Historical Notes on the Architecture of Italian Confraternities

Historians of architecture have always drawn a distinct line between civic and religious architecture. Although this separation allows for easier classification of the vast heritage of architecture, it is not adequate for analysing certain realities that, by their very nature, fall between the two categories. An example of this is confraternal architectural production that developed extensively, in a variety of forms and environments, in the Catholic world from the thirteenth century to the present. As lay institutions with religious aims, confraternities gave birth to a special type of architecture, distinctive because of its combination of lay and religious elements, and because it was not restricted to sacred buildings. This architecture presents a complexity and an originality borne out of the close relationship to its various devotional aspects and, above all, to the social-charitable role played by these organizations.