The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions)

THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUL

Wietse de Boer

BRILL

THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUL

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION THOUGHT EDITED BY

HEIKO A. OBERMAN, Tucson, Arizona IN COOPERATION WITH THOMAS A. BRADY, Jr., Berkeley, California ANDREW C. GOW, Edmonton, Alberta SUSAN C. KARANT-NUNN, Tucson, Arizona JÜRGEN MIETHKE, Heidelberg M. E. H. NICOLETTE MOUT, Leiden ANDREW PETTEGREE, St. Andrews MANFRED SCHULZE, Wuppertal

VOLUME LXXXIV WIETSE DE BOER THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUL

THE CONQUEST OF THE SOUL CONFESSION, DISCIPLINE, AND PUBLIC ORDER IN COUNTER-REFORMATION MILAN

BY

WIETSE DE BOER

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN 2001

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boer, Wietse de. The conquest of the soul : confessions, discipline, and public order in Counter-Reformation Milan / by Wietse de Boer. p. cm. — (Studies in medieval and Reformation thought, ISSN 0585-6914 ; v. 84) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 9004117482 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Catholic Church. Archdiocese of Milan (Italy)—History—16th century. 2. Milan Region (Italy)—Church history—16th century. 3. Catholic Church. Archdiocese of Milan (Italy)—History—17th century. 4. Milan Region (Italy)—Church history—17th century. 5. Confession—Catholic Church—History of doctrines. 6. Counter-Reformation—Italy—Milan Region. I. Title. II. Series. BX1547.M5 B64 2000 282’.4521’09031—dc21 00–046863 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Boer, Wietse /de: The conquest of the soul : confession, discipline, and public order in counter reformation Milan / by Wietse de Boer. – Leiden ; Boston ; Köln : Brill, 2001 (Studies in medieval and reformation thought ; Vol. 84) ISBN 90–04–11748–2

ISSN 0585-6914 ISBN 90 04 11748 2 © Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

Voor Renée en Sylvia

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CONTENTS Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Figures, Table and Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PART ONE

ix xix xxiii

STRATEGIES

Introduction to Part One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

Chapter One Asserting Hierarchy: The Clergy and the Early Counter-Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5

Chapter Two Discipline of the Soul: Confession, Conversion, Coercion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43

Chapter Three Constraints of the Body: The Confessional and Church Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

84

Chapter Four The Politics of Civility: Federico Borromeo and The Later Counter-Reformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

126

PART TWO ADVANCES AND RETREATS

Introduction to Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165

Chapter Five The Administration of the Sacraments: Piety and Obligation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

Chapter Six Governing the Soul: The Limits of Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

212

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CONTENTS

Chapter Seven Priestly Exercises: Schoolroom and Confessional . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

258

Chapter Eight Defining the Sinful: The Case of Superstition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

295

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

323

Select Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

331

Indices Index of Personal Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Place Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

349 354 357

PREFACE

This study is devoted to an extraordinary social experiment. It examines one of the earliest instances in European history in which a public authority launched a concerted and full-scale effort to transform the social order by reaching into the consciences of its subjects. The authority was a religious one — a bishop and his clergy — and so was the overarching goal, the sanctification of everyday life. But the social ramifications were many, including novel codes of conduct and speech, a drastic segregation of the sexes, and new barriers between the sacred and secular. The means adopted to achieve this ambitious program were various, but crucial among them was an old religious practice: the confession of sins. This experiment took place in what is arguably the foremost laboratory of the Counter-Reformation: the archdiocese of Milan. It was engineered by one of the most driven and influential ecclesiastics of the time, Archbishop Carlo Borromeo (1564-84), and carried on by his successors Gaspare Visconti (1584-95) and Federico Borromeo (1595-1631). The attempt was by no means isolated. In the aftermath of the Council of Trent, and at its behest, numerous Italian church leaders tried to enhance the scope and effectiveness of their governance of lay society, drawing especially on the help of confessors. The need to do so was felt to be deep and urgent if the Catholic Church was to re-establish loyalty and order in a society riven by religious conflict and disagreement. That in turn proved essential in an age of confessionalism, in which religious faith and political allegiance were largely overlapping concepts. While these principles were widely shared among the Catholic leadership, and similar to those held by many Protestant counterparts, opinions differed on questions of strategy and enforcement. Carlo Borromeo stands out, and was widely known at the time, for having pioneered a system of discipline that was comprehensive, consistent, and unswerving. Paradoxically, it earned him at once a reputation for exemplarity — soon rewarded with sainthood — and excessive rigorism. These features make the Borromean experiment into a worthwhile object of historical inquiry. Few others allow us an equally revealing

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look at an integrated form of discipline affecting in like measure clergy and laity, women and men, family and workplace, city and countryside, state and Church. For all the difficulty of investigating a practice based on confidentiality — a difficulty which has conditioned most scholarship on confession — the Milanese records not only shed abundant light on the historical conditions, motivations, and concepts underlying the episcopal uses of penance, but they also chronicle the successes, obstacles, and unintended consequences that the program found on its way. To avoid unwarranted conclusions, norms and practices have to be distinguished, as they are in this book. At the same time, their relationship is so close and complex as to merit a detailed examination. Here is another reason why this study, unlike some of its predecessors, has a relatively limited geographic and chronological span. The wider significance of the Borromean project is nevertheless unquestionable. On the one hand, many other church leaders of the time shared its basic assumptions and fostered similar penitential techniques, both old and new. On the other hand, the consistency, detail, and force of the Borromean model of discipline conferred it a lasting and almost unparalleled influence throughout the Catholic world. It is all the more relevant to understand the ways in which the program was developed and played out locally, in a diocese that was one of Italy’s most extensive, diverse, and renowned. By far the largest of all Lombard bishoprics, the Borromean diocese extended roughly from the border of the Venetian republic outside Bergamo, in the east, to the river Ticino and the Lago Maggiore in the west; and it stretched from the mountainous borders of the Swiss confederacy to the lowlands ten miles south of Milan (Fig. 1). Two major irregularities interrupted these outlines: the Church of Como formed its own diocese, leaving a large gap in the center-north; in turn, Milan claimed spiritual jurisdiction over three Swiss valleys around the northern reaches of the Ticino.1 The rugged Alpine areas of the diocese depended essentially on a pastoral economy, yearly laid low by long and cold winters. The forested foothills and high plains of northern and central Lombardy allowed for a more varied, though still 1

For general introductions, see Mario Bendiscioli, “Politica, amministrazione e religione nell’età dei Borromei,” Storia di Milano, 10:3-350; and Domenico Sella, Lo Stato di Milano in età spagnola (Milano: Utet Libreria, 1987).

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Figure 1. Map of the Diocese of Milan, ca. 1592

not abundant, livelihood. The fertile low plains around and especially south of Milan were the true engine of the Lombard economy. Since the later Middle Ages, intensive development, a network of irrigation works, and a system of continuous field rotation had made the area a prime producer of cereals and raw materials such as wool and silk. The latter formed the basis of the highly specialized textile industry

xii

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and trade that distinguished the Milanese urban economy, along with its traditional weapons industry. A thriving merchant class, producers as well as consumers of wealth, was the social corollary of this economy. Overall, wealth as well as population were unequally distributed: economic activity and demographic density were heavily concentrated in the south, and in the city. Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century, and well into the seventeenth, political stability and almost uninterrupted peace favored prosperity, economic expansion, and steady population growth, turning Milan into one of Europe’s foremost urban centers. The city numbered 79,000 inhabitants in 1542, had reached 112,000 in 1599, and probably grew to 130,000 around 1610. Twice, however, devastating plagues seriously disturbed this trend: the first in 1576-77 (the so-called “Plague of San Carlo”), the second in 1629-31. The population of the diocese roughly followed the same pattern, though at a slower pace; counting around 560,000 souls in the mid 1570s, it was to exceed 600,000 after the turn of the seventeenth century. Politically, the diocese fell mostly within the secular confines of the State of Milan. The state itself, which had become part of the Habsburg empire after Francesco II Sforza’s death in 1535, had effectively been under the Spanish crown since the lands of Charles V were divided (1555). As a military outpost at the crossroads of Europe, the Spanish found it essential for maintaining their military corridor to the Netherlands and France, and for controlling northern Italy. Internally, Spanish Milan depended on the collaboration of old structures of local government, culminating in the Senate, and new organs and functionaries in charge of executing Spanish policy, headed by the governor. The Senate, a collegial body of jurists recruited from the urban patriciate, had broad jurisdictional and administrative powers, and in practice served as guarantor of Milanese legal traditions and privileges. The successive governors, the highest representatives of the Spanish sovereign and as such the first legislators in the state, preferred to heed the centralizing tendencies and strategic schemes of the Spanish political conglomerate more than the interests of local particularism. Resulting tensions and conflicts often ended up on the table of the Spanish king himself — Philip II for much of the period covered in this book — whose inclination was usually to find a compromise acceptable to both sides. Thus, the Milanese state was in a delicate equilibrium of foreign domination and local autonomy.

PREFACE

xiii

Royal authority was often also needed to intervene in bitter disputes between the secular and religious authorities of Milan. The episcopates of Carlo Borromeo and his two successors saw frequent clashes over matters of ecclesiastical autonomy and jurisdiction ranging from the bishop’s right to his own police force, to the jurisdiction of his tribunal, to his control over lay confraternities. Strengthened by extensive papal privileges, generally powerful connections, and sheer doggedness, Carlo Borromeo was usually more successful than his successors in such conflicts. Strong ecclesiastical leadership undeniably tipped the balance of Church-state relations to the advantage of the former in many areas of public policy. In issues where both powers had traditionally collaborated, the initiative now often came from the diocesan authorities. Thus the battle against heresy, which had been fought jointly by Senate and Inquisition before Borromeo’s arrival, found an ardent promoter in the new archbishop. In matters of church administration, the Milanese diocese had long been left to its own devices. Its archbishops had ruled in absentia during most of the century, and the practice of non-residence was equally typical for the lower clergy. In principle, the curia ruled over a diocesan territory neatly carved up in about 750 parishes; most of these were subject to the jurisdiction of bigger churches (pievi) headed by provosts. But due to clerical delegation of powers, special privileges, and exemptions from episcopal authority, the organization was scarcely homogeneous, efficient, or manageable. Carlo Borromeo sought to change this by promoting clerical discipline and residence, by claiming absolute episcopal authority, and by reorganizing the diocese along strictly hierarchical lines. In addition, Borromeo carefully assembled a compact group of outsiders, unimpeded by local interests and fully dedicated to their superior, to form the core of his administration. Many of them, such as the vicars general Niccolò Ormaneto, Gian Battista Castelli, and Ludovico Audoeno, were later promoted to episcopal sees and other prestigious positions outside Milan, thus spreading the Borromean reforms elsewhere. Their prime achievement was no doubt the promulgation of a formidable body of church law. Carlo Borromeo came fairly close to meeting the Tridentine norms on this point by convening eleven synods and six provincial councils. The councils were particularly important for their legislative activities; they bear witness to Borromeo’s sustained effort to buttress the church province as a unit of governance along with his own metropolitan

xiv

PREFACE

authority. It earned him the reputation of “Pope of Lombardy” as well as the disaffection of some fellow bishops. His successors had to abandon the policy — after the first Borromeo only one more provincial council was held, in 1609 — but continued the tradition of almost yearly synods. Finally, a few words on the Milanese archbishops themselves are in order . Carlo Borromeo was born in 1538 into a prominent noble family of Milan. Destined for an ecclesiastical career, he received a thorough legal training in utroque iure at the University of Pavia. A stroke of good fortune catapulted him into one of the highest offices of the Church in early adulthood: his uncle Gian Angelo Medici, elected pope (Pius IV) in 1559, called him to Rome to become his personal secretary. During six years as cardinal-nephew, Borromeo grew into an able administrator and was deeply involved in directing the final sessions of the Council of Trent (1562-63). More importantly, a conversion experience turned him into an ardent supporter of the Tridentine reforms. Ordained priest in 1563 and appointed archbishop of Milan in 1564, he was required by Tridentine law to take up residence in the Milanese diocese, which he had administered since 1560. Between 1566 and his death in 1584 he was rarely to leave it. Opposition to his reforms — in the secular as well as ecclesiastical domain — rarely weakened his resolve; if anything, his dedication and identification with his office grew over the years. The disastrous plague of 1576-77 deepened Borromeo’s personal bent toward asceticism and exercises of penance. At the same time, his fearless conduct during this crisis earned him a lasting reputation of holiness; it was to contribute greatly to his rapid canonization (1610). Borromeo died, ill and exhausted, in 1584 at the age of forty-six.2 Carlo Borromeo’s contemporary and later fame almost inevitably overshadowed the name of his successor. The episcopate of the Milanese nobleman Gaspare Visconti (1584-95) is conventionally portrayed as an uneventful intermezzo; a lack of studies perpetuates this perception.3 It is probably true that the meticulous but scarcely 2

For biographical sketches, see Roger Mols, “Charles Borromée,” Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastiques, 12:486-534; Hubert Jedin, Carlo Borromeo (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1971); and Michel De Certeau, “Carlo Borromeo, santo,” DBI, 20:260-69. 3 But see for a reappraisal, with bibliography, the special issue of Studia Borromaica 1 (1987): 7-136.

PREFACE

xv

charismatic Visconti left not much of an imprint on the diocese; a lack of special titles and powers made this archbishop (not cardinal) certainly less effective than his predecessor. His basic policy of conservation of the Borromean reform program encountered many obstacles. Otherwise, diocesan government proceeded structurally unchanged but for a process of continuing bureaucratization. The episcopal see regained authority and initiative with the appointment in 1595 of Cardinal Federico Borromeo (1564-1631), a younger cousin of Carlo Borromeo. While Cardinal Federico has derived lasting fame from his portrayal in Manzoni’s Promessi Sposi, he has received much less attention from historians. His numerous works suggest a personality devoid of Carlo’s activism and more inclined toward contemplation and humanistic studies; he initially even resisted accepting the archiepiscopal office. His tenure constituted nonetheless a consistent, and on the whole successful, attempt to consolidate Carlo Borromeo’s reforms in strict fidelity to the rules laid out by his cousin; to these, in fact, not much was added. Federico’s decision to republish the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis (1599) is in this sense indicative, and so are his efforts to promote his cousin’s canonization. Under Federico, moreover, the bureaucratic machinery of the diocese seems to have worked more smoothly than ever before. On the other hand, by this time administrative procedures — visitations, congregations, synods — had also become more streamlined and standardized; their documentation is for this reason much poorer than anything the earlier phase of experimentation, conflict, and intransigence had produced.4 A revolution had been normalized. This book has been in the making much longer than I thought possible and desirable at the outset. Now that it is finished I hope that where the project lost in speed it gained in depth. Whatever its merits, they are owed in no small part to the interest, largesse, and patience of a great number of institutions and individuals. The first stage of the research was made possible by a dissertation fellowship of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and grants of the Netherlands Institute in Rome (NIR). During those years I enjoyed the hospitality of the NIR, the Istituto di storia moderna 4 For biographical sketches, see Carlo Castiglioni, Il cardinale Federico Borromeo (Torino: SEI, 1931); and Paolo Prodi, “Borromeo, Federico,” DBI, 13:33-42.

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e contemporanea at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, the American Academy in Rome, and the Harvard University History Department. More recently, the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and, particularly, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies “Villa I Tatti” in Florence have allowed me to rethink and expand considerably on my earlier research. During my year at I Tatti, supported by a generous Robert Lehman Fellowship, I found in this community of scholars the ideal environment to complete the research for this book; particular thanks go to Walter Kaiser and Patricia Rubin. In addition, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Publication Subsidy at Villa I Tatti facilitated the publication of the book illustrations. At all these venues, I was able to present portions of my work to exceptionally responsive and helpful audiences. The archives and libraries I have been able to frequent over the years, with the indispensable assistance of their staffs, are too numerous to list here. Fundamental for my work in Milan were the collections of the Archivio Storico Diocesano (with special thanks to Don Bruno Bosatra and his collaborators), the Archivio del Capitolo Metropolitano, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, and the Biblioteca Trivulziana. Elsewhere in Lombardy, Don Luigi Sacchi of Arcisate, and his colleague, the Provost of Vimercate, gave me access to their parish archives. In Rome, numerous trips to the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu were especially fruitful; in Florence, the same was true for the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. Outside Italy, I acknowledge the opportunities to work in the rare book collections of the British Library, Harvard’s Houghton Library, and the University of Amsterdam. My personal debts are even more numerous and cannot be fully expressed. I am thankful for the unstinting (and continuing) support of my dissertation director Willem Frijhoff, while I gratefully remember the good care and advice of my other advisor, the late Jan van Laarhoven. I can never repay my mentor at the University of Amsterdam, Bert Demyttenaere, for his contributions to my intellectual growth: it was he who kindled and fostered my interest in the study of penance, cultural history, and much else besides. Many scholars of Italian history have shaped this book fundamentally through their own work, by

PREFACE

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reading and discussing mine, and by offering unfailing personal support; I am particularly grateful to Carlo Ginzburg, John W. O’Malley, Adriano Prosperi, Angelo Turchini, and Danilo Zardin. Others, colleagues and friends, have advanced my work in innumerable ways. I fondly remember the 1996-97 Villa I Tatti fellows and community, including Megan Holmes, Silvio Leydi, Rossana Sacchi, Alison Wright and Andrea Zorzi. I also record with gratitude the aid and counsel offered by Emily Bartels, Marco Bascapè, Benjamin Kaplan, Robert Kendrick, Robert Kingdon, Evonne Levy, Flavio Rurale, Gianvittorio Signorotto and Benjamin Westervelt. Over the last six years, my colleagues in the History Department at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis have provided ample research opportunities and a supportive professional environment; I thank Stephen Heathorn and Kevin Robbins in particular. I am deeply indebted to Professor Heiko A. Oberman for his persistent interest in my research and his invitation to publish it in the Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought. He and his anonymous readers gave my manuscript a prompt, thorough, and extremely helpful review. During revisions, my friend Carol Wharton checked the entire manuscript with admirable patience for linguistic slips. For the duration of the project, my family has been my best asset. I thank my parents, Sibbele de Boer and Johanna de Boer-Bruinsma, for much help and encouragement. In more ways than one this book belongs to my wife and colleague, Renée Baernstein, whose constant supply of expertise, criticism, and good humor has benefited it almost from inception to conclusion. To her, and to our small and dear companion, Sylvia, I dedicate the following pages. Indianapolis, 13 March 2000

WdB

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ABBREVIATIONS

Archives and Libraries AGBR APAr APAs APV ARSI ASDM ASV BAM BCMM BVR

Archivio Generalizio dei Barnabiti, Rome Archivio Prepositurale, Arcisate Archivio Parrocchiale, Asso Archivio Parrocchiale, Vimercate Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome Archivio Storico Diocesano, Milan Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rome Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan Biblioteca del Capitolo Metropolitano, Milan Biblioteca Vallicelliana, Rome

Printed Works AEM

Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, ed. Achille Ratti, vols. 2-4. Mediolani: Pontificia Sancti Ioseph, 1890-96.

Avvertenze

Avvertenze di monsignore illustriss. cardinale Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano, a i Confessori della città, et diocese sua (1574), in AEM, 2:1870-93.

Canons and Decrees

Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. English translation by H.J. Schroeder, O.P., 2nd edition. Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, 1978.

COD

Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. G. Alberigo et al. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991, 19621.

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ABBREVIATIONS

CT

Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum nova collectio, published by the Societas Goerresiana. Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1901 —.

DDC

Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. R. Naz, 7 vols. Paris, 1935-65.

