̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Mary Laven

Animating objects: what material culture can tell us about domestic devotions

amb206 — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 06:21:48 +0000

It’s an enduring irony of history that the most commonplace objects from the past are those least represented in today’s museum collections. ̽��ֱ��more precious and expensive an object, the more likely it is to have survived. As a result, our perceptions are skewed towards items that belonged to the rich and powerful – objects that were perhaps rarely handled.

During Madonnas and Miracles, a recent exhibition of religious material culture at the Fitzwilliam Museum, one of the most ‘stopped at’ items of the objects on show was an exquisite rock crystal rosary. It was clearly crafted for an individual of outstanding wealth and status. Each bead features a scene from the New Testament; the drawings are incised into a layer of gold. Not surprisingly, the rosary is today one of the treasures held by the Palazzo Madama Museum in Turin.

But also attracting attention was a much less eye-catching slip of paper printed on both sides with prayers in Latin. This breve would have been sold cheaply on the streets of Italian cities. Its frayed edges suggest that it was folded and worn close to the skin in the belief that the prayers would protect the wearer from a host of disasters – from earthquake to plague. Thousands of brevi were produced, and carried as talismans against misfortune, but few have survived.

In 2013, three Cambridge academics from different fields of scholarship came together to throw fresh light on the ways in which Renaissance Italians worshipped within the privacy of the home. Historian Professor Mary Laven, literary specialist Dr Abigail Brundin and art historian Professor Deborah Howard were determined to explore material culture from modest as well as wealthy households through their ambitious research project, Domestic Devotions: the Place of Piety in the Italian Domestic Home 1400–1600, funded by the European Research Council.

During the research, which informed Madonnas and Miracles and a forthcoming book, the three stepped out of the ‘golden triangle’ of Florence, Rome and Venice, the major hubs of cultural activity in the Renaissance, to look at material culture from further afield – in Naples, the Marche and the Venetian mainland. In doing so, their study makes an important contribution to our understanding of domestic religious practice across the Italian peninsula.

̽��ֱ��Renaissance is often seen as a secular, less religious age in which interest in antiquity encouraged a more rational way of seeing the world. But the evidence from material culture paints a different picture. “ ̽��ֱ��wealth of devotional images and artefacts that we have discovered in Renaissance homes encourages us to view the period 1400–1600 as a time of spiritual revitalisation,” says Laven.

Household inventories show how even a relatively modest family could create a special place for prayer and meditation by setting objects such as a crucifix, candlesticks, holy books and rosaries on a table or kneeling stool. As a reminder of divine protection, religious pictures or statues might be found almost anywhere in or around the house.

“Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences, such as miracles and visions, frequently took place in the home and were shaped to meet the demands of domestic life with all its ups and downs – from birth to death,” adds Laven. “ ̽��ֱ��tight bond between the domestic and the devotional can be seen in the material culture of the period – in paintings, ceramics and more. These objects tell us how closely daily life intersected with religious belief.”

Young women often asked the Virgin Mary for intercession during childbirth. Representations of the Madonna embracing her healthy son were a feature of many bedchambers – and not just those of the wealthy. ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum holds an example of a rustic terracotta figure of a solemn-looking Madonna and Christ child who is portrayed holding his mother’s naked breast. This rare object exemplifies the type of lower-end production available to less well-off consumers.

Household objects acted as reminders to Renaissance parents of their duties, and the Holy Family was a powerful model of how a devout family should live. An early 16th-century maiolica inkstand in the Fitzwilliam collection, for instance, takes the form of a nativity scene: the infant Christ lies before an adoring Mary and Joseph while a cow and ass look over a stable door, their placidity testament to the wonder of the moment.

In Renaissance paintings, the Madonna appears as an ideal mother and educator – a compelling role model. “A painting of Virgin and child with John the Baptist by Pinturicchio, held by the Fitzwilliam, is a wonderful example,” says Howard. “It shows the Madonna teaching the young Jesus to read. Seated on her lap and encircled by her arms, he is perfectly absorbed in a book. Meanwhile, a boyish and pious John the Baptist provides a model for devotion by young children.”

