This book explores how in medieval Italy people perceived, interpreted, and sought to influence weather and climatic phenomena through the lens of sanctity. Focusing on hagiographic narratives from the early to the late Middle Ages, it reconstructs a rich corpus of miracle stories in which saints calm storms and hail, bring rain during droughts, or protect sailors and river travellers from tempests.  

By reading these accounts as cultural texts, the volume offers a history of miraculous weather in medieval Italy, spanning the centuries before the Medieval Warm Period and the onset of the Little Ice Age. At the same time, it situates the evidence of the peninsula within a broader European and Mediterranean framework, highlighting the particular importance of maritime and coastal environments. The volume has a strong comparative structure, in which medieval sources are in constant dialogue with tales from antiquity and artistic works. Combining cultural history and historical anthropology, the study sheds light on how medieval communities understood climate variability, articulated fear and hope in the face of natural forces, and embedded weather events within systems of belief and ritual. The result is a nuanced contribution to the cultural and environmental history of the Middle Ages and to the history of human–climate relations.

Its primary audience comprises students and scholars specialising in medieval studies, the history of religion, hagiography, and cultural history.

Marco Papasidero is a Historian of Christianity. 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 among 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).

Table des matières :

Introduction

1 Weather, hagiography, and saints

2 Miraculous storms and climate change in the early Middle Ages

3 Miraculous weather phenomena in the Medieval Warm Period

4 Towards the Little Ice Age: Climatic phenomena in the late Middle Ages

5 Saints and rain: Prayers, performative actions, and gender aspects

6 Relics and prayers: Collective rituals and private devotion

7 Magical-folkloric beliefs and practices

8 Interpreting weather phenomena: Punishment and protection

9 Miraculous rains beyond the Alps: A comparative approach

Conclusions

Informations pratiques :

Marco Papasidero, Saints and Storms. A Cultural History of Miraculous Weather Events in Medieval Italy, Londres, Routledge, 2026 ; 1 vol., 258 p. (Studies in Medieval Religions and Cultures). ISBN : 978-1-03228-598-6. Prix : € 210,00.

Source : Routledge