DBI

Dizionario biografico degli Italiani. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960 —.

DTC

Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, 16 vols. Paris: Letouzay et Ané, 1903-72.

Denzinger

Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer, 16th edition. Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1976.

Giberti, Constitutiones

Constitutiones editae per reverendiss. in Christo patrem D. Io. Matthaeum Gibertum... (1542), in Jo. Matthaei Giberti episcopi Veronensis... Opera. Hostiliae: apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740.

Mansi

Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. Ioannes Dominicus Mansi. Parisiis: H. Welter, 1901-27.

MSDM

Memorie storiche della diocesi di Milano, 16 vols., 1954-70.

Sacri Ragionamenti

Federico Borromeo, I sacri ragionamenti, 10 tomes in 4 vols. Milano: Gariboldi, 1632-46. [Quoted by volume no.]

Sala

Documenti circa la vita e le gesta di S. Carlo Borromeo, ed. Aristide Sala, 3 vols. Milano: Z. Brasca, 1857-61.

ABBREVIATIONS

xxi

Saxius, Homiliae

S. Caroli Borromei S.R.E. Cardinalis Archiepiscopi Mediolani Homiliae..., ed. Josephus Antonius Saxius, 5 vols. Mediolani, 1747.

Storia di Milano

Storia di Milano, 16 vols. Milano: Fondazione Treccani, 1953-62.

Additional Abbreviations c. cart. fol. fasc. q. sess.

carta/canon cartella folio fascicle quire (binding unit of ASDM mss.) session

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LIST OF FIGURES, TABLE AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Map of the Diocese of Milan, ca. 1592 (courtesy Kevin Mickey, The Polis Center, Indianapolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . Figure 2. Sketch of the confessional described in Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae (courtesy Kathleen O’Connell, Indianapolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

92

Table 1. Congregations held in Milanese church districts . . . . .

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Illustrations (following this page): 1. Ambrogio Figino, Portrait of Carlo Borromeo (courtesy Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) 2. Cesare Bonino, Nonnulla praeclara gesta B. Caroli Borromaei (Milano, 1610): The visitation of Valle Mesolcina (courtesy Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan) 3. Rizzardo and Giovanni Taurini, Confessional in S. Fedele (courtesy S. Fedele, Milan) 4. Giuseppe Maria Crespi, St. John Nepomuk shrives the Queen of Bohemia (courtesy Galleria Sabauda, Turin)

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terminal histories and arthurian solutions

Illustration 1. Ambrogio Figino, Portrait of Carlo Borromeo.

31

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Illustration 2. Cesare Bonino, Nonnulla praeclara gesta B. Caroli Borromaei (Milano, 1610): The visitation of Valle Mesolcina. Note the confessional on the left.

terminal histories and arthurian solutions

31

Illustration 3. Rizzardo and Giovanni Taurini, Confessional in S. Fedele.

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Illustration 4. Giuseppe Maria Crespi, St. John Nepomuk shrives the Queen of Bohemia.

PART ONE

STRATEGIES

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INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

This book is organized into two parts. The first studies the Borromean program of penitential discipline from the ideal and prescriptive angle; the second focuses on its implementation and results. This division is meant to avoid undue confusion of precept and response, of purpose and effect. All too often, norms are taken to be indicative of practice, while goals are simply believed to be achieved or not. Historical reality is usually far more complex. Yet while each side of the equation merits consideration on its own terms, the distinction is pragmatic rather than absolute. Ecclesiastical models operate in the heat of politics, in competition with other models, and in response to social realities. In turn, the latter are fundamentally (though often unpredictably) shaped by official rhetoric, legal initiatives, and institutional change. The first part concentrates on the massive package of normative texts produced by the diocesan curia to guide the practice of confession, public worship, and social conduct generally. These documents, which include conciliar decrees, instructions to the clergy, episcopal sermons, and special edicts, form the scattered but nonetheless powerful evidence of a comprehensive project of discipline. That project (I will argue) emerged in the wake of the Council of Trent as an ambitious attempt at Catholic confessionalism — the attempt to shape a disciplined, devout, and loyal Christian community able to withstand the perceived threats of a religiously and politically divided world. Such an interpretation finds support in the program’s main objectives (orthodoxy, a code of public conduct, a general penitential ethos) and in its methods (a disciplinary turn in pastoral practices, particularly confession). In analyzing these elements, my point is not only to reconstitute an ecclesiastical agenda whose premises often remain implicit, but to understand its cultural underpinnings, implications, and aspirations. That is important not only because of the powerful historical resonance of the Borromean project, but because it shaped practically all source materials studied in this book. Whether we like it or not, our historical perspective is conditioned by the bishop’s ‘gaze.’ Thus an analysis of the basic concepts of moralistic discourse — such as ‘abuse,’ ‘scandal,’ ‘occasion of sin,’ and ‘penance’ — may help

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historicize the often harsh and uncompromising attitudes that permeate and motivate it — in short, the proverbial ‘Counter-Reformation zealotry.’ What, after all, “lies behind this trite expression that we cannot seem to do without?”1 My exposé will follow a loosely chronological order. We start in the mid-1560s, the beginning of Carlo Borromeo’s episcopate, set in perspective by means of numerous flashbacks on the previous half-century. The goal is to elucidate a central concern among the Tridentine establishment during those years: the critical condition of the lower clergy, who were both the targets of pervasive anticlericalism and the proposed enactors of the new system of discipline. The second chapter highlights the years 1573 and 1574, during which the bulk of the Borromean program of worship and discipline took shape. An analysis of the archbishop’s seminal instructions for confessors shows how penance, understood both generally as a conversion experience and specifically as a sacrament, was meant to transform the social order. The underlying world view became dramatically manifest during the plague of 1576-77. Those years are also at the center of the following chapter, which examines the consequences of Borromeo’s disciplinary program for religious ritual. They included significant innovations in the architecture and layout of church buildings, particularly the confessional. Such interventions were meant as material supports of a new code of conduct, which emphasized the segregation of men and women, as well as that of clergy and laity. Taking a longer view, the fourth chapter studies the fate of Carlo’s initiatives during the lengthy episcopate of Federico Borromeo (1595-1631). The outcome is mixed. While the legacy of the older Borromeo remained firmly entrenched in the Ambrosian Church, his successor’s notion of discipline was further evolved, interiorized, and tinged with Baroque ideals of proper conduct and civility. Discipline had to be discreet and politic rather than confrontational, and aimed less at the overhaul of society than the refinement of manners and speech. In an uncanny final echo of the earlier Borromeo’s experience, a recurrence of the plague put Cardinal Federico’s views of religion and society to their most serious test. 1

Carlo Ginzburg, “Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Century Codes for Erotic Illustration” (1978), in Id., Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 92.

CHAPTER ONE

ASSERTING HIERARCHY: THE CLERGY AND THE EARLY COUNTER-REFORMATION

In 1610, at the occasion of Carlo Borromeo’s canonization, the Milanese nobleman and priest Giovanni Pietro Giussano published a lengthy and well-documented biography of Milan’s first CounterReformation bishop. The moment was particularly fitting not only to review the life and virtues of the new saint, but to assign him a place in history. For this Giussano resorted to an analytical and rhetorical device common in hagiography, according to which the hero’s appearance on the scene constitutes the caesura ending a time of decay and beginning one of turnaround and success. Thus the biographer introduced an issue that had been central to Borromeo’s efforts: the reform of the clergy. Prior to the archbishop’s arrival in Milan, “the lifestyle and conduct of the ecclesiastics could not have been more scandalous nor serve as a worse example...” And Giussano proceeded to sketch an identikit that, as we will see, was the perfect counterimage of the priestly ideal promoted by Carlo Borromeo and developed further by his successor Federico. Pre-Borromean priests in this portrayal were indistinct from the laity, dressing “in the secular manner” and bearing arms in public. Open and inveterate concubinages put them even lower than their lay peers on the scale of morality. To aggravate matters, they neglected their religious duties, did not reside at their benefices, and kept churches and other sacred places and objects in conditions “far worse and more indecent” than all things profane. But Giussano placed special emphasis on clerical inadequacy in matters of penance; many parish priests were so ignorant that they did not know the sacramental form of confession, nor that there were ecclesiastical censures and cases of conscience whose absolution was reserved to higher authorities. Some were even convinced they did not have to confess themselves, since they heard the confessions of others. Through such disorders, Giussano concluded, the clerical estate, secular as well as regular, had rendered itself “mean and almost detestable” in the eyes

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of lay people. It was the origin of a common proverb: “If you want to go to hell, become a priest!”1 This diagnosis, along with the corresponding image of the disciplined, knowledgeable and virtuous Tridentine priest, not only enhanced the stature of Giussano’s hero, but celebrated the ‘reform’ of the clergy as a central accomplishment of the renascent Catholic Church. It thus served the apologetic purposes of early CounterReformation historiography and helped to inaugurate a tradition in Catholic historical reflection that was to endure until quite recently.2 The Catholic Church did not differ from other institutions emerging from movements of ‘reform,’ such as early Lutheranism, in its tendency to paint its past in the stark contrasts of before and after, of decay and renewal, corruption and correction, abuses and remedies. The modern historian must take a critical stance vis-à-vis such analyses, not so much because they exaggerate the achievements they claim — which is no doubt the case — as because they frame complex historical developments according to an institutional logic (in this case of the Counter-Reformation Church) that was itself part of those developments. While the image of a corrupt priesthood and the corresponding notion of ‘reform’ had distant origins, both took on new and urgent meanings during the Counter-Reformation. In particular, as will become clear in the following pages, the reform of the clergy represented a strategic choice on the part of the Tridentine leadership to save the badly tarnished edifice of the Catholic Church and respond to the challenges of Protestantism. As archbishop of Milan, Carlo Borromeo was one of the first to act on this decision. His attempts to establish control over the diocesan clergy, including the vast army of confessors, dominated in particular his early years in 1

Giovanni Pietro Giussano, Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, prete Cardinale del titolo di Santa Prassede arcivescovo di Milano (Roma: Stamperia della Camera Apostolica, 1610), 49. 2 Federico Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa dello Stato di Milano durante il dominio di Carlo V. Note e documenti” (1938), in Id., Lo Stato e la vita religiosa a Milano nell’epoca di Carlo V (Torino: Einaudi, 1971), 233. Borromeo’s posthumous fame and the historiography of sixteenth-century religion in Milan are discussed more extensively in Giuseppe Alberigo, “Carlo Borromeo come modello di vescovo nella chiesa post-tridentina,” Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 1031-52; Angelo Turchini, La fabbrica di un santo. Il processo di canonizzazione di Carlo Borromeo e la Controriforma (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1984); and Id., “Roberto Bellarmino e il processo di canonizzazione di S. Carlo Borromeo,” in Bellarmino e la Controriforma. Atti del simposio internazionale di studi, Sora 15-18 ottobre 1986 (Sora: Centro di Studi “Vincenzo Patriarca,” 1990), 385-401.

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office — the chronological focus of the present chapter. This first snapshot, whose contours are sharpened by flashbacks on the crisis of the preceding half-century, highlights the dynamics and rhetoric of reform at their most elementary. In it the identification of specific ‘abuses’ was the moving force behind the search for equally specific ‘remedies.’ However pragmatic, these early policies were soon to evolve into a comprehensive program of clerical discipline; the latter, in turn, was geared to the purposes of an ambitious campaign to sanctify and discipline society at large.

Reform, Reformation, Counter-Reformation Any study of the sixteenth-century clergy (as of numerous other elements of religious life) runs the risk of becoming entangled in the complexities of a historiographical legacy rooted in the conflicts of the era itself. Before embarking on an examination of what is commonly known as the reform of the clergy, it may therefore be useful to analyze this crucial term, ‘reform.’ However commonplace in scholarly discourse, it has deep and often inextricable layers of meaning which have carried over into discussions about the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, themselves derivates of the same term. Using it carries the risk of adopting, consciously or not, one or another of its implied historical perspectives.3 Fundamental among these is the enduring assumption that the late medieval Church was a broken system, badly in need of repairs, rather than an evolving if conflict-ridden institution. This view derives its origins from the Middle Ages itself. In calling for ‘reform’ (reformatio), concerned churchmen and lay people of various backgrounds and periods advocated spiritual and institutional renewal, a fundamental break with a recent past considered corrupt, and (often) a salutary return to a more distant, idealized past (such as the days of the early Church). Hence, for instance, the papal quest, initiated by Pope Gregory VII and taken up by various successors, for the institutional emancipation of the Church from secular interests and its 3

For a general historiographical overview, see William V. Hudon, “Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy — Old Questions, New Insights,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 783-804.

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‘return’ to its proper sacred mission. A similar perspective became a central motive among sixteenth-century reformers, regardless of denomination; Protestants and Catholics clashed only (and precisely) because they competed for the same banner of ‘true’ reform. Later historians reified these conflicting claims by uniting the multiple Protestant movements under the common umbrella of ‘the Reformation,’ and by framing the Catholic reforms as the defensive response to the Protestant challenge, hence ‘the Counter-Reformation.’ In any case, the notion of reform as a reparative act continued to prevail.4 That idea persisted when, during the mid-twentieth century, a new generation of Catholic historians raised objections against the category of ‘Counter-Reformation.’ The term simplified historical reality, they argued, in reducing the post-Tridentine Church to a reactionary and repressive force brought on by the Protestant Reformation. The German church historian Hubert Jedin provided an essential, and still influential, theoretical foundation for this position in a famous essay of 1946.5 Next to the ‘Counter-Reformation,’ Jedin argued, a separate albeit interconnected strain of reform could be detected within early modern Catholicism. This ‘Catholic Reformation’ was part of a continuing, autonomous tradition of ‘self-reform,’ quite independent from and much older than Protestantism. Jedin’s highly influential proposal and the research it has generated have been useful in correcting oversimplified views of early modern Catholicism and in highlighting the obvious continuities between late-medieval and sixteenth-century religious movements.6 Today this perspective is as entrenched as the habit among scholars of the Protestant Reformation to stress the traditional features of the Lutheran movement. Yet Jedin’s famous thesis has serious problems, 4 For a summary and further bibliography, see Konrad Repgen, “Reform,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3:392-95; and Adriano Prosperi, “Catholic Reformation,” ibid., 1:287-93. 5 Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das Trienter Konzil (Luzern: Verlag Josef Stocker, 1946). 6 Catholicism in Early Modern History. A Guide to Research, ed. John W. O’Malley (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1988), esp. the editor’s introduction, 1-9; for Italy, see Paolo Prodi, “Il binomio jediniano riforma cattolica e controriforma e la storiografia italiana,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico 6 (1980): 85-98.

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too. This is not because his claims about Catholic ‘reform’ carried the obvious traces of inter-confessional polemics, by granting the muchmaligned late medieval Church a measure of vitality, by turning the Protestant movement into a later, ‘other’ reformation, and by highlighting the elements considered positive in the so-called Catholic Reformation. The real problems are twofold. First, the distinction of ‘Catholic reform’ and ‘Counter-Reformation’ is bound to inflict artificial cuts on the ailing and conflicted, but integral, body of sixteenth-century Catholicism. Assigning some phenomena — such as innovations in devotional practice, pastoral care, or clerical training — to the category of ‘self-reform’ and others — the inquisition, censorship and other forms of repression — to the rubric of ‘antiProtestant reaction’ is an often arbitrary and ultimately misleading operation. These elements, if they can be distinguished at all, formed the two sides of the same coin.7 Second, and even more importantly, the genealogy of reform movements has obscured the important insight (to which we will return at the end of this chapter), that the CounterReformation should not be seen primarily as a new installment in a tradition of institutional reform, but as the reflection of fundamental changes in sixteenth-century politics and society. These considerations are eminently relevant for our subject matter, since the Tridentine reform of the clergy not only drew on an age-old ecclesiastical legacy, but was fundamentally shaped by the the postReformation era. During the Middle Ages the conditions of the clergy were so pressing a preoccupation as to generate a deeply rooted tradition of anticlericalism and, not coincidentally, to become the core of all official plans for church ‘reform.’ Yet rather than leading to overall

7 This becomes very clear in Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Torino: Einaudi, 1996). In a different approach, John W. O’Malley (“Was Ignatius Loyola a Church Reformer? How to Look at Early Modern Catholicism,” Catholic Historical Review 77 [1991]: 177-93) does not contest the validity of Jedin’s dual categorization, but suggests that neither term captures all things “of importance [that] happened in Catholicism during the period,” in particular the history of the Jesuits. O’Malley’s alternative term, “early modern Catholicism,” appears useful provided one acknowledges that it amounts to abandoning the attempt at period characterization in favor of a neutral and ‘empty’ periodization. I use the traditional term ‘Counter-Reformation’ in this book as a convenient short-hand designation for post-Tridentine Catholicism without making implicit claims about its nature or denying its complexity.

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institutional intervention or successful resistance, both phenomena became systemic features of medieval religious culture. During the early Reformation, however, this legacy inevitably turned into combustible material. As the crisis of Christianity set in, negative stereotypes and ingrained realities conditioning the position of the ordained church minister were bound to affect the battle of principles that the Reformation was in the first place. For those with Protestant sympathies, complaints about clerical behavior could add fuel to their theological objections against sacerdotal powers, the doctrine of the sacraments, and the existing church structure as a whole. Catholic authorities, especially those whose views came to prevail as positions hardened around the middle of the century, took the issue in a sense more seriously; not prepared to alter the doctrinal edifice of the Church, they reduced the evident crisis to errors of execution and found in church discipline the key instrument to restore the functionality and credibility of the institution. Hence the fundamental distinction at Trent between discussions of doctrine — which ended up reconfirming the essence of existing scholastic theology — and debates on institutional and legal ‘reform.’ The sacrament of penance was of central concern here. In the meeting of confessor and penitent, the Church’s claim at spiritual jurisdiction was inescapably manifest; and as the dispenser of divine judgment, punishment and pardon, it was unavoidable that the confessor, and his personal qualities, would tinge the appreciation of the sacrament. No doubt this played a role in the Protestants’ principled rejection of the sacrament, based on the denial of the priestly power of absolution, the validity of indulgences, the sacramental nature of penance, and the requirement of full and specific confession of sins to a priest. The Tridentine reformers of Catholicism saw the question of penance as equally essential but drew the opposite conclusion. Rather than altering the theology of confession, they sought to remove perceived abuses, instill new confidence in the practice, and reinforce its functions. Inevitably, the administrator of penance became a prime target of their reforms. The priest, especially the confessor, was thus caught up in a gamble with high stakes; much depended on the outcome of this attempt to reshape a figure blamed for previous decay into the reliable minister of

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a restored Catholic Church.8 Carlo Borromeo was among the first and most assiduous bishops to take on this gamble. As cardinal-nephew of Pope Pius IV he had barely finished overseeing the closure of the Council of Trent (1563) when he started the reform of the Milanese clergy.

