Late Medieval and Early Modern Ritual: Studies in Italian Urban Culture (Europa Sacra)

"Combining aspects of recent scholarship in history and anthropology, this book explores how 'Survivals and Renewals' can be used as tools for understanding the society of Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy. This collection of fifteen studies brings together scholars of late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Italy to reflect on the multifaceted world of ritual. The scope is expansive, covering four centuries, and the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula. Because of older presumptions about the modernity of the Renaissance and hence its supposed aversion to the irrational, scholarship on ritual life in Italian city-states of the Renaissance has lagged behind the historiography on symbols and rituals in monarchies north of the Alps. Only by the 1990s had a wide range of scholars across disciplines become interested in these subjects and approaches for the late medieval and early modern Italian city-state; yet no synthesis or comparative work on rituals and symbols has peered across the regional enclaves of Italy. Through original research in libraries and archives across the Italian peninsula, these essays analyze the richness and importance of ritual at the heart of the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation states, the importance of oaths, ritual space, the power of images, processions, curses, guild ceremonies, saints, and more. The wide geographic and disciplinary range of these essays provides a new platform for viewing the significance of ritual and symbolic power in Renaissance and early modern Italy." -- Publisher's website Introduction: Symbols and Rituals, p. 1 Samuel Cohn Jr Symbols and Rituals: Definition of a Field of Study, p. 15 Marcello Fantoni Between Rules and Ritual: The Election of the Signoria in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, p. 43 Ilaria Taddei The Rituals of the Guilds: Examples from Tuscan Cities (Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries), p. 65 Franco Franceschi The Rhetoric of Power in Renaissance Florence, p. 93 Fabrizio Ricciardelli Peace and Revolt: Oath-Taking Rituals in Early Sixteenth-Century Italy, p. 119 Carlo Taviani Family Rituals in Northern Italy (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries), p. 139 Guido Alfani The First Female Nudes of the Quattrocento, p. 161 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber Honour and Insult: Military Rituals in Late Medieval Tuscany, p. 183 William Caferro Philip II’s Royal Exequies in Two Italian Cities: His Deeds and Virtues as Seen in Florence and Naples, p. 211 John A. Marino Rituals of Youthful Violence in Late Medieval Italian Urban Societies, p. 235 Andrea Zorzi Papal Sovereignty and Civic Rituals in the Early Modern Age, p. 269 Maria Antonietta Visceglia Ritual Form and Urban Space in Early Modern Rome, p. 297 Genevieve Warwick Symbol of Venice: The Doge in Ritual, p. 329 Andrew Hopkins The Pope as Conqueror: Rites of Possession, Episodes, and Unexpected Events in 1598 Ferrara, p. 349 Giovanni Ricci This collection of 15 studies brings together scholars of late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Italy to reflect on the multifaceted world of ritual. The scope is expansive, covering four centuries, and the length and breadth of the Italian peninsula