Howard abstract

‘Adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum’: Preaching and the Actualization of the Holy in Renaissance Florence

Peter Howard

Monash University

Sometime in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, Fra Antonino Pierozzi OP - prominent reformer and eventually archbishop of Florence – preached on a theme drawn from the 5^th psalm, and explored the meaning of activity proper for churches.  A church, we are told, was not a place for business or chatter, but for a devotion that was both interior and external.  With a veiled reference to two separate, well-known stories - the expulsion of tax collectors and moneylenders from the temple, and of the adolescent Jesus discoursing to the elders in the temple - Fra Antonino instructs his hearers on the context of appropriate behaviour in church. Ecclesiastical space was for teaching and preaching - both verbally and visually – and for devotion.   It was for preachers, artists and devotees.

This prominent and influential preacher draws striking parallels between the methods employed by preacher and artist alike to develop their themes, and goes on to examine the stance of the viewer before an image: “One should adore with the soul through devotion…. with the body by genuflecting, prostrating and suchlike…”.

The proposed paper will examine Fra Antonino’s sermon in detail as a unique entree into the perceptual world of Renaissance Florentines, at least as envisaged by the city’s archbishop.  The study will examine the roots and developments proffered by the preacher’s psychology of representation and its implications for our understanding of developments in devotional art in the fifteenth century.

The study will add further to our understanding of the way in which Florentines understood the actualization of the sacred through visualization at a time when painting in Florence was undergoing rapid change.