Literary and Visual Forms of a Domestic Devotion: The Rosary in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

The Rosary is one of the most widely practiced forms of domestic devotion in modern Italy. Literature and cinema document the deep penetration of this form of prayer into the culture and lives of Catholic Italians. The Rosary, how-ever, is not rooted in the ancient past, as some other prayers are; the practice dates to the late fifteenth century, and became widely diffused in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The period of the spread of Rosary was one Italy characterised by prominence places cultures, defining intellectual professions and political theories of of laity in intellectual and social life, new religious doctrines, formation European confessionalism. some char-acterized the early modern played a role in the development and spread of the devotional practice under consideration. I would particularly underline the importance of printing, the role of the laity, the Reformation, and open confrontation between different peoples, religions and cultures (with the con-sequence that many commercial routes and forms of labour and production were altered dramatically), as fundamental elements that contributed to the spread of the Rosary.