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Around the mid-sixteenth century, one of the largest Italian heterodox communities developed in Modena: the community of 'Brothers'. At the beginning of the century, a flourishing humanistic tradition had inspired protests against the authority of the Church and had led many of the city's prominent figures to sympathize with Luther and the Reformation. Over the following decades, such positions became more extreme: most of the 'Brothers' held radical convictions, ranging from belief in predestination to contestation of the Antichrist pope. In some cases, the 'Brothers' even went so far as to deny the value of baptism.
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Since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical authorities considered medical activity worthy of their attention and control. During the Counter-Reformation, they toughened their disciplinary action, aware of the peculiarity of an ars that mixed together the cure of the body with the cure of the soul. Moreover, the authorities became increasingly suspicious of practitioners who were highly involved in the Reformation movement, and who distanced themselves from Catholicism in the epistemological premises of their work. By examining original sources from the Venetian Inquisition archive, this paper discusses the factors that put the Roman Church and the medical profession in opposition to each other in the sixteenth century, and describes the professional solidarity put forward by physicians. It also examines the problematic relationship between doctors and the Inquisition, dealing with the former as effective agents of heretical propaganda.
Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy
GESNERUS Vol. 71 (2014) n. 1
Many Italian physicians embraced Protestant ideas during the Sixteenth Century: this suggests a connection between medical science and religious nonconformity. But why were physicians so exposed to the influence of Protestantism? Can we suppose that their heretical views affected the way in which they conceived medicine? And can we posit a particular link between certain kinds of medical thinking and specific religious doctrines? In order to analyse this relationship, I will focus on a specific character: Girolamo Donzellini. As a physician of great renown, put on trial five times by the Venetian Inquisition and eventually sentenced to death, Donzellini is a good case study. Moreover, his exposure to the works of Paracelsus allows one to put forward some considerations on Italian Paracelsianism, showing that medical attitudes often described as incompatible by historians could actually coexist in the same person, as a result of the complexity of the cultural and religious context.
2019, A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities
The place of the social margins, 1400-1800, eds Andrew Spicer and Jane Stevens Crawshaw (forthcoming 2015)
This article examines the Rialto area of Venice in the sixteenth century in order to investigate the interplay of centrality and marginality, both spatial and social, in the early modern urban metropolis. Focusing on pedlars who worked in the area, documented in a trial of the Venetian Holy Office, it argues that factors such as poverty, mobility, foreignness and even religious heterodoxy did not simply make a person marginal, but also suggests how the city’s complex social geographies were shifting at a time of upheaval and change.
2012
The Apostolic Order, a late medieval Italian mendicant order remains fundamentally little understood despite several centuries of research and writing devoted to their history. Much of the work done on the Apostolic Order (or Followers of Dolcino) has been focused on their leaders, taken as given the order’s heretical status, or presumed the marginalized status of those who supported the order. This thesis attempts to reconsider the order and its supporters by placing them as another mendicant order prior to the papal condemnation, and put forth the new perspective that the supporters were much like other medieval persons and became socially marginalized by the inquisitorial focus on the Apostolic Order. To support this theory, this thesis will compare the inquisitorial records of the Apostolic supporters found in Historia Fratris Dulcini Heresiarche and the Acta S. Officii Bononie—ab anon 1291 usque ad annum 1310 to those of another group of mendicants and supporters, the Beguins o...
2013, Mattia Preti - Faith and Humanity
This is the catalogue of the international exhibition entitled 'Mattia Preti - Faith and Humanity' held in Taverna (24th February to 21st April) and subsequently in Malta (3rd May to 4th July) to commemorate the 4th centenary from the birth of Mattia Preti (1613-1699).
