Conversion To Catholicism In Early Modern Italy

Author : Peter A. Mazur
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2016-01-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781317265672

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Conversion to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy by Peter A. Mazur Pdf

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, conversion took on a new importance within the Catholic world, as its leaders faced the challenge of expanding the church's reach to new peoples and continents while at the same time reinforcing its authority in the Old World. Based on new archival research, this book details the extraordinary stories of converts who embraced a new religious identity in a territory where papal authority and Catholic orthodoxy were arguably at their strongest: the Italian peninsula. Through an analysis of both the unique strategies employed by clerics to attract and educate converts, and the biographies of the men and women—soldiers, aristocrats, and charlatans—who negotiated new positions for themselves in Rome and the other cities of the peninsula, a new image of Italy during the Counter-reformation emerges: a place where repression and toleration alternated in unexpected ways, leaving room for negotiation and exchange with members of rival faiths.

Author : Emily Michelson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2024-02-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9780691233413

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Catholic Spectacle and Rome's Jews by Emily Michelson Pdf

A new investigation that shows how conversionary preaching to Jews was essential to the early modern Catholic Church and the Roman religious landscape Starting in the sixteenth century, Jews in Rome were forced, every Saturday, to attend a hostile sermon aimed at their conversion. Harshly policed, they were made to march en masse toward the sermon and sit through it, all the while scrutinized by local Christians, foreign visitors, and potential converts. In Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews, Emily Michelson demonstrates how this display was vital to the development of early modern Catholicism. Drawing from a trove of overlooked manuscripts, Michelson reconstructs the dynamics of weekly forced preaching in Rome. As the Catholic Church began to embark on worldwide missions, sermons to Jews offered a unique opportunity to define and defend its new triumphalist, global outlook. They became a point of prestige in Rome. The city’s most important organizations invested in maintaining these spectacles, and foreign tourists eagerly attended them. The title of “Preacher to the Jews” could make a man’s career. The presence of Christian spectators, Roman and foreign, was integral to these sermons, and preachers played to the gallery. Conversionary sermons also provided an intellectual veneer to mask ongoing anti-Jewish aggressions. In response, Jews mounted a campaign of resistance, using any means available. Examining the history and content of sermons to Jews over two and a half centuries, Catholic Spectacle and Rome’s Jews argues that conversionary preaching to Jews played a fundamental role in forming early modern Catholic identity.

Author : Peter A. Mazur
Publisher : Lund Humphries Publishers
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2014-07-28
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1472427645

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Converts to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy by Peter A. Mazur Pdf

Author : Massimo Leone
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 665 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2010-08-31
Category : Art
ISBN : 9783110229523

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Saints and Signs by Massimo Leone Pdf

Saints and Signs analyzes a corpus of hagiographies, paintings, and other materials related to four of the most prominent saints of early modern Catholicism: Ignatius of Loyola, Philip Neri, Francis Xavier, and Therese of Avila. Verbal and visual documents – produced between the end of the Council of Trent (1563) and the beginning of the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623) – are placed in their historical context and analyzed through semiotics – the discipline that studies signification and communication – in order to answer the following questions: How did these four saints become signs of the renewal of Catholic spirituality after the Reformation? How did their verbal and visual representations promote new Catholic models of religious conversion? How did this huge effort of spiritual propaganda change the modern idea of communication? The book is divided into four sections, focusing on the four saints and on the particular topics related to their hagiologic identity: early modern theological debates on grace (Ignatius of Loyola); cultural contaminations between Catholic internal and external missions (Philip Neri); the Christian identity in relation to non-Christian territories (Francis Xavier); the status of women in early modern Catholicism (Therese of Avila).

Author : Matthew Coneys Wainwright,Emily Michelson
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 441 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2020-12-15
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004443495

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A Companion to Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome by Matthew Coneys Wainwright,Emily Michelson Pdf

An examination of groups and individuals in Rome who were not Roman Catholic, or not born so. It demonstrates how other religions had a lasting impact on early modern Catholic institutions in Rome.

