Michelangelo's Christian Mysticism

Sarah Rolfe Prodan is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, where she has designed and taught cultural history courses for the Renaissance Studies program and lectured on Italian language and literature. Her research interests include Michelangelo, the Italian Reformation, and the intersection of literature and art in the Italian religious culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Prodan has been interviewed on Michelangelo and on the Renaissance for both audio-visual and print media and she has participated in numerous international conferences as a speaker and as an organizer. A published translator of French and Italian, and a scholarly writer, her work has appeared in such journals as Quaderni d'italianistica, Confraternitas, and Annali d'italianistica. Most recently she co-edited a volume on friendship and pre-modern Europe.

Introduction; Part I. Michelangelo and Renaissance Augustinianism: 1. 'The sea, the mountain, and the fire with the sword': an Augustinian pilgrimage?; 2. 'The sea': the vicissitudes of inordinate love, or hell as habit; 3. 'The mountain': acedia and the mind's presumption to ascend; 4. 'The fire with the sword': grace and divine presence; Conclusion; Part II. Michelangelo and Viterban Spirituality: 5. The benefit of Christ; 6. The action of the spirit; 7. Michelangelo's Viterban poetics; 8. Aesthetics, reform, and Viterban sociability; Conclusion.