Civic Ritual In Renaissance Venice

Venice's reputation for political stability and a strong, balanced republican government holds a prominent place in European political theory. Edward Muir traces the origins and development of this reputation, paying particular attention to the sixteenth century, when civic ritual in Venice reached its peak. He shows how the ritualization of society and politics was an important reason for Venice's stability. Influenced in part by cultural anthropology, he establishes and applies to Venice a new methodology for the historical study of civic ritual.

"At the heart of the book is a detailed account of four major events that significantly shaped the history of Venice, the formation of the Holy League (the coalition that brought the republic into conflict with the Ottoman Empire): the victory of that League against the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto; the ceremonial arrangements that were made to welcome Henry III of France to the city in 1574; and the devasting plague of 1575-7." "This central part is frame by two others. The first concentrates on St. Mark's Square, the buildings that surround it and the social and religious life that used it as a backdrop. This involves reconstruction of the historical and mythical events that gradually led to the elaboration, by Jacopo Sansovino and others, of a monumental civic arena invested with layers of meaning that were fundamental to a sense of Venetian identity. The final section considers how the major events of the 1570s, and above all the victory at Lepanto, were metabolized in Venetian history and reconfigured in the realms of memory and myth. Important factors in this process were the role of the printing press (Venice lay at the heart of the Italian booktrade) in disseminating accounts of current events and reworking them into a further elaborator of the Myth of Venice, and the ritual and other transformations that took place (such as the construction of Palladio's church of the Redentore), and their connection to the religious matrix that provides the key to the civic ethos of the city in the late sixteenth century. Venice had become the City of God."--Rabat de la jaquette

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A compelling examination of how a religious brotherhood administered charity in its local community and acted as mediator between provincial elites and the early modern state. Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy explores the often subtle and sometimes harsh realities of life on the Venetian mainland. Focusing on the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti and its Ospedale, the book addressesa number of well-established and newly articulated historiographical questions: the governance of territorial states, the civic and religious role of confraternities, the status of women and marginalized groups, and popular religious devotion. Adapting the objectives and methods of microhistory, D'Andrea has written neither a traditional history of political subjugation nor a straightforward survey of poor relief. Instead, thematic chapters survey the activities of a powerful religious brotherhood [Santa Maria dei Battuti] and document the interconnected local, regional, and international factors that fashioned the social world of Venetian subjects. Grounded in previously unexplored archival material, the book is an innovative study of the nexus between local religion and Venetian territorial power, providing scholars with this first scholarly monograph of the city that served as the keystone of Venice's mainland empire. This original approach to the critical relationship between provincial powers and the central government also contributes to other important areas of historical inquiry, including the history of popular religion, poor relief, medicine, and education. David D'Andrea is Associate Professor of History at Oklahoma State University.

The comprehensive 2005 study of rituals in early modern Europe argues that between about 1400 and 1700 a revolution in ritual theory took place that utterly transformed concepts about time, the body, and the presence of spiritual forces in the world. Edward Muir draws on extensive historical research to emphasize the persistence of traditional Christian ritual practices even as educated elites attempted to privilege reason over passion, textual interpretation over ritual action, and moral rectitude over gaining access to supernatural powers. Edward Muir discusses wide ranging themes such as rites of passage, carnivalesque festivity, the rise of manners, Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the alleged anti-Christian rituals of Jews and witches. This edition examines the impact on the European understanding of ritual from the discoveries of new civilizations in the Americas and missionary efforts in China and adds more material about rituals peculiar to women.

This study reveals the broad material, devotional, and cultural implications of sculpture in Renaissance Venice. Examining a wide range of sources—the era’s art-theoretical and devotional literature, guidebooks and travel diaries, and artworks in various media—Lorenzo Buonanno recovers the sculptural values permeating a city most famous for its painting. The book traces the interconnected phenomena of audience response, display and thematization of sculptural bravura, and artistic self-fashioning. It will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance history, early modern art and architecture, material culture, and Italian studies.

Venice Reconsidered offers a dynamic portrait of Venice from the establishment of the Republic at the end of the thirteenth century to its fall to Napoleon in 1797. In contrast to earlier efforts to categorize Venice's politics as strictly republican and its society as rigidly tripartite and hierarchical, the scholars in this volume present a more fluid and complex interpretation of Venetian culture. Drawing on a variety of disciplines—history, art history, and musicology—these essays present innovative variants of the myth of Venice—that nearly inexhaustible repertoire of stories Venetians told about themselves.