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A model of ‘Civic religion’, understood as municipal attempts to develop legitimacy through sacred language and devotional activities, is now widely used by historians of late medieval and renaissance Europe. In this seminar Andrews will propose that the model requires some fine-tuning, to acknowledge the institutionally creative and divergent political and religious realities of central and northern Italy, the area associated historiographically with the original concept.
Frances Andrews is Professor in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her books include The Early Humiliati (1999), The Other Friars (2006) and several co-edited collections, among which Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy (2013) and Doubting Christianity: the Church and Doubt (2016) are the most relevant to this seminar.