Everyday objects could literally incorporate the sacred. An earthenware bowl in the Fitzwilliam Museum decorated with an image of the Madonna of Loreto bears around its rim the inscription: CON POL. DI S. CASA. This abbreviated Italian text tells us that the clay from which it was made contains dust (polvere) from the ‘holy house’ of the Virgin Mary, supposedly carried from Nazareth to Italy in the 13th century. Behind the Madonna is an outline of the Santa Casa with its tiled roof and bell tower.

At a time when much of the population was illiterate, owning devotional texts was important for surprisingly large swathes of the population. Even when closed, or unread, they exuded beauty and spiritual value within the domestic sphere. Brundin explains: “Sacred words, by their very presence, could provide protection. Some authors even advised writing the words of certain psalms on the walls to keep the family safe and as a reminder to pray regularly.”

Texts can offer clues to their owners. Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library holds a stunning hand-illustrated printed copy of the Meditation on the Life of Christ. Hand-written notes in its margins show that in 1528 it was given to a nun, Sister Alexia, by her uncle. Alexia’s annotations indicate that she read the work closely. She even added manicules (pointing fingers) next to passages of particular importance. ̽��ֱ��book was later owned by another nun, Teofila, whose own reading would have been guided by Alexia’s marks.

Objects accrue deeply personal meanings that are impossible to unravel fully. Careful investigation across disciplines can, however, offer a glimpse of the very human and very fragile hopes and fears embodied by objects, as Brundin explains: “A humble scrap of paper marked with a cross or a brief prayer, of no obvious artistic or literary merit, comes alive when we’re able to marry it with an archival record in which a devotee explains what it means to them.”

‘ ̽��ֱ��Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy’ by Abigail Brundin, Deborah Howard and Professor Mary Laven will be published by Oxford ̽��ֱ�� Press in 2018.

Inset image: This breve was probably folded and worn close to the skin around 500 years ago in the belief that the prayers would protect the wearer; Breve di S. Vincenzo Ferrerio contro la fibre, Civica Raccolta Stampe A. Bertarelli.

Rustic figurines of a resigned-looking Virgin clutching her child may have no obvious literary or artistic merit to us today. But understanding what they meant to the spiritual lives of their owners can offer a glimpse of the human hopes and fears that people have, for centuries, invested in inanimate objects.

̽��ֱ��tight bond between the domestic and the devotional can be seen in the material culture of the period – in paintings, ceramics and more. These objects tell us how closely daily life intersected with religious belief.

Mary Laven

Fitzwilliam Museum

This down-to-earth, glazed terracotta figurine of the Virgin could act as the focus of family prayers in a modest home

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How we fell in love with shopping

sjr81 — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:49:34 +0000

Opening at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge on March 24, Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment features 300 stunning objects, each revealing the tastes and hopes of its owners and the skills of the hands that made them. Following different collections of items, we see how Europeans shopped and brought novelties into their lives and their homes.

̽��ֱ��exhibition takes us on a visual adventure through the decorative arts, starting with bespoke Renaissance luxuries made in glass, bronze and maiolica. ̽��ֱ��impact of global trade soon changed European habits and expectations. Shoppers were seduced by the glamour of the exotic; they lusted after eastern objects, Arab designs, and became obsessed with all things Chinese and Japanese. New world products like tea, chocolate and sugar, powered frenetic trade. Commerce led to constant innovation and new technologies. In a single generation the idea of luxury was flipped on its head from being the preserve of the elite, to a universal desire. ‘Populuxe’ – popular luxury – was born.

By the Enlightenment, objects that were displayed in the home and worn on the body had transformed the look and feel of the world, and allowed for the creation of masterpieces in silk and silver, pearwood and porcelain.

Treasured Possessions is intended to take visitors back to the bazaars and workshops of the distant past. Prints of city markets, illustrated trade-cards and figurines of vendors are set beside the wares themselves. From gorgeous silks, silverware, jewels and porcelains, via shoes, armour and embroideries, to snuffboxes, tea-pots, fans and pocket-watches, Treasured Possessions sets strange and extraordinary items alongside objects that we still use every day.

̽��ֱ��exhibition has been co-curated by Dr Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Dr Melissa Calaresu, Dr Mary Laven and Professor Ulinka Rublack from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of History.

