The Natural History of a Neapolitan Miracle
The Natural History of a Neapolitan Miracle

Author: Francesco de Ceglia

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1040172350

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This book examines Naples’s patron saint, Gennaro, the history of his blood relic, and the mystery of its periodical liquefaction. Three times a year, Neapolitans gather to witness the recurring phenomenon of the liquefaction of San Gennaro’s blood. From the seventeenth century to the present, crowds have prayed to the city’s patron for protection from fires, earthquakes, plagues, droughts, and the fury of Mt. Vesuvius. In the “miraculous” moment of transposition from solid to liquid, the faithful seek respite from the ills of the world in the saintly blood, a visual reminder of the blood of Christ spilled for their salvation. In Naples, the periodical liquefaction of San Gennaro’s blood is not officially recognized as miraculous by the Catholic Church, which now more cautiously refers to it as a prodigy. Nevertheless, for centuries, this phenomenon has been called “a miracle” in liturgical texts approved by the ecclesiastical authority and in the words of bishops, cardinals, popes, and saints. However, not everyone agreed. This volume follows the efforts of theologians, alchemists, charlatans, and scientists who, through the centuries, have tried to answer questions such as: Is the liquefaction of San Gennaro’s blood really a miracle? If not, how is it possible to explain a phenomenon that occurs only on dates liturgically relevant to the saint? The Natural History of a Neapolitan Miracle will be of great value to those interested in Religious Studies, Italian Studies, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, as well as the History of Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography.

Virgil's Golden Egg and Other Neapolitan Miracles
Virgil's Golden Egg and Other Neapolitan Miracles

Author: Michael A. Ledeen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13: 1351297260

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Savvy Italians will tell you that Neapolitans are considered the cleverest, most imaginative, most romantic, and the most entertaining people in the country. The world's finest men's fashions are Neapolitan, Italy's most celebrated popular songs and a high proportion of popular and operatic singers are Neapolitan—starting with Enrico Caruso. Sophia Loren and Toto are famously Neapolitan. Divorce Italian Style and Marriage Italian Style were based on plays written by the great Neapolitan Eduardo de Filippo. If you check the Italian literary awards year after year, you will find an amazingly high proportion of Neapolitans walking off with the highest honors. Naples has been a great creative center for hundreds of years. Neapolitan creativity has survived centuries of foreign occupation, widespread misery, the end of its role as a great capital city, repeated natural catastrophes, and terrible epidemics. What accounts for the creativity of Naples? The sorcerer Virgil is said to have created a Golden Egg, inside a crystal sphere, to save Naples from natural catastrophe. The egg, locked in an iron cage, was buried beneath a castle—still known as the "Egg Castle"—to give it stability and to give eternal life to Naples. Michael Ledeen suggests some surprising answers in a highly original exploration of Neapolitan life and death that ranges from religion to organized crime, war and violence. His deep affection for this remarkable city and its people is evident on every page.

Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples
Nature and the Arts in Early Modern Naples

Author: Frank Fehrenbach

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-09-21

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 3110720485

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The literary, artistic, and scientific culture of early modern Naples is closely linked to the natural topography of the city, stretching from Iacopo Sannazaro’s poetic evocation of the Campania landscape to Giambattista Vico’s approach in which he anchors human civilization to the existential confrontation with natural forces. With the open sea, the rocky coastline, and the menacing presence of Vesuvius, the image of Naples, more than any other city in early modern times, is associated in the collective imagination with the forces of nature. Even the populace was interpreted as a force of nature. In this volume, art, literature, and science historians investigate the convergence of culture and nature in a unique geographic context.

Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History
Public Uses of Human Remains and Relics in History

Author: Silvia Cavicchioli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-08

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 1000752127

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The principal theme of this volume is the importance of the public use of human remains in a historical perspective. The book presents a series of case studies aimed at offering historiographical and methodological reflections and providing interpretative approaches highlighting how, through the ages and with a succession of complex practices and uses, human remains have been imbued with a plurality of meanings. Covering a period running from late antiquity to the present day, the contributions are the combined results of multidisciplinary research pertaining to the realities of the Italian peninsula, hitherto not investigated with a long-term and multidisciplinary historical perspective. From the relics of great men to the remains of patriots, and from anatomical specimens to the skeletons of the saints: through these case studies the scholars involved have investigated a wide range of human remains (real or reputed) and of meanings attributed to them, in order to decipher their function over the centuries. In doing so, they have traversed the interpretative boundaries of political history, religious history and the history of science, as required by questions aimed at integrating the anthropological, social and cultural aspects of a complex subject.

Shores, Surfaces and Depths
Shores, Surfaces and Depths

Author: Felicity Picken

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-26

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1040253466

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This book examines the oceanic presence in life on Earth, and the ways that we engage with the oceanic worlds for play, pleasure, adventure, and the pursuit of leisure and escape through tourism and travel. The oceanic ‘turn’ across the social sciences and humanities has produced a still proliferating opus of work that seeks to discover and emphasize oceanic presence in life on Earth. This literal and figurative ‘unearthing’ of blue spaces has encouraged scholars to gaze beyond the lands that have supported much of our experience and knowledge towards the gathering up of a more holistic appreciation of blue planetary life. This widening of scholarly attention – from ‘land’ to ‘sea’ – is occurring simultaneously across a range of disciplines and fields, including history, archaeology, anthropology, comparative literature, public policy, cultural studies, and geography. With an explicit focus on 'leisure' and 'tourism', this edited collection follows a growing appreciation that it is our seemingly inconsequential encounters – at play, for pleasure, and on holidays – that are increasingly present and influential in our oceanic relations. This volume will be of value to scholars and students interested in social and cultural history and environmental history and humanities.

The matter of miracles
The matter of miracles

Author: Helen Hills

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 742

ISBN-13: 1526100398

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This book investigates baroque architecture through the lens of San Gennaro’s miraculously liquefying blood in Naples. This vantage point allows a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of the power of baroque relics and reliquaries. It shows how a focus on miracles produces original interpretations of architecture, sanctity and place which will engage architectural historians everywhere. The matter of the baroque miracle extends into a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. The study will transform our understanding of baroque art and architecture, sanctity and Naples. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation to engage fiercely with materiality and potentiality and thus unleash baroque art and architecture as productive and transformational.

Catholic Cults and Devotions
Catholic Cults and Devotions

Author: Michael P. Carroll

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 1989-04-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0773561951

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Michael Carroll is the first to bring psychoanalytic theory to bear on a range of Catholic cults and devotions, including the Rosary, the Angelus, the Stations of the Cross, the Blood Miracles of Naples, the Stigmata, the Forty Hours, the Brown Scapular, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Carroll assembles a great deal of historical information that until now has been widely scattered in obscure publications. He suggests why such devotions are absent from the Protestant tradition and argues for a new and more subtle appreciation of the role that Italian Catholicism played in shaping Catholicism generally.

Souls of Naples
Souls of Naples

Author: Autori Vari

Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice

Published: 2024-03-21T14:32:00+01:00

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13:

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In this volume you will find stories about hyperactive relics, ghosts in spiritual or bodily form, as well as accounts of the dead being conjured, resurrected, and brought back to life from decomposing matter. This is not so much for the purpose of assembling a kind of Neapolitan Wunderkammer, but rather to allow these bodies – in physical or spiritual form, or sometimes both at the same time – to speak as protagonists, and to offer their own contribution to the historical anthropology of the Kingdom of Naples. This volume explores the boundaries between body and spirit, life and death, as well as the natural, preternatural, and supernatural in the long early modern era in southern Italy.