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Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility
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Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Humanities/Philosophies".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 May 2022) | Viewed by 22368

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Diego Pirillo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Department of Italian Studies, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2620, USA
Interests: intellectual history; book history; religious studies; migration; diplomacy
Dr. John Christopoulos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of History, University of British Columbia, Vancouver , BC, V6T1Z2, Canada
Interests: social history; history of science; religious studies; women's history

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The history of the transformations to Italian religious life that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been a battleground for centuries. Confessional, political and ideological commitments have infused and shaped representations both within academia and in the broader public sphere. Historians have argued vehemently about and vacillated between competing and overlapping paradigms, often signaled by the use of specific terms to describe the period. From its coining in 1776 by the German jurist Johann Stephan Pütter, the “Counter Reformation” asserted the reactionary and forced re-Catholicization of Protestant lands and the often draconian suppression of heterodoxy in Catholic lands. By contrast, the “Catholic Reformation” emphasized the Church’s own internal efforts to reform its institutions, theology and the morality of the faithful. Moving beyond the debate over the spiritual drivers of reform, historians turned to the paradigm of “confessionalization”, linking religion and secular politics and asserting convergences between Catholicism and Protestantism and the rise of the modern state. Returning to “Counter Reformation”, others warned against ignoring or deemphasizing the repressive apparatus of the Catholic Church’s institutions and have illuminated various mechanisms of “social discipline” that sought to condition the behaviors and mentalities of the laity. Most recently, some scholars have adopted the capacious and flexible yet elusive terms “early modern Catholicism” or “the World of Catholic Renewal”, seeking to emphasize the diverse early modern and globalizing features of the faith, its practitioners and institutions.   

Today, all these terms coexist, often uneasily, and continue to shape research projects. Instead of taking sides on the never-ending controversy over how to label, research and tell the story of religious change in early modern Italy, the goal of this Special Issue is to bring together some of the most innovative recent work on the period by a new generation of scholars. The fourteen articles collected here, by European, Israeli and North American scholars, showcase the plurality of approaches used today to study the epoch that is still commonly referred to as the “Counter-Reformation”. Reflecting the two different backgrounds of the two editors, the issue was also borne out of the effort to bridge the gap between Italian and Anglo-American scholarship that often run on two parallel tracks ignoring each other. In this respect, it is perhaps not just a coincidence that many of the conversations that led to this Special Issue began in an ideal “contact zone”, the Villa I Tatti, where we were both fellows in 2016/2017.

Dr. Diego Pirillo
Dr. John Christopoulos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • religion
  • culture
  • early modern
  • Italy
  • historical methodology

Published Papers (17 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 149 KiB  
Editorial
Conclusions
by Stefania Tutino
Religions 2023, 14(5), 624; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050624 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 530
Abstract
Generalizations are always difficult to make, often imprecise, and sometimes misleading [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
4 pages, 207 KiB  
Editorial
Editorial: Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy
by John Christopoulos and Diego Pirillo
Religions 2023, 14(5), 622; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050622 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 857
Abstract
In 1925, having spent six months on the island of Capri, Walter Benjamin and Asja Lãcis published a short essay on the city of Naples in the Frankfurter Zeitung [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

15 pages, 312 KiB  
Article
The Bishop’s Conscience: Pietro Camaiani, Cosimo I, and the Residency Debate at the Council of Trent, 1562–63
by J. G. Amato
Religions 2023, 14(5), 621; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050621 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1098
Abstract
The third phase of the Council of Trent (1562–63) witnessed a crisis erupt over whether bishops resided in, and ruled, their dioceses de iure divino (by divine right) or by papal authority. Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence, cooperated with instructions [...] Read more.
