AISSCA, the Italian Society for the Study of Sanctity, the Cult of Saints and Hagiography, was founded in 1996 by Sofia Boesch Gajano and a group of scholars from Italy, coming from many years of both individual and group research-projects, both within Italy and internationally, which, taking its origins in the tradition of a scholarly approach to hagiography which began with the Bollandists in the seventeenth century, continues to be one of the most innovative areas of historiography, as it has been over the last decades. The purpose of the Society has always been to encourage international collaboration between scholars, through the organization of conferences and seminars and the diffusion of news about relevant publications and research projects.
AISSCA’s approach to the study of sanctity and the cult of saints may be characterized as diachronic and multidisciplinary, from the earliest times to the present, and including all areas of the globe in which the cult of saints and sanctity is witnessed