Renaissance D

RELIGION AND IDENTITY IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TUSCANY

Sponsor: INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL SERMON STUDIES SOCIETY

Organizer: GEORGE FERZOCO, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

Chair: ANN KUZDALE, CHICAGO STATE UNIVERSITY

SABRINA CORBELLINI, UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

Holy Writ and Lay Readers: An Analysis of Tuscan Gospel Harmonies

This paper will describe the origin, dissemination, and reception of Italian gospel harmonies (diatessaron). Gospel harmonies are texts where the story of the life of Jesus is given as a coherent narrative from birth to death and resurrection. Textual and paratextual (form and layout) features of the manuscripts are studied to investigate the patterns of the distribution of the translation. Research shows a specific regional and social pattern in the dissemination, as these manuscripts circulated in the Veneto and Tuscany, and were nearly always exclusively owned by members of the urban bourgeoisie often belonging to the city government. Moreover, the owners were members of confraternities linked to the Dominican communities. The results of this research project, The Italian Quattuor Unum. An Analysis of the Manuscripts, will be completed later in 2007.

GEORGE FERZOCO, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

The Social Role of Patron Saints in the Maremma

Although much scholarly attention has been given to major urban cults of Tuscan centers such as Florence and Siena, the role of saints’ cults in the lives of inhabitants of the more rural and remote region of the Maremma has been largely unstudied. This paper proposes to examine the cults of the northern Maremma, and in particular those of Massa Marittima will be under closer scrutiny. Attention will be given to the roles of patrons such as Saint Cerbone, and how their figures are presented in local legislation, art, and liturgy. Although these saints may appear today to be of minor importance, the paper will argue that they were selected because of factors that people in the Middle Ages and Renaissance considered significant.

CAROLYN MUESSIG, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

The Stigmata and Religious Identity in Late Medieval Tuscany

Catherine of Siena’s reception of the stigmata became a focus of a fierce debate, especially between the Franciscans and Dominicans. Some Franciscans argued that Francis of Assisi’s reception of the stigmata was a sui generis miracle. In particular, Franciscans and other religious groups took objection to artists depicting Catherine with visible stigmata, as this was something, they argued, only Francis experienced. The  debate reached its height between the years 1472 and 1478 when the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) promulgated several bulls which forbade images of Catherine of Siena with the stigmata; furthermore any preaching of her reception of the stigmata was also forbidden. This paper will assess the implications of the stigmatic debate and what it reveals about medieval religious concepts of the miraculous, the holy and self identity in fifteenth-century Tuscany.