2021, Denise Bezzina and Michael Gasperoni (eds.) Mascolinità mediterranee (secoli XII-XVII) Genesis, XX/1 (2021):65-93
2019, U. Grassi, Sex and Toleration: New Perspectives of Research on Religious Radical Dissent in Early Modern Italy, Intellectual History Review, 29/1 (2019), pp. 129-144
This article examines the inquisitorial trials of a number of heretics whose ideas are reminiscent of the heresies of Domenico Scandella, known as Menocchio, the Friulian miller first studied by Carlo Ginzburg in his groundbreaking The Cheese and the Worms. However, all the defendants shared a transgressive belief that seems completely alien to Scandella’s intellectual horizon – namely, the heretical proposition that Adam and Eve committed sodomy in the Garden of Eden. At this stage of my research, I suggest that this curious reinterpretation of the myth of the fall from grace is an autonomous element that originated in ecclesiastical circles and was subsequently incorporated into a more complex corpus of heretical beliefs. In addition to taking a further step into the history of religious dissent in Italy, the current research allows us to shed new light on the history of religious toleration in the early modern period, investigating the influence of Islam in Christian heresies and analysing the possible connections between the quest for sexual freedom and criticism of institutionalized religions.
2006, Truman State University Press
2007, Renaissance Quarterly
despite the repressions of Albornoz, the return of the papacy from Avignon and the gradual reassertion of papal control throughout the remainder of the Trecento. Constitutional change during the intervening decades came slowly and subtly: rubrics outlawing participation of the barons in the city’s affairs stayed on the books, while the content of individual rubrics underwent gradual change or saw the replacement of former offices (reformatores) with new ones (conservatores), for example. Only under Paul II did Rienzo’s legacy truly disappear with the abolition of the 20 May Mass of the Holy Spirit in honor of his revolution (replaced by the feast of S. Bernardino in 1469) and the substitution of the Respublica romanorum and presens popularis status with the Sanctissimi domini nostri Pauli pape Secundi et Romane Ecclesie status. The change of a few words tells far greater tales. Modigliani offers a good review of the Roman constitution from 1143 into the Trecento and a detailed analy...
2016
The aim of this paper is to investigate the decline of an institution—the Catholic Church in Early Modern age—by applying a model introduced by the political economist Albert O. Hirschman. In his most famous book (1970) Hirschman proposed a tripartite division in order to describe the reactions of consumers and citizens to the deterioration of companies, political organizations and States: exit, voice and loyalty. This model was born out of the author’s desire to convince economists of the importance and usefulness of a political concept such as ‘protest versus exit’, but even more interesting is the interplay among the three options, which has proved useful to analyze very different contexts. In fact, Hirschman’s classification could be fit as well to Early Modern Europe, when Western christians began to develop responses to deal with the crisis of the Roman Church, either deciding to remain loyal to their religious institution, or raising a protest about specific issues, or even j...
While the social and intellectual basis of voluntary martyrdom is fiercely debated, scholarship on Christian martyrdom has unanimously distinguished between “martyrdom” and “voluntary martyrdom” as separate phenomena, practices, and categories from the second century onward. Yet there is a startling dearth of evidence for the existence of the category of the “voluntary martyr” prior to the writings of Clement of Alexandria. This paper has two interrelated aims: to review the evidence for the category of the voluntary martyr in ancient martyrological discourse and to trace the emergence of the category of the voluntary martyr in modern scholarship on martyrdom. It will argue both that the category began to emerge only in the third century in the context of efforts to justify flight from persecution, and also that the assumption of Clement’s taxonomy of approaches to martyrdom by scholars is rooted in modern constructions of the natural.
A single file with my publications in the decade 2006-2016, including all the essays that have already been uploaded individually here on Academia.edu
2017
Body and Apparition: Material Presence in Sixteenth-Century Italian Religious Sculpture Erin Giffin Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Stuart Lingo Department of Art History In early modern church interiors across the Italian peninsula, religious devotees gazed upon, spoke to, and touched sculptural sacred objects. These forms of contact reinforced the sensation of presence and communication between the devotee and the sacred figure, often inciting offerings of garlands, jewelry, and other adornment at many cult sites. Bound up in this religious practice, multiple materials are at work: in the offerings bequeathed—ephemera, wax, precious metals—but also in the sculptures themselves. Over the course of the sixteenth century, multiple artists and patrons used sculpture to underscore the sacred message of their subject matter through resonant materials: in the canonical materials of marble and bronze, but also in terracotta, wood, and wax. All of these materials ha...
