Renaissance Religions_Modes and Meanings in History, 2021
Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yiel... more Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yield, new insights into the diversity of religious experience in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Revisionist approaches to humanism and humanists have led to a re-evaluation of the framing of belief; the boundaries between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are seen to be more fluid and porous; a keen interest in devotion and materiality has lent new voice to 'subaltern' elements in society; sermon studies has emerged as a distinct discipline and a preacher's omissions are now understood to be often more telling than what was said; under the influence of the 'spatial turn' art and architectural history is generating new understandings of how belief and devotion translated into material culture; the emphasis in defining early modern Catholic culture and identity has moved from emphasizing reactions to Protestantism towards exploring roots and forms in fifteenth century reform movements; globalization, mass migration and issues surrounding social inclusion have re-positioned our understanding of reform in the late medieval and early modern period. The essays in this volume reflect these historiographical and methodological developments and are organized according to four themes: Negotiating Boundaries, Modelling Spirituality, Sense and Emotion, and Space and Form. This organization underscores how analysis of religious life clarifies the questions that are at the core of Renaissance studies today.
THIS ESSAY CONCERNS THE MORALITY of wealth and the range of meanings it had for people in Florenc... more THIS ESSAY CONCERNS THE MORALITY of wealth and the range of meanings it had for people in Florence during the fifteenth century. While there were contemporary humanist discussions and reassessments of the value of wealth, such as those of Poggio Bracciolini, I am concerned here with what Florentines were hearing from their pulpits. 1 My focus is on sermon texts that fed discussion about the pros and cons of wealth and, with it, poverty. To borrow the words of a Domin-ican preacher from Santa Maria Novella: "Poverty comes with the rich man's feasting. Through Lazarus he is challenged daily to acts of virtue." 2 These words assign agency to the poor. They served as a constant reminder of the rich man's obligations. But the pithy sentences also ascribe the source of poverty to the activities of the rich man himself. The biblical parable of Dives and Lazarus-where Dives is consigned to hell and Lazarus is welcomed into the bosom of Abraham-articulated the anxiety that drove the moral discussions of the period: "Could a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven?" In our day, this question, thus posed, may seem prosaic to many (although perennially pertinent in the context of the church's relationship to poverty), but the issue at that time obsessed the wealthy in the context of the
During the Medicean ascendancy in Renaissance Florence, the city's Dominican Archbishop, Sant' An... more During the Medicean ascendancy in Renaissance Florence, the city's Dominican Archbishop, Sant' Antonino Pierozzi, used the power of the pulpit to ensure that deeds undertaken by citizens were motivated not by self-interest (bonum particulare), but rather for the honour of God and the good of the republic – the common good of all (bonum commune). This article considers a range of texts from which he derived a language to express his particular vision of the city and its governance. I argue that preachers kept the idea of libertas alive in the consciousness of the city's inhabitants by drawing on sets of words that had both historical and contemporary resonance. Indeed, in the case of Florence and Archbishop Antonino, direct verbal borrowings served, at least implicitly, to link particular utterances to a long tradition and to shared ideals originating in the city's past. The article concludes with an examination of his hitherto unrecognized borrowings from the treatise on the cardinal virtues by Henry of Rimini OP, addressed to the citizens of Venice of the late 1290s, and with a reflection on how these words, envisaged for the polity of another time and place, had potency and authority within contemporary circumstances.
Renaissance Religions_Modes and Meanings in History, 2021
Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yiel... more Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yield, new insights into the diversity of religious experience in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Revisionist approaches to humanism and humanists have led to a re-evaluation of the framing of belief; the boundaries between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are seen to be more fluid and porous; a keen interest in devotion and materiality has lent new voice to 'subaltern' elements in society; sermon studies has emerged as a distinct discipline and a preacher's omissions are now understood to be often more telling than what was said; under the influence of the 'spatial turn' art and architectural history is generating new understandings of how belief and devotion translated into material culture; the emphasis in defining early modern Catholic culture and identity has moved from emphasizing reactions to Protestantism towards exploring roots and forms in fifteenth century reform movements; globalization, mass migration and issues surrounding social inclusion have re-positioned our understanding of reform in the late medieval and early modern period. The essays in this volume reflect these historiographical and methodological developments and are organized according to four themes: Negotiating Boundaries, Modelling Spirituality, Sense and Emotion, and Space and Form. This organization underscores how analysis of religious life clarifies the questions that are at the core of Renaissance studies today.
