Wednesday, January 21st, 2026, at 6:00 PM
Villa Lante al Gianicolo, Passeggiata del Gianicolo 10
Admission is free; seating subject to availability.
The lecture will be held in English.
Lived religion: Rituals and practices in later medieval canonization and inquisition processes
In the later medieval period, increasing levels of literacy and education, rapid urbanization, and an expanding economy led to the blooming of lay devotion through the emergence of new forms and modes of religiosity. At the same time, new mechanisms to investigate and control religiosity were developed, such as the canonization process of new saints and the inquisition process to fight heresy. In this presentation, sources from these two ecclesiastical procedures are discussed side by side to demonstrate their benefits for the study of medieval lived religion, particularly the everyday rituals and religious practices.
Dr Jenni Kuuliala works as a university lecturer at the University of Turku, Finland. She is a scholar of late medieval and early modern lived religion, social history of medicine, and sainthood, and currently a member of the research project “Cultures of Control? Lived Religion and Lay Challenges to Normativity in Later Medieval Europe”.
The lecture is organized with the support of the Association Amici di Villa Lante al Gianicolo.
The lecture will be recorded and later uploaded to the YouTube channel of the Institute.
