Gli Statuti della Compagnia degli Italiani di Nostra Signora di Loreto (1577)

Abstract

The recovery of the unpublished Statuti della Compagniadegli Italiani della Casa e Chiesa di Nostra Signora di Loreto di Lisbona, writtenat the end of March 1577, is part of the research activity and the cultural andhistoriographic interests of the author, mainly focused on the study of the Marianand Congregational devotions that developed in the modern era, between thesixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In this perspective, the reading of the originalthirty statutory chapters can be an interesting testimony to the attempt toconstruct the active Italian nation's identity in the Portuguese capital around thelauretan cult, and on the mechanisms of charitable internal solidarity, whether ofthe Confraria itself or of the the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, linkedto the well-known aspirations for religious renewal of the sixteenth century, fedand controlled already in the post-Tridentine period of the Holy See through theexperienced policy of granting indulgences.