Praying in the Renaissance. A plurality of Theories, Texts, and Practices in a Changing Europe

The European Renaissance witnessed a profound renewal of the forms and content of prayer. Even before the 16th-century Reformation, the growing role of lay people, both men and women, in the religious sphere had given rise to new cults, fostered new practices, and generated new texts. This renewal intensified during the 16th and 17th centuries, deeply conditioned by confessional conflicts, but also energized by the use of print in vernacular languages. In contrast to existing studies, which are largely devoted to monastic prayer and books of hours and do not extend beyond the 15th century, this edited volume uses a multidisciplinary approach and relies on the collaboration of international specialists to elucidate the transformations that occurred at the beginning of the modern period in what constituted a central practice of religious life, both collective and individual. He thus offers a unique synthesis of the history of prayer during the Renaissance in all its dimensions, institutional as well as informal, spiritual as well as physical and material, taking into account domestic practices and the contribution of women, the diversity of prayer books and the importance of catechisms, images and devotional objects. He thereby provides a truly renewed perspective on the subject and opens up numerous avenues for future research.Table of Contents: ERMINIA ARDISSINO, Introduction ; Partie 1. Prayer and Devotion: New Theories and Historical Changes: MARIE BARRAL-BARON DAUSSY, Erasme, Homme de Prière ; STEPHAN C. REIF, Jewish Prayer in Sixteenth-Century Europe ; MARY JANE HAEMIG, God’s Command and Promise: Luther and His Followers on Prayer; DONALD K. MCKIM, John Calvin on Believing in Prayer and Praying; CHRISTIAN GROSSE, La culture liturgique de la prière dans les sociétés calvinistes et zwingliennes de la première modernité (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles) ; TADGHT Ó HANNRACHÁIN, Proper and Improper Prayer as a Confessional Frontier in Early Modern Ireland ; STEFANO VILLANI, Conversion, Conquest, and Prayer. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer and its Translations; Partie 2. Novelties, Traditions, Texts: ELISE BOILLET, La prière du Notre Père à la Renaissance ; PIERRE-ANTOINE FABRE, Le sens de la prière dans les Exercises Spirituels d’Ignatius de Loyola ; DANILO ZARDIN, Nel coro della fraternità. Uffici della Vergine e libri di preghiera per confraternite tra primo e tardo Cinquecento; EDOARDO BARBIERI, La preghiera ‘a stampa’: il rosario e l’opera di Alberto da Castello o.p.; ELEONORA CARINCI, Praying to the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Europe: Texts and Contexts; STEPHANIE WODIANKA, In Quest of the ‘Inner Voice’: Spiritual Sonority and Polyphonies of Silence in Mental Prayer (Post-Tridentine France and Italy); HELENE MICHON, La prière mentale et les étapes de la vie spirituelle; Partie 3. Practices and Tools: RALPH DEKONINCK-INGRID FALQUE, Images and Devotional Practices (Fifteenth-Seventeenth Centuries): Historiographical and Historical Approaches; ALEXANDER J. FISHER, Music and Prayer in the Renaissance; BRUNO RESTIF, Corporeality and Materiality of Prayer in Western Europe (late 15th and 16th centuries); MARCO FAINI, Prayer and Domestic Devotions in Early Modern Italy; GABRIELLA ZARRI, Voci di donne. Modi e forme della preghiera femminile nel Rinascimento; LEE PALMER WANDEL, Teaching Prayer: Reformation Catechisms; ERMINIA ARDISSINO, Praying at the Roman Oratorio. Filippo Neri’s Novelties and Heritage.