Periodic Reporting for period 3 - NeMoSanctI (New Models of Sanctity in Italy (1960s-2010s).A Semiotic Analysis of Norms, Causes of Saints, Hagiography, and Narratives)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-03-01 al 2022-08-31
NeMoSanctI studies how models of sanctity have changed especially after the Second Vatican Council and their relationship with the culture of a country exemplum of strong Catholicism: Italy. To this end, it applies a pioneering semiotic method which will allows the comparative analysis of a corpus of texts of different genres:
- normative texts regulating sanctity emanating from the Church;
- judicial texts, i.e. causes of canonization of three famous Italian saints (Padre Pio, Gianna Beretta Molla, and Gerardo Maiella), with a focus on the dialectics between the models proposed by laic witnesses and by ecclesiastic inquirers;
- narrative texts, i.e. a sample of popular hagiography, of official hagiographic collections, and of Italian literary texts, where the theme of sanctity tends to be unconventionally elaborated and dissociated from Catholic values.
Despite its relevance for a deeper understanding of the role of religion in today’s culture, a systematic research on new models of sanctity and on their intertextual codification is still missing. By carrying out this research and by proposing an innovative semiotic methodology for the analysis of models of life perfection, NeMoSanctI will have a significant impact on numerous disciplines, especially semiotics, religious and cultural studies, critical studies of hagiography and canon law, literary and Italian studies.
OFFICIAL HAGIOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS: We have compared Martyrologium Romanum and Bibliotheca Sanctorum and also expanded our research to digital forms of organization of the knowledge about saints (e.g. online encyclopedias of saints). This research is exposed in a paper by J. Ponzo and G. Marino accepted by the journal Semiotica. The Martyrologium is also the subject of 2 more publications and of 4 conference presentations by G. Marino. The PI presented her research on the Bibliotheca at the 2019 annual conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR, Tartu). We have also focused on other liturgical texts listing saints, in particular the litanies, which are the subject of a book chapter by the PI, G. Marino and F. Galofaro published in an international volume about this particular genre, as well as of two further articles by F. Galofaro and M. Kubas.
CAUSES FOR SAINTS AND POPULAR HAGIOGRAPHIES: We have analyzed the causes for canonization and hagiographies of St. Gerardo Majella, St. Pio of Pietralcina and St. Gianna Beretta Molla. M. Papasidero published one paper about Saint Gerardo and one further paper about this saint is forthcoming. F. Galofaro has so far published 2 papers about Saint Pio. The PI has submitted an article about St. Gianna to the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and delivered a presentation at the 14th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS) in Buenos Aires (Argentina). Regarding the field of popular hagiographies, we are exploring a plurality of textual genres, e.g. comics, ex voto and digital texts. So far, we have organized a panel entitled “Pop hagiographies: From ex-votos to Internet memes” at the Associazione Italiana per lo Studio della Santità, dei Culti e dell’Agiografia (AISSCA) annual conference (2020 Rome), delivered 7 conference presentations and published 1 book chapter.
NARRATIVES: We are exploring literary texts from the post-Tridentine period to our days and we have published several papers about the representation of saints in novels and tales. We are organizing a seminar planned for May-June 2021 about “Spiritual autobiographies”, which will involve scholars from many disciplines and specialized in different religious traditions and epochs.
NeMoSanctI’s team members manage a website (nemosancti.eu) a FB page and a Youtube channel. Regarding the latter, of particular relevance is the video series SemioPills, in which we interview prominent scholars in the field of semiotics of religion about themes of interest for NeMoSanctI.
Furthermore, we carry out an innovative study of modelizing epystemologies, i.e. a semiotic study of texts offering an encompassing view of sanctity by listing all the saints and supplementing their names with a short description of their lives emphasizing the grounds characterizing each of them. We consider these texts as syntagmatic chains of signs based on a paradigm formed by a set of epistemological, religious and cultural principles.
NeMoSanctI is characterized by two key features: 1) the attention to the intertextual network through which models of sanctity are built and represented by different cultural and social subjects, which entails the analysis of a corpus composed of texts of many different genres; 2) the opening of our research’s scope to genres and works which have been scarcely studied up to now (e.g. popular hagiographies and neglected literary works). Thanks to these features, at the end of the action it will be possible to look at the phenomenon of sanctity from a privileged angle characterized by an extraordinarily broad span but also by a coherent methodological perspective.