Italian Religious Broadsides
The Newberry holds an outstanding collection of broadsides and other ephemeral printing, a reflection of our collecting interest early modern Italian history and culture, but also in all aspects of the book trade in the period. This particular resource makes available some rich examples of public religious ephemera: the Newberry’s collection of 154 religious broadsides printed in Italy between 1611 and 1697. These broadsides were produced and posted to advertise public celebrations and commemorations of Catholic feast days and other religious occasions, primarily in Rome, but also at Todi, Orvieto, Perugia, and Naples. As a group they offer a glimpse into the world of public religion in 17th-century Italy, especially in towns ruled directly by the papacy, where religious and civic practices were closely intertwined. In these communities, devotion, marketing, art, and typography came together in the print shops to support, advertise, and monetize the practice of public religion.
View: Catalog record | All digitized broadsides at the Internet Archive
While we have Optical Character Recognition (OCR) transcriptions for these items, they are often messy. OCR software sometimes erroneously interprets borders and other image elements as text. To help us clean up the transcriptions, click on a page from the gallery below.
Additionally, we invite users knowledgeable in Italian to click the "Translate" tab under each page and translate the text into English. Please see our instructions for transcribing and translating for more help.
(Note: this resource loads best on the Firefox web browser. If you are unable to see the pages below, click here to go to a separate page that should work across all browsers.)
Looking for more opportunities to help out? Please see our Transcribing Modern Manuscripts site to assist in making 19th and early 20th century letters and diaries more accessible.