Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, Jun 15, 1989 - History - 321 pages
Confraternities were - and are - religious brotherhoods for lay people to promote their religious life in common. Though designed to prepare for the afterlife, they were fully involved in the social, political and cultural life of the community and could affect all men and women, as members or as the recipients of charity. Confraternities organised a great range of devotional, cultural and indeed artistic activities in addition to other functions such as the provision of dowries and the escort of condemned men to the scaffold. Other works have studied the local activities of specific confraternities, but this is the first to attempt a broad survey of such organisations across the breadth of early modern Italy. Christopher Black demonstrates clearly the extent, diversity and influence of confraternal behaviour, and shows how such brotherhoods adapted to the religious and social crises of the sixteenth century - thus illuminating current debates about Catholic Reform, the Counter-Reformation, poverty, philanthropy and social control.

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Contents

Setting the scene
1
Catholic Reform CounterReformation and confraternities
7
Attitudes to salvation and good works
13
what where for whom?
23
Membership of the confraternities
41
Counting confraternities and their members
49
Control and sponsorship
58
Positive sponsorship of confraternities
69
Attitudes to poverty
130
needs and general responses
151
Government responses to crises and needs
159
The value of the assistance offered
165
2 The imprisoned ignorant and dead
214
Rosary devotion
231
Confraternity buildings and their decoration
234
Conclusions and suggestions
268

Confraternities and parochial control
75
Councils and general assemblies
83
Feastdays and private confraternity devotion
97
External religious devotions
108
Flagellation
109
Confraternities and finances
122
page
287
70
300
79
306
Index
310
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