Dr Laven said: “Today, we spend half our lives shopping, and many of our acquisitions end up on the scrap-heap or boxed away in a garage or attic. Before industrial mass production, purchasing took much more skill and effort, and was often the result of complex negotiations between maker and shopper. ̽��ֱ��most significant things in life were not bought and sold off the shelf, but were hand-crafted in homes and workshops, customized for their owners. Acquisition was an art.”

̽��ֱ��show also allows us a glimpse of the many hidden wonders that remain off-view in the vaults of our national museums due to lack of space in the public galleries. On the eve of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s 200 year anniversary in 2016, more than 80 per cent of exhibition’s objects are taken from its reserves. For the first time, visitors will be able to see some of the Fitzwilliam’s least-known treasures, from a silver pocket-watch shaped like a skull to the most fabulous pair of bright yellow embroidered high heels.

Treasured Possessions will be complemented by two companion exhibitions ‘Close-up and personal: eighteenth-century gold boxes from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection’ (a loan show from the V&A) and ‘A Young Man's Progress’ by photographer Maisie Broadhead, a fictional modern narrative inspired by the costume-book of Matthäus Schwarz, a sixteenth-century German accountant, who recorded the clothes he wore throughout his life in what has become known as ' ̽��ֱ��First Book of Fashion'.

Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment runs from March 24 until September 6, 2015. Admission is free.

An exhibition of ‘treasured possessions’ from the 15th to the 18th centuries reveals how we first fell in love with shopping, and takes us back to an age when our belongings were made by hand and passed down through the generations.

̽��ֱ��most significant things in life were not bought and sold off the shelf, but were hand-crafted in homes and workshops...Acquisition was an art.

Mary Laven

Fitzwilliam Museum

Folding ‘Trompe l’oeil’ fan, English, c.1750

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

Yes

Q&A: how archives make history

amb206 — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 09:00:00 +0000

Archives unlock doors to the past. For the past seven years historian Dr John-Paul Ghobrial has been in pursuit of an extraordinary traveller called Elias of Babylon. Elias lived in the 17th century and journeyed from his birthplace in Mosul (Iraq) across Europe and as far as Peru and Mexico. Ghobrial’s research on the trail of Elias has taken him to archives in Europe, the Middle East and South America, as he has pieced together the clues left behind by Elias during his global adventuring.

Ghobrial, a specialist in the early modern period at Oxford ̽��ֱ��, is among the speakers addressing an international audience at a conference later this week (9-10 April 2014) at the British Academy. 'Transforming Information: Record Keeping in the Early Modern World' will look at the ways in which our understanding of the past has been shaped by archives. Ghobrial will talk about Eastern Christians who, like Elias, started new lives in Europe in the 17th century. Many used their linguistic talents to work as archivists and copyists of Middle Eastern manuscripts.

Convened by three Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� historians, the two-day event will focus on an era that saw an explosion in record keeping as a result of a growth in literacy, burgeoning bureaucracy and advances in technology. In many respects, there are parallels between this transformation and the information revolution taking place today as a result of digitisation.

Speakers from Europe and the USA will share their expertise in fields as diverse as French feudal records, information gathering in early modern Japan, and the use and misuse of papers at the epicentre of the Spanish empire. ̽��ֱ��sessions will consider from multiple viewpoints how, and just as importantly why, the archives that underpin much of historical research came into being.

Professor Alexandra Walsham, who is organising the conference with colleagues Dr Kate Peters and Liesbeth Corens, said: “When we examine an archive today in a library or online, we are seeing it stripped of the context that is so important to its meaning and significance. ̽��ֱ��creation, organisation, preservation and destruction of archives are never neutral or impartial activities: they reflects a society’s fundamental preoccupations and priorities.

She continued: “ ̽��ֱ��conference will look at the major surge in record-keeping in the early modern world against the backdrop of wider technological, intellectual, political, religious and economic developments. It should not be assumed that an archive provides unmediated access to the past; rather record keeping practices fundamentally shape - and skew - our vision of history.”

We asked ten of the conference participants to answer some key questions about archives with particular reference to the period 1500 to 1800.