THIS ESSAY CONCERNS THE MORALITY of wealth and the range of meanings it had for people in Florenc... more THIS ESSAY CONCERNS THE MORALITY of wealth and the range of meanings it had for people in Florence during the fifteenth century. While there were contemporary humanist discussions and reassessments of the value of wealth, such as those of Poggio Bracciolini, I am concerned here with what Florentines were hearing from their pulpits. 1 My focus is on sermon texts that fed discussion about the pros and cons of wealth and, with it, poverty. To borrow the words of a Domin-ican preacher from Santa Maria Novella: "Poverty comes with the rich man's feasting. Through Lazarus he is challenged daily to acts of virtue." 2 These words assign agency to the poor. They served as a constant reminder of the rich man's obligations. But the pithy sentences also ascribe the source of poverty to the activities of the rich man himself. The biblical parable of Dives and Lazarus-where Dives is consigned to hell and Lazarus is welcomed into the bosom of Abraham-articulated the anxiety that drove the moral discussions of the period: "Could a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven?" In our day, this question, thus posed, may seem prosaic to many (although perennially pertinent in the context of the church's relationship to poverty), but the issue at that time obsessed the wealthy in the context of the
During the Medicean ascendancy in Renaissance Florence, the city's Dominican Archbishop, Sant' An... more During the Medicean ascendancy in Renaissance Florence, the city's Dominican Archbishop, Sant' Antonino Pierozzi, used the power of the pulpit to ensure that deeds undertaken by citizens were motivated not by self-interest (bonum particulare), but rather for the honour of God and the good of the republic – the common good of all (bonum commune). This article considers a range of texts from which he derived a language to express his particular vision of the city and its governance. I argue that preachers kept the idea of libertas alive in the consciousness of the city's inhabitants by drawing on sets of words that had both historical and contemporary resonance. Indeed, in the case of Florence and Archbishop Antonino, direct verbal borrowings served, at least implicitly, to link particular utterances to a long tradition and to shared ideals originating in the city's past. The article concludes with an examination of his hitherto unrecognized borrowings from the treatise on the cardinal virtues by Henry of Rimini OP, addressed to the citizens of Venice of the late 1290s, and with a reflection on how these words, envisaged for the polity of another time and place, had potency and authority within contemporary circumstances.
Renaissance Religions: Modes and Meanings in History, 2021
Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yiel... more Several decades of cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarship have yielded, and continue to yield, new insights into the diversity of religious experience in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Revisionist approaches to humanism and humanists have led to a re-evaluation of the framing of belief; the boundaries between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are seen to be more fluid and porous; a keen interest in devotion and materiality has lent new voice to 'subaltern' elements in society; sermon studies has emerged as a distinct discipline and a preacher's omissions are now understood to be often more telling than what was said; under the influence of the 'spatial turn' art and architectural history is generating new understandings of how belief and devotion translated into material culture; the emphasis in defining early modern Catholic culture and identity has moved from emphasizing reactions to Protestantism towards exploring roots and forms in fifteenth century reform movements; globalization, mass migration and issues surrounding social inclusion have re-positioned our understanding of reform in the late medieval and early modern period. The essays in this volume reflect these historiographical and methodological developments and are organized according to four themes: Negotiating Boundaries, Modelling Spirituality, Sense and Emotion, and Space and Form. This organization underscores how analysis of religious life clarifies the questions that are at the core of Renaissance studies today. http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503590691-1
Magnificence was not just an aesthetic judgement — it was a moral virtue. We have long assumed th... more Magnificence was not just an aesthetic judgement — it was a moral virtue. We have long assumed that it was the pursuit of this virtue that led Florence's cultural patrons to commission the artworks that thrust the city into the front ranks of artistic innovation. According to this view, Aristotle gave the concept its theoretical form and Timoteo Maffei its local voice in a spirited defence of Cosimo de' Medici that set his 'magnificence' on an individual and largely secular foundation. Peter Howard overturns this view and argues persuasively that Florentines were discussing the virtue of 'magnificence' decades earlier, and that it was mendicant preachers working with medieval texts who took the lead. This study relocates the origins of Florentine public discourse on magnificence from the 1450s to the 1420s, and from a largely secular to a distinctly religious context. It demonstrates that Antonino Pierozzi, a Dominican friar who became archbishop of Florence, propagated Aristotelian concepts of 'magnificence' that had been mediated and refracted through Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Rimini, first in sermons from the 1420s onwards, and then later in his influential Summa. A well researched, closely argued, and carefully constructed study of the influence of preaching on the attitudes of leading Florentines regarding their use of their wealth for magnificent building projects in Florence in the first half of the Quattrocento. John O'Malley – Georgetown University A superb and deeply learned study that overturns conventional readings of the key Renaissance concept of 'magnificence. '
Interdisciplinary in scope, the eleven essays in this book explore the dynamic and shifting relat... more Interdisciplinary in scope, the eleven essays in this book explore the dynamic and shifting relationships between texts, art, architecture, sermons, history, ritual, space, and place as they pertain to the Dominican and Franciscan religious orders from the later Middle Ages through the Baroque period (c. 1200-1700).
This book unravels the complex interaction of the paradigms of luxury and greed which lie at the ... more This book unravels the complex interaction of the paradigms of luxury and greed which lie at the origins of modern consumption practices. In the Western world, the phenomenon of luxury and the ethical dilemmas it raised appeared, for the first time since antiquity, in early modern Italy. Here, luxury emerged as a core idea in the conceptualization of consumption. Simultaneously, greed — which manifested in new and unrestrained consumption practices — came under close ethical scrutiny. As the buying power of new classes gained pace, these paradigms evolved as they continued both to influence, and be influenced by, other emerging global cultures through the early modern period.
After defining luxury and greed in their historical contexts, the volume’s chapters elucidate new consumptive goods, from chocolate to official robes of state; they examine how ideas about, and objects of, luxury and greed were disseminated through print, diplomacy, and gift-giving; and they reveal how even the most elite of consumers could fake their luxury objects. A group of international scholars from a range of disciplines thereby provide a new appraisal and vision of luxury and the ethics of greed in early modern Italy.
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http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503590691-1
After defining luxury and greed in their historical contexts, the volume’s chapters elucidate new consumptive goods, from chocolate to official robes of state; they examine how ideas about, and objects of, luxury and greed were disseminated through print, diplomacy, and gift-giving; and they reveal how even the most elite of consumers could fake their luxury objects. A group of international scholars from a range of disciplines thereby provide a new appraisal and vision of luxury and the ethics of greed in early modern Italy.