medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, July 17, 2009, at 2:15 pm, John Briggs wrote:
> Marjorie Greene wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone know why so many Carmelite churches (at least in Italy)
> are
> > called "Santa Maria del Carmine"?
>
> So that everyone knows that they are Carmelite churches, perhaps?
>
> (I think you will find that "Santa Maria del Carmine" is not the
> precise dedication.)
The precise dedication is likely to be in Latin with the dedicatee identified as _Sancta / Sanctissima (medievally, also Beata_ / Beatissima_) Maria Montis Carmeli_ (or _de monte Carmeli_). But that's semantically equivalent to the Italian, as Italian _Carmine_(medievally first attested as _Carmino_) signifies Italian _Carmelo_ in the latter's literal sense of "Mount Carmel" (latine: _Carmelus). The churches are dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
_Carmine_ is (and, acc. to the _Grande dizionario della lingua italiana_, _Carmino_ was) a proparoxytone. This now serves to distinguish it from words having to do with the dye and color carmine, but it may have been that in Italy _Carmelus_ too was often accented on the first syllable (compare Old and Middle French _Carme_, now largely replaced by the more recent _Carmelitain_).
Best,
John Dillon
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