Browsing by Subject "Catholicism"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Nation-building and Catholic assistance to migrants in Italy's transition from land of emigration to immigration, 1861-1990
    (2014-03) Venditto, Elizabeth O'Ressa
    This dissertation analyzes how Italian Catholic missionaries understood Italian migrants' relationship to both an abstract Italian nation and a concrete Italian nation-state, and how those understandings affected the spiritual and charitable work that missionaries undertook with Italian migrants. Massive emigration after Italian unification in 1861 embarrassed the new state, and it attempted, with limited success, to convince Italians that they were part of an Italian national community, even abroad. Although the new state and the Catholic Church remained officially estranged until the 1929 Lateran Accords, Italian missionaries employed their own version of Italian nation-building as a key strategy for maintaining migrants' Catholicism abroad. Missionaries, including Scalabrinians, Salesians, Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, and the missionaries of the Opera Bonomelli, followed Italian migrants around the world and created Italian Catholic communities and institutions. Missionaries frequently collaborated with the Italian state both before and after the Lateran Accords, and though missionaries always insisted on their independence from the Italian state, their relationship with the state was complex and often contested under both the Liberal (1861-1922) and Fascist (1922-1943) governments. By the mid-twentieth century, Italian missionaries' work evolved into a universal migrant ministry rather that one focused exclusively on Italians. Missionaries began to argue for a more expansive notion of the Italian national community and greater political and social inclusion for the migrants who arrived in Italy in the late twentieth century. This project examines the complex intertwining of religion and nation-state in a country known for its weak state, strong Church, and high levels of mobility.
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    Tangible Women: Marble Sculptures of Female Saints in Seventeenth-Century Rome
    (2023-06) Patton, Ashley
    This dissertation investigates how early modern sculptors employed different typologies of white marble sculpture to present an archetypal, yet largely inimitable model of the post-Tridentine, ideal Christian woman. Employing a mix of extensive fieldwork and historical investigations, I present four case studies that are broadly representative of the era’s major typologies which have so far gone unremarked upon in the literature: reclining women in ecstasy or death, freestanding statues on altars, and multimedia reliefs. These sculptures include Stefano Maderno’s "St. Cecilia" (1600), Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s "St. Teresa in Ecstasy" (1647–1652), Ercole Ferrata’s "St. Agnes on the Pyre" (1660–1664), and Melchiorre Cafà’s "St. Catherine of Siena" (1662–1667). My research contextualizes the complex and fluctuating status of holy women in seventeenth-century Rome by investigating these sculptures through a material and gendered lens. This dissertation reveals how marble statues of female saints mobilized specific moments from each woman’s biographical narrative to embolden post-Tridentine attitudes towards feminine sanctity, contributing to new and innovative scholarly debates on gender, religion, and sculptural materiality in early modern studies. Ultimately, I argue that marble sculptures of female saints oscillated between embodied purity and material sensuality, creating a paradox of story, purpose, and form for the early modern viewer to unravel.