The third phase of the Council of Trent (1562–63) witnessed a crisis erupt over whether bishops resided in, and ruled, their dioceses de iure divino (by divine right) or by papal authority. Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence, cooperated with instructions from Pope Sixtus IV to send the Tuscan bishops to Trent, to vote as a bloc for Episcopal residency by papal authority. This position strengthened papal primacy and weakened bishops’ claims to autonomy. Pietro Camaiani, the Bishop of Fiesole and a longstanding Medici loyalist, defied the Duke’s instructions, claiming his freedom of conscience and episcopal liberty. Through an examination of diplomatic and personal correspondence, treatises, and judicial documents, I argue that there are three reasonable causes that influenced Camaiani to support episcopal residency de iure divino, in defiance of his patron Cosimo I. These include, the episcopalist theological arguments circulating at the Council, the heterodox literature of the 1540s, and his own lived experience as the Bishop of Fiesole. I uncover the challenges Camaiani faced while governing his diocese that brought him into conflict with Cosimo I, explore the political dimensions of episcopacy by papal authority, and problematize the meaning of Trent’s “ideal bishop.” Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
11 pages, 283 KiB  
Article
Beheading the Hydra: Antonio Castelvetro, The Congregation of the Index, and an Imagined Future for Print Censorship
by Hannah Marcus
Religions 2023, 14(5), 620; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050620 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 952
Abstract
In 1587, Antonio Castelvetro, a little-known physician from a well-known Modenese family, circulated a manuscript treatise that proposed a radical new vision for a Catholic press and a reformed system of press censorship: The Brief Treatise on the Reform of the Press ( [...] Read more.
In 1587, Antonio Castelvetro, a little-known physician from a well-known Modenese family, circulated a manuscript treatise that proposed a radical new vision for a Catholic press and a reformed system of press censorship: The Brief Treatise on the Reform of the Press (Trattato breve sopra la riforma della stampa). Historians have typically treated this text with a combination of amusement and outright ridicule, but this essay explains the ways that Castelvetro’s text captured a particular ethos of expertise and reform at the end of the sixteenth century in Italy. Although never implemented, Castelvetro’s treatise represents a moment of creative tactics in confrontation with the hydra of print. Censorship lay firmly within the project of the Counter-Reformation—a response directed at undermining and controlling the immediate and long-term effects of religious upheaval across Europe. However, systemic solutions to managing the press were part of the creative process of Catholic Reform. As Castelvetro’s treatise shows, some of these suggestions were more far-fetched and self-aggrandizing than others, but each contributed to a flourishing landscape of ideas aimed at combatting heresy and restructuring Catholic life. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
12 pages, 351 KiB  
Article
The Inquisitor at the Table: Food and Identity in the Mediterranean Tribunals of the Roman Inquisition
by Eric R. Dursteler
Religions 2023, 14(5), 619; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050619 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1340
Abstract
This article explores the Roman Inquisition’s interest in the dietary practices of suspected heretics throughout the Roman Catholic Mediterranean. In an era marked by rampant religious nomadism and a deep uncertainty about assaying and fixing confessional identity, dietary practices were often used to [...] Read more.
This article explores the Roman Inquisition’s interest in the dietary practices of suspected heretics throughout the Roman Catholic Mediterranean. In an era marked by rampant religious nomadism and a deep uncertainty about assaying and fixing confessional identity, dietary practices were often used to determine religious belonging. For the Roman Inquisition, non-conforming diets served as a clue to potentially more serious spiritual infractions. In the early modern Mediterranean, what one ate was considered a sign of what one believed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
13 pages, 312 KiB  
Article
Unbelief and Inquisition in Early Modern Italy: The Case of Flaminio Fabrizi
by Vincenzo Lavenia
Religions 2023, 14(5), 618; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050618 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1231
Abstract
This essay reflects on the history of the origins of atheism in the late sixteenth century through an analysis of the Inquisition proceedings against Flaminio Fabrizi, which began in Siena in 1587 and ended in Rome in 1591 with the accused being sentenced [...] Read more.
This essay reflects on the history of the origins of atheism in the late sixteenth century through an analysis of the Inquisition proceedings against Flaminio Fabrizi, which began in Siena in 1587 and ended in Rome in 1591 with the accused being sentenced to death at the stake. This is a very intriguing case because Fabrizi, not a learned man, mixed different forms of heterodoxy and unbelief that surprised and disturbed the judges of the Holy Office. This essay aims to contribute to the history of religious nonconformism in Counter-reformation Italy and in Europe during the so-called “confessional era”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
22 pages, 2528 KiB  
Article
Martyrs and Madonnas: Inácio de Azevedo, the Brazil Martyrs, and the Global Circulation of the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore
by Paul Nelles
Religions 2023, 14(5), 617; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050617 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1593
Abstract
The article offers a revisionist account of the early circulation of copies of the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore, known since the nineteenth century as the Salus Populi Romani. Traditionally, the propulsion of the image into global circulation has been attributed variously to [...] Read more.
