Cristianesimo nella storia, volume XXV/3, settembre 2004, di Simon Ditchfield (York)
This book is a very important contribution to our understanding of the construction of sanctity in early modern Italy. In a steady flow of scholarly articles dating from 1987 the author has established himself as the leading authority on sanctity in Naples from the sixteenth down to the nineteenth-century (for an account of 19th century sanctity in the city by this author, see this journal, 1997, 557-78). Unlike Jean-Michel Sallmann's broader study of saints and society in the Kingdom of Naples between 1550-1750. (Santi barocchi, 1994. ed orig. Paris, 1994), whose sample was based essentially on the printed vitae of all those seen to enjoy fama sanctitatis, Sodano's book examines a very clearly circumscribed sample in systematic and exhaustive detail. The result, however, is by no means simply a monument to erudite campanilismo. Instead, we have a highly illuminating and richly contextualised account of the manifold ways in which men with a holy reputation (there are no women in Sodano's sample), had their virtues and miracles first constructed into narratives, according to the articuli (or questions) formulated by the locally-appointed procurator of the individual cases, before they were then critiqued by the promoter of the faith, working on behalf of the Congregation of Rites in Rome; above all in the latter's written animadversiones (or objections).
The book is divided into two main sections. The first examines the construction of what Sodano terms the "peripheral" models of sanctity around four figures (the dales in parenthesis refer to the period of the candidate's ordinary, i.e. diocesan, trial): the Theatine. Andrea Avellino (1614-19); the Dominican, Giovanni Leonardo de Fusco (begun 1620); the lay Capuchin, Geremia da Valacchia (begun 1625) and the Jesuit, Franccsco De Geronimo (1716-26). The fact that all four men were members of religious orders calls to mind Peter Burke's rather obvious point that candidates for canonization required institutional backers capable of maintaining pressure over the medium to long term required to bring their case to a successful conclusion. (Though here it should be observed straightaway that such institutional support constituted the necessary but by no means sufficient condition for success, for only De Geronimo and Andrea d'Avellino were actually proclaimed saints). For Sodano, the fact that all four candidates enjoyed the support of their religious order enables him to: "individuare come alcuni Ordini religiosi abbiano impostato i processi di canonizzazione in modo da proporre una propria tipologia del santo'" (42). The second section examines the same candidates, plus a few others to make his sample more representative, (Francesco Caracciolo, Camillo de Lellis, Giovanni Giuseppe della Croce, Bonaventura da Potenza, Domenico Girardelli, Bernardino Realino and Francesco Olimpio), from the perspective of the «centre», Rome. [...]