Ideas and Experiences of Peace in Italian Confraternities of the Late Middle Ages: Specifics and Developments

Abstract

Starting from the assumption — underlined by most of the scholarship — that lay devotional association in the Late Middle Ages is largely characterized by its “vocation for peace” and its efforts to attenuate and overcome the conflicts inherent to contemporary urban society, this article seeks to identify in a less generic and more concrete manner the contributions confraternities made to social peace. The first part of the article examines the different meaning that the concept of peace might have had for the men and women who gathered in confraternities; the second part, instead, provides some examples from various Italian cities — Bologna, Assisi, Padua, Bergamo, Venice, and Florence.