Le Cronache di Santa Cecilia _ (The Chronicles of Saint Cecily)

Memorie Domenicane, n.s.11, 1980, pp. 575-626; and ibid., n.s.12, 1981, pp. 269-286., 1980

mendicanti, in « II gotico a Pistoia nei suoi rapporti con l'arte gotica italiana », Atti del 2° convegno internazionale di studi, Pistoia, 24-30 aprile 1966, published Pistoia, 1972 a stimulating discussion of the historical and institutional motives for the swelling proportions of these churches and provides a summary plan of the superimposition of successive churches on the site of S. Maria Novella (fig. 1, tav. III). : I bid., p. 68. 3 S. ORLANDI O.P., « Necrologio » di. S. Maria Novella, I, Florence, 1955, p. 549, for the priority and patronage of the room. The relationship of the first church and successive sacristies is clearly described oy the Dominican chronicler, Fr. Modesto BrLIOTTI: « Latitudo [ veteris ecclesiae] erat quanta est hodie sacrarii longitudo, et iuxta maius illud altare ianua erat, per quam et breviusculam quandam scalam, in antiquum ascendebatur in sacrarium, quod erexerant et processu temporis instauraverant Cavalcantes ». (Chronica pulcherrimae aedis magnique coenobii S. Mariae cognomento Novellae fiorentinae civitatis, ms. written 1583-86 still conserved in the convent library and published through chapter L VIII in « Analecta sacris ordinis fratrum praedicatorum », VII (I of ser.

Cistercian Worlds, 2021

In 1873 the Kingdom of Italy, after the conquest of Rome, confiscated the properties of the Church, including the Cistercian library of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme: thus began the “war of codes”. The collection was really very precious: not only medieval manuscripts and rare printed books, but also modern manuscripts of considerable interest. These volumes, that are a tangible testimony of the theological and cultural interests of the monks, show traces of the life within the walls of the monastery and offer an original look at the Roman Cistercian reality during the last centuries of the papal dominion over the Urbe.

in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Devotional Spaces, Images of Piety, 2015

È vietata la riproduzione, anche parziale, effettuata con qualsiasi mezzo, compresa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico, non autorizzata. The photocopying of any pages of this publication is illegal. 2 The Franciscan order seems to have initiated the tradition of the presepio or Christmas crib. See ROSALIND BROOKE, The Image of St Francis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, pp. 309-310. 3 The Archivio di Stato was installed in the former friary on 13 December 1815. 4 The relationship between architecture, music and devotional life is explored in DEBORAH HOWARD -LAURA MORETTI, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2009, pp. 79-94. 5 UMBERTO FRANZOI -DINA DI STEFANO, Le chiese di Venezia, Alfieri, Venice 1976, p. 46; see also CARLO CORSATO -RENATA MARZI in this volume.

The University and the City. Historic University buildings in Genoa, 2015

Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 7. Ed. S. V. Mal’tseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova, A. V. Zakharova. — St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg Univ. Press, 2017, pp. 336-344., 2017

At the dawn of the 13th century the male monasticism was living a new era, marked by the advent of St. Francis and St. Dominic and characterized by a return to the poorest and humble roots of Christianity as well as by greater openness towards the believers, more than the closed dimension of the monastery. A new female religious movement, known as ‘the Poor Ladies’, was born in Central Italy in the same years, under the guidance of St. Clare of Assisi. The movement did not join any of the existing monastic rules at the beginning, even though it was strictly bound to the Franciscan experience and had total poverty as its highest and exclusive aspiration. The Church of Rome saw a possible critical issue in the movement and in its lack of control. It tried to regulate it at the Council of Lateran IV in 1215, especially with the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia Ugolino dei Segni (the future Pope Gregory IX), an essential figure for the history and evolution of the female monasticism who imposed the cloistered life on all female monastic orders. The analysis of the architecture of the so-called ‘PoorLadies’ is, therefore, fundamental in order to understand the consequences of this imposition. New liturgical spaces for females only, in fact, started to be created in both the existing convents and in the newly built ones with the aim of protecting the daily life of the nuns. The arrangement of the preexisting spaces in St. Damianoin Assisi — the cradle of the order of St. Clare — was purely random but led anyway to the creation of proper architectural models, later exported in other convents of the same order. The nuns’ choir in St. Damiano, infact, is located outside the ecclesiastical perimeter in order to preserve the cloistered dimension. However, this peculiar position of the choir made it quite difficult for the nuns to assist to the liturgical functions from the beginning, but the issue was solved only during the 14th century with the ‘migration’ of this liturgical space to a new position, after a series of different solutions.

