Monica Azzolini (Associate Professor of the History of Science, University of Bologna), “The Image, the Saint and the Earthquake: Francisco Borja and the Politics of God and Nature in the Spanish Empire”

This paper shall investigate how the cult of Francesco Borja, patron saint of earthquakes, emerged in the Kingdom of New Granada and how it was later transferred to Rome and Naples.
In doing so, the paper explores both the complex relationship between the Jesuits and the Borja dynasty within the vast Iberian Empire and concepts of nature and the divine in the period ca. 1620-1780.

BRIEF BIO:
Professor Azzolini is a historian of early modern science, medicine and the environment, with particular focus on Italy and, increasingly, transnational networks. After graduating from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, she obtained both MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Since then, she has taught at the University of Cambridge (U.K.), the University of Washington (U.S.A.), the University of New South Wales (Australia), and the University of Edinburgh (U.K.). She has held prestigious fellowships at I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, The Warburg Institute, London, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University. Her research has been supported by the British Academy, The Leverhulme Trust, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, The Carnegie Trust, The European Commission, and The Global Challenges Research Fund (AHRC/NERC/EHSC). She has published widely on Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical studies, Renaissance astrology, and courtly science. She is the author of The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Harvard University Press, 2013), and numerous articles.