State-building, church reform and the politics of legitimacy in Florence, 1375–1460

Peterson, David S.; Connell, William J.; Zorzi, Andréa

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511523120.007

Cited by 4 publications

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“…However, convent relations with the commune remained vexed, especially since restitution of confiscated convent property took almost fifty years to complete. 52 New attempts at civic oversight reignited a long-simmering dispute over jurisdictional control of female religious houses. Ongoing battles between church and state enabled the nuns of S. Pier Maggiore to maintain a circumscribed, yet still vital, ritual role into the mid-fifteenth century.…”

Section: A Negotiated Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

When the Bishop Married the Abbess: Masculinity and Power in Florentine Episcopal Entry Rites, 1300–1600

Strocchia

2007

Gender & History

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From 1286 to 1583, the citizens of Florence staged a curious ritual to celebrate the installation of a new bishop. Played out over two days, the bishop's entry gave visual expression to his institutional power, announced his personal values as chief pastor and legitimised the sacrality of the local institutional church. Part of the rite's power stemmed from its dual nature. It was simultaneously a rite of adventus -the arrival of an apostolic emissary or temporal lord -and a rite of possesso -the taking of legitimate possession. Investiture ceremonies also touched the sacred, dramatising the institutionalised charisma from which the bishop drew his power. By making explicit reference to local miracles and charismatic sites, entry rites permitted bishops all over Europe to identify themselves with their illustrious predecessors, around whom rich deposits of legend, iconography and civic ritual had accumulated. 1 Probably no other type of procession in late medieval and early modern Europe demarcated the sacred topography of a city so clearly and kept its sacred legends as alive as episcopal entries did.However, these rites were not sacred in an otherworldly sense but were deeply enmeshed with power relations of various kinds. The installation of a new Florentine bishop helped map the shifting contours of power exercised by aristocratic families and the republican city government over the local church. In fact, Florentines used the rite itself as an instrument by which to balance familial and civic claims against those of the bishop. 2 These ceremonies thus offer an important index to the nature and tenor of church-state relations. Much of the documentation for Florentine episcopal entries stems from litigation surrounding these events, in contrast to the narrative sources describing similar rites elsewhere in Europe. Judging from the perennial quarrels that erupted, the installation ceremonies for Florentine bishops offered an important locus for the visible expression of power and for its public renegotiation throughout the late medieval and early modern periods.Within the Florentine rite, one episode stands out for the ways it linked gender constructions with political power and religious culture: the symbolic marriage (sposalizio) of the incoming bishop to the abbess of S. Pier Maggiore, the city's oldest Benedictine

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Section: A Negotiated Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

When the Bishop Married the Abbess: Masculinity and Power in Florentine Episcopal Entry Rites, 1300–1600

Strocchia

2007

Gender & History

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Exorcism and Religious Politics in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Walden

2018

Renaiss. Q.

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This article examines a series of messages concerning politics and geography that the religious order of the Vallombrosans embedded within a series of exorcism manuscripts and addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the late fifteenth century. The Vallombrosans crafted their manuscripts to negotiate a host of troubles: schism over reform, friction with Lorenzo, diminishing social status, increased marginality, competition with rival religious orders, new definitions of orthodoxy, and alternate forms of religious devotion. I frame Vallombrosan troubles and their turn to exorcism as symptomatic of the increased predominance of Mendicant Observants over older orders, and link this shift to a newly active and politicized demonology.

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Political Views in the Preaching of Giovanni Dominici in Renaissance Florence, 1400-1406

Debby

2002

Renaiss. Q.

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The Dominican friar Giovanni Dominici (1356-1419) was an influential, charismatic, and popular preacher, and an important figure in the political world of Renaissance Florence, but neglected in modern scholarship. This study offers a thorough summary of Dominici's political views as well as a biographical portrait, a bibliographical survey, and a discussion of Dominici's preaching style. The article draws on a large, unpublished collection of Dominici's sermons from the Biblioteca Riccardiana, dating from 1400 to 1406. Dominici emerges as an ambivalent participant in Florentine politics, advocating some of its civic values such as the active life and patriotism, while fiercely criticizing humanist ideals such as the use of rhetoric in politics and the rise of the professional politician

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State-building, church reform and the politics of legitimacy in Florence, 1375–1460

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

When the Bishop Married the Abbess: Masculinity and Power in Florentine Episcopal Entry Rites, 1300–1600

When the Bishop Married the Abbess: Masculinity and Power in Florentine Episcopal Entry Rites, 1300–1600

Exorcism and Religious Politics in Fifteenth-Century Florence

Political Views in the Preaching of Giovanni Dominici in Renaissance Florence, 1400-1406

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