Autobiography Of An Aspiring Saint

Download or read book Autobiography of an Aspiring Saint written by Cecilia Ferrazzi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charged by the Venetian Inquisition with the conscious and cynical feigning of holiness, Cecelia Ferrazzi (1609-1684) requested and obtained the unprecedented opportunity to defend herself through a presentation of her life story. Ferrazzi's unique inquisitorial autobiography and the transcripts of her preceding testimony, expertly transcribed and eloquently translated into English, allow us to enter an unfamiliar sector of the past and hear 'another voice'—that of a humble Venetian woman who had extraordinary experiences and exhibited exceptional courage. Born in 1609 into an artisan family, Cecilia Ferrazzi wanted to become a nun. When her parents' death in the plague of 1630 made it financially impossible for her to enter the convent, she refused to marry and as a single laywoman set out in pursuit of holiness. Eventually she improvised a vocation: running houses of refuge for "girls in danger," young women at risk of being lured into prostitution. Ferrazzi's frequent visions persuaded her, as well as some clerics and acquaintances among the Venetian elite, that she was on the right track. The socially valuable service she was providing enhanced this impresssion. Not everyone, however, was convinced that she was a genuine favorite of God. In 1664 she was denounced to the Inquisition. The Inquisition convicted Ferrazzi of the pretense of sanctity. Yet her autobiographical act permits us to see in vivid detail both the opportunities and the obstacles presented to seventeenth-century women.

Download or read book Culture and Change written by Margaret Lael Mikesell and published by University of Delaware Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These issues of city-building and institutional change involved more than the familiar push and pull of interest groups or battles between bosses, reformers, immigrants, and natives. Revell explores the ways in which technical values - a distinctive civic culture of expertise - helped to reshape ideas of community, generate new centers of public authority, and change the physical landscape of New York City."--Jacket.

Download or read book Aspiring Saints written by Anne Jacobson Schutte and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2001-04-19 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1618 and 1750, sixteen people -- nine women and seven men -- were brought to the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities in Venice because they were reporting visions, revelations, and special privileges from heaven. All were investigated, and most were put on trial by the Holy Office of the Inquisition on a charge of heresy under various rubrics that might be translated as "pretense of holiness." Anne Jacobson Schutte looks closely at the institutional, cultural, and religious contexts that gave rise to the phenomenon of visionaries in Venice. To explain the worldview of the prosecutors as well as the prosecuted, Schutte examines inquisitorial trial dossiers, theological manuals, spiritual treatises, and medical works that shaped early modern Italians' understanding of the differences between orthodox Catholic belief and heresy. In particular, she demonstrates that socially constructed assumptions about males and females affected how the Inquisition treated the accused parties. The women charged with heresy were non-elites who generally claimed to experience ecstatic visions and receive messages; the men were usually clergy who responded to these women without claiming any supernatural experience themselves. Because they "should have known better," the men were judged more harshly by authorities. Placing the events in a context larger than just the inquisitorial process, Aspiring Saints sheds new light on the history of religion, the dynamics of gender relations, and the ambiguous boundary between sincerity and pretense in early modern Italy.

Download or read book Italian Literature Before 1900 in English Translation written by Robin Healey and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 1185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation provides the most complete record possible of texts from the early periods that have been translated into English, and published between 1929 and 2008. It lists works from all genres and subjects, and includes translations wherever they have appeared across the globe. In this annotated bibliography, Robin Healey covers over 5,200 distinct editions of pre-1900 Italian writings. Most entries are accompanied by useful notes providing information on authors, works, translators, and how the translations were received. Among the works by over 1,500 authors represented in this volume are hundreds of editions by Italy's most translated authors - Dante Alighieri, [Niccoláo] Machiavelli, and [Giovanni] Boccaccio - and other hundreds which represent the author's only English translation. A significant number of entries describe works originally published in Latin. Together with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature."--Pub. desc.

Download or read book The Renaissance in Europe written by Margaret L. King and published by Laurence King Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Renaissance is usually portrayed as a period dominated by the extraordinary achievements of great men: rulers, philosophers, poets, painters, architects and scientists. Leading scholar Margaret King recasts the Renaissance as a more complex cultural movement rooted in a unique urban society that was itself the product of many factors and interactions: commerce, papal and imperial ambitions, artistic patronage, scientific discovery, aristocratic and popular violence, legal precedents, peasant migrations, famine, plague, invasion and other social factors. Together with literary and artistic achievements, therefore, today's Renaissance history includes the study of power, wealth, gender, class, honour, shame, ritual and other categories of historical investigation opened up in recent years. Tracing the diffusion of the Renaissance from Italy to the rest of Europe, Professor King marries the best work of the last generation of scholars with the findings of the most recent research, including her own. Ultimately, she points to the multiple ways in which this seminal epoch influenced the later development of Western culture and society."--Jacket.

Download or read book Reformation and Early Modern Europe written by David M. Whitford and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing the tradition of historiographic studies, this volume provides an update on research in Reformation and early modern Europe. Written by expert scholars in the field, these eighteen essays explore the fundamental points of Reformation and early modern history in religious studies, European regional studies, and social and cultural studies. Authors review the present state of research in the field, new trends, key issues scholars are working with, and fundamental works in their subject area, including the wide range of electronic resources now available to researchers. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research is a valuable resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe.

Download or read book The Making of Saints written by James F Hopgood and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2005-04-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary study of the commonalities between heroes, icons, saints, and their institutions, across several cultures.