Confraternities in Southern Italy: Art, Politics, and Religion (1100–1800)

Confraternity studies has been one of the most innovative and active fields of scholarly inquiry in the last several decades, yet few scholars have ventured beyond the traditional focus on northern Italian communities. This ambitious volume addresses the historical and historiographical origins of these scholarly biases, introduces the vibrant yet understudied world of southern Italian confraternities, and provides many suggestions for areas of future research and comparative analysis. Fifteen essays by leading Italian scholars investigate medieval and early modern religious confraternities in Naples, several mainland regions, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. The result is not only the first book in English to examine southern Italian confraternities, but also the most wide-ranging chronological and geographic survey in any language. The collection makes a significant contribution to confraternity studies and will interest scholars of art, religion, lay sociability, and charitable institutions in Italy, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

This fascinating anthology, an important addition to the vibrant literature on confraternities in late medieval and early modern Europe, shines a welcome light on the long-neglected region of Southern Italy. The essays collected here, written by a range of experts on the various local contexts, reveal the rich tapestry of confraternal life across the Mezzogiorno, from the bustling metropolises of Naples and Palermo to the small towns of Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, and beyond.
-Diana Bullen Presciutti, University of Essex

This ground-breaking collection–the first study in English of confraternities in southern Italy–shatters old stereotypes of north and south and opens new questions about social kinship. Art, politics, and religion braid together in comparative studies that set the region’s distinctive forms into shifting peninsular and Mediterranean contexts from the medieval to early modern periods. Truly fascinating and highly recommended.
-Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto

DAVID D'ANDREA is a Professor of History at Oklahoma State University. In addition to his monograph, Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400–1530 (Rochester, 2007), he has published widely on confraternities, charitable organizations, and miracles in early modern Italy.

SALVATORE MARINO is a lecturer of Medieval History at the University of Barcelona. In addition to his main monograph, Ospedali e città nel Regno di Napoli (Florence, 2014), he has published several works on charitable institutions, confraternities, and childhood in late medieval Catalonia and Italy.