Chapels of the Cinquecento and Seicento in the Churches of Rome form "a geM set In Most resplendent gold" eneath the raised chancel of the church of Santa Susanna is an oval confessio that was built and decorated during the last decade of the sixteenth century (FIgs. 1, 4). Unprecedented in its plan and complexity of decoration, this subterranean place of prayer, in one of Rome's oldest churches, has received remarkably little scholarly attention, despite the fact that it was considered by early viewers to be a "venerable place," "beautiful and dignified … a gem set in most resplendent gold."1 To fill this scholarly gap, this essay traces the history of the confessio with respect to its origins and place within Santa Susanna. It considers its patron and the architects and painters involved in its creation and adornment; analyzes its plan, altar, and pictorial program; and addresses its function as a martyrium, funerary chapel, and site for veneration and liturgical celebration. From this multifaceted exploration of the confessio, my goal is to enrich our understanding of this little-explored and little-understood monument and to situate it within the context of post-Tridentine Rome. The Early History of Santa Susanna In order to understand the sixteenth-century confessio, knowledge of the church's history-however briefly sketched-is essential. The origins of the church of Santa Susanna can be traced to the end of the third century, when a Christian house of worship was first established on the site. According to early sources, the church was constructed "ad duas domos" (at the site of two houses), in reference to the homes of Gabinius, a nephew of Emperor Diocletian and the father of Susanna, and Gaius, Gabinius's brother.2 The three family members were Christians: Gabinius a presbyter, Gaius a pope, and Susanna a devout virgin, all of whom, according to tradition, were martyred by Diocletian-Susanna in 295 and the other two in 296-and subsequently elevated to sainthood.3 By the fifth century, the church was designated a titulus, and during the reign of Pope Leo III (795-816), who had served the church as its titular priest, it was largely rebuilt.4 In addition to richly outfitting the church with an apse mosaic, marble pavements and columns, and other liturgical gifts, Leo III is also credited with having created a semiannular crypt below the high altar to house the bodies of Saints Gabinius and Susanna, who were martyred on the site. To these precious remains Leo also added the body of the second-century Roman martyr Saint Felicita, which he translated from the cemetery of Maximus on the via Salaria.5 Following Leo III's interventions at Santa Susanna, no major work was carried out until the last quarter of the fifteenth century, when Sixtus IV oversaw extensive work on the building, both inside and outside, including the addition of a new facade.6 This was, to a great extent, the church inherited by Cardinal Girolamo Rusticucci when Pius V named him its titular cardinal in 1570. The Patron: Girolamo Rusticucci The church of Santa Susanna that we see today is largely the result of Girolamo Rusticucci's extensive interventions in its structure and decoration, most of which have been well studied.7 Exactly when he began his renovation is uncertain, but Pompeo Ugonio, in his Historia delle Stationi di Roma of 1588, noted that "in our times, he [Rusticucci] has put it [the church] commodiously in order," suggesting that considerable work was already carried out by that time.8 Steven F. Ostrow girolamo rusticucci's confessio chapel in santa susanna "A Gem Set in Most Resplendent Gold" B 93 92 steven F. ostrow "a geM set In Most resplendent gold"

“Ordines Militares. Yearbook for the Study of the Military Orders”, 27 , 2022

This paper’s focus is women as professed members of the Order of St John in Italy, as documented in cities such as Milan, Florence, Venice, Genova, Monteleone di Spoleto, Perugia, Penne and Sovereto. The adherence of women to the Order came under several institutional forms. Some women were laypeople, associated consorores who carried out the Order’s activities, sometimes working in its hospitals. Others lived in the houses of the Order of St John, where they could also take the vows, with consequent formation of “mixed” convents or monasteries. But in some cases, separate nunneries were created or assimilated from other communities. Some historians have seen a different evolution from the initial vocation of women, which consisted of field activities in support of the poor and the sick, and would later become a strictly cloistered life. This change can be observed by examining the biographies of the two Italian female Hospitaller saints, Ubaldesca and Toscana. Yet, local development varied, and the situation in an important city like Florence differed from nunneries in smaller localities like Sovereto or Penne. Finally, several interesting sources allow us a glimpse of the spirituality and norms in those women’s daily lives compared to male religiosity. The medieval Italian nunneries of St John never became an autonomous branch of the Order, but at the same time, they were not a rare or exceptional phenomenon.

Medieval Feminist Forum, 2014