The LAUDARE group in Naples

From 26 November to 2 December, the LAUDARE group spent a week of research in Naples. Despite the number of confraternities and religious orders operating in the city in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, lauda practice is scarcely documented. Goal of the trip was to put into question this apparent ‘silence’ by investigating the possible presence of lauda sources in Neapolitan institutions.   

We started with a couple of confraternities still active today: the Pio Monte della Misericordia, whose interest in artistic patronage is well known through the commission to Caravaggio of the Le opere della misericordia for its Church, or the Compagnia della Disciplina della Santa Croce, founded in 1290 and now running social project in the Rione Forcella.  

Besides the archives of these two institutions, the LAUDARE group visited other, not easily-accessible libraries, such as the Diocesan Archive, the Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, the State Archive and the libraries of the Girolamini, Santa Chiara and San Lorenzo Maggiore.

In some institutions the collections were available for consultation; in others, the lack of a systematic cataloguing made hard to work directly with the sources. What the group did, in those cases, was to ‘educate’ the librarians to recognize the material of interest, so that they could alert us of its presence in the future.  

The week was capped with a day of work in the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Nazionale, where the efficiency of the staff allowed us a series of quick checks and new discoveries.  

Despite the unusual rainy weather, Naples offered us several moments of fun and eno-gastronomic research, which greatly contributed to the team building atmosphere!