Our systems are now restored following recent technical disruption, and we’re working hard to catch up on publishing. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Find out more

Recommended product

Popular links

Popular links


The Politics of Ritual Kinship

The Politics of Ritual Kinship

The Politics of Ritual Kinship

Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy
Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto
November 1999
Available
Hardback
9780521621854

    Between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries Italians frequently joined "confraternities" that made them symbolic brothers and sisters to one another. These kin groups launched extensive charitable programs, directed civic and religious rituals, and socialized members in class and gender roles. These essays examine how medieval religious and political values shaped early ritual kinship, how sixteenth-century social change and religious reform transformed confraternities, and how these altered groups became key agents in achieving the more rigid social order of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

    • A wide-ranging collection, from medieval times to the eighteenth century, on a key institution in Italian society
    • Covers the length and breadth of Italy, with insights into the country's social, religious and anthropological make-up
    • Brings together a team of outstanding historians from Italy, Britain and North America

    Reviews & endorsements

    "...this valuable collection introduces scholars to important historiographical and methodological questions, expands the geographic and chronological boundaries that have traditionally defined Italian studies, and test the applicability of innovative interpretations of political and social change." Sixteenth Century Journal

    See more reviews

    Product details

    November 1999
    Hardback
    9780521621854
    332 pages
    229 × 152 × 22 mm
    0.66kg
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • List of contributors
    • Acknowledgements
    • Introduction: the politics of ritual kinship Nicholas Terpstra
    • 1. The development of confraternity studies over the past thirty years Christopher F. Black
    • 2. Homosociality and civic (dis)order in late medieval Italian confraternities Jennifer Fisk Rondeau
    • 3. Confraternities and lay female religiosity in late medieval and Reniassance Umbria Giovanna Casagrande
    • 4. The bounds of community: commune, parish, confraternity and charity at the dawn of a new era in Cortona Daniel Bornstein
    • 5. Men and women in Roman confraternities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: roles, functions, expectations Anna Esposito
    • 6. The Medici and the youth Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin, 1434–1506 Lorenzo Polizzotto
    • 7. In loco parentis: confraternities and abandoned children in Florence and Bologna Nicholas Terpstra
    • 8. The first Jesuit confraternities and marginalised groups in sixteenth-century Rome Lance Lazar
    • 9. Jewish confraternal piety in sixteenth-century Ferrara: continuity and change Elliott Horowitz
    • 10. The scuole piccole of Venice: formations and transformations Richard S. Mackenney
    • 11. Relaunching confraternities in the Tridentine era: shaping conscience and Christianising society in Milan and Lombardy Danilo Zardin
    • 12. The development of Jesuit confraternity activity in the Kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Mark A. Lewis
    • 13. Corpus Domini: ritual metamorphoses and social changes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Genoa Claudio Bernardi
    • 14. Faith's boundaries: ritual and territory in rural Piedmont in the early modern period Angelo Torre
    • 15. The suppression of confraternities in Enlightenment Florence Konrad Eisenbichler
    • Bibliography
    • Index.
      Contributors
    • Nicholas Terpstra, Christopher F. Black, Jennifer Fisk Rondeau, Giovanna Casagrande, Daniel Bornstein, Anna Esposito, Lorenzo Polizzotto, Lance Lazar, Elliott Horowitz, Richard S. Mackenney, Danilo Zardin, Mark A. Lewis, Claudio Bernardi, Angelo Torre, Konrad Eisenbichler

    • Editor
    • Nicholas Terpstra , University of Toronto