The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores private devotional life in the Italian Renaissance home between 1400 and 1600, and suggests that piety was not confined to the Church and the convent but infused daily life within the household. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources help to cast light on the practice of religion in the home. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life—childbirth, marriage, infertility, sickness, accidents, poverty, and death. The book moves beyond traditional research on the Renaissance in important ways. First, it breaks free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome to investigate practices of piety across the Italian peninsula. In particular, new research into the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland offers fresh insights into the devotional life of the laity. Moreover, it goes beyond the study of elites to include artisanal and lower-status households, and points to the role of gender and age in shaping religious experience. Drawing on a wide range of textual, material, and visual sources, this book recovers a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday. Its multidisciplinary approach enables unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.