Mara Ioriatti

Mara Ioriatti received her degree in Arts and Humanities in 2005 from the University of Trent, Italy, with a thesis on medieval history. She has been pursuing doctoral work in History Studies since November of 2006 at the same university, researching a dissertation provisionally titled "Licit and Illicit Devotional Practices in the Sermons of James of the Marches"

The aim of my research is to map the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable devotional practices through a reading of the sermons that James of the Marches (a 15th century observant Franciscan Friar Minor) presented to his lay audience. Through his preaching and by actually suggesting substitutive models of behavior, he made a distinction between what should be definitively condemned as superstition or heretical, and what was merely to be transformed into something more "correct". Moreover, his sermons contain exempla, many of which the friar derived from his own personal experience as preacher and as inquisitor. These exempla open a window for us onto the actual behavior of the laity with respect to the sacred, and provide an opportunity to discover what was recommended for popular devotional practices, and also to observe in what ways they were expected to be manifested in daily life. My research will analyze these practices in light of the "instructions" that James of the Marches gave, but I will also compare his advice with that given by his predecessors in order to better understand the development of this particular field and trace how it changed over time, while bearing in mind the changes of the 16th century.