Becoming Neapolitan

2011 Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize of the Renaissance Society of America Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries managed to maintain a distinct social character while under Spanish rule. John A. Marino's study explores how the population of the city of Naples constructed their identity in the face of Spanish domination. As Western Europe’s largest city, early modern Naples was a world unto itself. Its politics were decentralized and its neighborhoods diverse. Clergy, nobles, and commoners struggled to assert political and cultural power. Looking at these three groups, Marino unravels their complex interplay to show how such civic rituals as parades and festival days fostered a unified Neapolitan identity through the assimilation of Aragonese customs, Burgundian models, and Spanish governance. He discusses why the relationship between mythical and religious representations in ritual practices allowed Naples's inhabitants to identify themselves as citizens of an illustrious and powerful sovereignty and explains how this semblance of stability and harmony hid the city's political, cultural, and social fissures. In the process, Marino finds that being and becoming Neapolitan meant manipulating the city's rituals until their original content and meaning were lost. The consequent widening of divisions between rich and poor led Naples's vying castes to turn on one another as the Spanish monarchy weakened. Rich in source material and tightly integrated, this nuanced, synthetic overview of the disciplining of ritual life in early modern Naples digs deep into the construction of Neapolitan identity. Scholars of early modern Italy and of Italian and European history in general will find much to ponder in Marino's keen insights and compelling arguments.

Translation of: Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana del 1799.

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores the rich devotional life of the Italian household between 1450 and 1600. Rejecting the enduring stereotype of the Renaissance as a secular age, this interdisciplinary study reveals the home to have been an important site of spiritual revitalization. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources are scrutinized to cast new light on the many ways in which religion infused daily life within the household. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life — from childbirth and marriage to sickness and death. Breaking free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome, The Sacred Home investigates practices of piety across the Italian peninsula, with particular attention paid to the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland. It also looks beyond the elite to consider artisanal and lower-status households, and reveals gender and age as factors that powerfully conditioned religious experience. Recovering a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday, The Sacred Home offers unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.

In the early Middle Ages Naples underwent huge changes. She was able to acquire complete independence from the Byzantine Empire and to emerge as one of the major powers in southern Italy. Moreover, Naples avoided becoming part of the Frankish Empire, being subdued by the Lombards of southern Italy, and being attacked by the Muslims, who had conquered Sicily. The Deeds of the Neapolitan Bishops, the only medieval historical text composed in Naples before the 14th century, not only reports the biographies of the Neapolitan bishops during those centuries, but also describes the history of Naples and the relationships the Neapolitans had with their dangerous neighbors. This volume presents the analysis, Latin text, English translation, and historical commentary of this work, thus offering an important contribution for a better understanding of early medieval southern Italian (and Mediterranean) history. The book will appeal to scholars and students of chronicles, Naples, and Church history in early medieval Italy, as well as all those interested in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean.

In a world that tends to homologate, thus becoming, in every aspect of our lives, grey, flat and uniform, so creating the world of universal similarity (including language), does it still make sense today to talk about vernacular theatre? Tackling such a question implies uncovering the reasons for the disappearance of the many regional theatres that were present in Italy in the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that first the unification of the country in 1861, and then the language policies of fascism in the ‘30s were the final nails in the coffin for local theatres. It is also true, however, that what really determined their downsizing was the progressive loss of connection with their own environment. If we give an essentially superficial interpretation to the adjective “vernacular”, and in a play we see a canovaccio (plot) that the local star uses as a vehicle to show his talent through a series of modest mannerisms, then “vernacular” implies the death certificate of this type of theatre (once the star dies, his alleged dramaturgy dies with him and his mannerisms). On the contrary, if we identify in this adjective the theatre’s healthy attempt to develop a local, social and cultural analysis of its environment, it opens a whole new meaning and acquires a perspective that a national theatre can never aspire to. This is the case of Neapolitan theatre. It managed to survive and thrive, producing plays that were capable of critically describing modern and contemporary reality. Neapolitan playwrights forcefully proclaimed their roots as a primary source for their work. The city, in fact, became a direct expression of that cultural microcosm which provided them with the living flesh of their plots.

Long neglected in the history of Renaissance and early modern Europe, in recent years scholars have revised received understanding of the political and economic significance of the city of Naples and its rich artistic, musical and political culture. Its importance in the history of science, however, has remained relatively unknown. The Science of Naples provides the first dedicated study of Neapolitan scientific culture in the English language. Drawing on contributions from leading experts in the field, this volume presents a series of studies that demonstrate Neapolitans’ manifold contributions to European scientific culture in the early modern period and considers the importance of the city, its institutions and surrounding territories for the production of new knowledge. Individual chapters demonstrate the extent to which Neapolitan scholars and academies contributed to debates within the Republic of Letters that continued until deep into the nineteenth century. They also show how studies of Neapolitan natural disasters yielded unique insights that contributed to the development of fields such as medicine and earth sciences. Taken together, these studies resituate the city of Naples as an integral part of an increasingly globalised scientific culture, and present a rich and engaging portrait of the individuals who lived, worked and made scientific knowledge there.

The New Neapolitan Cinema provides close analysis of the whole of this movement, which stands as one of the most vital and stimulating currents in contemporary European Cinema.

"This book uncovers the remarkable story of a fake saint to tell a tale about truth. It begins at the end of the 1650s, when a large quantity of forged documents suddenly appeared throughout the Kingdom of Naples. Narrating the life and deeds of a previously unknown medieval saint named Giovanni Calà, the trove generated much excitement around the kingdom. No one was more delighted by the news than Carlo Calà, Giovanni's wealthy and politically influential seventeenth-century descendant. Attracted by the prospect of adding a saint to the family tree, Carlo presented Giovanni's case to the Roman Curia. The Catholic authorities immediately realized that the sources were forged and that Giovanni was not real (let alone holy). Yet, it took more than two decades before the forgery was exposed: why? Vividly reconstructing the intricate case of the supposed saint, the book reveals the tensions between historical and theological truth. How much could the truth of doctrine depend on the truth of the facts before religion lost its connection with the supernatural? To what extent could theology ignore the truth of history without ending up engulfed in falsity and deceit? This story of a fake saint illuminates early modern tensions. But the struggles to distinguish between facts, opinions, and beliefs remain with us. Examining how our predecessors dealt with the relationship between truth and authenticity guides us too in thinking through what is true and what is not"--