Lay confraternities and civic religion in Renaissance Bologna
By: Nicholas Terpstra.
Series: Cambridge studies in Italian history and culture
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 251
Subjects: Confraternities -- Italy -- Bologna -- History -- 16th century.; Bologna (Italy) -- Church history -- 16th century.; Italy -- Church history -- 16th century.
Description: This book analyzes the social, political, and religious roles of confraternities - the lay groups through which the Italians of the Renaissance expressed their individual and collective religious beliefs - in Bologna in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Confraternities shaped the civic religious cult through charitable activities, public shrines, and processions.

This civic religious role expanded as they became politicized: patricians used the confraternities increasingly in order to control the civic religious cult, civic charity, and the city itself.

The book examines in detail how confraternities initially provided laypeople of the artisanal and merchant classes with a means of expressing a religious life separate from, but not in opposition to, the local parish or mendicant house. By the mid-sixteenth century, patricians dominated the traditional lay confraternities while artisans and merchants had few options beyond parochial confraternities which were controlled by parish priests.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 226-245) and index.