I am glad to announce that the first fruits of the CaPer project will finally appear in print.
In May, Brill will publish an ambitious and wide-ranging collection of essays, The English Community of Rome, 1500–1829, edited by Matteo Binasco, an Italian historian of the early modern period. The volume provides the first comprehensive examination of the English community in Rome from the late fifteenth to the nineteenth century, when the college was re-established following its ransacking by Napoleon’s troops in 1798. The range of topics covered in the volume is indeed impressive, so the book will certainly appeal to a broad academic audience and will become an important reference point for future researchers.
My contribution to the volume is a detailed chapter, “Performance Culture at the English College, Rome, c.1579–1660.” The piece examines how the seminarians’ engagement with the performing arts shaped the college’s public image and self-understanding, and helped negotiate its place in wider Roman society. Drawing on the records held at the Venerable English College and other repositories in Rome, the chapter provides a wealth of new information about musical and theatrical life at the college. It builds upon the pioneering work of Suzanne Gossett and deepens our understanding of the role of performance in the formation of future missionaries.[1]
[1] See Gossett’s excellent article “Drama in the English College, Rome, 1591–1660,” English Literary Renaissance 3, no. 1 (1973): 60–93.