1. What constitutes an archive in the early modern period?

Filippo de Vivo (Birkbeck, ̽��ֱ�� of London) replies:

Today, we think of archives as repositories of sources for the use of modern historians. But they originated as working tools of organisations (large or small) that produced large amounts of documents in the course of their activities. In the early modern period, many institutions showed an increasing awareness of the importance of preserving those records as information (about something: for example, population size) or proof (of, and often against, something: for example, territorial boundaries). Far from neutral collections, they were instruments of conflict.

As for their aspect and arrangement, think of cabinets, with chests and drawers – the word archive comes from the Latin arca, for box – but bags were also common. They were stacked at the back of offices with secretaries writing at their desks, and they increasingly occupied separate rooms; replete with documents bound or simply bundled together, they stretched back decades and even centuries. Some were neat and tidy, as indicated by this picture of the Venetian chancery – but others must have been decidedly messier, and we know that many different kinds of people went to archives to find out about legal precedents, fiscal duties, property rights, and so on: archives were full with people as much as papers.

Image: Cancelloria Superiore, Venice

2. How is our understanding of history shaped by archives?

Jesse Spohnholz (Washington State ̽��ֱ��) responds:

In the early 19th century archives began to acquire a privileged status among the new academic historians; they were seen to offer the most direct access to voices from past centuries. For all the opportunities that archives offer, they structure and limit our understanding of the past. Consider the decision of what records to keep and what to set aside. From the Middle Ages, archives were established by political or religious institutions, whose officials aimed to preserve the authority of those institutions. Thus evidence in archives is not simply descriptive of the past, but prescriptive of how a people understood their present and wanted later generations to understand the past. One result is a privileging of male voices with the result that religion and politics look more male-dominated to us today than they may have been.

Similarly, because state and church officials recorded and preserved records of their activities from their own perspective, historians have sometimes overemphasized the importance of centralised states and official churches in the pre-modern era, or have treated as marginal those people who those officials wanted to treat as marginal (so-called heretics or rebels). ̽��ֱ��actions of pre-modern record keepers have sometimes led historians to focus too much attention on kings, princes, magistrates, and clergy, and too little on the people who ignored, flaunted, deceived or skirted the attention of those institutions. By their very nature, archives align themselves with a side in past conflicts; and when historians use archives as representations of the past without considering the voices they intentionally excluded, they often inadvertently do much the same thing.

Image: 18th-century inventory from a Dutch archive (Jesse Spohnholz)

3. How are archives created?

Arnold Hunt (British Library) writes:

Archives grow and develop over time. They are the creation, not of a single person, but of a long succession of clerks, secretaries, archivists and curators who have reshaped and reorganised them. As a curator myself, I’m intrigued by the ways that the physical organisation of archives can affect – and sometimes obstruct – their use by historians. As the old saying goes: where do you hide a leaf? In a forest. Where do you hide a document? In an archive.

̽��ֱ��archives held at the British Library have often been rearranged in the course of cataloguing. Sometimes this is inevitable. If an archive arrives in a suitcase, two cardboard boxes and a carrier bag, what do you do? You have to create some sort of order out of chaos. But by imposing ‘order’ on the archive we also impose meaning and interpretation. Until quite recently we used to organise correspondence according to a system that reflected (probably unconsciously) the British class structure: ‘Royal Correspondence’ (the royal family), ‘Special Correspondence’ (the great and the good), and ‘General Correspondence’ (everybody else). Nowadays we organise it by ‘fonds’ and ‘sub-fonds’, but in 100 years’ time I daresay this system will seem equally quaint and arbitrary and our successors will wonder why we adopted it.

I’ve been trying to reconstruct some of the ways that early modern archives were originally organised – not an easy task, when the contents of the archives have been shuffled and reshuffled over the centuries. Secretaries played a crucial role in the making and storing of written records, but they are often shadowy figures whose intermediary role is only visible to us in the notes or ‘endorsements’ that they scribbled on the backs of letters as they filed them away. I want to bring these ‘invisible technicians’ to the centre of attention.

Image: Johann Amos Comenius, Orbis sensualium pictus quadrilinguis (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library)

4. Why were some records kept and others lost – and what can we learn from the gaps, silences and absences?

Kate Peters (Cambridge ̽��ֱ��) answers:

Most records were kept for the administrative purposes of the creating institution; the majority recorded transactions that either confirmed or exercised authority, or transferred resources. State records, and their keepers, therefore played an important role in the projection and maintenance of political power. My research explores this in the context of the political upheavals of the English civil wars.

