Domesticating Saints in Medieval and Early Modern Rome

FAIN: FEL-267547-20

Maya Maskarinec
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA 90089-0012)

Research and writing leading to a book on how prominent families in late medieval and early modern Rome appropriated Christian saints and hagiography into their own histories to further their moral and political authority.

This project investigates the "domestication" of Christian sanctity in medieval and early modern Rome. In the course of the Middle Ages, there developed a pronounced sense that churches and their saints belonged to specific regions, neighborhoods, and even families. This "emplacement" of medieval families and medieval saints, coupled with a resurgent interest in Rome’s Christian antiquity and a heightened attentiveness to noble lineages, culminated in Roman families weaving themselves, genealogically and materially, into Rome’s Christian past. Saintly lineages blossomed, as did the identification of churches as the former residences of early Christian and late antique saints—cementing presumed links between place, descent and moral worth.

Associated Products

The Genealogies and Domestic Spaces of Early Christian Saints in Early Modern Rome (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The Genealogies and Domestic Spaces of Early Christian Saints in Early Modern Rome
Author: Maya Maskarinec
Abstract: This talk considered the genealogies and domestic spaces of early Christian saints in early modern Rome to demonstrate how intimately connected these were with contemporaries' interest into Roman antiquities and illustrious Romans of antiquity.
Date: 02/19/2022
Conference Name: The Classical Tradition and the Making of Knowledge, USC EMSI/Huntington Library

Saints for All Occasions in Early Medieval Rome (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Saints for All Occasions in Early Medieval Rome
Author: Maya Maskarinec
Abstract: This talk examined how saints and their cults could serve as role models for individuals and communities, and to what degree their usage as such reveals aspects of the cultural connectivity of the Mediterranean.
Date: 06/10/2022
Conference Name: Exempla docent. Significance of Paradigmatic Conceptions for the Function of Mediterranean Societies during the 4th–8th Centuries, University of Zurich (Switzerland)

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