Civic Christianity In Renaissance Italy By David D Andrea

Reviewed work: Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400-1530 by David D’Andrea

With Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy: The Hospital of Treviso, 1400-1530, David D’Andrea provides the first English written monograph about Treviso in the Early Renaissance. Generally, both historians and the public have been known to record and prioritize the main cities of Renaissance Italy, such as Rome, Venice and Florence, and do not focus in great detail on the history of the smaller surrounding regions. It can be said that the surrounding regions are actually more representative of ordinary life during this great period, and it is from this that we can see the significance of D’Andrea’s original work. Within this book,

In his attempts to do this, the author explores ordinary life and struggles seen on the Venetian mainland while focusing simultaneously on the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti. This book gives a much needed contribution to confraternity studies, as it highlights the significance of these institutions in the centuries during and after their foundations. The most notable sections of the book use the confraternity as a key to understanding the complex relationship between Venice and Treviso. D’Andrea suggests that the confraternity became even more significant as a symbol of civic pride in the years following the loss of independence to Venice. Trevisans saw their confraternity as a representation of their city’s independent identity within the state whereas Venetians saw the solid governance and the good works of the confraternity as a source of stability for the state. D’Andrea provides a good interpretation of the religious association and social welfare with the state politics here, presenting how religion permeated the social fabric at the beginning of the modern age, and the role it played in the creation of civic

The critical relationship between provincial powers and the central government at this time are discussed in quite vivid detail. His study also contributes to other important areas of historical significance, such as the history of popular religion, poor relief, medicine, and education, which are areas that he has really brought to life in this book. It is with the use of photographs and floor maps that we get a real sense of the hospital which is so well described in his writing. With the hospital being such an important feature of the book, the visual aids are a very beneficial element to the reader. The use of thematic chapters is a very useful method employed by D’Andreas, as it further promotes the neat structure of the book. The introduction puts forward some of the debates as to why confraternities were such crucial factors of the civic, social, religious and economic areas of Renaissance