̽��ֱ��collapsing authority of the Stuart monarchy is evident in the desperate attempts of Thomas Wilson, keeper of the State Paper Office, to control what was in his record office, and who could see it. Records considered ‘disadvantageous’ to the king were destroyed or locked away. Parliamentary regimes in their turn asserted their authority through record-keeping, establishing statutory provision to access the king’s papers, and prohibiting the removal of records from London because it would be prejudicial to the estates of his subjects. Records of the hated prerogative courts were destroyed. Parliamentary ordinances established registers of all estates and monies seized; by 1649, Levellers were calling for county record offices. Over the course of the English revolution state record keeping was transformed from a system by which the king’s authority was maintained, to one by which the rights of subjects, and later citizens, were asserted.

Record-keeping was a deeply political act: decisions about what was kept and what was destroyed can tell us a great deal about changing notions of legitimacy and political participation.

Image: Warrant from John Bradshaw, regicide and President of the Council of State in the republican regime asking for royalist papers to be sent to the State Paper Office ‘for publique use’ (National Archives)

5. What can we learn about (and from) the organisation of archives?

Kiri Paramore (Leiden ̽��ֱ��) writes:

How an archive is organised helps us understand when, how, and by whom it was used. My research focuses on the Confucian knowledge systems of early-modern Japan. Confucian discourse and correspondence at that time linked senior shogunal officials with the outside world, but also with simple village teachers. So writings of shogunal retainers, for instance, regularly turn up in forgotten archives of private figures of little status in peripheral areas. After kicking in the door of an old rice store (kura) housing a rich, forgotten private archive in northern Japan last year, the first thing a colleague did was to take photographs of how that room had looked (and been organised) when it was sealed 200 years ago. This helps to understand how, and by whom, the archive had been used.

Every archive has its own story. Archives of states are particularly interesting. For instance, the fact that military intelligence records are kept with anthropological or ethnological materials in academic archives of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868) indicates how that regime used such material. Short commentaries in vernacular language attached to each foreign (Chinese, Manchu, Dutch) document suggest this archive was created for the less educated but hereditarily more senior liege lords who were making real decisions about foreign relations.

How different thematic folios were organised gives us an insight into the perceptions of the original compiler, but also of his state employer, and about issues of academic practice, civilisational categorisation (whether a country or culture was seen as ‘civilised’, ‘barbarian’ or something in between), and the use of information during this time of rapid global transformation.

Image: A typical Tokugawa period ‘kura’ for rice storage (Kiri Paramore)

6. What archives are you using in your current research?

Jennifer Bishop (Cambridge ̽��ֱ��) responds:

I am currently working with the records of the London Goldsmiths’ Company. ̽��ֱ��Company kept extensive records that cover every aspect of corporate life in the early modern period, from the regulation of trade and the assessment of skill, to the arbitration of personal disputes between goldsmiths and their friends, colleagues, and neighbours. ̽��ֱ��Company court minutes provide a rich source of information about the everyday activities and interactions of goldsmiths at all levels of the Company hierarchy. This detailed information allows us to reconstruct the personal and professional ties that bound company members together, and gave them a sense of communal and occupational identity, in the early modern period.

These Goldsmiths’ records were written by the Company clerk, who was also responsible for their safekeeping: the court books were kept locked in a chest in the clerk’s room in Company Hall, and nobody could access them without his permission. ̽��ֱ��clerk occupied a unique position in the Company, both participating in and commenting on the practices and rituals of corporate life. These records may therefore be read not only as documentary evidence of official business, but as creative texts that reflect the personal concerns and habits of the clerks who wrote them. As such, the Company records highlight important intersections between the literary, social, and corporate spheres of early modern London.

Image: Goldsmiths' Company court minutes book (October 1557) (Goldsmiths' Company)

7. What particular challenges do archives present to you as a researcher?

Liesbeth Corens (Cambridge ̽��ֱ��) writes:

One of the main challenges (but also delights) about research in archives is that they were and are precious to people. ̽��ֱ��sense of responsibility to protect the memory of past communities and individuals has motivated the creation, selection, and censoring of record collections across the centuries. This makes analysing an archive and its development revealing, as the motivations behind archives give us insights into the preoccupations of past communities. But sometimes the records are of such value – emotionally and materially – that access to them is restricted.

