頭脳循環を加速する若手研究者戦略的海外派遣プログラム | 若手研究者派遣-活動報告書

        One More Institution, One Less Collaboration

        “Routine” Preaching in Late Medieval Italy: A Franciscan Preacher’s Diary (1484–1507)

        Promoting a New Civic Institution: The Life of San Bernardino da Siena and the Hospital of Lodi

        Local- and Translocal Networking of Turkish Immigrants in Duisburg, Germany

Discussion will be held in English, Italian and Japanese, with the support of interpreter.

Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli (University of Bologna)

    There was a great need  for credit in  the cities  of the Late Middle Ages. Consumer credit  as well as credit for small  businesses was necessary. The merchant-changers were able to resolve only part of this need. Everyone and anyone who had even a small sum of money lent it but without firm rules. The Christian theory against lending money with interest had the effect of making credit complicated and expensive. The civic authorities had the idea of offering Jews the possibility to open credit-banks which operated in accord with established regulations (condotte). In this way Christian society delegated an important function to non-Christians. As a reaction to this contradiction the Observant Friars proposed the Montes Pietatis. This institution managed to overcome a centuries-long opposition to interest-based credit. The Montes invented ethical credit, a hybrid practice that is still a cause for discussion today. With the Montes the cities had a new system with which to obtain credit  but in many cases they missed the opportunity to collaborate and to co-exist with non-Christians.

    Popular Franciscan Observant preachers, like Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) and Bernardino of Feltre (1439–1494), played an active religious and social role in Italian cities in the fifteenth century. The civic authorities of cities competed amongst themselves to invite these charismatic preachers to their cities, and their sermons filled piazzas with men and women who came to listen to them. Their sermons encouraged their audience to turn words to action—reconciliations between factions, enactment of sumptuary laws, or instituting the Montes Pietatis.

    However, historical documents give us very little information on the majority of preachers—the “not so famous” preachers. In this paper, I will focus on the “ordinary” preachers in late fifteenth-century Italy by examining the unpublished diary of an anonymous Observant preacher. The small notebook, now owned by the Foligno City Library, is an account of the preacher’s experience of his itinerant preaching in northern and central Italy over a period of 24 years. Most of the topics of his sermons were standard for Observant sermons. This anonymous preacher—unlike Bernardino da Feltre, a contemporary prominent preacher—did not preach on subjects such as the Montes Pietatis and factional strife. The diary is, therefore, a unique historical document that enables us to reconstruct “routine” preaching at that time.

    The preacher delivered Lenten and Advent sermons for a number of years, repeating a similar schema. He preached as a matter of “routine.” This does not, however, mean that the preacher had no connection with urban life and society. His preaching at times influenced the civic authorities to take measures against blasphemy; at other times, he was compelled to revise the content of his sermons to maintain secular and religious peace. Therefore, both “famous” and “not so famous” Observant preachers had an impact on urban life at different levels.

    In the fifteenth-century, many cities in the north of Italy funded great and centralized hospitals as cornerstone for a reform of their poor relief and health policies. The urban authorities sought help for promoting these new institutions in preachers like Michele da Carcano and Bernardino da Feltre, who were asked to convince the citizens of the advantages of the great hospitals and to raise funds for them.

    In this historical context, also the hagiographical life of San Bernardino of Siena (who was canonized in 1450) could be used to promote this kind of institutions. In fact, in his secular life before entering the Franciscans, Bernardino was exemplar in serving the sick and the poor in the great Ospedale della Scala of Siena during a pestilence. This episode could be presented as a model that gave visibility not only to religious virtues but also to political values and projects. This is the case of Lodi, where an unusual life of San Bernardino that emphasized his service in the hospital was painted in 1467, in the same years in which the implementation of a new general hospital was under discussion in the city. The frescoes depicted a religious and civic ideal, a model of sanctity firmly connected with the life of the city. In fact, they showed the charity of San Bernardino as inseparable from a civic institution like the Ospedale della Scala. This had a peculiar meaning in the local context of Lodi, showing the exemplar charity of Bernardino not only as a religious virtue but also as a political value. In this way, the new saint served as a sort of advertisement for the new civic institution. The message was that, like the famous hospital of Siena had promoted both the health and the sanctity of that city, an analogous institution could do the same in Lodi. In this way, religious virtues and civic propaganda were strictly connected.

    Since the second half of the 19th century the City of Duisburg has developed as one of the important economic centers in the large urban-industrial Rhine-Ruhr Agglomeration Area based on the coal mining and steel industry.  Marxloh district was the trading center of the northern part of the city offering every kind of commercial goods and social facilities until the 1950s.  From the late 1960s many Turkish immigrants flowed into this district as guest workers on the industrial sites in order to make up for the labor shortage because of the outflow of German population to suburb.  Today the substantial part of the second or third generations of the former immigrants has gained success as self-employed.  They have founded the own network with twofold character: on the one hand, Turkish commercial association in Duisburg (TIAD) works for the　revitalization of  the local shopping street in collaboration with the German association.  On the other hand, they provide the Turkish goods (bridal dress, jewelry and the other luxury items) as a node for the translocal network among Turkish communities in Germany and other European countries.  The existence of such an own network also brings new investment from Turkey.  Therefore this network plays an important role of the global trade function that the municipal govern of Duisburg plans to get the position of the logistic hub in Europe.