Poteri municipali e religiosi nella Lecce barocca : santi patroni e identità urbana

Abstract

With the decline of the city of Otranto in the 16th c., the city of Lecce, more centrally located in the province of Otranto, acquired the character of a regional capital. The area’s nobles established their residences in the urban centre and contributed to developing it on the Neapolitan model. A city-dweller’s identity should correspond to the nobility’s prestige and the Church itself should develop a splendour worthy of its traditions. Lecce’s identitary construction developed through conflicts between rival factions, each of whom took up with a religious order, particularly the Jesuits and the Theatines : they competed in fostering veneration of a patron saint ; the Jesuits fostered local veneration of St. Irene of Thessalonica to which the Theatines opposed veneration of a St. Irene martyr, discovered in the catacombs of St. Sebastian in Rome. In the 17th c., Bishop Luigi Pappacoda, taking up the ideas of Iacopo Antonio Ferrari, expressed in his Apologia paradossica della città di Lecce (Paradoxical Apologia of the city of Lecce), set out to affirm the city’s prestige by beseeching the protection of the protomartyrs Orontius, Justus and Fortunatus upon it, and exalting the evangelization work of Orontius, first bishop of Lecce (6th c.). Thus Ferrari affirmed the role of episcopal power in urban religious policy and curbed the activities of the religious orders and their coteries. That gave the cathedral chapter a mediatory role in the city. All of these rivalries resulted in an architectural competition making Lecce an exceptional baroque church city.