Author : Tamar Herzig
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2019-12-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674242562

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A Convert’s Tale by Tamar Herzig Pdf

An intimate portrait, based on newly discovered archival sources, of one of the most famous Jewish artists of the Italian Renaissance who, charged with a scandalous crime, renounced his faith and converted to Catholicism. In 1491 the renowned goldsmith Salomone da Sesso converted to Catholicism. Born in the mid-fifteenth century to a Jewish family in Florence, Salomone later settled in Ferrara, where he was regarded as a virtuoso artist whose exquisite jewelry and lavishly engraved swords were prized by Italy’s ruling elite. But rumors circulated about Salomone’s behavior, scandalizing the Jewish community, who turned him over to the civil authorities. Charged with sodomy, Salomone was sentenced to die but agreed to renounce Judaism to save his life. He was baptized, taking the name Ercole “de’ Fedeli” (“One of the Faithful”). With the help of powerful patrons like Duchess Eleonora of Aragon and Duke Ercole d’Este, his namesake, Ercole lived as a practicing Catholic for three more decades. Drawing on newly discovered archival sources, Tamar Herzig traces the dramatic story of his life, half a century before ecclesiastical authorities made Jewish conversion a priority of the Catholic Church. A Convert’s Tale explores the Jewish world in which Salomone was born and raised; the glittering objects he crafted, and their status as courtly hallmarks; and Ercole’s relations with his wealthy patrons. Herzig also examines homosexuality in Renaissance Italy, the response of Jewish communities and Christian authorities to allegations of sexual crimes, and attitudes toward homosexual acts among Christians and Jews. In Salomone/Ercole’s story we see how precarious life was for converts from Judaism, and how contested was the meaning of conversion for both the apostates’ former coreligionists and those tasked with welcoming them to their new faith.

Author : David Gentilcore
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 446 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2006-09-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780191514296

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Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy by David Gentilcore Pdf

From the mid-sixteenth century onwards, the Italian Protomedicato tribunals, Colleges of Physicians, or Health Offices (jurisdiction varied from state to state) required charlatans to submit their wares for inspection and, upon approval, pay a licence fee in order to set up a stage from which to perform and sell them. The licensing of charlatans became an administrative routine. As far as the medical magistracies were concerned, charlatans had a defineable identity, constituting a specific trade or occupation. This book studies the way charlatans were represented, by contemporaries and by historians, how they saw themselves and, most importantly, it reconstructs the place of charlatans in early modern Italy. It explores the goods and services charlatans provided, their dealings with the public and their marketing strategies. It does so from a range of perspectives: social, cultural, economic, political, geographical, biographical and, of course, medical. Charlatans are not just some curiosity on the fringes of medicine: they offered health care to an extraordinarily wide sector of the population. Moreover, from their origins in Renaissance Italy, the Italian ciarlatano was the prototype for itinerant medical practitioners throughout Europe. This book offers a different look at charlatans. It is the first to take seriously the licences issued to charlatans in the Italian states, compiling them into a 'charlatans database' of over 1,300 charlatans active throughout Italy over the course of some three centuries. In addition, it makes use of other types of archival documents, such as trial records and wills, to give the charlatans a human face, as well as a wide range of artistic and printed sources, not forgetting the output of the charlatans themselves, in the form of handbills and pamphlets.

Author : Celeste McNamara
Publisher : Catholic University of America Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2020-08-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780813233574

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The Bishop's Burden by Celeste McNamara Pdf

In 1563, the Council of Trent published its Decrees, calling for significant reforms of the Catholic Church in response to criticism from both Protestants and Catholics alike. Bishops, according to the Decrees, would take the lead in implementing these reforms. They were tasked with creating a Church in which priests and laity were well educated, morally upright, and focused on worshipping God. Unfortunately for these bishops, the Decrees provided few practical suggestions for achieving the wide-ranging changes demanded. Reform was therefore an arduous and complex process, which many bishops struggled to accomplish or even refused to undertake fully. The Bishop’s Burden argues that reforming bishops were forced to be creative and resourceful to accomplish meaningful change, including creating strong diocesan governments, reforming clerical and lay behavior, educating priests and parishioners, and converting non-believers. The book explores this issue through a detailed case study of the episcopacy of Cardinal-Bishop Gregorio Barbarigo of Padua (bp. 1664-1697), asking how a dedicated bishop formulated a reform program that sought to achieve the Church’s goals. Barbarigo, like other reforming bishops, borrowed strategies from a variety of sources in the absence of clear guidance from Rome. He looked to both pre- and post-Tridentine bishops, the Society of Jesus, the Venetian government, and the Propaganda Fide, which he selectively emulated to address the problems he discovered in Padua. The book is based primarily on the detailed records of Barbarigo’s visitations of rural parishes and captures the rarely-heard voices of seventeenth-century Italian peasants. The Bishop's Burden helps us understand not only the changes experienced by early modern Catholics, but also how even the most sophisticated plans of central authorities could be frustrated by practical realities, which in turn complicates our understanding of state-building and social control.