Bishop, clergy, confession When Carlo Borromeo first manifested an interest in confession, it was to signal the need for rules. Writing from Rome on January 13, 1565, the archbishop informed his Milanese vicar general that he had ordered the compilation of new instructions for diocesan confessors.9 However matter-of-fact, the remark captures Borromeo’s disciplinary spirit at the earliest stages of his episcopal career. Appointed to the archiepiscopal see of Milan eight months previously, he was still serving as secretary to Pius IV, his uncle Gian Angelo Medici. Only after the Pope’s death in December 1565 would he move to Milan to fulfill his episcopal duties in situ and thus satisfy the Tridentine requirement of residence. For the time being Borromeo had delegated most episcopal tasks to his vicar general Niccolò Ormaneto, a zealous church administrator trained in Verona, where he had assisted Bishop Gian Matteo Giberti in his diocesan reform program. That program had in many ways anticipated Tridentine ideals and was to become an important model for Counter-Reformation bishops. In two years of employment in Milan (1564-66), Ormaneto not only made himself

8 For recent interpretations of the Italian situation, see Luciano Allegra, “Il parroco: un mediatore tra alta e bassa cultura,” in Intellettuali e potere, ed. Corrado Vivanti, Storia d’Italia, Annali 4 (Torino: Einaudi, 1981), 895-947; Mario Rosa, “La Chiesa meridionale nell’età della Controriforma,” in La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli, Storia d’Italia, Annali 4 (Torino: Einaudi, 1986), 295-345, esp. 312ff.; Roberto Bizzocchi, “Clero e Chiesa nella società italiana alla fine del Medio Evo,” in Clero e società nell’Italia moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Bari: Laterza, 1991), 3-44; Gaetano Greco, “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio: il clero secolare nella società italiana dal Cinquecento al Settecento,” ibid., 45-113. 9 AGBR, Minute di lettere scritte da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I (a copy in BAM, P.27 inf.), fols. 5v-7r (“ho stabilito di far metter insieme qui alcune regole necessarie, et importanti per l’officio del confessore”); for a summary of the letter, see Sala, 3:330.

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into an architect of the Borromean reform program but gave it a firmly Gibertian imprint.10 As for the sacrament of penance, Borromeo’s letter of January 1565 is reticent about the main concerns or projects in the episcopal curia. More revealing is a brief treatise, “On the Examination of Confessors,” mentioned in the letter but rejected as inadequate for purposes of clerical instruction.11 Its probable author is the Spaniard Diego (in Italian, Giacomo) Carvajal, a former rector of the Jesuit college at Florence, who had been among the first Jesuits invited by Borromeo to set up a mission in Milan. He was to work there from his arrival in 1563 until his death in early 1566. In the figure of Carvajal we have a representative of another influence that would prove decisive in Borromean Milan. The Jesuits brought with them the energy of an order less than a quarter century old, as well as a spirituality and expertise focused on missionary tasks, in particular preaching and confession. Those qualities and specialties were most attractive from the episcopal point of view, and soon Jesuits came to serve as preachers in the main churches of Milan, confessors of the city’s elite (including the governor and archbishop), educators of its aspiring clergy, and consultants to the diocesan curia. Carvajal himself was appointed soon after his arrival to conduct episcopal examinations of confessors, and it was probably in that capacity that he wrote the treatise that concerns us here.12 10 Carlo Marcora, “Nicolò Ormaneto, vicario di S. Carlo (giugno 1564 - giugno 1566),” MSDM 8 (1961): 209-590. On the Veronese influence, see Enrico Cattaneo, “Influenze veronesi nella legislazione di san Carlo Borromeo,” in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento, Italia sacra, vol. 2 (Padova: Antenore, 1960), 123-66. 11 AGBR, Minute di lettere scritte da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fols. 5v-7r (“non satisfacendo compitamente il trattato del Padre Jacomo per sì fatto bisogno”); another reference by Borromeo is in a letter of 3 March 1565 (ibid., fol. 20r-v). A manuscript version of the treatise, also attributed to a “Padre Jacomo,” survives (ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fols. 89r-94v). That the author is the Jesuit Diego Carvajal, who arrived in Milan on 24 June 1564 and died there in early 1566, is made likely by his deep involvement in early diocesan reform, including examinations of confessors (see p. 34 below). 12 On Carvajal, see Mario Scaduto, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia, vol. 3, L’epoca di Giacomo Lainez. Il governo 1556-1565 (Roma, 1964), 444 (date of arrival in Milan: June 24, 1563), 456-57; Flavio Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano. Religione e politica nel secondo Cinquecento (Roma: Bulzoni Editore, 1992), passim. Letters by Carvajal, 1561-1565, are preserved in ARSI, Ital. 119, and Ital. 122-27. Ormaneto reports his death on 26 February 1566 (Terza raccolta di lettere inedite del glorioso S. Carlo Borromeo Arcivescovo di Milano [Lugano: Gli Agnelli, 1763], 1-2); see also J. Fejér, Defuncti primi saeculi Societatis

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Despite its title, the work is devoted less to the technical question of how to examine confessors than to the general state of the sacrament. It offers the best insight into the way Milanese church authorities viewed the penitential practice in the immediate aftermath of Trent. Carvajal analyzed his topic especially in terms of the “errors and abuses” which he detected in many confessors, and of “remedies” that might correct these. This approach is interesting not because it was in any sense original, but precisely because it was not. It reflected an outlook that had emerged among the Catholic establishment in decades of tormented debates about penance and the sacraments in general. A quick review is in order here to understand the premises of the Milanese discussions.

A credibility crisis It should not come as a surprise that much of the criticism levelled against the traditional penitential regime should focus on the figure of the confessor. Donatism is of course the term summing up the problematic relation between the most sacred acts of worship and the person administering them. It raised a decisive problem for the church hierarchy: if doubts about a priest’s behavior were licit, these would inevitably undermine his sacred authority. Accordingly, medieval scholastics had based their doctrinal system on the premise that the sacraments were valid regardless of the personal qualities of their minister. Yet, sound and reassuring though this principle might be, it was hardly effective in removing concerns about contamination of the sacred. Penance was especially at risk when it came to Donatist temptations, for it required far more input on the part of the priest than any other sacrament. To instill and maintain the respect of the penitent, the confessor had to appear fair, trustworthy, competent, and personally without blemish. In short, there was ample room for conflict and error. For the Veronese bishop Giberti, an honest and learned confessor might do the utmost good, but an inadequate one could cause the

Jesu, 1540-1640 (Roma, 1982), 1:47; and ARSI, Med. 75, fol. 64r. Carvajal’s background and activities before the 1560s remain obscure.

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greatest havoc.13 Highminded theological reminders that the confessor was God’s own representative and beyond human inclinations or considerations did not prevent his being judged, perhaps all the more critically, on his human conduct. Throughout the sixteenth century we encounter rejections of confession based on personal estimations of the confessor’s morality. “I do not want to confess to one who is more of a sinner than I am”: thus, in 1580, a nameless inhabitant of Averara, in the northeastern outskirts of the Milanese diocese, expressed the anticlerical sentiment at its most elementary.14 Eleven years earlier, the weaver Alessandro Piacentino had been equally blunt; for him priests and other religious persons “are worse than lay people.”15 Objections against the priestly role in confession nevertheless came in numerous varieties. In circles of religious dissidence they often blended in with far-reaching theological arguments about sin and forgiveness — a decisive question not only for Luther but also for many Italian heretics who, rightly or wrongly, received the label of ‘Lutheran.’ One of the most influential texts in the Italian reform movement, Benedetto da Mantova’s Beneficio di Cristo (1543), had put the doctrine of God’s infinite mercy at the center of the debate; it was only through Christ that sinners could hope to receive “the abundance of grace and the gift of justice for life.”16 The possible implications and dangers of such theological speculation became clear when a reader of

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Thus Pietro Francesco Zini in his work on Giberti’s accomplishments as a bishop; in this sense, “maximi in utramque partem in ecclesia Dei ponderis esse confessores” (Boni Pastoris Exemplum, published in Jo. Matthaei Giberti episcopi Veronensis ... Opera [Hostiliae: apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740], 253-96, at 276). 14 ASDM, IX, 22, q. 15, fol. [2]: “Io non mi volio confesar da uno più peccatore de me et quando mi volio confessar mi ne vado in un cantono et mi confesso a Dio.” 15 The archbishop and the inquisitor, the Dominican friar Angelo da Cremona, who looked into the case, were informed “che havesse detto che non era bene confessarsi a preti, et altri religiosi, i quali sono peggiori delli laici.” To his parish priest, who had admonished him repeatedly to fulfill his Easter obligation, Alessandro “havea risposto che si communicava ogni dì, et pigliava ogni giorno il corpo, et sangue di Nostro Signor Giesù Christo, mangiando del pane, et bevendo una zaina di vino.” The priest’s efforts to “instruct” him regarding the difference between consecrated bread and wine and the bread and wine that is used for food, had not convinced Alessandro (ASDM, XIV, 120, fols. 241-42). 16 Benedetto da Mantova, Il beneficio di Cristo, con le versioni del secolo XVI, documenti e testimonzianze, ed. Salvatore Caponetto (Firenze: G.C. Sansoni; Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1972), 21.

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the Beneficio, the Paduan law professor Guido Panciroli, took a Lenten sermon in 1555 as the opportunity to describe penance essentially as an act of inner contrition. What role, then, was left for the confessor? Bartolomeo dalla Barba, leader of a Veronese heretical group dispersed in 1550, gave the inevitable answer: the belief in a merciful God, who would pardon the repentant sinner turning directly to him, dispensed with the need to “confess and manifest one’s sins to a priest.”17 Thus the conviction that the confessor could be bypassed was recurrent even among critics who accepted confession as an element in the process of forgiveness. “[W]hen I want to confess,” the inconfesso of Averara declared, “I go into a corner and confess to God.”18 He was in the company of many heretics who preferred to confess their sins directly to Christ, an image of Christ, a secular person, or a wall. No doubt motivations differed. Aside from serious theological reflection, criticism was often based on the social risks of confession. In 1550 Alessandro Ressa expressed a common objection when he told the inquisitor of Imola that it was “madness (gran pazia) to go and tell one’s secrets to others.” Ressa touched upon a fundamental issue: the secrecy of confession was in fact (as later chapters will confirm) a sine qua non for the social functionality of confession. For some, this was reason to reject the sacrament altogether; for others, to endorse more moderate but still drastic alternatives. In 1564, for example, Fra Tommaso Fabiano of Mileto expressed a belief that could easily be identified as Lutheran, stating “that it is sufficient to tell one’s sins in general, without telling their number, kind, and circumstances.”19 Regardless of the varieties of opinion, however, it was clear that doubts about the figure of the confessor and the trust he inspired cast a dark shadow over the sacrament. Of course, we cannot know with precision how widespread such sentiments were. In northern Italy only a small minority of adult Christians can be shown to have abstained from the required annual confession.20 Still fewer, no doubt, cherished the prospect of having to 17

Both cases are cited in Silvana Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia 1520-1580 (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1987), 172. 18 See note 14 above. 19 Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 170; see also the discussion of Bavarian and Austrian Lutheranism in W. David Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk.” Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 69-76. 20 See pp. 193-94 below.

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explain their dissent in the intimidating atmosphere of an inquisitorial courtroom. But even if they were few, they were the expression of a discontent that was more widespread and that, in a period of religious instability, and especially in a confessional border region like the Milanese diocese, had to be taken seriously. Therefore it was a good measure of the impact of the anticlerical mood that ecclesiastical authorities proved particularly sensitive to it from early in the century. For instance, it did not require Luther’s Wittenberg protests of 1517 for a synod in Florence to declare in the same year that unless quick action was taken the sacrament of penance, salutary and necessary though it was, would succumb under the contempt of many. The reason was simple: it was the practice of electing confessors who were “ignorant, greedy, without charity, without zeal, and inclined to examine their penitents’ purses more than their consciences.” The lament was taken up literally by the Veronese bishop Giberti and echoed through Italian episcopal palaces for much of the century.21 Similarly, the image of the deficient confessor hovered ominously over the Bologna meetings of the Council of Trent (1547-48), the first to be dedicated to the sacrament of penance. As an early discussion paper put it, how could the sick be expected to trust their physician if the latter could not even take care of himself ? It was of no help to object, as the general of the Conventual Franciscans did, that the medical metaphor did not apply “because bad spiritual doctors also absolve.”22 That might be an established theological principle, but it also led to serious problems of credibility. According to the famous novelist Bandello, another critic of the Lombard clergy, it 21

Statuta Concilii Florentini (Florentiae: per haeredes Philippi Iuntae, 1518), fol. 18v: “Tales hodie poenitentiae iudices aliquando eliguntur viri indocti, cupidi, prius confitentium crumenas quam conscientias exanimantes [sic], sine charitate, sine zelo, ut — nisi per patres vostros celeri remedio succurratur — tam salubre tamque necessarium sacramentum a plerisque contemptum iri videbimus.” Gian Matteo Giberti, Constitutiones..., tit. VI, cap. XVIII, in Giberti ... Opera, 97: “... cui rei istos tam enormes excessus ascribere debeamus, non facile excogitare possumus, nisi quod tales hodie poenitentiae judices aliquando eliguntur viri indocti, cupidi, sine caritate, sine zelo, prius confitentium crumenas, quam conscientias examinantes.” 22 Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum nova collectio [henceforth, CT], ed. Societas Goerresiana (Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1901 — ), vol. 6/1:404 and 587-88 (“metaphora illa de medico corporali et spirituali non est bona, quia mali medici spirituales etiam absolvunt”); the same objection was made by the archbishop of Aachen (ibid., 580).

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encouraged the unenthusiastic laity to seek out a “blind, deaf and also ignorant confessor,” who would absolve sins without distinction, “as if such an absolution were valid.” For Bandello such an absolution was unworthy of the name and should instead be called the “eternal damnation of both.”23 The crisis of credibility, both among the devout and others who had reason to be critical, was therefore too deep to be curbed by formal guarantees about the validity of the sacrament. Nor was it sufficient, as Trent did in 1551, to cast the anathema on anyone who claimed “that priests who are in mortal sin have not the power of binding and loosing, or that not only priests are the ministers of absolution...”24 Church authorities could hope to counter doctrinal objections against the sacrament effectively only if they addressed the sources of the prevailing discontent. The Tridentine fathers acknowledged as much when they began their proceedings on penance in 1547 by collecting the various abuses threatening the sacrament. The very first identified the uncontrolled admission of confessors as “[t]he first and perhaps most pestilential of all abuses in the Church of God.”25 After moving back to Trent, the council dropped the debate about abuses and devoted its session on penance (sess. XIV, 1551) almost entirely to the confutation of Protestant doctrines and theological criticisms. Nevertheless, as we will see, many of the concerns formulated at Bologna found their way into later reform decrees. In the council’s 23 Matteo Bandello, Le novelle, parte 4, nov. 2, in Id., Tutte le opere, ed. Francesco Flora (Milano: Mondadori, 1952). Similarly, for Bandello, this invalidated the comparison with medical care: the physically sick would prefer a competent doctor. 24 Sess. XIV, c. 10: Canons and Decrees, 103. During the preparations of this canon the Donatist controversy was explicitly invoked (CT 7/1, 326). 25 CT, 6/1:403. For the general background of the Tridentine discussions about confession and the preparations of the 1551 decree, see Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 4 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1951-75), 3:315-37; and Dino M. Manzelli, La confessione dei peccati nella dottrina penitenziale del Concilio di Trento (Bergamo: Centro di studi ecumenici Giovanni XXIII, 1966), 19-32. The extensive theological literature on the subject has generally ignored the socio-historical aspects, including the 1547 discussions of ‘abuses’; see, e.g., Hubert Jedin, “La nécessité de la confession privée selon le Concile de Trente,” La Maison-Dieu 104 (1970): 88-115; Angelo Amato, I pronunciamenti Tridentini sulla necessità della confessione sacramentale... (Roma: LAS, 1974); André Duval, “Le Concile de Trente et la confession” (1974), in Id., Des sacrements au Concile de Trente (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1985), 151-222; Hans-Peter Arendt, Bußsakrament und Einzelbeichte. Die tridentinischen Lehraussagen über das Sündenbekenntnis und ihre Verbindlichkeit für die Reform des Bußsakramentes (Freiburg: Herder, 1981).

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aftermath, the question of how to select, control, and train reliable confessors was accordingly high on diocesan agendas. The Milanese curia pursued a dual strategy, combining punitive action against individual offenders with the Tridentine procedure of collecting ‘abuses’ to prepare for adequate ‘reforms.’ Pressed by Archbishop Borromeo to “chastise according to their merits” all misbehaving priests over whom he had jurisdiction, Niccolò Ormaneto drew on visitations, reports of the diocesan clergy, and lay complaints to identify these.26 Soon he was inundated with denunciations: the creation of a forum of legitimate complaint generated an immediate response. On 20 March 1565, for instance, we find an anonymous writer denouncing a Gorgonzola priest, because he had heard from several sides “of your desire ... to deal with the abuses of many priests and to promote true worship.”27 Curia officials used such accusations not only to start disciplinary action against individuals, but to compile general surveys of abuses throughout the diocese for purposes of policy-making. The Borromean reform, however partisan and legalistic, was therefore hardly abstract or preconceived. Far from being unware of social realities, its framers acted on floods of information they had solicited or generated themselves.28

The conditions of the clergy In this climate of suspicion and incrimination Giacomo Carvajal examined the state of the penitential system. The Jesuit father was certainly not immune to the mood of the moment. He himself recommended that the laity be encouraged to scrutinize and, if necessary, report their own priests. The situation required it. The errors and abuses occurring in confessions, Carvajal cried out, were so many as 26

Letter of Borromeo to Ormaneto, 5 August 1564, ASDM, IX, 3, fols. 64v-65r. ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 14, fol. [2]r: “Intendendo io da diversi il desiderio che ha Vostra Signoria di riformar questa diocesi di Milano, di proveder alli abusi de molti sacerdoti e di promover il vero colto divino...” This archival volume contains a series of denunciations and reports on priestly misbehavior. 28 Ormaneto’s hunt for abuses, not only those regarding the clergy, was notable enough for Girolamo Vida, bishop of Alba, to inquire immediately after the results (letter to Ormaneto, 27 August 1564, quoted by Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 305-06). 27

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to defy description. It was the indignation of an expert who saw the minutiae of a highly skilled art go unheeded in the disorder and abuse of everyday reality. Even the form of his Latin report testifies to this contrast. The careful study of confessional manuals is evident in the punctilious exposition which Carvajal first devoted to the qualities required of the confessing priest: legal authority (potestas), knowledge (sapientia), and a charitable disposition (bonitas).29 These traditional categories, repeated by canonists from St. Antoninus to the contemporary Doctor Navarro, then became the conceptual grille used by Carvajal to capture the “almost innumerable” aberrations of his day.30 Carvajal first pointed his finger at abuses of the power of absolution. Most scandalously, confessions were often heard, “especially in villages and small towns,” by persons who were not priests. Priests themselves routinely ignored impediments prohibiting the exercise of their functions, such as suspension, irregularity, excommunication, heresy, or a state of mortal sin. Legitimate confessors frequently absolved from reserved cases without having the authority to do so. As far as ‘knowledge’ was concerned, Carvajal had detected widespread ignorance about the form and substance of the sacrament, the correct 29 Circa confessariorum examen, ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 91v: “Quintum [the fifth question] est qui nam errores et abusus contingere soleant, maxime his temporibus, circa confessiones; sed quia fere innumerabiles sunt, ordine quodam aliquos ponemus ut ex illis facile sit multos alios colligere, ne frustra paginas impleamus. Errores igitur qui contingere possunt aut sunt circa potestatem clavium primarum, aut circa clavem scientiae, aut circa clavem bonitatis et dilectionis...” 30 Antoninus of Florence, Confessionale “Defecerunt” (of which I consulted the edition Venetiis: per P.Io. de Quarengis, 1499); see Miriam Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi. Morale e diritto nei testi per la confessione della prima Età moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991), 190. Martin de Azpilcueta (or Doctor Navarrus), Manual de confessores & penitentes (Coimbra: por Ioam de Barreyra, 1560); after several Portuguese and Spanish editions Azpilcueta’s famous manual was translated into Italian (various editions from 1564) and into Latin (from 1573 onwards); see Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, “Censimento,” 365ff., nos. 350ff. Through Navarro the distinction was adopted by the Jesuit Diego Laínez; see Johann Theiner, Die Entwicklung der Moraltheologie zur eigenständigen Disziplin [Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1970], 70 and n. 13). On top of these three qualities Cajetan added two more: prudentia and sigillum (Summula peccatorum R.D.D. Thome de Vio Caietani..., 1526 [but 1525], LXXXff.); still in the early seventeenth century, Cajetan’s five criteria were adopted by an author like Nicolò Bonfigli, Somma aurifica... (in Venetia: appresso Giovanni Guerigli, 1603), 562, quoted by Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 202. Turrini speaks of “un’ormai consolidata riflessione al riguardo” (ibid., 193).

