Eloquent Images : Evangelisation, Conversion and Propaganda in the Global World of the Early Modern Period

The Christian image in the process of modern globalisation

Drawing on original research covering different periods and spaces, this book sets out to appreciate the specific place of images in the history of evangelisation in the long modern period. How can we reconceptualise the functions of the visual mediation of the gospel message, both in terms of the production and reception of this message and in terms of its effective mediators, artists, religious, and cultural ambassadors? The contributions in this book offer multiple geographical and historical insights regarding the circulation of the image on the global scale of the Christianised world or the world in the process of being Christianised, from China to Iberia. Combining the contribution of historians and art historians, the authors highlight the points of intercultural encounter and tension around preaching, catechesis, devotional practices and the propagandistic use of images.
Through its aesthetic and social study of the image, and by examining the inner and outer borders of Europe and the mission lands, Eloquent Images contributes significantly to the history of evangelisation, one of the major dynamics of the first European globalisation.

Contributors: Pierre-Antoine Fabre (EHESS, Paris), Clara Lieutaghi (EHESS Paris), Silvia Notarfonso (Università di Macerata), Silvia Mostaccio (UCLouvain), Mauro Salis (Università di Cagliari), Valentina Borniotto (Università di Genova), Gwladys Le Cuff (Paris-Sorbonne – EHESS Paris), Mauricio Oviedo Salazar (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen), Maria João Pereira Coutinho (IHA/FCSH/NOVA Lisbon), Sílvia Ferreira (IHA/FCSH/NOVA Lisbon), Paulo De Campos Pinto (Universidade Católica Portuguesa), Lorenzo Ratto (Università di Genova), Stephanie Porras (Tulane University), Arianna Magnani (Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia), Michela Catto (Università di Torino), Federico Palomo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Roberto Ricci (Istituto storico italiano per l'età moderna e contemporanea, Roma), Francesco Sorce (independent scholar), Maria Vittoria Spissu (Università di Bologna).

Giuseppe Capriotti is an early modern art historian at the University of Macerata.

Pierre-Antoine Fabre is historian of modern Catholicism and Evangelization at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Sabina Pavone is professor of early modern history and global history at the University of Macerata.