Title: Law, medicine, and engineering in the cult of the saints in counter-reformation Rome : the hagiographical works of Antonio Gallonio, 1556-1605 /
Authors: Touber, Jetze.; Longbottom, Peter,
Year: 2014
Subjects: Gallonio, Antonio.; Gallonio, Antonio,; Christian hagiography.; Martyrdom Christianity History.; Church history.; Historiography; Christianity history
Abstract: The Oratorian priest Antonio Gallonio (1556) devoted his life to writing about saints. The thread running through his hagiographical oeuvre was renunciation of the world, requiring humility, subservience and endurance. Yet he engaged the expertise of lay people, jurists, physicians and engineers, so as to appeal to their interests and convert them. In order to emphasize how saints endured torture, healed disease and exercised piety rather than ingenuity, Gallonio ventured into those secular disciplines, even if he did not endorse them. This book surveys Gallonio's published and unpublished works and his position in Roman society, to expose the tensions between a theocratic clergy and the self-assertion of skilled and scholarly profesionals in the Italian Counter-Reformation. --From publisher's description.
Contents: Introduction. Gallonio and the Oratory -- Social discipline and intellectual history -- Working method -- Vero figliuolo del nostro Padre -- Hagiography and historiography. Hagiography and Historia sacra -- Gallonio's sources -- The Christian history of the Oratorians -- Conclusion -- Judicial proceedings and malicious torture. Canonization process -- Confessors -- Martyrs -- Conclusion -- Health and holiness. Spiritual and physical health -- Gallonio and the physicians -- The body of the saint -- Conclusion -- Martyrological technology. Nobility, emblems, machinery -- Technical operation -- Illustration -- Conclusion -- Collecting material about saints. Collection -- Classification -- Presentation -- Conclusion -- Epilogue.