The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death

Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy

Bibliographic Data

ID4771321
AuthorsSharon T Strocchia (0000-0002-0315-7543), Sharon Strocchia, Cohn (0000-0002-4490-5034), Samuel K Cohn
Year1994
Volume25
Issue2
Pages308
Publication date1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-1953 • E-ISSN: 1530-9169
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/206362
OpenAlexW2114073999
LanguageEN
Citations received9

In 1363 the Black Death struck central Italy for the second time, causing a detectable shift notions of the afterlife and patterns of charitable giving. Throughout Tuscany and Umbria, patricians and peasants alike abandoned their previous practice of dividing bequests into small sums, combining them instead into last gifts to enhance their fame and glory and that of their lineages. Illustrative of the new mentality, religious art patronage spread to new social classes, touching even peasants, who sought to be represented in their very likeness at the feet of their patron saints. From the supposed center of Renaissance culture--Florence--to the citadel of Franciscan devotion--Assisi--this change sentiment spurred new levels of demand for monumental burials, testamentary commissions for art, and other efforts to exert control over the living from the grave.In his award-winning study, Death and Property Siena, historian Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., used close analysis of last wills to chart transformations mentalities over a six-hundred-year history. In The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death, he applies the same methods to compare six Italian city-states--Arezzo, Florence, Perugia, Assisi, Pisa, and Siena--showing the rise of a new Renaissance cult of remembrance. But this new cult was not Burckhardt's Renaissance individualism tout court. Instead, the new piety grew tandem with reverence for the ancestors and a strong sense of family identity that flowed down male blood lines

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art history · Central city · Cult · Economic geography · Geography · Sociology · The Renaissance · Demography · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies