homeless. Indeed, the life of Maria Agnesi reveals a complex and enigmatic figure—one of the most fascinating characters in the history of mathematics. Using newly discovered archival documents, Massimo Mazzotti reconstructs the wide spectrum of Agnesi's social experience and examines her relationships to various traditions—religious, political, social, and mathematical. This meticulous study shows how she and her fellow Enlightenment Catholics modified tradition in an effort to reconcile aspects of modern philosophy and science with traditional morality and theology. Mazzotti's original and provocative investigation is also the first targeted study of the Catholic Enlightenment and its influence on modern science. He argues that Agnesi's life is the perfect lens through which we can gain a greater understanding of mid-eighteenth-century cultural trends in continental Europe.
Download or read book Maria Maddalena de Pazzi written by Clare Copeland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-18 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a detailed reconstruction of the campaigns for and trials resulting in the beatification (in 1626) and subsequent canonization in 1169 of the Florentine mystic nun, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (1566-1607). Clare Copeland places her findings in the wide context of the politics of saint-making at a time of particular significance for the history of Roman Catholic canonization. The Protestant Reformation had put the Roman Catholic Church on the defensive in this area of devotional practice and the period covered in this volume (ca. 1600-1669) saw far-reaching reforms in the ways in which sanctity was measured and adjudicated by Rome. Copeland shows how these developments need to be seen less in terms of a top-down attempt by the central organs of ecclesiastical control to impose a hegemony of holiness and more in terms of negotiation over the meanings of sanctity--and how it relates to canonization-between the various stakeholders.
Download or read book Peter Paul Rubens and the Counter Reformation Crisis of the Beati moderni written by Ruth S. Noyes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints - or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called - by the Jesuits and Oratorians in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. Ruth Noyes focuses particularly on how the new regulations pertained to the creation of emerging cults of those not yet canonized, the so-called Beati moderni, such as Jesuit founders Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola, and Filippo Neri, founder of the Oratorians. Centrally involved in the book is the question of the fate and meaning of the two altarpiece paintings commissioned by the Oratorians from Peter Paul Rubens. The Congregation rejected his first altarpiece because it too specifically identified Filippo Neri as a cult figure to be venerated (before his actual canonization) and thus was caught up in the politics of cult formation and the papacy’s desire to control such pre-canonization cults. The book demonstrates that Rubens' second altarpiece, although less overtly depicting Neri as a saint, was if anything more radical in the claims it made for him. Peter Paul Rubens and the Crisis of the Beati Moderni offers the first comparative study of Jesuit and Oratorian images of their respective would-be saints, and the controversy they ignited across Church hierarchies. It is also the first work to examine provocative Philippine imagery and demonstrate how its bold promotion specifically triggered the first wave of curial censure in 1602.
Download or read book Representing Infirmity written by John Henderson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first in-depth analysis of how infirm bodies were represented in Italy from c. 1400 to 1650. Through original contributions and methodologies, it addresses the fundamental yet undiscussed relationship between images and representations in medical, religious, and literary texts. Looking beyond the modern category of ‘disease’ and viewing infirmity in Galenic humoral terms, each chapter explores which infirmities were depicted in visual culture, in what context, why, and when. By exploring the works of artists such as Caravaggio, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, this study considers the idealized body altered by diseases, including leprosy, plague, goitre, and cancer. In doing so, the relationship between medical treatment and the depiction of infirmities through miracle cures is also revealed. The broad chronological approach demonstrates how and why such representations change, both over time and across different forms of media. Collectively, the chapters explain how the development of knowledge of the workings and structure of the body was reflected in changed ideas and representations of the metaphorical, allegorical, and symbolic meanings of infirmity and disease. The interdisciplinary approach makes this study the perfect resource for both students and specialists of the history of art, medicine and religion, and social and intellectual history across Renaissance Europe.
Download or read book A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Milan written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Milan was for centuries the most important center of economic, ecclesiastical and political power in Lombardy. As the State of Milan it extended in the Renaissance over a large part of northern and central Italy and numbered over thirty cities with their territories. A Companion to Late Medieval and early Modern Milan examines the story of the city and State from the establishment of the duchy under the Viscontis in 1395 through to the 150 years of Spanish rule and down to its final absorption into Austrian Lombardy in 1704. It opens up to a wide readership a well-documented synthesis which is both fully informative and reflects current debate. 20 chapters by qualified and distinguished scholars offer a new and original perspective with themes ranging from society to politics, music to literature, the history of art to law, the church to the economy. Contributors are: Giuliana Albini, Giancarlo Andenna, Jane Black, Stefano D’Amico, Alessandra Dattero, Massimo Della Misericordia, Giuliano Di Bacco, Claudia Di Filippo, Federico Del Tredici, Andrea Gamberini, Christine Getz, T.J. Kuehn, Germano Maifreda, Patrizia Mainoni, Alessandro Morandotti, Simona Mori, Serena Romano, Giovanna Tonelli, Massimo Zaggia.
