Preaching Peace in Renaissance Italy. Bernardino of Siena & His Audience (2002)

In this engaging and highly narrative work, Cynthia Polecritti undertakes the challenge of uncovering the relationship between preacher and audience by examining the popular fifteenth-century preacher, Bernardino of Siena, and his sermons.The sermons of Bernardino are perhaps the best source for this type of study, particularly the Sienese cycle of 1427, during which a literate cloth cutter recorded the words of the preacher verbatim.What emerges from her investigation is a complex and colorful picture of a talented, practical preacher and a volatile yet reverent audience, torn between secular and spiritual concerns.After introducing the preacher and his style, Polecritti discusses Bernardino's probable audience.Readers familiar with other studies of premodern preaching will not be surprised by her findings: women comprised the majority of listeners, and the size of the crowd varied according to the day, time, and topic of the sermon.Subsequent chapters examine the process of peace negotiations, including legal documents, public oaths, witnesses, and financial sanctions, and the role that a preacher like Bernardino played in these precarious and highly ritualized events.As men of God, preachers were considered to be ideal, impartial judges with impeccable moral sense.Unlike some preachers, however, Bernardino refused to partake in the actual negotiations, preferring his role as preacher to that of administrator.His duty, as he saw it, was to convince his audience to forgive vendettae and ignore political factions.His goal, Polecritti argues, was internal conversion rather than outward gesture towards peace.Without the inner desire, external peace would only be temporary.In her conclusion, the author suggests that there is irony in Bernardino's message of social unity considering his intense focus on individual souls.Yet, as she herself argues earlier in the book, ideas that we consider irreconcilable or distinct may not have seemed so to a Renaissance audience.Polecritti provides an in-depth study of the peacemaking work of Bernardino in the 1427 Siena sermons.Called to save the city from political strife, he emphasized the sin of hatred and the danger in expressing it.Polecritti notes, however, that the vibrant and normally direct preacher became tempered when discussing faction and vendetta.Careful not to offend individuals, Bernardino condemns factions without mentioning names.Through his unusual tact, the Franciscan conveys to the historian that his audience could become violent at the slightest provocation.Polecritti suggests that feuds in Renaissance Italy do not fit neatly into anthropological models of describing feuding through its function in society.She argues that the differentiated social strata, complex legal systems, and high population density in urban areas, characteristics not found in other feuding societies, complicate the matter beyond its functional mode; she rejects the idea that feuding worked as a `self help' mechanism.Confraternitas readers, in particular, may appreciate her brief discussion of the Bianchi and their role, similar to that of the preachers', in the peace-making process.As is to be expected, the audience receives less attention than the preacher himself;