Mount Carmel in the Commune: Promoting the Holy Land in Central Italy in the 13th and 14th Centuries

The Carmelite friars were the last of the major mendicant orders to be established in Italy. Originally an eremitical order, they arrived from the Holy Land in the 1240s, decades after other mendicant orders, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, had constructed churches and cultivated patrons in the burgeoning urban centers of central Italy. In a religious market already saturated with friars, the Carmelites distinguished themselves by promoting their Holy Land provenance, eremitical values, and by developing an institutional history claiming to be descendants of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. By the end of the 13th century the order had constructed thriving churches and convents and leveraged itself into a prominent position in the religious community. My dissertation analyzes these early Carmelite churches and convents, as well as the friars’ interactions with patrons, civic governments, and the urban space they occupied. Through three primary case studies – the churches and convents of Pisa, Siena and Florence – I examine the Carmelites’ approach to art, architecture, and urban space as the order transformed its mission from one of solitary prayer to one of active ministry.

My central questions are these: To what degree did the Carmelites’ Holy Land provenance inform the art and architecture they created for their central Italian churches? And to what degree was their visual culture instead a reflection of the mendicant norms of the time?

I have sought to analyze the Carmelites at the institutional level, to determine how the order viewed itself and how it wanted its legacy to develop. I then seek to determine how and if the institutional model was utilized in the artistic and architectural production of the individual convents. The understanding of Carmelite art as a promotional tool for the identity of the order is not a new one, however my work is the first to consider deeply the order’s architectural aspirations. I also consider the order’s relationships with its de facto founding saint, the prophet Elijah, and its patron, the Virgin Mary, in a more comprehensive manner that situates the resultant visual culture into the contemporary theological and historical contexts.

A REPRESENTATIVE OUTSIDER AND THE INCLUSION OF THE OUTSIDER IN ACTS 8:26-40

In Luke’s two volumes, Luke is not interested only in Gentiles and those with high social status but also in the marginalized and those who are outsiders. This dissertation seeks to read Luke’s concern for outsiders and the theme of the inclusion of outsiders in the new kingdom of God in Luke’s narrative of the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion in Acts 8:26-40. This paper examines the Ethiopian eunuch’s complex identity from the perspectives of the Greco-Roman world, Old Testament (LXX) allusions to the Elijah-Elisha narratives, and Luke’s interpretation of the Isaianic quotation of the Suffering Servant in Acts 8:32-33 (cf. Isaiah 53:7-8). This study pays close attention to the correlations between the theme of outsiders and three key characters in Acts 8:26-40: the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip, and the Suffering Servant. First, Luke depicts the Ethiopian eunuch as the consummate outsider—geographically, morally, socially, ethnically, and in terms of gender—and indicates that the eunuch represents other marginalized outsiders. The eunuch shows no one can prevent outsiders like him from inclusion in the kingdom of God. Second, Luke portrays Philip as a prophet, specifically a prophet like Elijah and Elisha. Philip emulates Elijah and Elisha by reaching out to the outsider (in this instance, the Ethiopian eunuch). Third, Luke presents the Isaianic Suffering Servant as a religious and social outsider and identifies the character with Jesus and the Ethiopian eunuch. The indescribable descendants of the Suffering Servant signify a universally inclusive messianic community and fulfill the outsiders’ inclusion within the people of God as Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 56:3-8). This thesis finally suggests ways to read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch today and concludes that it is imperative to include those outsiders among us within the community of Jesus’s followers.