The article offers a revisionist account of the early circulation of copies of the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore, known since the nineteenth century as the Salus Populi Romani. Traditionally, the propulsion of the image into global circulation has been attributed variously to Pius V or Francisco Borja, the third Superior General of the Society of Jesus. The article argues that the circulation of the Saint Luke Madonna, as it was known at the time, was closely tied to the martyr’s cult that grew up around the Jesuit missionary Inácio de Azevedo and the so-called Brazil Martyrs, a group of Jesuits murdered by Calvinist corsairs off the Canary Islands in 1570. Azevedo had intended to carry a copy of the Roman icon to Brazil, a copy that perished at sea with Azevedo and the party of Jesuit missionaries. The article suggests that the popularity of the image among Jesuits in Europe and the overseas missions was fueled by the nascent martyr’s cult that followed Azevedo’s death. Painted copies of the Saint Luke Madonna came to function, together with relics of the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne, as proxies for the missing material remains of the martyred Jesuits. The article argues that while the distribution of the image was globally extensive, circulation was restricted to an internal Jesuit martyr’s cult. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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14 pages, 314 KiB  
Article
A New History of Christian Empire: Excavating Pope Sylvester’s Oratory, 1636
by Talia Di Manno
Religions 2023, 14(5), 616; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050616 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1088
Abstract
This article examines how antiquarians in Rome used archaeological evidence—a site excavated from under the church of San Martino in Monti in 1636—to argue that Pope Sylvester (314–335) exercised spiritual and temporal authority over the Roman Empire. The document which had formed the [...] Read more.
This article examines how antiquarians in Rome used archaeological evidence—a site excavated from under the church of San Martino in Monti in 1636—to argue that Pope Sylvester (314–335) exercised spiritual and temporal authority over the Roman Empire. The document which had formed the bedrock of papal sovereignty, the Donation of Constantine, was shown to be a forgery in the early modern period. Protestant reformers pointed to the document’s contradictions to dismantle the Catholic Church’s claims that its preeminence originated in the privileges bestowed on Sylvester by the Emperor Constantine. I use archival materials and a history of the site published in 1639 to describe how antiquarians claimed that they found the house church of Sylvester, which he converted into a church after Constantine’s baptism and then used to host a Roman Council in 324 (before Nicaea). I offer a new perspective on Catholic confessional historiography by observing how antiquarians used material evidence to provide a foundation for early papal power in the Roman Empire, thereby bypassing the need for spurious documents such as the Donation. This new tradition, which lives on today despite modern archaeological critiques, illustrates the malleability of Catholic epistemologies and historiography in the wake of textual criticism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
15 pages, 3093 KiB  
Article
Evaluating the Altarpiece: Image Decorum in Post-Tridentine Apostolic Visitations
by Grace Harpster
Religions 2023, 14(5), 615; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050615 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1459
Abstract
This essay seeks to shift our perspective when addressing the question of the impact of the Council of Trent on art. Rather than focusing on the artistic treatises that emerged in the wake of the council, it turns to a different type of [...] Read more.
This essay seeks to shift our perspective when addressing the question of the impact of the Council of Trent on art. Rather than focusing on the artistic treatises that emerged in the wake of the council, it turns to a different type of text: the records from visitations, regular church inspections that functioned as an important tool of Catholic reform. This analysis looks at apostolic visitation records in the Vatican archives between 1564 and 1630 to show how ecclesiastical visitors chiefly judged image decorum—and the definition of images themselves—according to function instead of form, giving priority to issues related to ritual use, such as conservation, consecration, and location. The functional definition of terms such as altarpiece and icona in the visitation records also reminds us to carefully consider the art historical vocabulary used in scholarship today. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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14 pages, 697 KiB  
Article
Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the Seventeenth Century
by Katherine Aron-Beller
Religions 2023, 14(5), 614; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050614 - 06 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 973
Abstract
This article concentrates on Modenese inquisitorial processi that investigated interactions between Jews and Christians that took place in their domestic premises, especially the more spacious dwellings in country towns and villages where there were no ghettoes. These investigations confirm that inquisitorial vetoes on [...] Read more.
This article concentrates on Modenese inquisitorial processi that investigated interactions between Jews and Christians that took place in their domestic premises, especially the more spacious dwellings in country towns and villages where there were no ghettoes. These investigations confirm that inquisitorial vetoes on socializing were blithely ignored, and that Jews and Christians often seemed to have no antipathy for or suspicion of each other. As will be shown, Christians went into Jews’ houses, but Jews seldom appeared to enter those of Christians. The reasons for this are suggested below. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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16 pages, 1493 KiB  
Article
Mapping Heresy in Sixteenth-Century Venice
by Alessandra Celati
Religions 2023, 14(5), 613; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050613 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1403
Abstract
Drawing on a systematic study of the Savi sopra l’eresia archive in Venice, the most complete collection of historical records pertaining to Italian heretical movements and their repression, this article sketches the geography of heretical circles in Venice between the 1540s and the [...] Read more.
