The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World

Studies and Sources

Jennifer Mara DeSilva

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317016779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual's understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders' activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: ‘Piously Made’: Sacred Space and the Transformation of Behavior
• 1 Preventing Sloth and Preserving the Liturgy: Organizing Sacred Space in Sixteenth-Century Rome
• 2 Piety, Patronage and Power: Funerary Sculpture in Sixteenth-Century France
• 3 Ritual Viewing in the Chapel of Corpus Christi: Bernardino Luini’s Passion Cycle at San Giorgio al Palazzo, Milan
• 4 From Rome to the Southern Netherlands: Spectacular Sceneries to Celebrate the Canonization of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier
• 5 The Sanctification of Nature in Marian Shrines in Catalonia: Contextualizing Human Desires in a Mediterranean Cult
• 6 The Pope’s Two Souls and the Space of Ritual Protest during Rome’s Sede Vacante, 1559–1644
• 7 Defining the Sacred in the Community: Iconoclasm, Renewal, and Remembrance at the Basilica of Saint Martin in Tours
• 8 Extending the Boundaries of the Sacred in Seventeenth-Century Padua
• 9 Churchyard Capers: The Controversial Use of Church Space for Dancing in Early Modern England
• 10 The Imperial Horrification of Jesuit Frontier Sacred Space in South America, 1750–67
• Bibliography
• Index