Saints and the City: Civic Identity in Early Modern Italy

FAIN: FA-50610-04

Giles R.M. Knox
Trustees of Indiana University (Dallas, TX 75205-1902)

Rooted in the political division of the Middle Ages, the growth of Italian national identity has long struggled against the centrifugal force offered by attachment to cities. My book-length study addresses this phenomenon in the Early Modern period through an examination of the architecture and decoration of three churches in Milan and Bergamo, at a time (1575-1630) when the traditional means of crafting the civic image was challenged by religious reform. During the Middle Ages churches had become the primary focal points of civic identity. By the mid sixteenth century church reform began to question this tradition, with the goal of cleansing churches of the secular. I examine how churches responded to this challenge, forever changing the relationship between the civic and the sacred. I completed the research on Bergamo in the years leading up to the writing of my dissertation. I have spent the last two summers in Milan researching the first part of the book as outlined above. In the summer of 2004 I will return to Milan to compete this research. As a consequence, I shall be ready to devote a 2004-2005 fellowship year to writing, and I would expect to complete the draft of my book by the end of that time.

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