Download or read book The Politics of Ritual Kinship written by Nicholas Terpstra and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-19 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries Italians frequently joined "confraternities" that made them symbolic brothers and sisters to one another. These kin groups launched extensive charitable programs, directed civic and religious rituals, and socialized members in class and gender roles. These essays examine how medieval religious and political values shaped early ritual kinship, how sixteenth-century social change and religious reform transformed confraternities, and how these altered groups became key agents in achieving the more rigid social order of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.