Download or read book Siena Civil Religion and the Sienese written by Gerald Parsons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Siena is often referred to as the 'City of the Virgin' and the 'City of the Palio'. The special devotion of the Sienese to the Virgin began in the thirteenth century and in times of danger the Sienese have regularly rededicated their city to the Madonna, who is also celebrated in the twice-yearly festival of the Palio. Siena, Civil Religion and the Sienese examines Sienese devotion to the Virgin from the medieval period until the present day. Exploring how the Palio has become the principal means of sustaining and celebrating Sienese culture, values and identity - including popular devotion to the Virgin - Parsons shows how this festival stands in continuity with the earlier civil religion of medieval and renaissance Siena. Drawing on insights from recent discussion of the role of civil religion in medieval and renaissance Italy, the USA and modern Britain, this book explores how civil religion sustains the Sienese sense of their history, identity and uniqueness through a variety of beliefs, rituals, ceremonies and symbols. Highly illustrated and including a full bibliography, this book breaks new ground in interpreting Sienese devotion to the Virgin and to the Palio in terms of 'civil religion'.
Download or read book The Cult of Saint Catherine of Siena written by Gerald Parsons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the origins, development and history of the cult of Saint Catherine of Siena. Gerald Parsons argues that the cult of Catherine of Siena constitutes a remarkable example of the cult of a particular saint which, across more than six centuries, has been the vehicle for an evolving sequence of civil religious rituals and meanings. He shows how the cult of this particular saint developed, firstly, as an expression of Sienese civil religion; secondly, as a focus for Italian civil religion; and finally into an expression of European civil religion. Instead of the predominantly devotional - and frequently essentially hagiographical - approach of much of the literature on Catherine of Siena, Parsons examines the significance of her cult from the perspective of civil religion and the social history of religion.
Download or read book Perspectives on Civil Religion written by Gerald Parsons and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-23 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2002: Perspectives on Civil Religion introduces the concept of civil religion, examines the use of the concept in recent scholarship and investigates examples of civil religion in the contemporary world. The book sets out to explore tensions and complexities in the relationship between the 'sacred' and the 'secular', and draws on two major case studies for in-depth illustration of key issues. It looks first at the development of rituals of remembrance from the American civil war, British and American responses to the two world wars and the controversial Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It then considers civil religion in the Italian city of Siena, especially in relation to the Palio of Siena and Sienese devotion to the Virgin. The five textbooks and Reader that make up the Religion Today Open University/Ashgate series are: From Sacred Text to Internet; Religion and Social Transformations; Perspectives on Civil Religion; Global Religious Movements in Regional Context; Belief Beyond Boundaries; Religion Today: A Reader
Download or read book Siena and the Sienese in the Thirteenth Century written by Daniel Philip Waley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1991 book portrays the life and institutions of a great medieval Italian city, Siena, through the surviving records and buildings of the period. Laws, council minutes, records of the commune's revenue and expenditure, wills and other charters from the thirteenth century are among the plentiful material which makes up the picture of the city republic's institutions and those who ran them. The main themes are the political institutions of the city, and the involvement of the citizens in them. The religion of the Sienese is also investigated. This is a portrait of a special, but not untypical, society which was engaged in an experiment in oligarchic self-government. Although the milieu was urban, Siena's bankers and tradesmen, craftsmen and those involved in transport and agricultural labour, were in many cases landowners: the city was dependent on and greatly involved with its rural environment. The precocity of the commune's governmental methods and the wealth of information that has survived mean that the medieval life of this famous and beautiful Tuscan city can be depicted in full and convincing detail.