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identification of sins and their relative gravity, and other requirements of a proper confession. Among its detrimental effects were unequal standards, moral confusion and contradiction among confessors; the discussion of topics that should remain off-limits; the neglect of the seal of confession; and the risk of heresy, “for often ignorance is followed by malice.” Malice was precisely Carvajal’s third category; it could inspire ill-conceived advice and incorrect, even heretical, teachings, or it might take the form of other vices — the greed of priests who abused the sacrament for personal gain, the pride of confessors who preferred some penitents over others, and the envy of those who allowed verbal abuse of their colleagues. What all these abuses had in common was that they offended “the glory and honor of Christ, and the salvation of souls.”31 In short, Carvajal’s discourse clearly betrayed the moralist; receptive to traditional clichés, it was keen on denouncing any deviations from a norm presented as objective and timeless. Yet it also reflected, from the particular viewpoint of a reform-minded Jesuit, a complex set of conditions that had come to determine the position of the clergy by the mid-sixteenth century. Most urgent, for Carvajal as for most Catholic authorities of the time, was no doubt the power vacuum which had characterized the preceding half-century. The priestly potestas whose abuse Carvajal lamented was in fact much more than the technical term used by medieval scholastics to systematize their doctrine of penance. In many ways (as the example of confession has already shown us) the Reformation was precisely a conflict over clerical power. Where that fundamental principle was contested, both in the ideological and the political spheres, it could seem almost pedantic to complain that the various sanctions of medieval canon law were applied incorrectly. In fact, in Lombardy as elsewhere, the protests of ecclesiastical authorities against such negligence, and their attempts at enforcement, had been weak and ineffective.32 By the 1560s, however, as the political scales had tipped toward the side of authority, the time of church discipline had come. Hence Carvajal’s, and also Borromeo’s, insistence 31

Circa confessariorum examen, ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fols. 91v-93r. See the archiepiscopal edicts of 1515, 1520 and 1550, cited in Storia di Milano, 9:523, 532, 533-34; these edicts, however general in intent, focused on clerical discipline rather than lay worship. 32

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on those old tools of discipline: absolution from sins and canonical impediments, interdiction from church buildings and services, excommunication from the Christian community, suspension from ecclesiastical office, and so on. When it comes to explaining the previous power vacuum, we have to consider the practice of ecclesiastical government itself. Symptomatic was the lasting absence of prelates, certainly in Lombardy. Two archbishops of the D’Este family of Ferrara, Ippolito I (1497-1518) and Ippolito II (1519-50), had never set foot on Milanese soil to attend to their episcopal duties; they had left diocesan government in the hands of vicars general and other substitutes. Occasionally these issued stern legislation to reform clerical conduct, but their inability to impose it was such that the civic authorities began to clamor for a “resident pastor.” Accordingly, when the diligent but shortlived archbishop Giovanangelo Arcimboldi died in 1555, the city supported Filippo Archinto’s candidacy for the succession on the grounds that “our clergy and all divine worship with it are in much disorder for not having their pastor.” But Archinto, elected three years later, died before even reaching the diocese.33 The factors reviewed so far — heretical contestation and a political void — are not enough to account for the picture of the confessor sketched by Carvajal, nor for the other complaints about abusive priests that were common currency in the Tridentine period. To understand the charges of immorality, ignorance and scandalous behavior, regardless of their merit in any given case, we have to know more about the social physiognomy of the diverse army of clergy who, in a diocese like Milan, were engaged in the care of souls.34 Let us begin with the parish clergy.

33 Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 232. See also Carlo Marcora, “Ippolito II arcivescovo di Milano,” MSDM 6 (1959): 305-521; and Id., “La chiesa milanese nel decennio 1550-1560,” MSDM 7 (1960): 254-501. 34 Despite recent advances of historical research in this field, a full analysis is currently out of the question; I limit myself to an indication of some crucial issues.

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The parish priest Recent research has shown abundantly that Italian parish life was conditioned in many ways by its problematic economics.35 The key issue was that the economic and juridical foundation of church offices was essentially divorced from the effective performance of liturgical services. At all levels of the hierarchy, chaplains, parish priests, provosts and canons derived their sacred office from a benefice — the right to enjoy the income of a certain ecclesiastical property. The appointment to such a title was formally sealed by church authorities, usually the bishop, but effectively in the hands of whoever had its patronage rights (juspatronatus), whether individuals or institutions, ecclesiastical or lay. Thus, while benefices were normally in the hands of clergymen (though even here exceptions were possible), their assignment and administration were subject to the pressures of family strategy, patronage and clientage relations, or, alternatively, to the mechanics of communal and institutional power. The Riva family of Galbiate may serve as an example. In the mid-1560s these “borghesi-gentiluomini” owned 45% of the landed property in that rural town; they had endowed and patronized the major chapels in the parish church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, as well as two local oratories. Several family members had the title to local benefices, most prominently Vittor Riva, who was not only parish priest of Galbiate but also provost of the pieve to which the parish belonged, Garlate. But Vittor Riva lived in Galbiate; hence the main church of the pieve, the collegiate church of S. Agnese in Garlate, had to do without its provost. Indeed, all four canons of S. Agnese (including one other Riva) were non-resident as well, and liturgical services were delegated to priests hired just for this purpose (mercenari). Similarly, the provost had also appointed a replacement for the church of S. Stefano of Garlate, whose nominal pastor he was; this vicecurate in turn was related to another powerful family of the area, the D’Adda’s.36 35 For a synthesis, see Greco, “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio.” On Lombardy, see Giorgio Chittolini, “Note sui benefici rurali nell’Italia padana alla fine del Medioevo,” in Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso medioevo (secoli XIII-XV), 2 vols. (Roma: Herder, 1984), 1:415-68, esp. 453-56. 36 Manon Franzosini, “Clero e società locale nel secondo ’500: la ristrutturazione borromaica in una pieve della Brianza,” Nuova rivista storica 70 (1986): 275-300, esp. 280-83.

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In this fashion, churchmen routinely accumulated benefices and controlled them from a distance. They treated the liturgical services attached to them as a secondary concern, often entrusting these to mercenari, sometimes ignoring them altogether. In 1538, for instance, in the wake of the devastating Italian wars of the previous years, the town of Trezzo had only one officiating church. Its castle church S. Protasio was abandoned by the benefice holders, who lived in Milan and showed up only to celebrate the feast of its patron saint and collect the customary gifts of the faithful. The commander of the castle saw himself forced one day to sequester church goods to pay a chaplain to say Mass for his soldiers.37 In the following decades, the nonresidence problem only worsened as church benefices became ever more desirable pawns in the politics of a centralizing State of Milan; hence the increasing complaints that local benefices went to strangers and foreigners. This was especially true for the wealthiest ecclesiastical institutions, like the Milanese S. Maria della Scala, whose richly endowed canonries were controlled by the Emperor himself, but also for smaller urban and rural churches.38 Even if a church rector resided in his parish, that was no guarantee that he would personally celebrate Mass and attend to his pastoral duties. This was one of the reasons why in 1564 the commune of Montorfano (pieve Gagliano) rejected their parish priest: since he neglected all divine offices it was “logical that he should be deprived of every benefice.”39 The resulting economic conditions of the mid-sixteenth-century Lombard clergy are still far from clear. We know too little about the real value of benefices, the effects of accumulation, and the consequences of substitution. Yet the available documentation leaves little doubt that many clergymen in charge of the liturgy and the care of souls, especially in rural areas, often lived in precarious conditions. The case is easily made for the lower clergy hired for miserable stipends to replace benefice holders. In 1551, for instance, the absentee parish priest of S. Stefano of Nosiggia, who had the respectable annual income of 600 lire, paid only 40 lire to his substitute:

37

Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 237. On the Scala episode, see Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 257. 39 ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 10, fol. [8]: “... unde de raggione dovrebbasi restar privo d’ogni beneficio.” 38

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what wonder then that this chaplain celebrated Mass only on feast days?40 Underpayment may thus help explain the frequent complaint of neglect. It also encouraged priests’ attempts to supplement their income. High on the lists of civic concerns about the parish clergy is in fact the charge of engaging in economic activities, like working the land, selling bread and wine, hunting for a profit, and dealing in hawks.41 An equally controversial source of clerical income were the contributions received from the faithful for services rendered, in particular funerals and the administration of the sacraments. In this area the principle of a quid pro quo was well-established, and the appearance of simony in most cases avoided by veiling the gifts as alms or pious donations. There was nevertheless a fine line between charitable giving and extortion. The sacrament of penance was particularly prone to such suspicions and resentments, which could suddenly turn into firm accusations at times of conflict or increased vigilance. In the secrecy of confession, confessor and penitent could come to a variety of financial agreements. Confessors could accept or require, if not gifts, penances in the form of alms or masses; they could be asked (or ask) to transfer restitutions which their penitents had agreed to pay to an offended party; they could commute penances into money payments.42 Is it surprising, to give one example, to see Donato de Negronis enraged against his parish priest, the curate of Ello, after finding that his younger brother Pier Antonio had agreed to a considerable pious bequest during his deathbed confession and thus diminished the family patrimony?43

40

Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 258. ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 17, fols. [4]-[5]; ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 10, fol. [8]. 42 See the varieties of financial gain described by Carvajal, Circa confessariorum examen, ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 92v: “Item multi non solum suscipiunt ab offerentibus, sed exigunt, et aliquando quidam vi volunt turpe lucrum extorquere, vel si non vi saltem astutia quadam, iubentes sibi restitui quod aliis restituendum esset. Item pro paenitentia iniungere solent elemosinas et missas quas ipsi pollicentur se facturos, imponunt etiam onera gravia paenitentiarum simplicibus, ut illa pecuniis redimant, et vota commutant, quae non possunt.” 43 ASDM, IX, cart. 9, 22, q. 14, fol. [3] (letter of complaint of the curate, Bartolommeo de Abbiate, November 1580); and ibid., X, Oggiono, v. 5, q. 14, fols. [1]-[8] (investigation ordered by Vicar General Niccolò Galerio, 7 December 1580). 41

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In addition to setting the economic terms of parish life, the benefice system also affected the social and educational profile of most clergymen effectively serving its churches. Whether they had to thank a powerful family or institution for their benefice, or owed a subordinate position and meager income to an absentee priest, their religious competence might be only marginally relevant to their election; their interests and loyalties were inevitably tied up with the politics of the local community; and their sacred functions could easily blur with worldly concerns. As far as competence is concerned, the frequent outcries over priestly ignorance should be considered, beyond their obvious rhetorical and stereotypical aspects, against the background of two equally difficult questions: What was the education of the parish clergy? And what kind of knowledge was expected of them? It is obvious, to start with the latter question, that the indignation of a learned Jesuit like Carvajal is no objective measure and may result as much from high personal standards as from lamentable realities. Many parishioners, especially in rural areas, may not have required more professional knowledge of their priest than the ability to say Mass and administer the sacraments. Civic complaints about ignorance usually concern only the inability to perform these limited tasks. Frequently, the diocesan authorities did not ask for much more: a Milanese edict of 1515, devoted mostly to issues of clerical lifestyle, required only that the celebrating priest “should be able to read well and distinctly.” A quarter of a century earlier, a rare diocesan visitation limited itself to simple catechistical knowledge in inquiring “if he [the parish priest] knows the articles of the faith, the Ten Commandments, the works of mercy, the theological and cardinal virtues, the sacraments, the Mass and the mortal sins.”44 These considerations, of course, have little bearing on the question what the actual levels of education among the Lombard parish clergy were. Here too, a full answer is impossible at this stage. Yet the conclusions of Borromean church visitors, the accounts of clerical meetings, and the contents of their libraries suggest vastly different educational backgrounds and variable levels of learning. Absolute 44

Edict of 1515, quoted in Storia di Milano, 9:523; for the fifteenth-century visitation, ibid., 534; for confirmation that similar attitudes were still dominant during the Borromean period, see p. 197 below.

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illiteracy was hardly ever found; but while some members of the diocesan hierarchy — provosts, cathedral canons, and others — could draft elegant Latin sermons and boasted well-stocked libraries, others, particularly rural and lower clergymen, might have difficulty in reciting the Creed or in writing a sermon that was not copied from a printed anthology. In Saronno, for example, Borromeo was to find the parish priest, coadjutor and chaplain all equally unable to read. Such priests were obvious targets of denunciation and prime contributors to negative stereotypes.45 They were also the most likely candidates for the epithets of worldliness and immorality. Carvajal, in his text on abusive confessors, did not dwell on these issues. But the anticlerical invective of the time, including the accusations reaching the Milanese curia, was all the more explicit. It draws the picture of an ecclesiastic who dressed like his lay fellows; who bore arms and used them; who worked other jobs and stored his grain in the church; whose relation with a concubine constituted a de facto marriage, often resulting in offspring; and who preferred the company of the men of the village over his spiritual duties. With a few strokes of the pen a critic like Fra Sabba da Castiglione summed up the image: the rural priest “always carries his playing cards in his right pocket and his breviary in his left,” but while the cards are worn out, the breviary “is as clean as when it was printed.” Things could even be worse: the priest of Montorfano denounced by his townspeople carried “instead of the breviary a pistol and often also a carbine.”46

45 For the Saronno example, see Paolo Sevesi, “San Carlo Borromeo e le sue visite pastorali in Saronno,” Archivio storico lombardo 56 (1929): 484ff. On the variable levels of education, see Angelo Turchini’s introductory remarks in Stampa, libri e letture a Milano nell’età di Carlo Borromeo, ed. Nicola Raponi and Angelo Turchini (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1992), XXI-XXXIII; for the difficulty of studying the issue of clerical knowledge, Wietse de Boer, “The Curate of Malgrate, or the Problem of Clerical Competence in Counter-Reformation Milan,” in The Power of Imagery. Essays on Rome, Italy and Imagination, ed. Peter van Kessel (Roma: Apeiron Editori, 1992), 188-200, 310-16; for the issue of education, see further Chapter Seven. 46 Sabba da Castiglione, Ricordi overo ammaestramenti (Venezia, 1582), 226 (quoted in Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 262-63). The complaint against the curate of Montorfano can be found in ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 10, fol. [8]; a similarly detailed accusation is that against Giacomo Manzoni, a parish priest in Valsassina (ibid., q. 17, fols. [4]-[5]).

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It was ultimately this figure of the secularized priest that worried civic and ecclesiastical authorities most. In fact, such measures as the diocesan curia had taken before Borromeo’s arrival had concerned especially matters of religious decorum: imposing the clerical habit and tonsure; forbidding secular clothes, beards, jewelry, and weaponry; warning against female company; and prohibiting theater, dance and commercial activities. This concern with the public image of the priest was fully shared by civic authorities, who clamored throughout the century for effective church action. At times, however, pessimism was such as to inspire calls for state intervention. In 1541 the humanist Antonio Maggiorago used the image of the cardplaying, drinking and swearing priest to solicit the intervention of the Milanese governor, Alfonso d’Avalos, Marquis Del Vasto. Without it, Maggiorago feared, “our religion ... which is already in dire straits, will entirely collapse.”47

The regular confessor The secular clergy, however, filled in only half of the anticlerical picture. Pivotal though their function in parish life was, the laity often avoided that institutional framework and gravitated instead to the numerous monasteries that dotted the pre-Tridentine ecclesiastical landscape. Here much of the religious fervor, experimentalism, and dissidence of the early sixteenth century had developed; here, also, the sacrament of penance formed a prime occasion for interaction between the lay and clerical worlds. For this reason there is little doubt that Giacomo Carvajal’s complaints about the abuses of confessors referred to the practices of the regulars as much as those of the secular clergy.48

47

Storia di Milano, 9:536 n. 1. Recent syntheses include Gigliola Fragnito, “Gli Ordini religiosi tra Riforma e Controriforma,” in Clero e società nell’Italia moderna, ed. Mario Rosa (Bari: Laterza, 1991), 115-205; Roberto Rusconi, “Gli Ordini religiosi maschili dalla Controriforma alle soppressioni settecentesche. Cultura, predicazione, missioni,” ibid., 207-74; Id., “Gli ordini Mendicanti tra Rinascimento e Controriforma: eremi e riforme, conventi e città, missioni e campagne,” in Città italiane del ’500 tra Riforma e Controriforma, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Lucca, 13-15 ottobre 1983 (Lucca, 1988), 267-83. 48

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To take the pulse of this segment of religious life remains, however, a difficult task. Only when Tridentine control mechanisms started to produce surveys and visitation records does the role and significance of the convent world come into focus; but by that time, inevitably, the picture had changed. Some impression can nevertheless be gleaned from it. By the mid-1570s the Milanese diocese had, next to 753 parish churches, 106 convent churches. In the latter, 986 priests were active, of whom 219 were confessors. The presence of the old mendicant orders was still preponderant: in their conventual and observant varieties they accounted for about half of all regular confessors. Another third was furnished by various new orders of clerks regular, whose vocation combined a common life under a rule with pastoral activities in the world. Most of these traced their origins to local spiritual movements of the first half of the century: the Theatines had formed in 1524 around Gaetano da Thiene, the Barnabites in 1533, and the Somaschi in 1540. The Jesuits (also founded in 1540) were of course an outside import of a more recent date in Milan, but they had grown to considerable numbers by the mid-1570s.49 During the preceding decades, as these new orders were only beginning their rise to prominence, the mendicants were thus in a position of overwhelming hegemony. At the same time, the total number of regular confessors may have been considerably higher than after Trent, as controls on their admission were nearly absent and the regulars enjoyed almost complete autonomy, in this as in other respects. In the field of hearing confessions, that autonomy had been sealed in the previous century, when the friars had turned their age-old competition with the parish clergy into a complete victory. In 1474, their practice of requesting special papal privileges to obtain confession rights and bypass parochial control had culminated in Sixtus IV’s general bull Regimini universalis ecclesiae, whose nickname Maremagnum (‘Great Sea’) eloquently summed up the extent of this grant.50

49

AEM, 3:1146 (survey based on the figures of the Apostolic Visitation of 1575-76, printed for first time in the AEM edition of 1599). See Antonio Sala, Biografia di San Carlo Borromeo (Milano: Boniardi-Pogliani, 1858), 249-422, for a survey of the orders, old and new, active in the Milanese diocese during the Borromean period. 50 On the regulars’ jurisdictional rights concerning the administration of penance: H. Lippens, “Le droit nouveau des Mendiants en conflit avec le droit coutumier du clergé séculier du Concile de Vienne à celui de Trente,” Archivum franciscanum historicum

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In Lombardy, the results of this autonomy were only too visible during the early sixteenth century. In the generalized civic discontent about clerical conduct, the mendicants took a considerable share of the blame. Again, matters of religious honor and devotional purity had the upper hand: most indignation centered on the “disorders” and “licentious” lifestyle detected or suspected inside and outside many convent walls. In 1542, Girolamo Vida, bishop of Alba, did not hesitate to qualify the scandalous abbot of S. Maria della Passione in Milan, who had twice been general of the Lateran Canons Regular, as “that criminal,” perhaps for his dealings with female convents. Out in the countryside, near Treviglio, the prestigious collegiate church of Pontirolo derived a reputation as a “den of thieves” from its presumed hospitality to bandits and delinquents. The ease of obtaining a dispensation to live outside one’s own convent allowed single friars, in habit or not, to roam the country unsupervised. But it was especially the frequent and unencumbered contacts of friars with female religious that aroused suspicions of loose living and sexual transgression.51 As far as the friars’ contacts with the laity were concerned, the sacrament of penance became the obvious target of suspicions: confessions were the regulars’ principal pastoral activity, hence the main occasion for conflict and abuse. The accusation of greed was often heard, even more insistently than with the parish clergy. The explanation is not difficult. Usually working outside the parish structure, therefore lacking the income from a benefice, regular confessors were presumably hard pressed to expect some compensation from their penitents, and may have felt justified to do so for a service in which they specialized and were recognized authorities. The practice was probably much more accepted than outraged accusations suggest. The Carmelite Fra Donato di Falchi of Appiano, reported in 1567 by a local parish priest, may indeed have heard confessions “without any respect ... to increase his daily income.” But the implication is that a more considerate confessor, less “sad, scandalous, ignorant, greedy

47 (1954): 241-92; Y. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 28 (1961): 35-151; Roberto Rusconi, “I francescani e la confessione nel secolo XIII,” in Francescanesimo e vita religiosa dei laici nel ’200 (Assisi, 1981). 51 For these, and more examples, see Chabod, “Per la storia religiosa,” 238-48.

