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On the Fringes of Center: Disputed Hagiographic Imagery and the Crisis over the Beati moderni in Rome ca. 1600*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ruth S. Noyes*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University

Abstract

This article sets forth, through a small collection of case studies, the extent to which the literal and pictorial figures of the Beati moderni constituted potentially provocative and disputed hermeneutical territory between particular religious constituencies, in this case the Oratorians and the Jesuits, and an increasingly stringent Curia ca. 1600. A reexamination of Beati moderni hagiographic imagery, and curial censorship of such imagery, potentially problematizes scholarly assumptions that these images served the Counter-Reformation Church's demands to control the meaning of religious images and the cult of the saints. Such reassessment calls for the reevaluation of a newly-constituted, uniquely post-Tridentine genre of hagiographic imagery: the Beati moderni devotional altar image and its reproductive printed devotional derivatives.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2011

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Footnotes

*

Please see the online version of this article for color illustrations.

This article is indebted to the guidance and support of the anonymous readers; to Stephen Campbell, who assisted in all stages of writing; to Thomas Izbicki, who generously transcribed and translated Latin; and to Laura Blom, who provided invaluable help with the editing process. All translations are the author's except where otherwise noted; any errors of translation are the author's own.

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