ABSTRACT
This chapter redefines Beati moderni alternative hagio-historiography, as characterized by the interpolative revision of modern would-be saints into the hagio-historical record through diverse media—text, image, material and ritual—united by a common paradigm of imprinting. Supporters of the would-be saints experienced the twofold loss of their would-be saintly champions, first in death, then in curial censorship. In light of Neri's sanctity truth claims, pronounced by Oratorian practitioners then or their interpreters now, the chapter takes up the question of Beati moderni hagio-historiography's self-professed facticity. In identifying and describing early Seicento examples of Beati moderni alternative hagio-historiography, what follows seeks to address both Ditchfield's "problem" of "a teleological approach to the history of hagiography", to "move beyond positivism and genre", and "anachronistic understanding of the distinction between hagiography and historiography. Beati moderni wax votive deathmasks, together with the derivative portraits they engendered, emerge as especially fraught and compelling multivalent instantiations of Counter-Reformation historiography and hagiography, palpable historical trace and cultic presence.