In my research on English Catholics, I often handle documents which are to me interesting glimpses of past communities but for many Catholics are sacred relics and part of devotional cultures. These written relics are an explicit illustration of a much wider process in which records have significance other than mere records of past actions. These sensitivities have shaped what has been passed down across generations and how it is understood. Keepers protect both the materiality and interpretation of the records in their care: the fragility of records sometimes means they are not open for research or some elements of ancestors’ less virtuous past are not shown very easily. ̽��ֱ��negotiations between protecting and analysing the past are fascinating to study and a challenging but rewarding exercise.

Image: Thomas Braithwaite of Ambleside Making His Will, 1607 (Lakeland Arts Trust)

8. What is the relationship between private and public record-keeping?

Heather Wolfe (Folger Shakespeare Library) comments:

There are lots of similarities between how public records and private evidences and personal papers were stored in early modern England, in terms of bags, boxes, chests, bundles, files, drawers, and labels. Archival principles of arrangement didn't exist - antiquarians and others complained about how disorganized and dirty and mouse-eaten the public records were, and then other people went in and tried to clean them up and make sense of them, and then other people borrowed them and neglected to return them, and then other people got frustrated and tried to have them returned, to no avail! Clerks and keepers were torn between keeping up with the vast amount of documentation being produced on a daily basis by a wide range of bureaucratic entities, and dealing with an overwhelming backlog - the same challenge that faces archivists today.

̽��ֱ��private papers, or muniments, of England's landed gentry, were typically easier to keep under control. Property deeds were arranged by county, and each property might be "defended" with centuries'-worth of deeds, in case ownership was ever contested. Bills and receipts were often bundled together, and large account books and pedigrees maintained and saved. Different families saved other kinds of personal documents in a range of ways.

Some people saved their correspondence and personal papers, for example, or copied their letters into letter books and discarded the originals, while others burned or recycled them. Unless you came from a family with a long history in a single home with a "muniment" room, the chances of your papers surviving were pretty slim.

Image: Bundles of archives from a private collection (Heather Wolfe)

9. How can we best facilitate access to archives?

Valerie Johnson (National Archives) suggests:

Access to archives is a complex thing. When digitisation started coming in, it was widely seen as 'democratising the archive', and obviously, if something is digitised and available online, it massively increases access for those who might live hundreds or even thousands of miles away. But what happens if that digitised document is in medieval Latin? Digitising it doesn't improve 'access' at all for most people: they can't read the handwriting and even if they could, they can't understand the language.

So some things that look like an easy fix, aren't. And though digitisation is great for standard series like the census, putting material online can take the document out of context. Good cataloguing is in my opinion hugely important in opening up for others the potential treasure that might lie waiting to be uncovered within an archive. And access to the physical archive remains important - most people still get a huge thrill from having the original record in their own hands, feeling that there is nothing to beat the touch (and sometimes the smell) of the real thing.

But access to archives can only happen if there are archives to access - so the best way to facilitate access to archives is to value archivists, and their work.

Image: Magna Carta (National Archives)

10. What has been your most memorable or frustrating ‘archive moment’?

Mary Laven (Cambridge ̽��ֱ��) reports:

My most frustrating archive moment occurred after the publication of my first book: Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows in the Renaissance Convent. I wanted to embark on a new project in an unfamiliar Italian city, and so I decided to spend a month in Parma in Northern Italy looking at what appeared from the archive catalogue to be an extensive collection of early modern criminal records. On day one I was told that these records were invisibili (literally invisible, or unseeable, though I think this was an archivist's euphemism for 'mislaid'). Resolution: never again shall I broach a new archive without corresponding first with the staff.

More positively, I reckon my most memorable archive moment is about to happen. Yesterday I flew to central Italy with eight colleagues. We’re working on an ERC-funded collaborative project based in Cambridge: 'Domestic Devotions: ̽��ֱ��Place of Piety in the Renaissance Italian Home'. Our intention is to make a collective assault on the archives of the Marche. For the first time in my life this means that I'll be working alongside colleagues in a shared endeavour. Any problems with the palaeography? I'll ask one of the post-docs. Unsure what that devotional object was used for? My PhD student will know for sure. It's going to be bliss.