Early modern Italian preachers who had been condemned by the Holy Office of the Inquisition for words uttered from the pulpit were often forced to abjure the doctrinal errors contained in their sermons. In some cases the abjuration was made in public in the same venue where the heretical statements had been pronounced, supposedly so as to be heard by the same people who had already listened to the incriminated sermons. The text of the abjuration put into writing by the inquisitors was a different version of the spoken words previously uttered by the preacher in church; the defendant had to read it aloud word by word before the same people. This article considers public abjurations as an attempt to substitute the ‘wrong’ orality of the preachers with the ‘right’ orality written by religious authorities, a replacement of the original performance with a new one that would erase from the audience’s mind the memory of the heretical propositions. The aim is to analyse the reasons, the nature, the consequences, and the implications of this process. Free Download: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/rest.12181/abstract
Past and Present, No. 176 (August 2002).
This article investigates the actions of the eighteenth-century Roman Inquisition, looking at controlling sexuality and social control in particular. To this end, it examines the actions of an " atypical " outlying tribunal: the Modena tribunal. In the 1700s, the tribunal's activities did not decline, as the number of trials held increased. Possible reasons for this anomaly and its characteristics are illustrated in response to certain questions: what instructions did Modena receive from the Holy Office in Rome? What was the Modena tribunal's actual reaction? The article demonstrates the existence of not only a discrepancy between the Roman Congregation's instructions and the behavior of the judges in Modena, but also differing priorities regarding which crimes to pursue. The Modena anomaly is compared with other Italian inquisitorial offices, identifying idiosyncrasies and points of convergence: in the case of Modena—capital of the Duchy of Modena—it seems the Inquisition acted as a tool of social control and moralization, alongside a relatively weak political power. Lastly, the case in question highlights a methodological matter: the documentation from Rome (e.g. correspondence with local inquisitions) does not reflect the reality of events in the outlying offices, thus requiring caution and, where possible, verification, when used.
2013, New Perspectives on the Man of Sorrows, ed. by Catherine R. Puglisi and William L. Barcham, Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications
1997
with Sandra Hindman, Mirella Levi d'Ancona, Pia Palladino
2014
2007, Cambridge History of Christianity
A synthesis of the historical context and examination of the distinctive elements of the theology and liturgy of Reformed Christianity in a broad European context in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Arguably the most influential date for the reception of Spanish painting is 1838, the year the famous Galerie Espagnole or Spanish Gallery opened at the Louvre. There, more than 400 paintings of the Spanish Baroque were displayed, the result of careful collecting in the previous years by Louis-Philippe as part of an institutional campaign that cost the French government 1.3 million francs.
In: Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800, eds. G. Bailey, P. Jones, F. Mormando and T. Worcester. Exhibition catalogue, Worcester Art Museum, 2005; distributed by the University of Chicago Press.
2014, Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy, edited by Trinita Kennedy,
St. Clare by the Master of the Loeser Madonna, Georgia Museum of Art, Kress Collection 1961.1890. Italy in the thirteenth century was transformed by two new religious orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans. They created a tremendous demand for works of all kinds – painted altarpieces, crucifixes, fresco cycles, illuminated choir books, and liturgical objects – to decorate their churches. The visual narratives they favoured are notable for their naturalistic treatment and the emphasis on expressive gestures to show human emotions, both of which were significant new developments in Italian art. This book is the first major study to examine the art of these rival religious orders together, exploring the ways in which they used art as propaganda to promote the charisma of their saints and to articulate their revolutionary concept of religious vocation. The first exhibition dedicated to Italian Renaissance art in Nashville since 1934, Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy explores the role of the two major new religious orders in the revival of the arts in Italy during the period 1200 to 1550. The exhibition presents drawings, illuminated manuscripts, liturgical objects, paintings, prints, printed books and sculptures drawn from the collections of major American and European libraries and museums, including works of art from the Vatican Library and Vatican Museums that have never before been exhibited in the United States. Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. A fully illustrated catalogue published by Philip Wilson Publishers in conjunction with the Frist Center will accompany the exhibition.