Drawing on a systematic study of the Savi sopra l’eresia archive in Venice, the most complete collection of historical records pertaining to Italian heretical movements and their repression, this article sketches the geography of heretical circles in Venice between the 1540s and the 1580s. The article puts space back into history and reads the history of religious dissent against the urban structure of sixteenth-century Venice, where streets and squares favored people’s encounters, allowing and fueling the exchange of information and the process of knowledge generation. Shifting the focus from people to places, and emphasizing fluidity and porosity, suggests new ways to pursue a more dynamic and performative conception of religious dissent. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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14 pages, 278 KiB  
Article
Roamin’ Holiday: Protestants on Foot in the Eternal City
by Emily Michelson
Religions 2023, 14(5), 611; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050611 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 864
Abstract
This article analyses accounts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglophone travellers to Rome who encountered and described Catholic rituals of walking. These visitors observed Catholic rituals such as pilgrimages and processions so closely that they came to understand the act of walking and ways [...] Read more.
This article analyses accounts of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Anglophone travellers to Rome who encountered and described Catholic rituals of walking. These visitors observed Catholic rituals such as pilgrimages and processions so closely that they came to understand the act of walking and ways of walking as expressions of religious identity. They also used the language of walking to interpret such moments of encounter in their narratives. Taken together, this evidence demonstrates the centrality of walking to their understanding of a religiously diverse Europe. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
13 pages, 318 KiB  
Article
Witch Hunting and Prosecuting in Early Modern Italy: A Historiographical Survey
by Michaela Valente
Religions 2023, 14(5), 610; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050610 - 06 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1802
Abstract
This article critically assesses Italian scholarship on the history of witchcraft over the last 60 years. Beginning with Carlo Ginzburg’s influential Night Battles (published in 1966 and translated to English in 1983) and ending with the recent work of Matteo Duni, Tamar Herzig, [...] Read more.
This article critically assesses Italian scholarship on the history of witchcraft over the last 60 years. Beginning with Carlo Ginzburg’s influential Night Battles (published in 1966 and translated to English in 1983) and ending with the recent work of Matteo Duni, Tamar Herzig, Vincenzo Lavenia and Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, the article traces the intellectual contexts and shifts in historiographical debates. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
14 pages, 328 KiB  
Article
The Lonely Girl. External Factors in the Conversion and Failed Ransom of the Turkish–Algerian Fatima (1608–1622)
by Bruno Pomara Saverino
Religions 2023, 14(5), 609; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050609 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1246
Abstract
Research into various aspects of slavery and the related conversions has multiplied in recent years. This contribution investigates the case of Fatima, a young woman belonging to the Turkish–Algerian elite, who was captured in 1608 by the Tuscan Knights of Saint Stephen. Rescued [...] Read more.
Research into various aspects of slavery and the related conversions has multiplied in recent years. This contribution investigates the case of Fatima, a young woman belonging to the Turkish–Algerian elite, who was captured in 1608 by the Tuscan Knights of Saint Stephen. Rescued by her parents and entrusted to some Corsican merchants for her safe return home, she remained in Calvi (Corsica) because she embraced Christianity. Thus, the local bishop pretended to keep her under his protection. Because of her conversion, her homecoming became considerably more complicated until it was decreed impracticable. The intervention of Fatima’s parents led to the opening of protracted negotiations between the political (Algerian, Ottoman, Spanish, Genoese) and ecclesiastical (Papal, Episcopal, Trinitarian) authorities. In dissatisfaction, the Algerian governors lashed out at one hundred and thirty Christian captives in Algiers whose rescue operation by Trinitarian redeemers was suddenly halted. Historiography, to narrate this case study, has paid attention predominantly to Spanish records and explained the political and economic mechanisms of the rescue machine with all its complications. Through other unpublished Spanish, Vatican and Genoese sources, this article focuses with a micro-glocal lens on the many psychological pressures used by political and religious agencies that accompanied such a young person by leveraging the decisive role of the Ecclesiastical authorities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
14 pages, 292 KiB  
Article
Between Repentance and Desire: Women Poets and the Word in Early Modern Italy
by Sarah Rolfe Prodan
Religions 2023, 14(5), 608; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050608 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 1124
Abstract
In early modern Italy, lyric poets of spiritual verse experimented with engaging and depicting the divine Word in novel ways. They aestheticized bodies, including that of Christ, and they imagined eroticized encounters between themselves and the Word made flesh. This article examines the [...] Read more.
