A new interpretation of what the Catholic Reform meant at local diocesan level c.1550-1700.

This book provides an introduction to current work and new directions in the study of medieval liturgy. It focuses primarily on so-called occasional rituals such as burial, church consecration, exorcism and excommunication rather than on the Mass and Office. Recent research on such rites challenges many established ideas, especially about the extent to which they differed from place to place and over time, and how the surviving evidence should be interpreted. These essays are designed to offer guidance about current thinking, especially for those who are new to the subject, want to know more about it, or wish to conduct research on liturgical topics. Bringing together scholars working in different disciplines (history, literature, architectural history, musicology and theology), time periods (from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries) and intellectual traditions, this collection demonstrates the great potential that liturgical evidence offers for understanding many aspects of the Middle Ages. It includes essays that discuss the practicalities of researching liturgical rituals; show through case studies the problems caused by over-reliance on modern editions; explore the range of sources for particular ceremonies and the sort of questions which can be asked of them; and go beyond the rites themselves to investigate how liturgy was practised and understood in the medieval period.

This book traces the origins and development of the use of votive panel paintings in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

2001 essay collection on the Italian Church's attempt to control and censor 'knowledge' during the counter-Reformation.

The sixteenth century was a critical period both for Spain’s formation and for the imperial dominance of her Crown. Spanish monarchs ruled far and wide, spreading agents and culture across Europe and the wider world. Yet in Italy they encountered another culture whose achievements were even prouder and whose aspirations often even grander than their own. Italians, the nominally subaltern group, did not readily accept Spanish dominance and exercised considerable agency over how imperial Spanish identity developed within their borders. In the end Italians’ views sometimes even shaped how their Spanish colonizers eventually came to see themselves. The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts in which Spaniards were present in early modern Italy. They consider diplomacy, sanctity, art, politics and even popular verse. Each essay excavates how Italians who came into contact with the Spanish crown’s power perceived and interacted with the wider range of identities brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. Together they demonstrate what influenced and what determined Italians’ responses to Spain; they show Spanish Italy in its full transcultural glory and how its inhabitants projected its culture - throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.

An important aspect of the Italian Renaissance was church reform. This book examines the nature of that reform - especially in Venice, Florence and Rome - as viewed through the unpublished manuscripts of a Venetian nobleman who became a Camaldolese hermit: Vincenzo Querini (1478-1514). This book sets Querini's personal journey to reform in the context of Venetian society, as well as against the backdrop of political crisis, cultural revival, and monastic renaissance in Italy generally. Querini's attempt to reform himself, the Roman Catholic Church, and the whole of Christendom are of interest to historians seeking to revise the chronology of early modern church reform since he employed a range of scriptural, humanist, conciliar, monastic, and mystical methods that had medieval antecedents but were also imitated by reformers after the Reformation.

This 2000 volume was the first attempt at a comparative reconstruction of the foreign policy and diplomacy of the major Italian states in the early modern period. The various contributions reveal the instruments and forms of foreign relations in the Italian peninsula. They also show a range of different case-studies and models which share the values and political concepts of the cultural context of diplomatic practice in the ancien régime. While Venice, the Papal States, the duchy of Savoy, Florence (later the duchy of Tuscany), Mantua, Modena, and later the kingdom of Naples may be considered minor states in the broader European context, their diplomatic activity was equal to that of the major powers. This reconstruction of their ambassadors, their secretaries, and their ceremonies offers a fascinating interpretation of the political history of early modern Italy.