The GLOBECOSAL project investigates the multiple functions of artworks in the process of negotiating sanctity with the Roman Curia in the age of Iberian hegemony (1500–1700). In the post-Tridentine period, saints came to serve spiritual, ideological and propagandistic purposes. The overall neglect in art history of local constructions of sanctity competing with those formulated by the Tridentine church is particularly invidious with regard to blesseds and saints connected in different ways to the process of European expansion, specifically to the Iberian empires.
Promoting a cause for canonization amounted to a lengthy and involved process of negotiation between the party requesting a candidate's canonization and the Curia, which decided upon admittance into the rank of the saints. Artworks were the primary means by which the masses of the faithful learned of a prospective saint's deeds and were invited to venerate and invoke a saintly figure. Veneration was stimulated through artworks both locally and at a distance, promoting the saintly reputation that was essential to the process leading up to canonization. This project examines not only the artworks produced in relation to the pioneers of Catholic sainthood in the post-Tridentine global context, but also failed attempts at beatification or canonization of venerated saintly figures.
How did artworks participate in the negotiation of sanctity between the Roman Curia and the promoters of saintly figures first venerated in newly Christianized territories? In addressing this question, the project considers, as a hypothesis, to what extent such artworks might reveal an underlying negotiation of the 'new' Catholic communities' spiritual status within universal Catholicism. As official recognition affirmed the society which had made a saint its own, the artworks produced to secure such recognition were vehicles of these communities' self-representation within the broader framework of social identity formation.
GLOBECOSAL adopts a perspective founded upon the historiographic concept of histoire croisée. It traces the circulation of material objects and iconographies within and between global networks of knowledge transmission, highlighting the power dynamics that undergird relationships of exchange. Concepts from critical sociology are drawn upon to describe a hypothetical 'global market of symbolic values'. In the situation of competition between early modern religious 'fields', the 'capital' represented by sanctity conferred religious legitimacy to a field as a whole. The Curia was the authority which granted access to the 'symbolic capital' of sanctity. To describe the construction of identity inherent in a saint’s portrayal in artworks, a Panofskyan concept of iconology relying on textual and visual sources is complemented by the full range of methods connected in the broadest sense with Visual Studies (Bildwissenschaft). Examination of the convergence of religious and sociopolitical discourse in 'new' Christian societies makes this project inherently multi-disciplinary, although its core is art historical.
Investigating the negotiation of sanctity between Rome and geographically distant areas participates in globalizing the history of early modern art. As the spreading of Catholicism served as the ideological justification for European expansion under Iberian rule, negotiation of an individual’s saintly status amounted to a negotiation of the status awarded to the 'new' Catholic societies within the order established by the Iberian colonial and mercantile empires. Because this process attests to the claims and aspirations of Christian societies around the globe beginning at an early stage of European expansion, it calls into question the dynamics of desire and demand generally associated with its economic aspects. Such an investigation is therefore qualified to challenge established perspectives on Roman Catholicism, colonialism, and the early modern world at large, impacting not only art history, but historical research at its broadest and most interdisciplinary.
The research agenda of GLOBECOSAL is organized under the following headings:
- The Global Itineraries of the Martyrs of Japan: Early Modern Religious Networks and the Circulation of Images across Asia, Europe, and the Americas (R. Preisinger)
- From Shangchuan to Saint: Images of Francis Xavier and the Growth of his Global Cult, 1552-1640 (J. Greenwood) / Hercules Asiaticus: Inventing, Popularizing, and Reframing Images of St. Francis Xavier between Europe and East Asia (A. De Caro)
- Portraying the American Rose: The Evolution of Peruvian Saints' Images Between Lima and Rome (L. Querejazu Escobari)
- Ex oriente sanctitas? Images in Unsuccessful Beatification Causes from Iberian Asia (W. Jiang)
- Exemplarity and Experimentation: Images in Unsuccessful Canonization Campaigns from the Viceroyalty of Peru (H. Friedman)