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and haughty” than Fra Donato was held to be, could well have gotten away with it.52 Another charge of immorality levelled against confessors, both regular and secular (though perhaps somewhat less insistently against the latter), was that of illicit contacts with female penitents. In fact, the general sensitivity to priests’ indecorous behavior toward women reached peaks of intensity where the sacrament of penance was concerned. The taboo was made up of multiple elements: the sacramental nature of confession; its required secrecy; its importance for devout women as one of the few accepted occasions of private conversation with a priest; and the inevitable discussion of sexual sins. A classic subject of derision in anticlerical invective, it led civil authorities to indignant denunciations. In 1565 the town leaders of Chiari, in the diocese of Brescia, complained angrily to their bishop Domenico Bollani about the friars of S. Bernardino for allowing “various kinds of impropriety” when hearing women’s confessions in convent cells. The accusation did not stem from specific incidents; “bad rumors” made the men reluctant to let their wives confess with the friars.53 The case is suggestive for the aura of suspicion that often surrounded the confessions of women. A charge of sexual licentiousness made against the parish priest of Gorgonzola, too, was presented in terms of allusion, scandal, and public knowledge. According to his anonymous accuser, a traveler passing through town, the priest had asked two female penitents “to have an affair with him,” while inviting other women into the presbytery. But the source remained vague, for while the whole region knew “with public scandal,” nobody dared speak out against this badmouthed and evil man.54 We will return to the question of solicitation 52

BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 321r: “Si ritrova un fratte de l’ordine carmelitano apresso Appiano a un luocho ditto Monte Caramello qual è triste, scandaloso, e ignorante, avaro, superbo, qual sempre per il passato ha fatto professione di confessar senza alchun rispetto; questo tutto faceva per accrescer il guadagno alla giornata...”; see also ibid., fol. 307r. According to a letter of the following year (15 March 1568), the curate’s efforts were destined to remain ineffective: ibid., S.185 inf., fol. 142r: “anchora che molte volte gli habbia vetato che non se ardisse di odir la confessione, et da parte de Vostra Signoria, anchora non me ha obedito, anci dicea che al mio dispetto volea confessar.” 53 Domenico Bollani, Atti della visita pastorale del vescovo Domenico Bollani alla diocesi di Brescia (1565-1567), ed. Paolo Guerrini (Brescia, 1915), 1:70; on this case, see also p. 96 below. 54 Letter to Ormaneto, 20 March 1565, ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 14, fol. [3]r.

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in a later chapter. Here suffice it to stress that the issue, like other scandalous behaviors attributed to regular (and secular) clergy, was enough of a public concern to tarnish seriously the public image of the clergy and the sacrament of penance. Ecclesiastical authorities might veil the subject with an embarrassed silence — Carvajal’s otherwise detailed list did not include it — but were all the more worried about it. Behind closed doors the fathers of Trent denounced the seduction of female penitents as the source of “the most serious and dangerous scandals,” but also agreed that their discussion of the matter should not transpire in the official acts. Yet their concerns soon materialized in the firm resolve to combat and prevent the phenomenon.55

The scandalous priest In short, in the priestly ‘abuses’ recurrent around the mid-sixteenth century we can often see the reflections of particular socio-economic conditions, educational backgrounds, and socio-religious expectations. Actual denunciations often combined these complaints, to result in the image of the all-round ‘scandalous’ priest. That was the case as much for the Carmelite Donato di Falchi as for the parish priest Geronimo Di Luciani, who was rejected by the commune of Limido for routinely refusing to hear confessions (causing the sick to die unabsolved and without the last rites), preferring to play cards, cursing God, seducing women, and neglecting the local congregation of the Corpus Domini.56

55

CT, 6/1:404 and 581ff.; and see p. 97 ff. below. Letter of 18 April 1583, signed by representatives of the commune of Limido (ASDM, IX, 1, q. 10, fols. 112-13): “Non lo voliamo non già perché non siamo pronti allo obedir ma perché li schandoli sono grandi et noij non restiamo servi[ti], perché non si atende ali confesioni de sani, che atende il giorno dela festa a giocha[r] chon li gentilomi, et dimandato a confesar non lasa di giochar ancha tutta la notte e molti ne sono morti che maij è volsuto venir a confesarli fin a che non erano morti, e quando le nostre donne vano per confesarse le dimanda così che non stano bene, et nel suuo [sic] parlar restiamo scandalizati che biastema Idio et portò molto disonestamente et a tentato alcune done ... oltra che la schola nostra per causa soua va di mal in peggio et patischeno le ani[me].” A similar complaint by the commune of Montorfano (pieve of Gagliano) in ASDM, XIV, 63, q. 10, fol. [8]. 56

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In most cases we remain unaware of the immediate social context and power dynamics that triggered such accusations. We do not know, for instance, why in 1572 the patrician Giovanni Ambrogio Torriano turned an episcopal investigation about the live-in maid of Giuseppe Guenzate, provost of Segrate, into a large-scale inquiry about his general performance, charging that Father Giuseppe asked money for absolutions and was negligent in doing baptisms, confessions of the sick, and burials. We only know that from then on their relationship degenerated into a bitter personal contest. The priest knew from the confessions of a young female penitent that she had been seduced by Torriano, and used this knowledge to have him reported for rape to the Milanese legal authorities, who had just passed harsh anti-rape legislation; Torriano responded by reporting the provost to the diocesan court for breaking the seal of confession and forcing him to spend large amounts of money on the legal defense necessary to avoid capital punishment and the confiscation of his property.57 We have to be aware, of course, that by this time a new factor was active in the complex relationship between clergy and laity. The rapidly escalating conflict at Segrate was the result not only of existing anticlericalism and unclear personal relations, but of disciplinary intervention by the church hierarchy. It was juridical procedure, available and applied systematically for the first time, which required that names be attached to longstanding but formerly unspecified opinions, and thus forced discontent into the open. As we have already noted, however, controls and prosecutions of individual clergy were not the only approach taken to address this discontent. The lists of abuses collected in the diocesan curia also served to formulate general policy, which was intended not only to prevent such abuses from reoccurring but to repair the seriously damaged public image of mid-sixteenth-century priests and confessors, and to rescue their sacred authority.

57

Processo informativo against Giuseppe Guenzate, Provost of Segrate, 1572, ASDM, X, Segrate, 17, qq. 14-20. For the anti-rape legislation, see Constitutiones dominii Mediolani, quibus ordines, declarationes et decreta multa ... addita fuerunt (Mediolani: apud Antonium Antonianum, 1574), c. 71r-v.

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The power of hierarchy The foremost response envisaged by the Tridentine Church to confront the crisis of the clergy can be summed up in one term: episcopal control. For ecclesiastical authorities, the restoration of the sacrament of penance depended primarily on the establishment of an effective hierarchy of power controlled by the bishop. Without exception, confessors were to become delegates of the local bishop, and therefore in need of his express approval. The Milanese diocese was, also in this respect, exemplary: its earliest legislation was fully based on the principle, and so were the “remedies” proposed by Carvajal to combat the much-lamented “abuses” in the sacrament of penance. The necessary legal basis was of recent date. In 1551, during its session devoted to penance, the Council of Trent had condemned Protestant objections against the doctrine of absolution and confirmed the priestly power of the keys as the sacramental foundation of confession. But twelve years later, as matters of church discipline had moved to the forefront of conciliar concerns, the Tridentine fathers saw the need for a significant restriction of that sacerdotal power. Although priests derived the right to absolve from their ordination, they concluded, this alone was insufficient license for the hearing of lay confessions. Henceforth that permission was to come either with the granting of a parochial benefice or by express approval of the local bishop. In either case, episcopal control was ensured.58 The true novelty of the decree was the emphatic inclusion of regular confessors under its terms. It was a dramatic reversal of Maremagnum and the centurieslong development that had prepared it. Along with the episcopal right of approval came the right to examine all candidates. Such an admission procedure was doubly important in the case of confessors, since their performance — unlike that of preachers or teachers — was inaccessible to any direct appraisal by church authorities. Before Trent, Gian Matteo Giberti had already made attempts to introduce examinations, only to run into the stiff 58 Sess. XIV (1551): Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. G. Alberigo et al. (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991, 19621) [henceforth, COD], 707-08, 712-13; Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H.J. Schroeder, 2nd ed. (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books and Publishers, 1978), 95, 103-4; sess. XXIII de reform. (1563): COD, 749; Canons and Decrees, 173.

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opposition of the regular orders.59 But his was clearly the line of the future: as early as 1547, the Tridentine fathers indicated examinations as the way to select regular confessors; in 1563, they gave bishops explicit authorization.60 In Milan, Carvajal’s recommendations and Ormaneto’s first official acts bear witness to the urgency the issue had for the curia. Within a year after the end of the Council of Trent, the new vicar general had the First Diocesan Synod solemnly promulgate the Tridentine norms about the admission and examination of parish clergy and confessors. A year later, the First Provincial Council specified these rules and extended them to the entire church province. Henceforth all confessors needed to carry a written episcopal license, and their names were to be posted in the church in which they worked.61 Meanwhile, as the diocesan correspondence shows, the machinery of examinations was working at full speed. Prominent among the examiners, aside from curia officials, were the Milanese inquisitor and several Jesuits, including Giacomo Carvajal.62 No doubt the indispensable collaboration of the regulars was at first uncertain. Toward the end of 1564, the

59 See the introduction to Giberti, Opera, LXXIX-LIII; Adriano Prosperi, Tra Evangelismo e Controriforma. G.M. Giberti (1495-1543) (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969), 194-97. In 1548, the Veronese official Luigi Lippomano had less difficulty in imposing examinations on urban parish priests, provided he informed them in advance of the questions; thus Gottfried Buschbell, Reformation und Inquisition in Italien um die Mitte des XVI. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1910), 230. 60 Sess. XXIII, c. 15 de reform. (only those who already had obtained a parochial benefice were exempt from explicit episcopal approval to hear confessions). For the earlier discussions, see CT, 6/1:404, 580ff., 676ff., 704ff. 61 First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:52. Carvajal, too, insisted on the use of written licenses for purposes of control: “remedium sit ut [confessor] litteras ostendat curato, et aliquibus aliis ex prudentioribus illius loci, et quia aliquando solent litteras falsificare, melius esset neminem extraneum admittere, nisi vel cognitus sit, vel litteras cognitas habeat a vicario” (Circa confessariorum examen, ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 92r). 62 Thus Carvajal reported on 6 September 1564: “... in niun modo volsero [the other Milanese companions?] iterum nominarmi per examinator ... io lo haveva pregato al vicario [Ormaneto], pur lui in ogni modo mi desiderava, et il padre [generale] mi comandò che si fusi electo lo acceptassi et Dio mi ayuti...” (ARSI, Ital. 125, fols. 61-63); and on April 18, 1565: “Fuera de casa me toca fer examinador de los frailes y confesores de Milano y foy clamato muchas vezes del vicario para ayudarli en algunos confesos...” (ARSI, Ital. 127, fols. 78r-79v).

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archbishop thanked the superior of the Lombard Franciscans with evident relief for his willingness to be the first to undergo the examination.63 We can get some sense of the contents of these examinations from a study guide which the Barnabite provost Alessandro Sauli prepared around this time for the clergy of nearby Pavia. Most striking in this questionnaire is the juridical emphasis. The answer to the first question, “What is penance,” asserts immediately: “It is the penitent’s absolution made by a priest having jurisdiction...” And after definitions of the parts making up the sacrament (contrition, confession, and satisfaction), the interrogation turns quickly to questions of ecclesiastical structure, powers and sanctions: the confessor’s authorization, the church hierarchy, reserved cases, excommunication, and so on.64 To confessors up for examination, a text like Sauli’s imparted the Tridentine lesson that they were to function within the larger hierarchical apparatus of the Church and respect its rules.

Instructions Yet what were these rules? At this point it is not difficult to see why Archbishop Borromeo rejected Carvajal’s treatise as an instructional tool; it offered a diagnosis that might enlighten higher church officials, but very little practical information for ordinary priests. More useful were no doubt two existing manuals which the archbishop recommended as long as his own text was not ready: the Confessionale “Defecerunt” by Antoninus of Florence (1389-1459), printed in numerous editions from 1472 onwards; and especially the Summula peccatorum by Tommaso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan (1469-1534), first published 63

Minute of letter, 9 December 1564, ASDM, IX, 3, fol. 172r-v. Sauli prepared the questionnaire to be added to his edition of Savonarola’s Confessionale; at the time, in 1565, he was teaching cases of conscience in Pavia at the request of Bishop Ippolito De’ Rossi; see Orazio Premoli, Storia dei barnabiti nel Cinquecento (Roma: Desclée & C., 1913), 162-63. I consulted the 1571 edition: Confessionale Reveren. Fratris Hieronymi Savonarolae ordinis praedicatorum ... denuo impressum, mendisque quibus passim scatebat expurgatum; additis ... quibusdam compendiosis interrogationibus pro his, qui ad Ecclesiasticos ordines promovendi, quique ad audiendas confessiones et ad curam animarum sunt admittendi ... per Reverendum D. Alexandrum Saulium Theologum, collectis et revisis (Papiae: Apud Hieronymum Bartholum, 1571). 64

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in 1525.65 These texts were quintessential late-medieval tools for the basic instruction of confessors: they contained a compendium of professional knowledge — theological, pastoral, and legal — drawn up by experts in the art of hearing confessions, usually members of one of the mendicant orders. The genre included a wide range of forms — from voluminous Latin summae to brief and simple guidelines in the vernacular — and displayed a variety of systems for organizing the complex problems the confessor might encounter.66 But evidently, even these tried and tested handbooks did not satisfy Borromeo. The reason becomes immediately clear when one compares them to the instructions which the archbishop eventually published in 1574. Unlike the earlier manuals, these Avvertenze were the product, not of a convent or theological study, but of an episcopal curia. Instead of a comprehensive treatise on the sacrament of penance, the text consists of select and pragmatic directives of a bishop to the confessors working within his jurisdiction. It begins, in fact, by expounding the rules of episcopal control over diocesan confessors, cases reserved to the bishop, and other forms of curial involvement in confessions. From the outset, therefore, Borromeo’s instructions reflect and explain a diocesan conception and use of confession. This is not to say that the text was without precedent. We may see it as a blend of two existing genres. First, penance had often found selective treatment in synodal decrees or episcopal constitutions, usually limited to issues concerning the enforcement of the annual confession, reserved cases, and matters of procedure and jurisdiction; only rarely did this legislation reflect an interest in catechization and other

65 AGBR, Minute di lettere scritte da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fols. 5v-7r (“fra tanto che vi mandarò questa instruttione ch’io dico, potrete far studiare loro diverse sommule che vi sono, come il Defecerunt di S. Antonino et specialmente la somma del Caietano, che par’ il megliore et più risoluto in questa materia”). On both texts, see Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, passim; editions are listed ibid., 347-53 and 415-16. 66 Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession au moyen-âge (XIIe-XVIe siècles) (Louvain-Lille-Montreal: Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia, 1962); and Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, including a extensive bibliography of confession manuals. For some locally produced texts, see Roberto Rusconi, “Manuali milanesi di confessione editi tra il 1474 e il 1523,” Archivum franciscanum historicum 65 (1972): 107-56.

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pastoral concerns.67 The first half of the sixteenth century saw the cautious development of a new genre: some reform-minded bishops in northern Italy set out to publish general guides for the instruction of the diocesan clergy. These texts owed their origin not only to an awareness of clerical insufficiency, but the conviction that it was an episcopal responsibility to intervene. In 1521 Filippo Sauli, bishop of Brugnone (Piedmont), had a handbook printed in Milan for the use of all clergy having care of souls.68 A decade later Sauli’s colleague of Verona, Giberti, published a similar guide in the vernacular. That this text was to resurface several times outside Verona (in Bologna, in 1535; and in Mantua, in 1561), is only further indication of the demand for this kind of instruction.69 By the end of the Council of Trent, then, the idea of guiding clerical conduct through brief and accessible diocesan publications was by no means a novelty. The Tridentine emphasis on episcopal responsibilities and the training of a professional parish clergy offered ample incentive for further application of the same tool. To see it used in Milan is thus hardly surprising, and even less so when we consider Giberti’s well-attested influence on the Borromean reforms, in particular through Niccolò Ormaneto.70 Borromeo’s instructions are noteworthy, however, for their sheer number, as well as an unmistakable trend towards specialization. The Avvertenze ... ai confessori were part of an avalanche of episcopal directives, which included instructions

67

Zelina Zafarana, “Cura pastorale, predicazione, aspetti devozionali nella parrocchia del basso medioevo,” in Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso medioevo (secoli XIII-XV), 2 vols. (Roma: Herder, 1984), 1:493-539, esp. 520-21. 68 Filippo Sauli, Opus noviter editum pro sacerdotibus animarum curam habentibus (Mediolani: apud Augustinum Vicomercatum, 1521). 69 On this genre in general, and Giberti specifically, see Adriano Prosperi, “Di alcuni testi per il clero nell’Italia del primo Cinquecento,” Critica storica 7 (1968): 137-68; an edition of Giberti’s Breve ricordo di quello hanno da fare i chierici, massimamente curati can be found in Id., “Note in margine a un opuscolo di Gian Matteo Giberti,” Critica storica 4 (1965): 367-402. 70 Enrico Cattaneo, “Influenze veronesi.” It is not a coincidence that Ormaneto, having become bishop of Padua, published similar instructions for his diocesan confessors in 1574 (the year of publication of Borromeo’s Avvertenze): Avvertimenti ai predicatori et confessori della città et diocese de Padoa. Con i casi riservati, et canoni poenitentiali (Padova: per Lorenzo Pasquati, 1574). Borromeo in fact assisted Ormaneto in the preparation of this text; see Ormaneto’s letter to the Milanese archbishop, 6 February 1573, BAM, F.46 inf., no. 30, fol. 55r-v.

