Late Medieval and Early Modern Italian Saints were of a diverse origin: canonized, popularly recognized, or self-proclaimed. As such their cults spread through manuscripts, printed pamphlets and festive culture.

The Saint between Manuscript and Print in Italy, 1400-1600
Ed. by Alison K. Frazier
Series: Essays & Studies (Book 37)
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies 2015
ISBN-10: 0772721815
ISBN-13: 978-0772721815

The twelve essays in this volume identify mutually interactive developments in media and saints’ cults at a time and in a place when both underwent profound change. Focusing on the Italian peninsula between 1400 and 1600, authors analyze specific sites of intense cultural production and innovation. The volume invites further study of saints of all sorts — canonized, popularly recognized, or self-proclaimed — in the fluid media environment of early modernity.

Table of Contents

Introduction:

Alison K. Frazier, “Introduction: Spreading the Word about Saints in Manuscript and Print”

Prelude:
1) Roberto Cobianchi, “Printing a New Saint: Woodcut Production and the Canonization of Saints in Late Medieval Italy”

Part I: Lay Sanctity Between Manuscript and Print
2) Barbara Wisch, “Seeing is Believing: St. Lucy in Text, Image, and Festive Culture”
3) Pierre Bolle, “Archival Documents, Early Printed Books, and Manuscripts: The Backwards Text-Tradition of St. Roch “of Montpellier’”
4) Stephen Bowd, “Tales from Trent: The Construction of ‘Saint’ Simon in Manuscript and Print”

Intermezzo:
5) Giuseppe Antonio Guazzelli, “Early Printed Martyrologies in Italy (1486-c. 1584)”

Part II: Saints of the Religious Orders Between Manuscript and Print
6) Cécile Caby, “Honoratus of Lérins: A Saint and a Holy Island Between Manuscript and Print”
7) Laura Ackerman Smoller, “The Unstable Image of Vincent Ferrer in Manuscript and Print vitae, 1455–1555”
8) Stefano Dall’Aglio, “‘Everyone Worships Fra Girolamo as a Saint’: Savonarola’s Presumed Sanctity in Sixteenth-Century Manuscripts and Prints”
9) Serena Spanò Martinelli and Irene Graziani, “Caterina Vigri between Gender and Image: La Santa in Text and Iconography”
10) John Gagné, “Fixing Texts and Changing Regimes: Two Holy Lives in French-Occupied Milan, ca. 1500–1525”
11) Gabriella Zarri, “Blessed Lucia of Narni (1476–1544) Between ‘Hagiography’ and ‘Autobiography’: Mystical Authorship and the Persistence of the Manuscript”

Coda: 
12) Kevin Stevens, “Sanctity as Cheap Print: Production, Markets, and Consumers in Early Modern Milan”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Alison Frazier is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas in Austin. Her monograph Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy (2005) won the 2006 Gordon Prize from the Renaissance Society of America. Her current research addresses humanist contributions to the pre-Tridentine liturgy.

The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) at Victoria University in the University of Toronto is a research and teaching centre.

FEATURED PHOTO:

One of the saint’s cult presented in this book is Vincent Ferrar. Here he is depicted in  the painting: Christ on the Cross with Saints Vincent Ferrer, John the Baptist, Mark and Antoninus by the Master of the Fissile Epiphany, Italy, circa 1491/1495. The saint is holding a manuscript. This large, vivid and brilliant altarpiece was painted during the High Renaissance, in the late 15th century. Originally, the panel functioned as an altarpiece. It was commissioned by the wealthy silk weavers’ guild for their altar in the Dominican church of San Marco in Florence. Photo generously provided by Lacma.