Le iscrizioni in antico volgare delle confraternite laiche veneziane

The volume is the first complete study of the surviving vernacular inscriptions commissioned by Venice's lay confraternities between 1300 and 1500. These organisations, deeply embedded at neighbourhood level, with thousands of members across all social classes, were central to the city's religious, social and political fabric. Their public writing provides important evidence about attitudes and practices in these spiritual associations and craft guilds, about literacy and he evolution of writing practice, and about standardisation and variation in the Venetian language. This study contains the complete corpus of the confraternities vernacular inscriptions on stone and fabric -- from across Venice and on Murano and Torcello -- contextualised historically, analysed linguistically, and documented photographically. The book has a foreword by Marino Zorzi of the Ateneo Veneto, formerly Director of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice.