Everyday Worship, Brotherhoods and Festivals in the Genoese World

From the medieval commune to the end of the Republic in 1797, religious life in Genoa and Ligurian communities under Genoese influence took place both within church institutions and through lay associations. Among the most visible of these were confraternities: groups whose members gathered for worship, organized processions and undertook charitable work. In Genoa, many became known as casacce. Their activities joined devotion to local identity and civic life, while remaining subject to changing church and government oversight.

The cathedral of San Lorenzo offers one point of orientation. Consecrated in 1118 and raised to archiepiscopal rank in 1133, it stood at the centre of a city where its piazza served as the principal public space during the Middle Ages. Yet collective religious practice was not confined to the cathedral. Confraternities met at altars and chapels, and, from the fifteenth century, increasingly in their own oratories. Their records show how worship, seasonal observances, care for the dead and assistance to people in need could be organized by local groups.

On this page5 sections

Lay confraternities and local worship

Lay confraternities became securely visible in Italian towns from the twelfth century. In Genoa, a firm early record is the foundation in 1232 of a Domus disciplinatorum, or house of penitents, dedicated to Saint Anthony at the church of San Domenico. Some early groups were associated with the disciplinanti, members who undertook acts of penitence, including self-flagellation. They met for religious observances under the guidance of a lay leader and a priest. Meetings could include readings from scripture, sometimes in the vernacular, and religious performances intended for a wider public.

Over time, confraternities acquired clearer local identities. Many took the name of a patron saint and were connected with a neighbourhood or a particular social group, including artisans. The term casaccia is recorded in a 1561 contract for a processional object made for the confraternity of Saint Zita. Its origin is uncertain: explanations have linked it either to the joining of groups under a shared patron or to the word for a large house. By the fifteenth century, some confraternities had sufficient resources to maintain their own oratories, while continuing to operate within the parish and diocesan church.

Regular worship included prayers for living and deceased members, readings and observances for a patron saint. An oratory gave the group a place to gather, keep furnishings and organise its duties. A procession extended that participation into public space, where the order of groups, carried objects and chosen route made the association visible.

Processions, festivals and public order

Processions made confraternal devotion visible in the streets. Members carried crosses, banners, staffs, candles and sculpted images, while clergy and musicians could accompany them. The penitential movement that spread from Umbria in 1260 encouraged associations in Liguria. Participants sought forgiveness through prayer, hymns and public acts of penance.

Another striking example came in 1399, when white-robed penitents travelling through Liguria toward Rome for the jubilee of 1400 reached Genoa. Local people joined their religious activities, and confraternities were established in several places along the route. Such events show how itinerant devotion could encourage new local associations, as well as draw existing communities into shared observance.

As processions became a regular feature of civic life, their routes and order required negotiation. In 1528 the Republic appointed four magistrates to oversee confraternal processions, settle route disputes and prevent disorder. A decree issued by these officials on 9 April 1530 recorded 21 confraternities in Genoa. Regulations addressed practical questions, including procession routes, conduct in the cathedral and whether the city gates should remain open to admit people attending festivals. The need for such rules reflected the public scale of the gatherings, as well as competition between groups over precedence and display.

Processions also demanded resources. Oratory account books record spending on candles, musicians and participating clergy, as well as refreshments for those who had taken part. Sometimes the shared food was simple, such as bread and wine. These expenses reveal the work behind a festival: members arranged equipment and personnel, coordinated with other groups and paid for the observance from confraternal resources. Rivalries over the splendour of a feast, the ornament of a processional image or a group’s position in the procession could nevertheless produce tensions.

Penitence, clothing and church reform

Early disciplinanti wore plain white garments, some with an opening at the back for penitential flagellation. Over the centuries, and especially as forms of penitence changed, confraternal clothing could become more elaborate. By the sixteenth century, some members wore coloured or decorated garments in silk and other fine fabrics, with gold or silver embroidery. The change was not simply a matter of costume: public dress marked membership and helped make a confraternity recognizable during a procession.

Church authorities sought closer supervision of these associations after the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563. Bishops reviewed statutes, conduct and charitable institutions. In Genoa, Archbishop Antonio Sauli issued rules in 1587 that included teaching Christian doctrine to young people. Regulation concerned what members did as well as how their funds were administered.

Oversight was reinforced in 1604, when Pope Clement VIII’s bull Quaecumque required confraternities to submit to episcopal authority and obtain church approval before new associations were established or existing ones joined an archconfraternity, a larger network of confraternities. In practice, authority could remain contested. Some older Genoese groups became socially exclusive, while newer associations tended to be more open. In the seventeenth century, bishops increased their efforts to review confraternal statutes, and some groups resisted changes to their established customs.

Funerals, care and shared obligations

Confraternities also organized practical forms of support. Depending on the group, their duties included caring for the sick, arranging funerals and masses for the dead, assisting poor people and supporting prisoners or people condemned to death. Some collected alms for orphans and girls without dowries. Others raised money to ransom captives, including people taken during raids and carried into slavery in North Africa. These tasks made religious association a means of coordinating aid that individuals might have struggled to provide alone.

Some groups developed more specialized charitable work. In the fourteenth century, confraternities dedicated to the Misericordia took on the assistance of condemned people; other associations supported hospitals. In the sixteenth century, charitable groups such as the Companies of Charity and Divine Love established hospitals and refuges for people in need. In rural districts, institutions known as pawn or grain banks were founded to address usury and help manage seed supplies. Their activities differed by place, but they show how confraternal resources could be directed toward local needs as well as worship.

These obligations depended on money, property and collective labour. By the seventeenth century, confraternities might hold land or other goods, receive donations and organize collections. They used these resources to sustain religious observances and charitable work, including masses for deceased members or others in need of suffrage, the prayers offered for the dead. Their responsibilities connected remembrance and funeral care with the continuing life of the community.

Confraternities in the late Republic

By the later centuries of the Republic, confraternities could be both centres of neighbourhood participation and influential social bodies. Their festivals brought worship into public streets, while their charitable obligations joined religious commitments to everyday assistance. At the same time, disputes over precedence, public conduct and independence from parish or diocesan authorities showed that these groups did not operate beyond institutional control. Their history to 1797 is therefore one of shared devotion shaped by local organization, public custom and continuing negotiation with church and civic power.

For the wider setting, see Daily Life in the Genoese World: Communities of the Republic and Its Maritime Network.