The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death by Samuel K Cohn Jr

The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death by Samuel K Cohn Jr

In his award-winning study, Death and Property in Siena, historian Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., used close analysis of last wills to chart transformations in mentalities over a six-hundred-year history. Now, in The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death, Cohn applies the same methodology to fashion a comparative history of six Italian city-states - Arezzo, Florence, Perugia, Assisi, Pisa, and Siena - showing the rise of a new Renaissance cult of remembrance. In 1363 the Black Death devastated central Italy for the second time, causing a detectable shift in notions of afterlife and patterns of charitable giving. Throughout Tuscany and Umbria, patricians and peasants alike abandoned the practice of dividing their bequests into small sums, combining them instead into last gifts to enhance their fame and glory. But this new cult of remembrance, Cohn argues, does not support Burckhardt's thesis of Renaissance individualism. Instead, the new piety grew in tandem with reverence for ancestors and a strong sense of family identity founded on the importance of male blood lines. But rather than retreat into the religious pessimism of earlier times, survivors of the plague would develop into a new generation of art patrons, albeit one with a taste for distinctively cruder and more regimented forms of religious art. From the supposed center of Renaissance culture - Florence - to the citadel of Franciscan devotion - Assisi - the widespread change of sentiment created a new demand for monumental burials, testamentary commissions for art, and other efforts to exert control over the living from beyond the grave.

This is a rich, provocative book that builds important bridges between local Italian and European studies, and establishes new conversational ground between historians of religion, society, and artJournal of Interdisciplinary History The results of Cohn's research add weight to an interpretation, now out of favor, focusing on the rise of individualism. This is all to the good and should elicit lively responses. American Historical Review

Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., is professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the author of The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence and co-editor of Portraits of Medieval and Renaissance Living: Essays in Memory of David Herlihy. His Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in the Italian Renaissance and Death and Property in Siena, winner of the Catholic Historical Association's Howard R. Marraro Prize for Italian History, are also available from Johns Hopkins.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780801856068
ISBN 10	080185606X
Title	The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death
Author	Samuel K Cohn Jr
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Johns Hopkins University Press
Year published	1997-08-10
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.