Image: Mary Laven and colleague examining documents in Macerata, Italy (Abigail Brundin)

̽��ֱ��early modern period (1500-1800) saw a surge in the keeping of records. A conference later this week (9-10 April 2014) at the British Academy will look at the origins of the archives that shape our understanding of history. We asked ten of the speakers to tackle some fundamental questions.

Record-keeping was a deeply political act: decisions about what was kept and what was destroyed can tell us a great deal about changing notions of legitimacy and political participation.

Kate Peters

John-Paul Ghobrial

Notarial document with the name of Elias in the left-hand margin, Archivo Histórico Provincial de Cádiz

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Yes

Piety in the Renaissance Home

sjr81 — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:12:51 +0000

̽��ֱ��ground-breaking interdisciplinary project ‘Domestic Devotions: ̽��ֱ��Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home’ will aim to demonstrate that religion played a key role in attending to the needs of the laity, and explore the period 1400-1600 as an age of spiritual - not just cultural and artistic - revitalisation.

̽��ֱ��project is one of only two projects from the Humanities and Social Sciences to be awarded ERC ‘Synergy’ funding, and the only project to be led by an exclusively female team. ̽��ֱ��competition for ERC funding attracted more than 700 applications, only 1.5 per cent of which were retained for funding.

By bringing together the study of books, buildings, objects, spaces, images and archives, the researchers aim to show how religion functioned behind the doors of the Renaissance home.

Devotions, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles or exorcisms, frequently took place within the home and were specifically shaped to meet the everyday demands of domestic life.

̽��ֱ��three principal investigators, Abigail Brundin (from the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages), Deborah Howard (Architecture and History of Art) and Mary Laven (History) offer a rare combination of expertise and experience across several disciplines.

̽��ֱ��project moves beyond traditional research on the Renaissance in other ways. Firstly, it breaks away from the ‘golden triangle’ of Venice, Florence and Rome in order to investigate practices of piety in three highly significant yet under-explored zones: Naples and its environs; the Marche in central Italy; and the Venetian mainland. Secondly, it rejects the standard focus on Renaissance elites in order to develop an understanding of domestic devotion across a wide social spectrum.

Abigail Brundin said: “Our pooled knowledge and expertise are key to this project, which, in the way of arts and humanities research, gains its strength and vitality from the bringing together of people, and the opportunity to arrive at a 360-degree view of a research question that alone we could never achieve.”

̽��ֱ��notion of the Renaissance as a ‘secular age’ is to be challenged by three ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers after securing €2.3m funding from the European Research Council.

Our pooled knowledge and expertise are key to this project.

Abigail Brundin

Piety in the renaissance home

Renaissance

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Yes

Objects of devotion

lw355 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:10 +0000

An earthquake ravages a small town in central Italy. Catastrophic fissures rip through the buildings; desperate cries can be heard from those whose houses are collapsing; others try to attract attention by standing on rooftops and waving their hands but to no avail. Only one home stands firm while the buildings all around it crumble to the ground. Here, the Viadana family kneels in quiet prayer; husband, wife and four sons, all neatly attired and strikingly tranquil amid the chaos, appeal to their local saint, Nicholas of Tolentino.

This compelling image is preserved among the remarkable collection of ex votos at Tolentino, in the Marche region of central Italy: nearly 400 painted wooden boards, dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries, usually about a foot long and orientated horizontally, purchased or commissioned by those who had been granted a miracle thanks to the intervention of St Nicholas.

Ex voto means ‘in fulfilment of a vow’ and the idea was that when one prayed to the Virgin Mary or to the saints for a miracle one would promise to leave an offering in return for a favour granted. This is why, in Italy and in other Catholic countries, shrines are sometimes bursting with objects and pictures like this one, each recording the miraculous activities of God’s busiest saints.

I have been drawn to thinking about ex votos as part of my project on ‘Objects of Devotion: ̽��ֱ��Material Culture of Italian Renaissance Piety, 1400–1600’ funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. My research reacts against the common misconception of the Renaissance as a secular age, characterised by luxury, individualism, worldliness and scepticism.

