1st Edition
Saints and Storms A Cultural History of Miraculous Weather Events in Medieval Italy
Introduction
Chapter 1: Weather, hagiography, and saints
Chapter 2: Miraculous storms and climate change in the Early Middle Ages
Chapter 3: Miraculous weather phenomena in the Medieval Warm Period
Chapter 4: Towards the Little Ice Age: climatic phenomena in the late Middle Ages
Chapter 5: Saints and rain: prayers, performative actions, and gender aspects
Chapter 6: Relics and prayers: collective rituals and private devotion
Chapter 7: Magical-folkloric beliefs and practices
Chapter 8: Interpreting weather phenomena: punishment and protection
Chapter 9: Miraculous rains beyond the Alps: a comparative approach
Conclusions
Biography
Marco Papasidero is Assistant Professor in the History of Christianity at the University of Palermo, Italy. His research focuses on the cult of saints from a diachronic perspective, pilgrimage and devotional spaces, healing practices at shrines, hagiographic sources, and the cultural relationship between miracle, medicine, and magic. His recent books include The Monastic Dimension of Identity Politics: Global Case Studies from the Premodern Period (2024, edited with Dean Accardi and Emilia Jamroziak) and Thefts of Relics in Italy: From Late Antiquity to the Central Middle Ages (300–1150) (2025).
