Queen of Sorrows: Plague, Piety, and Power in Late Medieval Italy
Queen of Sorrows takes an original approach to both late-medieval Italian history and the history of Christianity, using quantitative and qualitative analyses of a remarkable archive of 1,904 testaments to determine patterns in giving to the Virgin of Loreto shrine in the late fourteenth and early f...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
Ithaca, NY
Cornell University Press
[2024]
|
| In: | Year: 2024 |
| Series/Journal: | Medieval Societies, Religions, and Cultures
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Loreto
/ Marian devotion (motif)
/ Will
/ History 1379-1423
|
| Further subjects: | B
Plague
Religious aspects
Christianity
B Mary Blessed Virgin, Saint Devotion to (Italy) (Loreto) B Medieval / HISTORY B Plague Social aspects (Italy) History B Basilica della Santa Casa di Loreto History B Loreto, Our Lady of B Santa Maria di Loreto, Virgin Mary cult, medieval Italy, Christianity, pre-modern pandemic, Italian Renaissance, notarial research, pilgrimage |
| Online Access: |
Cover (Publisher) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
|
| Summary: | Queen of Sorrows takes an original approach to both late-medieval Italian history and the history of Christianity, using quantitative and qualitative analyses of a remarkable archive of 1,904 testaments to determine patterns in giving to the Virgin of Loreto shrine in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Bianca M. Lopez argues that in central Italy, as elsewhere, the cult of the Virgin Mary gained new prominence at this time of unprecedented mortality. Individuals gave to Santa Maria di Loreto, which houses the structure in which Mary is believed to have lived, as an expression of their grief in the hope of strengthening family lineages beyond death and to care for loved ones believed to be languishing in purgatory.Lopez establishes statistical correlations between different social groups and their donations to Loreto over time, uncovering informative new historical patterns such as the prominence of widow and migrant donors in the notarial record. The testaments also provide a social history of Recanati, revealing how its denizens venerated Mary as a saint with unrivaled spiritual power and uniquely sympathetic to grief, having lost her own son, Jesus. In the fourteenth century, plague survivors transformed their anguish into Marian devotion. The devastation of the plague brought the Virgin out of noble courts and monasteries and onto city streets. As Queen of Sorrows details, however, the popularity and growing wealth of Loreto's Marian shrine attracted the attention of the papacy and peninsular seigneurial lords, who eventually brought Santa Maria di Loreto under the control of the Church "This book traces the late medieval rise of Santa Maria di Loreto, a wealthy and powerful Marian shrine in central Italy. Devotees venerated the shrine as an emotional response to multiple plagues, leading to the site's cooptation by the papacy in the fifteenth century"-- |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 Online-Ressource (XIII, 208 Seiten), 6 b&w halftones, 2 maps, 5 graphs |
| ISBN: | 978-1-5017-7592-5 978-1-5017-7593-2 |
| Access: | Restricted Access |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/9781501775925 |