In early modern Italy, lyric poets of spiritual verse experimented with engaging and depicting the divine Word in novel ways. They aestheticized bodies, including that of Christ, and they imagined eroticized encounters between themselves and the Word made flesh. This article examines the sensual spiritual poetry of three early modern Italian women who, between 1530 and 1630, dedicated themselves to crafting and reinvigorating the poetic word and to expressing and (re)presenting the divine Word. Exploring the introspective and subjective spiritual lyrics of Vittoria Colonna (1492–1547), Laura Battiferri (1523–1589), and Francesca Turini Bufalini (1553–1641) in the context of the Italian literary Renaissance and Counter-Reformation, it aims to highlight and to elucidate the conflation of the sacred and the erotic in their verse. In so doing, this article reveals how these early modern female poets deployed the sensual strategically in their verse to elevate the erotic and how they raised the Italian religious lyric to new literary heights by spiritualizing the dominant poetic idiom. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
13 pages, 1534 KiB  
Article
Enslavement, Religion, and Cultural Commemoration in Livorno
by Tamar Herzig
Religions 2023, 14(5), 607; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050607 - 06 May 2023
Viewed by 2074
Abstract
This essay critically reexamines the career of Bernardetto Buonromei (d. c. 1616), a physician who is celebrated today as one of Livorno’s founding fathers. It argues that Buonromei’s expertise as a medical practitioner was instrumental for turning the Tuscan port city of Livorno [...] Read more.
This essay critically reexamines the career of Bernardetto Buonromei (d. c. 1616), a physician who is celebrated today as one of Livorno’s founding fathers. It argues that Buonromei’s expertise as a medical practitioner was instrumental for turning the Tuscan port city of Livorno into a major stronghold of the early modern Mediterranean slave trade. Buonromei’s fame in the early seventeenth century, it proposes, reflected the high esteem with which the Medici Grand Dukes held his contribution to the Tuscan state’s involvement in religiously justified slaving. The essay analyzes documentary evidence regarding Buonromei’s exceptionally cruel treatment of enslaved Jews and Muslims who were placed under his care while he was serving as the physician in charge of Livorno’s slave prison. It demonstrates that Cosimo II continued to back Buonromei despite repeated complaints about the physician’s excessively ruthless conduct. The final part of the essay delineates the varied manifestations of Buonromei’s cultural commemoration from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. The continuous textual, artistic, and performative celebrations of Buonromei’s accomplishments, it concludes, complements the erasure of the suffering he had inflicted on enslaved non-Catholics in Livorno. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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14 pages, 905 KiB  
Article
Singing Nuns and Soft Power: British Diplomats as Music Tourists in Seicento Venice
by Alana Mailes
Religions 2022, 13(4), 330; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13040330 - 06 Apr 2022
Viewed by 1718
Abstract
Historians of early modern statecraft and confessional politics have traditionally treated the arts as peripheral to the more official bureaucratic concerns of government agents. Meanwhile, musicological scholarship rarely centers the experiences and exploits of politicians who participated in early modern musical events. This [...] Read more.
Historians of early modern statecraft and confessional politics have traditionally treated the arts as peripheral to the more official bureaucratic concerns of government agents. Meanwhile, musicological scholarship rarely centers the experiences and exploits of politicians who participated in early modern musical events. This case study on British envoys to Venice in the early Stuart period illustrates how musical activity and political work were, in fact, thoroughly imbricated within the daily mechanics of cross-confessional ambassadorship. Drawing on seventeenth-century diplomatic sources, I detail how both English and Northern Italian politicians made strategic use of sacred music-making—particularly vocal performance in local nunneries—to influence their dealings with foreign states, as well as how English diplomats in the Italian peninsula surveilled Catholic musical devotions in their covert correspondences to communicate information about international affairs. In revealing these moments of interconnection between music, religion, and geopolitics, I seek to further recent efforts in the New Diplomatic History to highlight the contributions of women and artistic practice within histories of international relations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rethinking Catholicism in Early Modern Italy: Gender, Space, Mobility)
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