ABSTRACT
On the parapet of the nuns’ choir on the entrance wall of the convent church of San Gregorio Armeno in Naples three frescoes painted by Luca Giordano in 1684 show the arrival of the Greek Basilian nuns in Naples (Figs 1.1 and1.8). The central scene, with God above, shows the nuns holding the urn containing St Gregory of Armenia’s relics (Fig. 1.1). The subject of the relic’s arrival, not an easy one for a painter, must have been stipulated by the convent. Why were the nuns of San Gregorio intent on the depiction of their relics? What did relics mean to female enclosed orders at this date? In Counter-Reformation Europe, the central struggle was over spiritual authority – how conceived, constituted, and wherein vested. Recent scholarship has usefully examined how dynasties, such as the Savoy in Turin, exploited relics to advance their spiritual authority, but their deployment by women and especially by enclosed nuns remains relatively unexplored.2 As Jean-Claude Schmitt has emphasised, Incarnation
1 I am pleased to thank the British Academy for a Research Readership and a Small Research Grant which hugely facilitated research for and writing of this piece. In Naples I am indebted to the staff of the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Archivio di Stato, and P. Antonio Illibato, Director of the Archivio Diocesano, for their professional assistance. Special thanks to the Eccellentissima Deputazione della Cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro, to Conte Alessandro d’Aquino dei Principi di Caramanico, to Dottore Ciro Giordano, General Secretary, and to the staff of the Archive of that institution. Provocative questions from participants at the conference at Wolfson College helped shape this paper, and Cordula van Wyhe’s attentive editing has improved it. Sarah Cormack and Alice Sanger made helpful suggestions at an early stage of rewriting. My thanks to colleagues in the Department of History of Art at York for a stimulating and congenial environment in which to write.