Download or read book Law Medicine and Engineering in the Cult of the Saints in Counter Reformation Rome The Hagiographical Works of Antonio Gallonio 1556 1605 written by Jetze Touber and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-01-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oratorian priest Antonio Gallonio (1556-1605) devoted his life to writing about saints. The thread running through his hagiographical oeuvre was renunciation of this world: humility, subservience and endurance. Yet he engaged with the expertise of lay people, jurists, physicians and engineers, so as to appeal to their interests and convert them. In order to emphasize how saints endured torture, healed disease and exercised piety rather than ingenuity, Gallonio ventured into those secular disciplines, even if he did not endorse them. This book surveys Gallonio’s published and unpublished works and his position in Roman society, to expose the tensions between a theocratic clergy and the self-assertion of skilled and scholarly professionals in the Italian Counter-Reformation.
Download or read book Medical Miracles written by Jacalyn Duffin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern culture tends to separate medicine and miracles, but their histories are closely intertwined. The Roman Catholic Church recognizes saints through canonization based on evidence that they worked miracles, as signs of their proximity to God. Physicianhistorian Jacalyn Duffin has examined Vatican sources on 1400 miracles from six continents and spanning four centuries. Overwhelmingly the miracles cited in canonizations between 1588 and 1999 are healings, and the majority entail medical care and physician testimony. These remarkable records contain intimate stories of illness, prayer, and treatment, as told by people who rarely leave traces: peasants and illiterates, men and women, old and young. A woman's breast tumor melts away; a man's wounds knit; a lame girl suddenly walks; a dead baby revives. Suspicious of wishful thinking or na ve enthusiasm, skeptical clergy shaped the inquiries to identify recoveries that remain unexplained by the best doctors of the era. The tales of healing are supplemented with substantial testimony from these physicians. Some elements of the miracles change through time. Duffin shows that doctors increase in number; new technologies are embraced quickly; diagnoses shift with altered capabilities. But other aspects of the miracles are stable. The narratives follow a dramatic structure, shaped by the formal questions asked of each witness and by perennial reactions to illness and healing. In this history, medicine and religion emerge as parallel endeavors aimed at deriving meaningful signs from particular instances of human distress -- signs to explain, alleviate, and console in confrontation with suffering and mortality. A lively, sweeping analysis of a fascinating set of records, this book also poses an exciting methodological challenge to historians: miracle stories are a vital source not only on the thoughts and feelings of ordinary people, but also on medical science and its practitioners.
Download or read book Saints and Sanctity written by Ecclesiastical History Society. Summer Meeting and published by DS Brewer. This book was released on 2011 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides insight into a key issue of Christian history which still has a huge influence on ecclesiastical practice and politics.
Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter Reformation written by Alexandra Bamji and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In the last two decades, the history of the Counter-Reformation has been stretched and re-shaped in numerous directions. Reflecting the variety and innovation that characterize studies of early modern Catholicism today, this volume incorporates topics as diverse as life cycle and community, science and the senses, the performing and visual arts, material objects and print culture, war and the state, sacred landscapes and urban structures. Moreover, it challenges the conventional chronological parameters of the Counter-Reformation and introduces the reader to the latest research on global Catholicism. The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation presents a comprehensive examination of recent scholarship on early modern Catholicism in its many guises. It examines how the Tridentine reforms inspired conflict and conversion, and evaluates lives and identities, spirituality, culture and religious change. This wide-ranging and original research guide is a unique resource for scholars and students of European and transnational history.
Download or read book Medicine and the Italian Universities 1250 1600 written by Siraisi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects essays published in the last 20 years. They deal with medicine in the university world of thirteenth to sixteenth century Italy, discussing both the internal academic milieu of teaching and learning and its relation to the lively urban social, economic, and cultural context in which medieval and Renaissance Italian university medicine grew up. Topics covered include the complex interaction of continuity and change in the transition from scholastic to humanistic medicine; humanist presentations of medical lives; the activities of physicians who moved among the worlds of academic learning, princely courts, and city life; the teaching of practical medicine; the relations of medical and surgical learning and practice; and the influence on medical writing of a variety of elements in the broader surrounding intellectual culture.
Download or read book Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material written by Jenni Kuuliala and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the ways in which early modern hagiographic sources can be used to study lived religion and everyday life from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. For several decades, saints’ lives, other spiritual biographies, miracle narratives, canonisation processes, iconography, and dramas, have been widely utilised in studies on medieval religious practices and social history. This fruitful material has however been overlooked in studies of the early modern period, despite the fact that it witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of hagiographic material. The contributors to this volume address this, and illuminate how early modern hagiographic material can be used for the study of topics such as religious life, the social history of medicine, survival strategies, domestic violence, and the religious experience of slaves.
