(John Hopkins University)

Fellow in the Context of the International Research Fellowship Program  IRF

May – August 2012

Bitter Pills. Peter Paul Rubens, Cesare Baronio, and the Counter-Reformation crisis over the Beati moderni

I will oversee revision and publication of Bitter Pills. Peter Paul Rubens, Cesare Baronio, and the Counter-Reformation crisis over the Beati moderni, a book which takes up the question of the issues involved in the formation of recent saints – or Beati moderni (modern Blesseds) as they were called – in the new environment of increased strictures and censorship that developed after the Council of Trent with respect to legal canonization procedures and cultic devotion to the saints. My secondary project is to further a second book project, Double-edged sword. Figuring conversion and martyrdom in Counter-Reformation Rome.