Download or read book Siena and the Virgin written by Diana Norman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the Virgin Mary as both an object of religious affection and a focus of civic pride, artists of fourteenth-century Siena established for their city a vibrant tradition that continued into the early decades of the next century. Such celebratory portraits of the Virgin were also common in Siena's extensive subject territories, the contado. This richly illustrated book explores late medieval Sienese art--how it was created, commissioned, and understood by the citizens of Siena. Examining political, economic, and cultural relations between Siena and the contado, Diana Norman offers a new understanding of Marian art and its political function as an expression of civic ideology. Drawing on extensive unpublished archives, Norman reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the commission of Marian art in the three most prestigious locations of fourteenth-century Siena: the cathedral, the Palazzo Pubblico, and the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. She analyzes similarly important commissions in the contado towns of Massa Marittima, Montalcino, and Montepulciano. Casting new light on such topics as the original site for the reliquary tomb of Saint Cerbone, patron saint of Massa Marittima, and the identity of the patrons of the Marian frescoes in the rural hermitage of San Leonardo al Lago, the author deepens our insight into the origins and meanings of Sienese art production of the late medieval period.
Download or read book Saint Catherine of Siena written by Edmund G. Gardner and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture written by Elina Gertsman and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interdisciplinary approaches to the material culture of the middle ages, from illuminated manuscripts to church architecture.
Download or read book The Lay Saint written by Mary Harvey Doyno and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lay Saint, Mary Harvey Doyno investigates the phenomenon of saintly cults that formed around pious merchants, artisans, midwives, domestic servants, and others in the medieval communes of northern and central Italy. Drawing on a wide array of sources—vitae documenting their saintly lives and legends, miracle books, religious art, and communal records—Doyno uses the rise of and tensions surrounding these civic cults to explore medieval notions of lay religiosity, charismatic power, civic identity, and the church's authority in this period. Although claims about laymen's and laywomen's miraculous abilities challenged the church's expanding political and spiritual dominion, both papal and civic authorities, Doyno finds, vigorously promoted their cults. She shows that this support was neither a simple reflection of the extraordinary lay religious zeal that marked late medieval urban life nor of the Church's recognition of that enthusiasm. Rather, the history of lay saints' cults powerfully illustrates the extent to which lay Christians embraced the vita apostolic—the ideal way of life as modeled by the Apostles—and of the church's efforts to restrain and manage such claims.
Download or read book Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c 1300 1520 written by Andrew Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-10 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public religious practice lay at the heart of civic society in late medieval Europe. In this illuminating study, Andrew Brown draws on the rich and previously little-researched archives of Bruges, one of medieval Europe's wealthiest and most important towns, to explore the role of religion and ceremony in urban society. The author situates the religious practices of citizens - their investment in the liturgy, commemorative services, guilds and charity - within the contexts of Bruges' highly diversified society and of the changes and crises the town experienced. Focusing on the religious processions and festivities sponsored by the municipal government, the author challenges much current thinking on, for example, the nature of 'civic religion'. Re-evaluating the ceremonial links between Bruges and its rulers, he questions whether rulers could dominate the urban landscape by religious or ceremonial means, and offers new insight into the interplay between ritual and power of relevance throughout medieval Europe.
Download or read book The Art Science and Technology of Medieval Travel written by Robert Odell Bork and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sixth volume in the AVISTA series considers medieval travel from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, placing the physical practice of transportation in the larger context of medieval thought about the world and its meaning. The papers included cover vehicle design and logistical management, the practicalities of how travellers oriented themselves, and the symbolism of the landscapes and maps created in the Middle Ages.
Download or read book The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena written by F. Thomas Luongo and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) has become a defining figure in the history of medieval religion and one of the main exemplars of the "feminine turn" in late medieval religious culture. Despite a hagiographical tradition and historiography that has placed Catherine at a mystic remove from the politics of her day, Catherine's public authority was shaped by politics, both locally in Siena and broadly within late-fourteenth-century contests between the papacy and the Republic of Florence for hegemony in central Italy. In The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena, F. Thomas Luongo combines literary-critical readings of Catherine's letters—she was the author of one of the largest collections of medieval letters—with political and social analysis. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Luongo investigates how Catherine's spiritual authority and sanctity were linked with contemporary political and cultural developments. He shows how the political situation of the church in Italy and a culture that privileged female spirituality and prophetic speech facilitated Catherine's emergence into a public role. The Catherine who emerges from Luongo's well-written pages is a splendid example of what can result when a historian asks fresh questions about a familiar figure's life and brings new materials and methods to bear in formulating answers. The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena offers a woman more complex and interesting than the figure portrayed in most contemporary scholarship.
