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Full Description
This book explores how medieval Italy perceived, interpreted, and sought to influence weather and climatic phenomena through the lens of sanctity. Focusing on hagiographic narratives from the Early to the Late Middle Ages, it reconstructs a rich corpus of miracle stories in which saints calm storms and hail, bring rain during droughts, or protect sailors and river travellers from tempests.
By reading these accounts as cultural texts, the volume offers a history of miraculous weather in medieval Italy, spanning the centuries before the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the Little Ice Age. At the same time, it situates the evidence of the peninsula within a broader European and Mediterranean framework, highlighting the particular importance of maritime and coastal environments. The volume has a strong comparative structure, in which medieval sources are in constant dialogue with tales from Antiquity and artistic works. Combining cultural history and historical anthropology, the study sheds light on how medieval communities understood climate variability, articulated fear and hope in the face of natural forces, and embedded weather events within systems of belief and ritual. The result is a nuanced contribution to the cultural and environmental history of the Middle Ages and to the history of human-climate relations.
Its primary audience comprises students and scholars specialising in medieval studies, the history of religion, hagiography, and cultural history.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Weather, hagiography, and saints
Chapter 2: Miraculous storms and climate change in the Early Middle Ages
Chapter 3: Miraculous weather phenomena in the Medieval Warm Period
Chapter 4: Towards the Little Ice Age: climatic phenomena in the late Middle Ages
Chapter 5: Saints and rain: prayers, performative actions, and gender aspects
Chapter 6: Relics and prayers: collective rituals and private devotion
Chapter 7: Magical-folkloric beliefs and practices
Chapter 8: Interpreting weather phenomena: punishment and protection
Chapter 9: Miraculous rains beyond the Alps: a comparative approach
Conclusions
