This essay explores the activities of the Italian consortium of S. Alessandro in Colonna in Bergamo, through an analysis and translation of the Regola (Rule) that governed it for nearly five centuries. Written in Latin in 1363–65, and republished in Italian in the late sixteenth century, the statutes and other primary source documents of this confraternity reflect the (admittedly modest) aspirations, disappointments, and achievements of one group of Bergamo’s citizens as they sought to achieve the “sacred miracle” of brotherhood. The essay also compares the consortium of S. Alessandro in Colonna to other Bergamasque confraternities, especially the large and powerful Misericordia Maggiore (MIA), with a particular focus on how confraternities in Bergamo supported lay and clerical education. Specific topics include the membership, organization, and social purpose(s) of a rather ordinary confraternity, here considered both as an individual case study and as a vehicle of comparison with similar pious associations.

1. Confraternitas

Original publication: Carlsmith, Christopher; Foroughi, Louisa. ““To Live Piously and to Help the Needy Poor”: The Consortium of S. Allessandro in Colonna, in Bergamo.” Confraternitas 24 (2): 2013. 3-32. DOI: . This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Confraternitas. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Confraternitas under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.