Author : Kenneth Austin
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-06-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780300187021

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The Jews and the Reformation by Kenneth Austin Pdf

Judaism has always been of great significance to Christianity but this relationship has also been marked by complexity and ambivalence. The emergence of new Protestant confessions in the Reformation had significant consequences for how Jews were viewed and treated. In this wide-ranging account, Kenneth Austin examines Christian attitudes toward Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning, arguing that they have much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities—and have important implications for how we think about religious pluralism today.

Author : Martin Borýsek,Davide Liberatoscioli
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2024-07-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9783111050560

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The Many Faces of Early Modern Italian Jewry by Martin Borýsek,Davide Liberatoscioli Pdf

The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.

Author : Autori Vari
Publisher : Viella Libreria Editrice
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2020-03-11T12:37:00+01:00
Category : History
ISBN : 9788833134277

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Compel People to Come In by Autori Vari Pdf

“Compelle intrare”: since the time of St Augustine, St Luke’s words in the parable of the Banquet have served as a justification for forced conversion to Christianity. Challenging this tradition, in 1686 Pierre Bayle denounced how a literal interpretation of the parable had led to a long line of crimes, and argued that “nothing is more abominable than obtaining conversion by coercion”. In recent decades, scholarly research on conversion in the Early Modern Age has increasingly focused on intriguing aspects such as the fluidity of converts’ identity and their crossing of borders – both geographical and confessional. This book takes a different perspective and brings the focus back to the dark side of conversion, to the varying degrees of violence that accompanied Catholic missionary activities in the non-European World in the 16th and 17th centuries. The essays collected here examine three areas where, sometimes visibly, sometimes much more subtly, the violent aspects of conversion took shape: doctrine, missionary practice, and the conversion narratives. Investigating the connection between violence and conversion is a way to reflect not only on the early modern world, but also on that of the present day, when conversion – including by coercion – has yet again become a significant issue.

Author : Mercedes García-Arenal,Yonatan Glazer-Eytan
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2019-10-21
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004416826

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Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam by Mercedes García-Arenal,Yonatan Glazer-Eytan Pdf

Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam explores the legal and theological grounds through which Christians, Jews, and Muslims sanctioned and reacted to forcible conversion in premodern Iberia and related settings.

Author : Elissa B. Weaver
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2002-04-04
Category : History
ISBN : 0521550823

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Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy by Elissa B. Weaver Pdf

This book is a study of convent theatre in Italy, an all-female tradition. Widespread in the early modern period, but virtually forgotten today, this activity produced a number of talented dramatists and works worthy of remembrance. Convent authors, actresses and audiences, especially in Tuscan houses, the plays written and produced, and what these reveal about the lives of convent women, are the focus of this book. Beginning with the earliest known performances of miracle and mystery plays (sacre rappresentazioni) in the late fifteenth century, the book follows the development in the convents at the turn of the sixteenth century of spiritual comedy and of a variety of dramatic forms in the seventeenth century. Convent theatre both reflected the high level of literacy among convent women and contributed to it, and it attested to the continuing close contact between the secular world and the convents - even in the Post Tridentine period.

Author : Simone Maghenzani,Stefano Villani
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2020-09-14
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780429516849

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British Protestant Missions and the Conversion of Europe, 1600–1900 by Simone Maghenzani,Stefano Villani Pdf

This book is the first account of British Protestant conversion initiatives directed towards continental Europe between 1600 and 1900. Continental Europe was considered a missionary land—another periphery of the world, whose centre was imperial Britain. British missions to Europe were informed by religious experiments in America, Africa, and Asia, rendering these offensives against Europe a true form of "imaginary colonialism". British Protestant missionaries often understood themselves to be at the forefront of a civilising project directed at Catholics (and sometimes even at other Protestants). Their mission was further reinforced by Britain becoming a land of compassionate refuge for European dissenters and exiles. This book engages with the myth of International Protestantism, questioning its early origins and its narrative of transnational belonging, while also interrogating Britain as an imagined Protestant land of hope and glory. In the history of western Christianities, "converting Europe" had a role that has not been adequately investigated. This is the story of the attempted, and ultimately failed, effort to convert a continent.

Author : David Salomoni
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2021-07-19
Category : Education
ISBN : 9789004448643

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Educating the Catholic People by David Salomoni Pdf

In Educating the Catholic People, Salomoni offers a new perspective on the pedagogical, institutional, and political innovations introduced in Italy by religious teaching congregations between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.