Preliminary Programme

I will try to raise hypothesis and questions - more than definitive answers - about the ways in which Northern Portuguese wall paintings may have been used. A parish church was a cluster of spaces with particular uses (chancel, nave – with its funerary arches, private chapels, baptismal font). In Portugal, the responsibility for the upkeep of parish churches was divided between the abbot (or the patron), who took care of the chancel, and the parishioners, who took care of the nave; some images were compulsory (those ordered by bishops in their Constitutions and by their diocesan visitors) but other images were the result of the free will of their commissioners. It is my belief that, when trying to guess what could have been the intended uses of late medieval wall paintings in Northern Portuguese parish churches, all these aspects should be taken into consideration. For instance, images of St Christopher, of the Mass of St Gregory or of the Epiphany placed in the side walls of the nave and in front of portals from where they could easily have been seen were most probably chosen for an intended prophylactic use; nevertheless, the choice to depict a Mass of St Gregory in a chancel may have been to stress the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. (Show less)

Scholarship on life in early modern convents is thriving. These, however, were just one of many Catholic institutions in which people shared a confined space and which were regulated by detailed regimes. How such regimes intersected with contemporary notions and practices of health is the focus of this paper. In the 1610s the Jesuits of the Collegio Romano took to court a neighbor whose new house allegedly prevented the circulation of winds, causing illness in the young students. The system of Roman Canon law allowed the Jesuits and their neighbor to turn to physicians for expert witnessing. Their testimonies offer tantalizing glimpses into the layout of the space inhabited by the students, and hygienic practices at the College. Physicians’ concern for the health of such communities was the result of the increasingly vital Hippocratic tradition, with its emphasis on morbity and mortality patterns, as well as on the effects on health of geographical location and architectural layout of buildings. However, Counter Reformation regimes primarily aimed at fostering spiritual rather than bodily health. The medical and the devotional perspectives intersected in various ways: following the legal case will allow discussion on how boundaries between different notions and practices of health were negotiated at the heart of the Catholic world. (Show less)

Religious practices have always been associated to objects, images, and inscriptions which were found in public and private spaces: houses, churches, charitable and educational institutions. In early modern Western Europe, these visual and textual devices were ideal media for sponsoring codes of behaviour, and convey moral as well as religious messages to a wide and heterogeneous audience. This included adults and children of both sex, from the learned elites and also the less privileged and largely illiterate social groups. Education, good behaviour, and knowledge of the divine, were experienced, from an early stage of life, through the aid of images, devotional objects and children toys which were charged with moral and spiritual meanings. These items aimed at stimulating edifying thoughts and behaviours, by recalling codified pedagogical and moral discourses. Most importantly these items largely appealed to emotions and the senses. Drawing on a selection of texts of good household government, and on images from Fifteenth and Sixteenth century Italy, my paper explores the role of objects and images in education and learning arguing that sight, hear, touch, taste, and smell, played a consistent part in early modern discourses on the nature and construction of the individual. (Show less)

The Puritan householder John Bruen (d.1625) had a faithful servant known as ‘Old Robert’ who was acclaimed for his knowledge of scripture. According to Bruen’s biographer, Old Robert crafted a long leather girdle with partitions, thongs and knots to represent every book and chapter of the Bible in order. This mnemonic device enabled Robert to recall any saying or sentence from the Bible and so he became “a godly Instructor” to the household. When Robert died his Master Bruen set up the belt in his study as a “monument” of God’s mercy and Robert’s piety and industry. The story of Old Robert’s girdle reminds us that even the strictest Protestants made use of material props to aid religious duties. This paper will explore the role of the visual and material in propagating and advancing the reformed faith in post-Reformation households. I will argue that biblical imagery was employed as the subject of domestic decoration (such as plasterwork, wall painting and wood carving) in order to prompt and guide pious meditation on points of Protestant doctrine. (Show less)