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(avvertenze) on confirmation, the Eucharist, and the Mass; on feasts, offices and funerals; on parish registers and congregations of the rural clergy; and so on. And while some, such as the instructions concerning the sacraments, were later systematized and published in Latin, it is the vernacular antecedents that best show the original intent to tailor diocesan publications to a precise task, occasion, and user.71 The publication history of the Avvertenze clarifies this practical intent. As it turns out, the text had a predecessor. Some time between 1565 and 1569, Borromeo had the decrees on penance of his First Provincial Council (1565) collected, translated, supplemented by a few provisions, and printed on the approval form for confessors.72 The document thus physically represented the link between the bishop’s approval and obedience to his instructions; it carried the clear message that the confessor was expected to be an executor of episcopal policy. A few years later, after another provincial council had required all Lombard dioceses to introduce such permits-with-instruction, the Milanese curia started work on a revised edition of its own.73 In late February 1574, the archbishop discussed the new rules for confessors in several meetings with his rural vicars; within weeks, the Avvertenze were completed and available in printed form.74 We do not know who was involved in the editorial process, but the archbishop’s editorial assistant, Pietro Galesino, claimed final responsibility by signing the editio princeps on behalf of the archbishop and the Milanese inquisitor. The Pontio house published the Avvertenze, along with the license form, 71 The vernacular versions were reprinted in AEM, 2:1771ff. For the publication history of the Latin rituale, Sacramentale Ambrosianum... (Mediolani, ex officina typographica Pacifici Pontii, 1589), see Enrico Cattaneo, “Il rituale ambrosiano da S. Carlo a noi. Note storiche,” Ambrosius 22 (1946): 64-69. 72 Avvertenze per chi havera d’amministrare il sacramento della penitenza in questa citta, et diocesi di Milano. For a copy, of 33 by 44.5 cm, see BCMi, 2G-4-4/17. A modern edition (but without the approval form), is in AEM, 2:1899-1901. A reference to “il Concilio Provinciale” allows us to date the text between November 1565 and April 1569. In the same period short guidelines were also published for regular confessors: Avvertenze per i reverendi confessori, che si desidera siano da i superiori di ciascun convento fatte osservare (AEM, 2:1901-03). 73 Third Provincial Council, 1573, AEM, 2:247. 74 Borromeo mentioned the published text in a letter of 24 March 1574 to his colleague of Verona, Agostino Valier, who had attended the meetings: San Carlo Borromeo ed il card. Agostino Valier (carteggio), ed. Lorenzo Tacchella (Verona: Istituto per gli studi storici Veronesi, 1972), 72-73.

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on a single, large sheet (96 by 45 cm). Soon, no doubt because this format proved too cumbersome, it also brought out a bound pocketbook edition (16o). Priests having the care of souls received yet another version, also in 16o, which contained a brief Aggionta per i curati, while lacking the license form. (This made sense considering that curates went through a different approval procedure.) In this way the Avvertenze quickly outgrew their original dress to become a booklet, small enough to be carried into the confessional.75

From clerical reform to social discipline When, a quarter of a century previously, the Tridentine fathers discussed the reform of penance at Bologna, the host-bishop Alessandro Campeggi of Bologna (1541-54) had suggested: “If we take pains to expel the wicked and ignorant priests, we can easily restore Christianity to its old splendor and dignity; if not, we will waste our energy in devising regulations and statutes.”76 This telling remark by an old-style bishop captures the findings of this chapter in at least three ways. First, it reflected the prevailing tripartite historical perspective on church reform that assumed that a period of “old splendor” had been superseded by one of decay and corruption, which in turn called for a time of renewal. Second, Campeggi presented the crisis of Christianity (implicitly equated with the dire state of sacramental confession) as a personnel problem of the institutional Church. Lastly, he expressed the legal-bureaucratic impulse typical of the administrator but combined it with a touch of political activism. These views no doubt represented more widely held attitudes, if not an emerging consensus, among the Tridentine establishment; and they certainly contained an uncanny premonition 75 Avvertenze di monsignore illustriss. cardinale Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano, a i Confessori nella città, et diocese sua (Milano: per Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1574). Copies of the sheetwith-license format can be found in BVR, S.Borr.C.46 (3), and BCMi, 2G-4-4/10. The first was made out to “presbytero Jo. Petro Perachiono de Clavasio,” dated 21 July 1576, signed by Archbishop Borromeo and his secretary Giovan Battista Oldoni, and sealed with the archiepiscopal seal. A bound edition with approval form but lacking the supplement for curates is in BCMi, 20-9-47. The Aggionta per i curati alle avvertenze de i confessori has been reprinted in AEM, 2:1893-99. 76 “Sententia de abusibus sacramenti poenitentiae,” 10 November 1547, CT, 6/2:67.

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of the political strategies deployed after Trent by Carlo Borromeo and like-minded Counter-Reformation bishops. From a historical perspective, however, more was at stake than the reactive and restorative institutional response advocated by Campeggi. Beneath the tentative policies of Borromeo’s early years in Milan a deeper and more novel trend was taking shape. As later chapters will confirm, the ever-growing body of “regulations and statutes” went far beyond the correction of alleged abuses such as financial exploitation, sexual harassment, intellectual incompetence or personal failings, however significant such initiatives might be.77 Taken as a whole, these rules amounted to a comprehensive effort to reshape the diocesan clergy into a professional class, shifting their loyalty from their local communities to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, imposing a distinctive code of conduct, and instilling values of group identity and collegiality. To be sure, the medieval Church had long experimented with such corporatist discipline in cloisters, canonries and collegiate churches, and its most ambitious prelates had wished to extend it to the clergy at large.78 The early modern policies, however, not only represented a quantitative leap from earlier efforts, but took them to a different level. For all the backward-looking language of traditional ‘reform,’ clerical discipline of the sixteenth century may be connected to a broader process: the development of administrative castes, in state and Church alike, organized along new, impersonal if not ‘rational,’ criteria of efficiency. Receptive to certain suggestions of Weberian sociology, recent historiography has placed such trends under the umbrella of ‘social discipline.’ The concept, which is vital for the research pursued in these pages, deserves a summary introduction here. Developing out of a German debate about the origins of the modern state, social discipline has come to indicate a fundamental transformation of the social order in post-Reformation Europe.79 In 77 E.g., AEM, 2:52-53 and 1873 (on diligence in hearing confessions); AEM, 2:42, 247, 1461-65, 1890, 1906 (prevention of financial exploitation); AEM, 2:68-69 (book requirements, on which see further Raponi and Turchini in Stampa, libri e letture, XXIIXXIV); on the contacts with women, see p. 97 ff. below. 78 Dilwyn Knox, “Disciplina: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility,” in Renaissance Society and Culture. Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., ed. John Monfasani and Ronald G. Musto (New York: Italica Press, 1991), 107-35. 79 For introductions into this vast field of study, see R. Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline in The Reformation (London and New York: Routledge, 1989); Kirchenzucht

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the profoundly uprooted political landscape of that era, territorial states across the continent displayed remarkably similar tendencies to safeguard and police the public domain through the disciplining of conduct. This trend became manifest in such diverse ambiences as the military, the growing state bureaucracies, court culture, education, and economic life. Political theorists even dreamed up images of a fully disciplined, orderly, and centralized state whose subjects owed direct obedience to an absolute monarch, but these dreams remained unrealized for the lack of an effective monopoly of power. Churches fully participated in this trend, even while they maintained their own institutional profiles and goals, as denominational loyalty was essential not only for establishing religious distinctiveness but for enhancing the unity of the state and the common identity of its subjects. This ‘confessionalization’ was enacted by new (or reconstituted) ecclesiastical organs devoted to population registration, charitable and pious activities, education, and especially church discipline.80

und Sozialdisziplinierung im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Mit einer Auswahlbibliographie), ed. Heinz Schilling, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 16 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994); and Disciplina dell’anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Paolo Prodi and Carla Penuti, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico, Quaderno 40 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994). On the concept, see Winfried Schulze, “Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff ‘Sozialdisziplinierung’ in der frühen Neuzeit,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 14 (1987): 265-302. Wider historiographical connections are suggested in Stefan Breuer, “Sozialdisziplinierung. Probleme und Problemverlagerungen eines Konzepts bei Max Weber, Gerhard Oestreich und Michel Foucault,” in Soziale Sicherheit und soziale Disziplinierung, ed. Christoph Sachße and Florian Tennstedt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 45-69; and Giorgia Alessi, “Discipline. I nuovi orizzonti del disciplinamento sociale,” Storica 2, no. 4 (1996): 7-37. 80 See further Heinz Schilling, “Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich. Religiöser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,” Historische Zeitschrift 246 (1988): 1-45; Die katholische Konfessionalisierung, ed. Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling (Heidelberg: Verein für Reformationsgeschichte, 1995). Theoretical essays of importance are: Wolfgang Reinhard, “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 226-52; Id., “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State,” Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989): 383-404; Id., “Disciplinamento sociale, confessionalizzazione, modernizzazione. Un discorso storiografico,” in Disciplina dell’anima, 101-23; and Paolo Prodi, “Controriforma e/o Riforma Cattolica: superamento di vecchi dilemmi nei nuovi panorami storiografici,” Römische Historische Mitteilungen 31 (1989): 227-37.

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Interpreted from this perspective, the Tridentine (and Borromean) restructuring of the church hierarchy was both a defensive response to the pressures of the confessional age and a reflection of larger trends toward political consolidation and centralization. Yet for the social discipline thesis to be fully applicable, the forms of clerical discipline discussed in this chapter would have to correspond to a much larger disciplinary project: the rigorous subordination of the laity to central church authority, and the concerted enforcement of a common code of conduct. The following chapters explore this hypothesis, while demonstrating the centrality of penance in this project. The case of confession, in fact, allows us to reiterate a conclusion reached in the last few pages: the ‘reform’ of a sacrament presented as abusive adapted traditional elements of this practice for the purposes of a new, integrated system of discipline.

CHAPTER TWO

DISCIPLINE OF THE SOUL: CONFESSION, CONVERSION, COERCION

In 1584, during a talk to his diocesan confessors, Carlo Borromeo reminded his audience of their special role and responsibility. Where the salvation of souls was concerned, he said, it was the confessors who, even more than parish priests, “have the souls in their hands, as it were, and ‘speak to Jerusalem’s heart.’”1 The remark was more than an inspirational call to duty. It summed up the strong conviction among the Tridentine establishment that confession could constitute a vital hold over the individual conscience. This consensus had matured over the long decades spanning the early Reformation, when the sacrament of penance had come under heavy attack, to the end of the Council of Trent. By that time, a new Roman Catechism (1566), composed under Borromeo’s own supervision, went so far as to vindicate the sacrament of penance as the “fortress of Christian virtue.” That fortress had withstood the ferocious attacks of the devil and his heretical servants, and was thus to be thanked for “whatever today’s Church has preserved in holiness, piety, and religiosity.”2 Ever since, CounterReformation bishops had continued to fortify this stronghold, turning it into a bastion of Catholic confessionalism. The episcopal uses of the sacrament of penance for purposes of discipline have so far received little attention from historians. The latter have come to recognize, as Heinz Schilling has noted in a recent historiographical essay, that confession was paramount in Catholic projects of social discipline, but most have pointed to the Jesuits rather than post-Tridentine bishops as prominent innovators of the sacrament. 1 S. Caroli Borromei S.R.E. Cardinalis Archiepiscopi Mediolani Homiliae..., ed. Josephus Antonius Saxius, 5 vols. (Mediolani, 1747), 4:4: “Illi [pastores] siquidem utilem operam praestare possunt, ut animarum saluti provideatur; at isti [confessores] sunt, qui peculiariter veluti in manibus animas gerunt, qui loquuntur ad cor Jerusalem [Is. 40:2]...” 2 Catechismus ex decreto concilii Tridentini ad Parochos Pii V Pont. Max. iussu editus (Roma: Manutius, 1566), 172.

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The importance of the Jesuits for early modern practices of confession is beyond doubt. Yet it is questionable whether (as Schilling suggests) they were the “most determined and efficient agents” of the Tridentine reforms of confession. Nor is the discipline enforced in Jesuit confessionals an obvious equivalent of Protestant forms of community discipline (another of Schilling’s hypotheses); as a missionary order operating mostly outside the parish structure, Ignatius’s followers were not in the forefront of community discipline. Post-Tridentine bishops and their parish clergy were, and they did indeed reshape the sacrament of penance to further that goal, in conformity with the decrees of Trent.3 Other recent studies have rightly highlighted the inquisitorial uses of confession. The Roman Inquisition dramatically expanded its reach by requiring the assistance of confessors in detecting and reporting heresy. However, this did not make them into the exclusive agents of that feared tribunal. Bishops like Carlo Borromeo not only operated in evident competition with the Inquisition, claiming authority and intervening in such gray areas as blasphemy, magic, sorcery, and even heresy itself, but they used their army of confessors for a far more comprehensive program of social discipline.4 3

Heinz Schilling, “Die Kirchenzucht im frühneuzeitlichen Europa in interkonfessionell vergleichender und interdisziplinärer Perspektive — eine Zwischenbilanz,” in Kirchenzucht und Sozialdisziplinierung, 11-40, at 36-37; hence it is also incorrect to state that “post-Tridentine confession cut its connections to the parish and the community altogether, in favor of a quasi-private, non-public and personal interaction between the confessor and the faithful” (ibid., 39). A similar emphasis on the Jesuits is evident, e.g., in Gernot Heiß, “Konfessionsbildung, Kirchenzucht und frühmoderner Staat,” in Volksfrömmigkeit. Von der Antike bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Hubert Ch. Ehalt (WienKöln: Böhlau Verlag, 1989), 191-220, esp. 201-04; and Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 144-84. On the Jesuits and Tridentine reform, see O’Malley, “Was Ignatius Loyola a Church Reformer?”; and Id., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 321-28. 4 The complex relations between confession and inquisition have been explored by Ottavia Niccoli, “Il confessore e l’inquisitore: a proposito di un manoscritto bolognese del Seicento,” in Finzione e santità tra medioevo ed età moderna, ed. Gabriella Zarri (Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991), 412-34; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza (along with several preparatory studies); and Giovanni Romeo, Ricerche su confessione dei peccati e inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Napoli: La Città del Sole, 1997). In partial disagreement with Prosperi, Romeo questions the scale and importance of the collaboration between inquisitors and confessors. On episcopal competition with the Inquisition, a largely unexplored subject, see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 278-89.

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For an understanding of this project, one brief set of episcopal instructions for confessors is of seminal importance. Carlo Borromeo’s Avvertenze ... ai confessori nella città et diocese sua (1574) were not only normative for Milan throughout the Borromean period, but soon achieved canonical status as a model of reform in many Counter-Reformation dioceses, in Italy and beyond.5 It is less clear, however, what the goals and principles of this composite and pragmatic set of rules were. One scholar has hailed its modernity, another has stressed its traditionalism; some have slighted its rigorism, others have downplayed it.6 These contradictions are best sorted out by reading the text in light of Borromeo’s overall project of diocesan reform. The Milanese archbishop enlisted his confessors in a comprehensive ritual and pastoral offensive aimed at conquering souls, changing public conduct and, ultimately, transforming the entire social order. This required a disciplinary turn in confession, which was both an outcome of the Reformation controversies about penance and an expression of postTridentine confessionalization. It was propelled by what we might call the Borromean socio-psychology, which justified authoritarian intervention in the soul on account of its incurable weakness and its vulnerability to the overwhelming pressures of society. Borromeo’s goal was thus to penetrate the intimacy of the private sphere in the interest of what he considered the public good.

5 On the later fortune of the text in Milan, and its widespread influence elsewhere, see pp. 130-31 below. 6 See, respectively, Roger Mols, “Saint Charles Borromée, pionnier de la pastorale moderne,” in Nouvelle Revue Théologique 29 (1957): 600-22, 715-47 (at 612, 716, 735-36, 739-40); John Bossy, “The Social History of Confession,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 25 (1975): 21-38, at 29; Jean Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon. Les difficultés de la confession, XIII e-XVIII e siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 79-80; Marcel Bernos, “Saint Charles Borromée et ses ‘Instructions aux confesseurs.’ Une lecture rigoriste par le clergé français (XVIe-XIXe siècle),” in Pratiques de la confession. Des pères du désert à Vatican II. Quinze études d’histoire, ed. Groupe de la Bussière (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1983), 185-200, at 186-90. A diligent exposition of the Borromean norms is offered in Giovanni Sofia, La dottrina di S. Carlo Borromeo sui doveri del confessore (Venegono Inferiore: La Scuola Cattolica, 1938); a brief comment can be found in Robin Briggs, “The Sins of the People. Auricular Confession and the Imposition of Social Norms,” in Id., Communities of Belief. Cultural and Social Tensions in Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 277-338, at 305-08.

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Confession and social control The notion that the sacrament of penance had vital disciplinary functions is by no means new. It is indeed at the heart of most socio-historical approaches to the topic. As early as 1896, Henry Charles Lea explained the origins of sacramental confession in terms of ecclesiastical power politics. Hence the fundamental requirement that all adult Christians confess their sins annually to their own priest: promulgated in the canon Omnis utriusque sexus by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), it derived from Pope Innocent III’s “far-seeing statesmanship and unbending purpose to establish ecclesiastical supremacy” and was aimed at “giving to the Church control over the conscience of every man.”7 Lea thus presented confession as a key weapon of an authoritarian Catholic Church in its battle against individual freedom. From this perspective, which also informed his work on other church institutions, notably the Inquisition, Lea drafted a voluminous history of penance from its origins to his own time. He devoted particular attention to the process whereby medieval scholastic theologians molded the ancient system of public (or ‘canonical’) penance and the early medieval procedures of private (or ‘tariffed’) penance into one of the seven sacraments. This sacrament derived its powers of constraint from the obligatory confession of sin, the priestly monopoly of judgment and absolution, and the requirement of satisfaction for all sin committed. Lea’s command of the sources of canon law enabled him to sketch the doctrinal and juridical framework of confession in remarkable detail and convey its enormous disciplinary potential, but without demonstrating the realities and effectiveness of its enactment. Lea’s general interest has re-emerged in recent times, albeit in a vastly different historiographical constellation. The numerous sociohistorical studies on confession published in the last quarter century, while varied in many respects, appear to share two basic assumptions. The first is that confession, along with the other sacraments, preaching 7

Henry Charles Lea, A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1896; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 1:228. For the Lateran decree, see Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. G. Alberigo et al. (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991), henceforth COD, 245, c. 21; for an analysis see Michele Maccarrone, “‘Cura animarum’ e ‘parochialis sacerdos’ nelle constituzioni del IV concilio lateranense (1215). Applicazioni in Italia nel sec. XIII,” in Pievi e parrochie, 1:81-195.