Draft of my contribution to Mary Laven, Alex Bamji eds, Ashgate Companion to the Counter Reformation
2014, Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy. Ed. Trinita Kennedy. Frist Center for the Visual Arts, 31 October 2014 – 25 January 2015. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, edited by Trinita Kennedy
Initial A with the Madonna of the Purification and St. Zenobius, attributed to Battista di Biagio Sanguigni, The Lilly Library, Indiana University Libraries, Medieval and Renaissance 26.
https://reforc.com/news/tenth-annual-reforc-conference-2021/
2018, The Council of Trent: Reform and Controversy in Europe and Beyond (1545-1700). Vol. 1 Between Trent, Rome and Wittenberg. Edited by W. François and V. Soen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), pp. 249–76
2001
Janet Robson's unpublished PhD Thesis - Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London - 2001. Prepared and uploaded by Peter Sidhom, in loving memory of Janet.
2006
In The Parma Baptistery and Its Pictorial Program, I examine how in 1233 the painter responsible for the extensive decoration of the Baptistery at Parma, Italy, adopted and redeployed Byzantine sources to promote the religious and political agenda of the Franciscan preacher in control of the city government. I read the sixteen-sided, domed interior of the Baptistery, built largely between 1196 and 1216, as a synthesis of late antique and early Gothic architecture. The iconographic program laid out in this idiosyncratic space depicts Heavenly Jerusalem in the dome, the Baptism of Christ in the apse, and an array of figures and scenes in the other niches. Through an analysis of the functions of the building and the connections between the iconographic program and the city’s political context, I identify the preacher Gerard Boccabadati, an early disciple of St. Francis, as the patron of the pictorial decoration. The painting of the Baptistery is thus dated to 1233, at the height of the religious movement known as the Alleluia, or Great Devotion, which spread from Parma throughout the cities of northern Italy in that year. My study of the pictorial program examines the process of the transmission of images in the medieval world and the assimilation of Byzantine sources into the visual vocabulary used in Parma. Discrepancies in the rendering of figures and scenes reveal the use of drawings as a means of recording and handling iconography. Consequences of this practice in the Baptistery are studied in comparison with another extensive pictorial program from this period found in the chapterhouse at Sigena, Spain. Five appendices focus respectively on historiography, on painting technique, on other works attributed to the Master of the Parma Baptistery, on the liturgy of baptism and on the political reasons behind the building of monumental baptisteries in high medieval city-states. My research challenges standard readings of thirteenth-century paintings in the so-called maniera greca showing that the Byzantine elements in the Baptistery at Parma derive – more than from an appreciation of Byzantine art – from the appropriation inherent in the medieval process of handling images and iconography.
2004
2021
The essay investigates the relationship between the Este family and some hospitallers commanders who in the XV century commissioned important artworks in Ferrara and Reggio Emilia. The first case is that of Avanzo de’ Ridolfi, preceptor in Ferrara in Lionello and Borso’s time, he renewed the decoration of the Santissima Trinità. The study of documents and the artistic analysis have support the identification between Bendedeo di Niccolò, a ferrarese painter, with the Master of the Imola triptych: in the past some frescoes, already in the mansion, were already attributed to this artist. The second case is that of Girolamo degli Ardizzoni, a prestigious hospitaller of Reggio Emilia, linked with Borso and Ercole d’Este. The association with the ducal family is perhaps further confirmed by the prestigious choice of commissioning the decoration of a chapel in the church of his commendery to the ducal painter Baldassare d’Este, illegitimate son of Niccolò III. The essay analyzes the large fresco fragments survived in Santo Stefano and formulates new hypotheses on the iconography and their dating.
An outline of the encounter between Jewish and Italian cultures during the Renaissance. With a particular focus on Hebrew language and Jewish symbols in Italian Renaissance art of late 15th - early 16th centuries. Dealing, among others, with paintings and sculptures by Sassetta, Cosmè Tura, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Raffaello, Ludovico Mazzolino.