Protecting the Faithful City: Disasters and the Cult of the Saints (Naples, 1573-1587)

Traumatic events may instigate a growth in the “devotional demand” by strengthening the role of saints within society. Hagiography offers, in fact, extensive accounts of earthquakes, eruptions, floods, epidemics, invasions, bloody battles and other disasters that may be ascribed to human or natural causes. This paper focuses on the hagiographic texts produced in Naples between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries and deals in particular with Paolo Regio’s works. The first noticeable signs of the Spanish decline become apparent during this chronological period; hence the “disaster” (in its broadest sense) becomes the catalyst of new political and religious alliances and encourages to build, deconstruct and reconstruct social identities which are conveyed by the organizations of rites, ceremonies, processions as well as networks of patronage in support of old and new cults.