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and even prayer, was designed not only to bear on humans in their relations with God, but also, directly or indirectly, to shape their conduct and social relations. Thus it is seen as a device furthering the purposes of “social control” and the “imposition of social norms and models of behavior.” The second assumption is that this function was as historical a phenomenon as any other; both its practice and its norms were continuously subject to adaptation and change. In short, there is a consensus that confession had its “social history,” which remains largely to be written.8 Unfortunately, the rediscovery of this history is hampered by an aggravating obstacle. The secrecy of confession has been as essential for its social function as it has been instrumental in preventing the creation of historical documentation. Evidence about confession, at least for the medieval and early modern periods, is therefore largely indirect. The most coherent and substantial body of sources is prescriptive in character; hence the heavy reliance in previous scholarship on the long tradition of moralistic, legal and pastoral literature — the summas and manuals of confession. Yet norms are part of complex processes of social interaction, and scholars have realized that the confessional literature has to be used with caution: one often has to read between the lines to capture their historical significance.9 In a similar spirit, the following close reading of the Avvertenze aims to reconstruct the ideological and discursive framework underlying the Borromean project. In the second part of this book, I will abandon the purely prescriptive level and turn to extensive archival evidence to understand the social dynamics shaping the ecclesiastical norms, the responses they elicited, and the consequences they had. 8 John Bossy, “The Social History of Confession.” A very different approach was taken by Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977). These and other socio-historical studies are discussed in Giancarlo Angelozzi, “Interpretazioni della penitenza sacramentale in età moderna,” Religioni e società 1 (1986): 73-87. Recent contributions include: Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza; Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk”; and Penitence in the Age of Reformations, ed. Katharine Jackson Lualdi and Anne T. Thayer, St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, Hants.-Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2000). 9 Delumeau speaks of a “second-degree” reading (L’aveu et le pardon, 14-16). See also Thomas N. Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control,” in The Pursuit of Holiness, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 103-26, 131-37 (at 108, 122).

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Penance as conversion “In order that the confessors may administer the sacrament of penance with such profit as it may have for the penitents — which is to say: the true amendment of their lives...”10 Hidden in a long and meandering opening sentence, the Avvertenze provide a brief but crucial hint about Carlo Borromeo’s place in the history of penance. In viewing a radical change in lifestyle as essential to the sacrament, Borromeo took a firm and by no means self-evident stance in dangerous territory. Behavioral correction, of course, had been an integral part of sacramental confession ever since it was conceived. In classic Thomist doctrine, penance consisted of three parts, the first of which was contrition; and contrition was defined as “a sorrow of mind and a detestation for sin committed with the purpose of not sinning in the future.”11 Oriented both towards the past and the future, confession was a turnaround, the beginning of a better life. That step was prompted, expressed, and shaped in the encounter with the confessor, and subsequently materialized in works of penance or satisfaction. Hence the rationale of confession and satisfaction as the second and third parts of penance. On this framework the mendicant friars, the medieval specialists of confession and authors of learned manuals, had built an elaborate psychology designed, in Thomas Tentler’s words, to “make conformity to the regulations of the hierarchy a strict matter of conscience” and to “bring down guilt on people who deviate.”12 This form of social control — reminiscent of Lea’s notion of ecclesiastical supremacy — did not exclude “a theology of consolation,” as Tentler admitted, but it remained a key ingredient of confession. Yet the formidable body of church doctrine and advice literature for confession allowed for widely divergent interpretations and practices, including neglect. At the most basic level, the medieval sacrament of penance became embedded in the community rituals of the Lenten 10

AEM, 2:1870. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 84, art. 10, ad 4; and q. 87, art. 1, ad 1, in Id., Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII p.m. edita (Romae, 1882–), 12:298 and 315-16. 12 Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors,” 104-05, 117, 124. For a critique denying the disciplinary intent attributed by Tentler to the medieval Church, cf. Leonard E. Boyle, “The Summa for Confessors as a Genre, and its Religious Intent,” in The Pursuit of Holiness, 126-30. 11

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season aimed at settling spiritual and social accounts. As John Bossy has argued convincingly in a critique of Tentler, “its object was not in the first place to secure conformity to abstract norms of behaviour but to restore damaged relations between the sinner and other parties (God, the church, the neighbour).”13 In circumscribed religious settings, however, more ambitious spiritual goals had their chance. The elaborate art of introspection, guilt and correction described by Tentler flourished in late-medieval urban convents and confraternities, most notoriously the flagellants. More intermittently, the spirit of penance took to the streets when charismatic preachers like Bernardino of Siena and Roberto Caracciolo traveled from city to city to sow the seeds of contrition, whose fruits were immediately reaped by the trains of confessors following in their wake. At such times, confession became a tool for reversing a state of religious neglect and moral tepidness, while it gained political relevance and apocalyptic overtones during the Florentine theocratic experiment of Savonarola, himself a Dominican preacher and author of a classic manual of confession.14 Conspicuous though these late-medieval religious movements were, historians have probably exaggerated the resulting levels of anxiety. One scholar went so far as to explain the Reformation itself in these terms, describing the Lutheran movement as a liberating revolt of guilt-ridden consciences oppressed by the sacrament of penance.15 13 John Bossy, “Holiness and Society,” Past and Present 75 (1977): 119-37, at 128 (reviewing Tentler’s Sin and Confession). 14 See, also for additional bibliography, Roberto Rusconi, “Dal pulpito alla confessione. Modelli di comportamento religioso in Italia tra 1470 circa e 1520 circa,” in Strutture ecclesiastiche in Italia e in Germania prima della Riforma, ed. Paolo Prodi and Peter Johanek (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984), 259-315. On Bernardino, see Id., “Il sacramento della penitenza nella predicazione di S. Bernardino da Siena,” Aevum 47 (1973): 235-86, esp. 246-47 and nn. 66-67. More generally on medieval penitential movements, Ida Magli, Gli uomini della penitenza. Lineamenti antropologici del medioevo italiano (Bologna: Cappelli, 1967); John Henderson, “Penitence and the Laity in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 229-49; on Savonarola’s penitential politics, see Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (1980) (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), esp. 468-90. 15 Steven E. Ozment, The Reformation in the Cities. The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), esp. 49-56. For a discussion of the “Angst”-thesis see also William J. Bouwsma, “Anxiety and the Formation of Early Modern Culture” (1980), in Id., A Usable Past: Essays in European Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

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While the argument may be valid for the most scrupulous among committed believers, it should probably not be generalized, if only because the late medieval practice of penance was, generally speaking, too lax, badly organized and inefficient to be felt as oppressive by large parts of the population.16 Yet in another respect Luther’s personal views on penance were to have lasting implications: they turned the issue into a crucial bone of contention. As is well known, Luther came to oppose the formal apparatus of sacramental forgiveness developed by the medieval Church. In his view, penance had become entangled in an arid and excruciating arithmetic of redemption far removed from matters of conscience and faith; the infamous trafficking in indulgences was only one of its expressions.17 But this was no rejection of the need to repent. To the contrary, echoing the radicalism of late-medieval penitential movements, the Wittenberg theologian used the very first of his ninety-five theses to declare evangelical his belief that “the entire life of believers” should be “one of repentance.”18 This critique had struck a deep chord among the devotionally inclined, in Italy as elsewhere in Europe, and it was thus that the notion of penance as a deep conversion, the beginning of a “new life,” had become both prominent and suspect. On the one hand, Luther’s high standards of penance were echoed in some Catholic religious movements. In the 1520s, for example, the Dominican friar Battista da Crema, spiritual guide of several new religious orders, formulated a view of confession that was as anti-Lutheran as it was critical of current practice, which he blamed for producing “so much half-heartedness in the religious orders,” and “such a lack of betterment (inemendabilità) among the laity.”19 On the other hand,

16 Lawrence G. Duggan, “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984): 153-75. For another critique of Ozment’s thesis, see Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 305-308. 17 John Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,” in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 214-34. 18 Luther’s Works, vol. 31, trans. C.M. Jacobs, revised by Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), 25. 19 Battista da Crema, Aperta verità ... da lui corretta et emendata (Venezia: Nicolò Bascarini, 1544), c. 58r; the criticism of Luther is on cc. 74v-75r. The work was first published in 1523.

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as Battista’s defensive assurances of orthodoxy suggest, any radical understanding of penance could now be suspected of heresy (in fact, the friar’s works ended up being prohibited until emended). A prominent Catholic theologian like Melchior Cano left no room for doubt, labeling the goal of a “new life” as a major misinterpretation on the part of Luther and Erasmus, and the source of all Lutheran errors.20 The Council of Trent did not really settle the issue. During its meetings of 1551, the doctrine of a “new life” (nova vita) as the ideal form of penance was initially included on a list of articles to be rejected as heretical. But when the article met with the objections of several northern-European theologians, it was removed and never made its way into the definitive canons.21 In other respects, the fathers vigorously upheld established scholastic doctrine, and thus reaffirmed that penance required not only contrition, but also confession and satisfaction.22 They endorsed a definition of contrition that included both sorrow for past misconduct and the intention to abstain from future sinning, but gave little further direction. To be sure, they revisited an age-old theological debate about contrition and its lesser variant, attrition, to decide the exact degree or form of repentance required or sufficient for absolution.23 Yet they did not really clarify this complex matter and, instead of countering current perceptions of widespread laxity, perhaps even lowered the standards for sufficient repentance. Whereas in late medieval theology attrition had usually indicated a perfect sorrow, lacking only God’s grace, Tridentine theology came to see it as a lesser — but still sufficient — form of regret, based on fear instead of the love of God.24

20

Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 261-62. Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils, 3:321 (with references to CT, 7/1:292f. and 7/2:251). The Louvain delegation considered the statement heretical “if it excluded satisfaction and penance.” A change of lifestyle alone was not sufficient for sins to be remitted and satisfied for. 22 Sess. XIV, c. 4, COD, 712, Canons and Decrees, 102. 23 COD, 705. See also the Roman Catechism, Catechismus ex decreto (ed. Lovanii: apud Ioannem Bogardum, 1567), 180: “... hoc primum sacerdotes in paenitente diligenter observabunt, si veram peccatorum suorum contritionem habeat, certumque illi sit, ac deliberatum in posterum a peccatis abstinere.” 24 Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 2:14. On the issue of attrition, see also Tentler, Sin and Confession, 250ff.; for theological treatments, see G.J. Spykman, Attrition and Contrition at the Council of Trent (Kampen: Kok, 1955), and the works cited on p. 17, n. 25. 21

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In short, the call for repentance and conversion that had reached so many eager ears in the world at large dissolved in an ecclesiastical assembly immobilized by theological complexities, institutional demands and the need to compromise. Yet it was neither forbidden nor suppressed. Soon, in fact, one of Trent’s most faithful interpreters, Carlo Borromeo, was responsible for reviving the notion of penance as a conversion experience and of the sacrament as a radical cure. Fra Battista’s lament resurfaced almost literally in Borromeo’s Avvertenze as his most pressing concern, for “we see everywhere so little betterment in those who have come to this sacrament for so many years.” In 1584, during a Lenten address to his diocesan confessors, the archbishop turned this observation into the premise of a long indictment of the prevailing practice. After remarking on the abundance of confessors and the wealth of spiritual ‘medicines,’ he asked bitterly: “Why then do the people of Milan ... still have open wounds?”25 However, there was a world of difference between Battista da Crema and Carlo Borromeo. The former was a religious leader of unclear institutional loyalties, representative of a time of religious experimentation and uncertainty; the latter was a prominent member of the church hierarchy, whose personal asceticism and missionary zeal were grounded in an unwavering support for the disciplinary reforms promoted by Trent. Borromeo not only wished to promote and generalize a penitential spirit among the laity, but was fully intent on safeguarding, directing and, where necessary, imposing it through an elaborate system of diocesan control, including an army of confessors. By matching penance with discipline the archbishop rescued and legitimized a radical idea that had become hazardous and deeply suspect before Trent. The confessors thus became the agents of mass conversion — a conversion, as we will see shortly, that followed a precise blueprint for a holy society. Not surprisingly, then, Borromeo attributed the current failings of the sacrament of penance to those immediately responsible for its administration. When the archbishop scolded his confessors, as he did more than once, he focused not so much on the customary charges of ignorance or immorality as on the sin of laxity, that is the confessors’ failure to achieve lasting behavioral change in their 25 Saxius, Homiliae, 4:3-5: “Cur ergo adhuc aperta vulnera gerit populus Mediolanensis, inter tot medicinas?”

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penitents. In his talk of 1584, Borromeo spelled out the varieties of this negligence: flattery, fear, gentleness, paternal affection and simple laxity all played their part.26 As a result, confession was all too often a cosmetic operation lacking any long-term impact. According to the Avvertenze, many penitents confessed “out of a certain habit rather than because of the knowledge [they had] of [their] sins, and the desire to mend [their] ways”; and since absolution would be forthcoming anyway, they persevered “for a long time in the same sins, causing the miserable ruin of their souls.”27

The tools of discipline The Avvertenze, however, did more than denounce. Their author meant to provide confessors with tools capable of reversing the state of sinful lethargy he deplored. These tools combined the powers of persuasion and force, in a balance which can only be appreciated against the background of the general religious politics of the time. Borromeo developed his views on confession at a time when ecclesiastical authorities throughout Italy debated the question of how to constitute a solid orthodoxy, heal deep religious and social divisions, and provide new devotional models. The question had practical relevance for the activities of inquisitors, confessors, preachers, and missionaries alike. Even during this most repressive phase of the Counter-Reformation, as Adriano Prosperi has shown, church leaders disagreed as to whether the spiritual (re)conquest of Italy was best served by ‘softness’ or ‘harshness,’ by persuasion or force, by admonition in the ‘internal forum’ (the confessional) or prosecution in the ‘external forum’ (the episcopal or inquisitorial court). In 1552, after the Roman Church had dealt decisive blows against the Italian heretical movement, even the hardliner Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa — the future Paul IV — was said to favor “softness” as a strategy of reconciliation, and thus to offer sacramental penance as an alternative for inquisitorial prosecution. Barely ten years later, in the wake of a brutal and bloody repression of Waldensian communities in Apulia and Calabria, the cardinal-inquisitor Michele Ghislieri — soon to become 26 27

Saxius, Homiliae, 4:5-7. AEM, 2:1880 and 1882.

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Pope Pius V — sent the Jesuit Cristoforo Rodriguez southwards to assist in the conversion of the survivors. Yet the two ended up disagreeing about the appropriate strategy to achieve the goal they both desired. When Rodriguez drew on the pastoral inclinations of his order to argue for friendly persuasion (suavità et amorevolezza), Ghislieri countered indignantly by proposing the harsh methods of judicial diffidence, prosecution and constraint.28 There is little doubt that, generally speaking, Borromeo came down firmly on Ghislieri’s side of this debate — not coincidentally, the two men were close allies during Ghislieri’s pontificate. But if these examples suggest that church leaders considered confession a tool of persuasion, and inquisition one of force, the Avvertenze suggest otherwise. In the hands of the Milanese archbishop, confession took on an inquisitorial rather than ‘pastoral’ character. To be sure, the Borromean confessor had to exercise patience and employ the powers of persuasion to sway the obstinacy of all sinners, “induc[ing] them to contrition about their sins by showing the ugliness of their guilt, its grave offensiveness in the eyes of God, and the endless harm of eternal damnation they thus incurred.” Even the imposition of penance was to be part of this strategy. Borromeo reintroduced the time-honored penitential canons, publishing a new compilation of these early medieval penances in 1573.29 The point, however, was not to revert to the rigors of a historic, long-defunct practice — a patently unattainable goal — but to exploit their memory for rhetorical purposes. Confessors were to use the harsh tariffs of medieval penance as a terrifying lesson for their penitents, so that they might “benefit from the kindliness with which the holy Church today softens the rigors of ancient church discipline.”30 Discipline of the body was here shifted to the mind. 28

Both episodes are analyzed in Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, at 222 and 10-15, respectively. 29 The text was published as an appendix in Decreta edita et promulgata in synodo dioecesana prima mediolanensi... (Mediolani: apud Pacificum Pontium, 1573); the chronological closeness to the publication date of the Avvertenze (1574) is of course no coincidence. A preparatory study for the Canones poenitentiales by Galesino (BAM, D.190 inf.) was judged insufficient by Borromeo, as is evidenced by the latter’s autograph note on the ms., “a D. Galesino collecti non perfecte.” The 1573 canons were considerably revised for the Sacramentale Ambrosianum, in which they appeared under the headings of the Ten Commandments (AEM, 2:1325-47). 30 AEM, 2:1889.

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Yet the rhetoric of persuasion was backed up by the powers of the law. The Avvertenze introduced the confessor to an unequivocally legal mindset, terminology, and equipment to accomplish his tasks. Hence there is little exaggeration in the claim that Borromeo gave confession a decidedly juridical turn. Yet, in doing so, he not only drew on the structural features of sacramental confession but articulated a broader shift in its history. Ever since sacramental confession had been developed during the Middle Ages, two metaphors dominated its representation: the confessor was said to combine the functions of physician and judge. The medical image implied a comparison of the soul and the body, of sin and disease, and of confession and healing. The juridical metaphor emphasized the similarities of sin and crime, confession and prosecution, penance and punishment. From this quasi-juridical responsibility the confessor derived his powers over the soul — to investigate, judge, impart penalties, reconcile, and absolve. Late medieval canonists had formalized this authority by assigning it a precise place in canon law. The confessor thus became responsible for the forum of conscience, or ‘internal forum,’ while prelates and judges (such as bishops and inquisitors) presided over the administration of ordinary ecclesiastical justice and discipline, the ‘external forum.’31 This elaboration of a separate sphere of spiritual jurisdiction lay at the heart of sixteenth-century discussions about confessors as judges. The image of the confessor as judge had raised some controversy when the Council of Trent discussed the sacrament of penance in 1551. Although the fathers agreed that the priestly absolvo te — “I absolve you” — concluding confessions was a judicial act, it was also observed that “the office of judge entails nothing but declaring the innocence of the innocent and the guilt of the offender.” But 31

A modern definition of the legal distinction between internal and external forum is in R. Naz, “For,” DDC, 5:871-73; for its development and implications for the doctrine of penance, see Winfried Trusen, “Zur Bedeutung des geistlichen Forum internum und externum für die spätmittelalterliche Gesellschaft,” Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung 76 (1990): 254-85; Miriam Turrini, “‘Culpa theologica’ e ‘culpa iuridica’: il foro interno all’inizio dell’età moderna,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 12 (1986): 147-68; and Ead., La coscienza e le leggi. Despite these studies, the relations both theoretical and practical between external and internal forum, between the church court and the confessional, are still an open field of research.

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confessors had a different task, namely “to make the delinquent just,” and this, it was pointed out, “was not in keeping with the metaphor of judge.”32 Despite such quibbles, however, the Council confirmed and even reinforced the conception of confession as a judicial procedure. Nobody expressed it as clearly as the Louvain theologian Ruard Tapper: “Since this sacrament is judicial, its nature requires it to have the elements of a judicial trial: an accusation, testimony or a confession of guilt, a judge, a sentence and its execution.”33 Borromeo’s instructions for confessors similarly suggested a trial proceeding, consisting of 1) the verification of the penitent’s disposition; 2) the investigation of the “case”; 3) sentencing; and 4) the imposition of a fitting punishment.34 Seen in this light, however, confession was highly idiosyncratic even aside from the confessor’s role. Canonists had defined sacramental confession strictly as self-accusation, and they often scolded penitents for their all too human inclination to avoid it, either by blaming other people or factors beyond their control, or by trying to excuse themselves.35 In juridical terms, the required mea culpa turned the speaker into the accuser as well as the accused. In the first capacity, the penitent had to be complete and sincere; in the second, he had to acknowledge his guilt and repent. This feature was by itself not unique: since the high Middle Ages, criminal trial procedure also relied heavily on the self-accusation of the defendant. Not coincidentally, the sacrament of penance had emerged roughly at the same time when early-medie32

Thus the seventeenth-century historian of Trent, Paolo Sarpi, in his account of the 1551 session: Istoria del concilio Tridentino, 2 vols. (Torino: Einaudi, 1974), 1:583. On the juridical and medical metaphors for the confessor, see Turrini, “‘Culpa theologica’ e ‘culpa iuridica,’” 147-51; Ead., La coscienza e le leggi, 190ff. (where the author downplays her earlier suggestion that the juridical image gradually overtook the medical one after the Council of Trent). 33 CT, 7/2:243. On this basis Tapper had argued that the imposition of satisfaction belonged to the tasks of the confessor. 34 Sofia, La dottrina di S. Carlo Borromeo, 34-53. 35 The traditional list of “conditions” necessary for a confession to be valid stipulated that it be “accusatory,” accusans (the list is confirmed in Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1879); see Tentler, Sin and Confession, 104-09. Cajetan’s comments on this term make it clear that this could only mean self-accusatory: “Quindecima [conditio]: accusans, hoc est sibi ipsi imputans peccata, non celo, non diabolo, non mundo, non carni, non sociis, non complexioni etc. Similiter accusans se, non excusans, nam circumstantias aggravantes debet explicare, excusantes autem debet tacere, imperfectionis si quidem est, has afferre; criminis autem non parvi est, reiicere iniquitatem suam in alias causas” (De Vio, Summula peccatorum, LIX-LXXV).