Download or read book A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Siena written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Siena introduces the once-powerful commune to a wider audience. Edited by Santa Casciani and Heather Richardson Hayton, this collection explores how Siena built a distinctive civic identity and institutions that endured for centuries.
Download or read book Renaissance Siena written by A. Lawrence Jenkens and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2005-07-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The art of Renaissance Siena is usually viewed in the light of developments and accomplishments achieved elsewhere, but Sienese artists were part of a dynamic dialogue that was shaped by their city’s internal political turmoil, diplomatic relationships with its neighbors, internal social hierarchies, and struggle for self-definition. These essays lead scholars in a new and exciting direction in the study of the art of Renaissance Siena, exploring the cultural dynamics of the city and its art in a specifically Sienese context. This volume shapes a new understanding of Sienese culture in the early modern period and defines the questions scholars will continue to ask for years to come. What emerges is a picture of Renaissance Siena as a city focused on meeting the challenges of the time while formulating changes to shape its future. Central to these changes are the city’s efforts to fashion a civic identity through the visual arts.
Download or read book Vecchietta and the Sacristy of the Siena Hospital Church written by H. W. van Os and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Sienese Ospedale di Sta. Maria della Scala, founded in the 12th century, is a rare example of the survival of medieval charitable institution in our own day. This once wealthy organization, in possession of fortified granaries throughout Tuscany, was a powerful economic, military, social and religious force in the community for hundreds of years. The hospital church too, Sta. Maria Annunziata, had greater importance for the life of the city than that of a mere chapel for patients and visitors. With money left to the foundation by plague victims in 1348, the church acquired several major relics which turned into an important pilgrimage site. In keeping with this function, it also hired some of the best artists of the day to decorate the church and it's chapels. In the 15th century, the artist responsible for most of the work done in the hospital was the greatest Sienese artist of his time, Lorenzo di Pietro, called Vecchietta, who was the author of the magnificent decorations in the cathedral baptistery. The reliquary he made for Sta. Maria Annunziata is now one of the treasures of the Pinacoteca, while his frescoes fr the walls and vault are among the greatest creations of the Sienese Quattrocento. But in the course of the centuries the church was alters drastically, and Vecchietta's unified scheme was lost forever. Yet, ruinous as they are, the frescoes still have some of their brilliant quality, as the new and unique photographs in this book Illustrate."--Jacket.
Download or read book Art as Politics in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena written by TimothyB. Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Art as Politics in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena, contributors explore the evolving relationship between image and politics in Siena from the time of the city-state's defeat of Florence at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 to the end of the Sienese Republic in 1550. Engaging issues of the politicization of art in Sienese painting, sculpture, architecture, and urban design, the volume challenges the still-prevalent myth of Siena's cultural and artistic conservatism after the mid fourteenth century. Clearly establishing uniquely Sienese artistic agendas and vocabulary, these essays broaden our understanding of the intersection of art, politics, and religion in Siena by revisiting its medieval origins and exploring its continuing role in the Renaissance.
Download or read book Siena City of the Virgin written by Titus Burckhardt and published by World Wisdom Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautifully illustrated book examines the history, culture, and spirituality of the Italian city of Siena. Through color photographs, maps, and reproductions of original manuscripts, Burckhardt invites the reader to walk the streets of a city whose history mirrors the development of Christianity in Europe.
Download or read book Siena a City and Its History written by Judith Hook and published by London : H. Hamilton. This book was released on 1979 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
