A Forgotten Italian Bestseller: Ludovico Pittorio’s Omiliario quadragisimale

Lenten sermon collections represent fascinating microcosms of the late-medieval religious culture, since they both reflected and constructed the religious knowledge of the time. The chapter focuses on one of the most influential – and less studied – of these texts, namely the Omiliario quadragesinale written by Ludovico Pittorio (d. 1525). This Lenten sermon collection originated from Pittorio’s preaching to a lay confraternity in Ferrara and was published for the first time in 1506. In its printed format, the Omiliario was dedicated to the Abbess Beatrice d’Este and presented as spiritual nourishment for her nuns. Thanks to the accessibility of its vernacular language, Pittorio’s sermons became a sixteenth-century religious bestseller, able to address a differentiated readership and to provide clerics, nuns, and lay people with a valuable instrument to have access to the Bible.