By focusing instead on the widespread ‘consumption’ of religious objects, I will cast light on the vibrant piety that shaped Renaissance lives. Through rosaries, crucifixes, Christ-dolls, statuettes, religious jewellery, devotional books and paintings, pilgrim souvenirs, and even instruments of self-mortification (the hair shirts or flails with which people in this period sometimes tested their faith), I aim to show that Renaissance shoppers filled their baskets with items that testified to a profound piety. But I shall also be asking why Catholic culture was defined by such a clutter of objects.

̽��ֱ��man who avoided Marys

Although focused on objects, my research will often be pursued via texts. Inventories and account books are the best means of informing us about patterns of expenditure in the Renaissance; trials carried out by the Inquisition can tell us about the uses and abuses of religious artefacts; meanwhile, the printed genre of the ‘miracle book’ provides essential context for understanding ex votos. During the first century or so of print, books that related the miracles accomplished by a particular saint were bestsellers. And when you come to read them, you can see why. Their dramatic recounting of some potentially horrific incident followed by a pious conclusion makes for a highly satisfying read.

Among my favourite stories is that of a lascivious and promiscuous man who nevertheless drew the line at having sex with any woman called Mary (an act which he considered profoundly blasphemous). Seeing an opportunity, the devil instigated a tryst between our hero and a woman who turned out to be named Maria. Fortunately, before the dreadful deed was committed, the man discovered the truth, and such was his remorse that he was saved from mortal sin by immediate death. That he then went straight to heaven, thanks to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, was a miracle indeed, even if it’s hard from a modern perspective to see that as a happy ending.

Other stories chart the aversion of disasters involving children – narratives with which anxious parents today can easily identify. We learn of the miraculous rescue of a girl who falls from the roof of her home where she has been sunning herself, and of the baby who incurs ‘monstrous’ injuries to the face and blindness in one eye after her nurse allows her to tumble into the hearth. One particularly graphic tale from a Florentine miracle book is of a boy who nearly suffocates when he becomes submerged in excrement after hiding from his mother in the latrine. He is pulled out unharmed, and miraculously fragrant, by the Virgin Mary herself.

Familiar, yet unfamiliar

Miracle books also shed light on the many different kinds of ex votos that were commissioned: not just painted representations of the miracle granted, but a whole range of three-dimensional objects, including wax items that have rarely survived. Most typical are the anatomical models: a pair of wax eyes or ears to record the recovery of a person’s sight or hearing, or a wax foot paid for by the mother whose little boy had been healed of a bad toe. ̽��ֱ��rich commissioned the same objects in silver. More humble folk might invest in candles identical in length to children that had been healed. Others hung up their crutches as a memento of their cure. Similar practices go back to antiquity and continue today at the great Catholic healing shrines such as Lourdes in France and Loreto in Italy.

As a historian therefore I’m left with a quandary. To what extent is the instinct to appeal for help from a saint or a divinity, or to make a public expression of gratitude for a calamity averted, a human constant?

To return to the ex voto commissioned by the Viadana family: at one level, the scene is all too familiar. Today, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, terrorist attacks and bombings continue to cause cities to crumble. And yet the appearance in the painting of a tonsured monk, buoyed along in a fluffy white cloud in the sky, is strikingly alien. It is this balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the universal and the particular, which will exercise me most during my research project.

In my attempt to establish what was distinctive about Renaissance piety, I shall be pursuing religion out of the church and into the neighbourhood and the home. It is already clear to me that the Italian household – far from being a site of worldly individualism – was saturated with religious practices and beliefs during this period. New attention to domestic devotions and the rich culture of objects that supported them will challenge our assumptions about the Renaissance mindset. This was a world in which the Virgin and saints were regular visitors, and in which materialism could be good for the soul.

Why did Renaissance shoppers fill their baskets with rosaries, crucifixes, Christ-dolls and devotional paintings? A new study by historian Dr Mary Laven investigates the significance of Catholic clutter, as she explains.

This was a world in which the Virgin and saints were regular visitors, and in which materialism could be good for the soul.

Dr Mary Laven

Objects of Devotion - Ex Votos

Courtesy of Museo do San Nicola in Tolentino

16th century votive offerings

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