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val accusatorial procedures and tests of guilt gave way in criminal law to inquisitorial methods, which placed great emphasis on confession, whether voluntary or forced through torture.36 However, sacramental confession differed from judicial confession in at least three important ways: it lacked the backup of physical force; it excluded most forms of additional evidence; and it was to result (at least in principle) in absolution rather than sentencing, in spiritual liberation rather than physical punishment. The latter characteristic, even allowing for the burdens of penance and satisfaction after absolution was declared, was a strength counterbalancing the weaknesses inherent in the first two: the confessor depended on a voluntary expression of guilt and had ultimately little choice but to believe it.37 The reason was simple: confession was protected by the seal of secrecy, the sine qua non of its social feasibility. In no way, as the Avvertenze confirmed this classic principle, “neither with words nor with signs,” not with the slightest hint, was the confessor to betray sins heard during confession, the penitent, or possible accomplices in sin.38 A corollary to the confession decree of Lateran IV (1215), the seal of confession went back to the origins of sacramental penance itself, and had been an unquestioned principle ever since.39 36 Paolo Marchetti, Testis contra se. L’imputato come fonte di prova nel processo penale dell’età moderna (Milano: Giuffrè, 1994), esp. 57ff.; on sacramental confession, see 68-69. Michel Foucault has stressed the historical connection between the rise of judicial and sacramental confession in The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978), 58; for a more precise chronology, see Jacques Chiffoleau, “Sur la pratique et la conjoncture de l’aveu judiciaire en France du XIIIe au XV e siècle,” in L’aveu. Antiquité et Moyen-Age. Actes de la table ronde, 28-30 mars 1984 (Rome: Ecole française, 1986), 341-80. 37 On the spontaneous nature of confession, see again Tapper’s speech (CT VII/2: 243); Card. Ghislieri defined the confessor as one “who believes all that he is told,” and thus denied the comparison with a judge, who “always suspects the veracity of the accused...” (quoted in Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 10). 38 AEM, 2:1890: “Guardisi sopra tutto il confessore di non iscoprire né con parole, né con segni in qual si voglia maniera il peccatore, o il peccato, o alcuna delle circonstanze della persona, con la quale il peccato è stato commesso; finalmente cosa alcuna sentita in confessione, per la quale si possa in qual si voglia modo venire in notitia di qual si voglia, etiam minimo, peccato confessato.” 39 COD, 221. Any offense against this prescription was to be punished with deposition from the priestly office and perpetual penance in a cloister. For the canonical treatment of the seal of confession after 1215, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:412-59; Léon Honoré, Le Secret de la Confession. Etude historico-canonique, Museum Lessianum, Section Théologique (Bruges: Charles Beyaert, 1924);

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Many scholastics, starting with Thomas Aquinas, had devised theological arguments to support it. Thus the seal was said to pertain to the sacramental nature of penance, whose aim was not only to forgive but to forget (or at least, conceal) sins. It was assumed that God was willing to do so, but human forgetfulness could only be assured by imposing strict secrecy. As for the confessor, he heard his penitents’ sins only as God’s representative; he did not know anything qua man. In this line of argument, breaking the seal of confession was sacrilegious.40 The social and psychological need underlying this theological construct is not hard to grasp: the confessor’s credibility was served by ‘dehumanizing’ his role. Thus the perception might take hold that he would transcend his personal feelings about the penitent, and that his activities would have no social impact other than the changes induced in the penitent’s personal behavior. The secrecy of confession, one might say, amounted to the claim that confession happened ‘outside society.’41 It was based on the recognition that confessors could hardly require a full, sincere and specific avowal of sins — the distinctive feature of sacramental confession — if penitents did not have the guarantee that it would never become a threat to their (or other persons’) reputation. Sincerity and secrecy were two essential, and mutually dependent, characteristics of confession.42 E. Jombart, “Confesseur,” DDC, 14:11-46; and Bertrand Kurtscheid, Das Beichtsiegel, Freiburger theologische Studien, Heft 7 (Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1912), trans. F.A. Marks, A History of the Seal of Confession (St. Louis and London, 1927). 40 Thus, for instance, Cardinal Cajetan: “Revelans enim confessionem mortaliter peccat, quia sacrilegii iniuriam infert sacramento: ex cuius natura est ut confessor nihil sciat ut homo” (De Vio, Summula peccatorum, 85). As a consequence, for a confessor to state, or to swear, that he did not know something heard in the confessional did not constitute a lie, or perjury. On the theological foundation of the seal of confession, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:412-15; Honoré, Le secret de la confession, 60-62. 41 This requirement could come into conflict with other social and juridical norms when a confessor was called upon to witness about what he had heard in confession. In such a context, the confessor was allowed to assert his ignorance, provided his knowledge derived only from the confessional. Thus, e.g., De Vio, Summula peccatorum, LXXXV. 42 The classic mnemonic verse, summarizing the necessary “conditions” of a good confession, included side by side “integra” and “secreta”: Tentler, Sin and Confession, 106ff.; the verse was repeated in the Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1879. Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 169-70, illustrates the mistrust of the seal of confession on the part of some penitents, who defined confession in terms like “saper li fatti di altri,” “dir il suo secreto,” etc.

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Yet, for all its importance in facilitating the confession, confidentiality seriously impaired the confessor’s role as investigator and judge; and it is not hard to see — though subject to further verification — that the problem could become especially exacerbating at a time when the judicial and disciplinary role of confessors was strengthened. Under the circumstances, penitents may have been less inclined either to expose their true sentiments or to give in to the confessor’s demands.43 The Avvertenze therefore gave the confessor a series of tools aimed at overcoming such deadlock: 1) penetrating the soul required ‘reading’ the body; 2) sincerity of intent needed proof in action; and 3) the confessional, or internal forum, was backed up by the church court, or external forum. The confessor applied the first technique as soon as the penitent approached the confessional. At this point the Avvertenze demanded a preliminary assessment of his or her disposition. Clothes provided valuable information about “external preparation.” Piety was denoted by a “modest and simple” attire; irreverence by any form of ostentation, explicated by the Avvertenze in remarkable detail: for women, “curls, rouge, cosmetics, earrings, vain adornments, clothes made of gold, scraps, embroidery, or similar kinds of ostentation”; for men, “gold or silver jewels ... scraps [ritagli], flaunting caps, arms, and similar things.” Transgressors of these sumptuary restrictions should not even be allowed to confess.44 Even more important was interior preparation, consisting of “a good and diligent examination of one’s sins and procuring the kind of sorrow that is justly required, with the strong and resolute intention of satisfying for the past and doing better in the future.”45 This was less easily checked than exterior criteria, but certain “signs” (segni) were there to aid the confessor. A person who had spent some time in prayer before approaching the confessional was more likely to be prepared than one who had just left some worldly activity; a penitent without knowledge of his sins was definitely not ready. Ill-disposed were also penitents of whom the confessor already knew that they would not abandon illicit activities and a sinful life, do 43

For examples, see pp. 242, 250, 278 and 301 below. Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1876. On sixteenth-century Milanese fashion, see Fritz Saxl, “Costumes and Festivals of Milanese Society under Spanish Rule,” Proceedings of the British Academy 23 (1937): 401-56; and Storia di Milano, 10:879-927. 45 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1876-77. 44

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penance and make restitution. Here we encounter the second principle — sincerity of intent needed proof in action. That principle became predominant as the confession continued, and as the confessor supplemented his observations with interrogations. Following long-established patterns of investigation, he was to inquire systematically about the penitent’s identity (social status and profession), spiritual condition (prior confession, penances and spiritual preparation), and of course the sins committed in the various moral categories (the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, and so on).46 This questioning was to be persistent and aggressive, as Borromeo reminded his confessors in 1584: “you have to dig in! dig in the wall, deeply shake up the souls and turn the fields of conscience ... with the ploughs of interrogation.”47 After each admission of sin the confessor should be satisfied only with an unconditional promise of betterment: absolution should be refused not only to “those who really do not have the firm resolution to abandon their mortal sin, but also [to] those who, while saying they want to abandon it, nonetheless assert that they believe they will not, unless they are willing to accept those remedies without which the confessor judges that they will return to their sin.”48 This passage gives a measure of the authors’ diffidence of repentance that was merely verbally expressed, without offering clear guarantees about future conduct. There was no denying that only deeds — satisfaction, penance, a correction of one’s lifestyle — were sure indicators of repentance. Unlike the ancient and early-medieval penitential regime, the modern practice of confession did not allow the confessor to have these executed before granting absolution. Necessary though these were, they were not a condition for the reconciliation of the sinner. The best the confessor could do to test the latter’s sincerity was to inquire if he had redeemed previous promises. This possibility became the basis of a practice of deferred absolution, which for all practical 46

Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1878-81. Saxius, Homiliae, 4:7: “... fodite, fodite parietem [Ezech. 8:8]; animas serio excutite; versate interrogationum veluti aratro conscientiarum agros...” 48 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1884: “non solo non si possono assolvere quelli, che veramente non hanno ferma deliberatione di lasciare il peccato mortale; ma né anco quelli, che se ben dicono di desiderare di lasciarlo, nondimeno affermano che gli pare che non lo lasciaranno: se questi tali non voglino pigliare quelli rimedii, senza li quali il confessore giudica che torneranno al peccato.” 47

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purposes was very similar to canonical penance. If a penitent had promised to mend his ways on a previous occasion, the confessor should defer absolution until he saw, if not full satisfaction, at least “some improvement.” This last detail suggests moderation, and certainly the possibility of negative side-effects of a radical remedy was taken into account: a drastic change of lifestyle could cause scandal, while a deferral of absolution could damage the penitent’s name. Yet even then the principle remained in place: the confessor should delay absolution until he had obtained “proof of true improvement” (prova di vera emendatione), or at least noticed “such signs of contrition, and such a disposition and readiness to receive the remedies [he] considers necessary for [the penitent’s] improvement.”49 If contrition was an act of interior conversion, it was only through exterior manifestations (other than words alone) that it became validated. A penitent had to “prove” his change of heart, not only in the confessional, but in his daily life as well. The confessor’s strongest weapon in disciplining the soul was no doubt the power of the keys — the power to grant or to deny absolution. It derived its strength from the fact that a denial of absolution would eventually make the penitent culpable not only in the internal but the external forum. Unless the problem was quickly resolved, he or she would inevitably violate the Easter obligation, become subject to church censures, and hence face prosecution in the episcopal court. It was this alliance between the internal and external fora — the third of the principles indicated above — that Borromeo sought to strengthen by forcing confessors into close collaboration with parish clergy, central diocesan officials, and even inquisitors. First, as agents of parish discipline, they should be part of a tight network of local knowledge. In this regard, regular confessors were less reliable than their secular, territorially based counterparts; they were urged to inquire with parish priests whether their penitents had any conditions prohibiting absolution — a scandalous lifestyle, persevering in a state of sin, the obligation to satisfy public penances, or outstanding pious bequests. The fear that penitents might slip through the net of local control also inspired warnings against the “harmful and detrimental” habit of frequently

49

Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1885; see also ibid., 1882-83. In practice, attempts to secure promises of amendment could exasperate both parties, or even lead priests to ignore the required order of absolution and satisfaction; see p. 233 below.

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switching confessors.50 Then, prior to the confession proper, confessors had to check for any legal impediments that their penitents might have. Such issues — excommunication, interdict, reserved cases — had to be resolved by the bishop, the penitentiary, or other curia officials, before the penitent could be absolved in the forum of conscience. A relatively new, extraordinary, addition to this category of impediments was heresy. Following up on a papal bull of 1559, the Roman Inquisition required all confessors under penalty of excommunication to interrogate their penitents about any knowledge they might have of heretics, their activities, and prohibited books. If the answer was affirmative, penitents had to report to the Inquisition before they could be absolved. In Milan, Archbishop Borromeo promoted the policy from an early stage in his tenure.51 Confessors thus became quite literally law enforcement officers, who were to use their privileged access to the soul to assist in the application of church law. Having dispensed with such matters, they turned to the confession proper. But they continued to wear their uniforms as agents of discipline, constantly weighing the need to deny absolution to those considered unwilling to mend their sinful ways. No less than a quarter of the Avvertenze was devoted to the circumstances requiring confessors to make that decision. This was the case, for example, for penitents who failed the test of reciting the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria (an old requirement reintroduced in the post-Tridentine period); for family fathers and mothers who neglected their religious responsibilities in the household; for businessmen ignoring the restrictions on buying and selling during feast days; and for numerous other obstinate sinners.

50

Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1876. On the papal bull, Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 230-31 (but see the whole chapter, 217-43, for background and implications). For the Milanese Inquisition policy, see the edict of 24 February 1573, in ASDM, XIV, 246, q. 3, fol. [1]; and see ibid., q. 5. For episcopal instructions, see the “Instruttione ai vicari foranei”(1568), in AEM, 2:1938-53; Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1880, and De sacramento poenitentiae rubrica seu instructiones, ibid., 2:1242. The diocesan legislation on issues of heresy is summarized in Agostino Borromeo, “L’arcivescovo Carlo Borromeo e la lotta contro l’eresia,” in Carlo Borromeo e l’opera della “grande riforma.” Cultura, religione e arti del governo nella Milano del pieno Cinquecento, ed. Franco Buzzi and Danilo Zardin (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 1997), 303-22, at 305. 51

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Rules such as these demonstrate that Borromeo treated absolution as a weapon targeting specific goals of moral policy; it is equally clear that its application was problematic. The Avvertenze allowed the confessor some leeway in accepting the penitent’s good intentions and promises of betterment before they were acted upon. Yet if obstinacy was undeniable, the refusal of absolution was to be no empty threat. The Milanese confessor was to display the same combination of holy zeal and legal spirit that was characteristic of his bishop.52

Public penance That assertion had special relevance if a sin had gained notoriety beyond the personal sphere. The renewed interest in safeguarding the social order gave a new lease on life to an old disciplinary practice: public penance. The Council of Trent reconfirmed the ancient moral principle that public sin deserved public correction, and Carlo Borromeo was all too eager to adopt it. A special term existed to indicate the public aspect of a sin (or in secular terms, of an offense or transgression of a social code): “scandal.” A scandal was, according to a classic moralistic definition, “a wrong action or statement which constitutes the occasion of spiritual ruin [for someone else].”53 A long tradition of moral thinkers had considered this to be a sin by itself, which was contrary to charity: a person who committed a crime publicly and before the eyes of the world could, by his example, provoke others to bad behavior.54 One might even surmise that the outrage over many sins stemmed especially from their public character. According to Luis de Granada, an author very close to Borromeo’s heart and 52

Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1882-88. The definition went back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 43, art. 1; see also Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:243, n. 3. 54 Thus, e.g., Cardinal Cajetan: “Scandalum (hoc est dictum vel factum minus rectum occasionem spiritualis ruinae praebens) peccatum est: quia charitati (qua spirituale bonum proximi amare ita debemus ut non in periculum ruinae ponamus) opponitur” (De Vio, Summula peccatorum, here quoted from the ed. Venetia: Nicolini, 1572, 452-53). The Tridentine fathers formulated the problem in terms of public order: “Quando igitur ab aliquo publice et in multorum conspectu crimen commissum fuerit ... quos [i.e., whoever witnessed his actions] exemplo suo ad malos mores provocavit” (sess. XXIV, c. 8 de reform., COD, 764). 53

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mind, the sin of sinning in public was in a sense the greatest of all, “[f]or the other sins, great as they are, hurt only those who commit them; but this one harms both the offender and others, by keeping them off the true path.”55 And so there was a strong social motivation for confessors to keep secret sins from becoming public. These sins should therefore be repaid with a secret penance, so as to avoid all risk of scandal (as we will see, this was not all that easy, especially if restitution was involved).56 Conversely, once a sin had become public, confessors had to impose a special compensation, “in order that with their correction [the offenders] make up for the scandal they have caused.” This compensation, public penance, was thus a means to undo a breach of the social order, a positive example to correct the negative example set by the public sin. By the same token, the individual in question, exposed to public scorn, would feel pressured to mend his ways. In that sense it would resemble the refusal of absolution, which, according to Hieronimo Di Basti, a simple parish priest in Malgrate, caused enough “confusion and disgrace” in the penitent to have that salutary effect.57 The reintroduction of public penance in Borromean Milan was certainly not an isolated initiative. Most immediately, the archbishop applied a reform decree adopted in one of the final sessions of the Council of Trent.58 But that decree had a complex background. The public expiation of sin, of course, was as old as the penitential system 55 Luis de Granada, Trattato ... in materia della gravezza dello scandalo, e dell’utile che da quello si può cavare, insieme con una breve, et necessaria instruttione per Christianamente vivere, trans. Gioan Domenico Florentio (Roma: nella stamperia di Tito & Paolo Diani, 1589), 15: “questo peccato ... in un certo modo puo dirsi essere il maggiore di tutti gli altri peccati, per grandi che siano. Percioché gli altri peccati, ancora che grandi, nuoceno solamente a chi gli commette, ma questo nuoce a chi n’è causa, e fa danno ancora a gli altri, quali apparta dal vero cammino.” On the relations between Borromeo and Granada, see Alvaro Huerga, “Fray Luis de Granada y san Carlos Borromeo. Una amistad al servicio de la restauración católica,” Hispania sacra 11 (1958): 299-347. Lea refers to solicitation as a sin which, according to medieval moralists, was to be feared less than its potential for scandal (A History of Auricular Confession, 1:384); but see also p. 97 ff. below. 56 For examples demonstrating these points, see pp. 230-35 below. 57 In a sermon of 20 October 1574 (ASDM, XIV, 52, q. 1; also ibid., 55, fols. 69-70), Di Basti declared: “...sua reverentia cognosce le sue pecore ... cioè conosce quelle persone che non si voleno emendarsi da li soi peccati et non volendo astinersi da li peccati non si admeterà ala communione de la eucarestia, et per la confusione et obprobio se emendarà...”; on this sermon, see De Boer, “The Curate of Malgrate.” 58 COD, 764; Canons and Decrees, 198 (sess. XXIV, c. 8 de reform., 1563).

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itself. The ‘canonical’ penance of the early Church had been public by definition, requiring the sinner to join a socially distinct order of penitents. The spreading of monastic practices of private penance in the early Middle Ages had not prevented the continued application of public forms of penance. As early as the Carolingian period we find attempts to systematize these practices, resulting in the prescription of a mixed regime, whereby private sins were to be compensated by private, and public transgressions by public correction. This ‘penitential dichotomy’ was maintained even as the secret confession of sins became the central element of the sacrament of penance during the thirteenth century. Historians have generally downplayed the practical significance of this norm, but its tenacity remains a surprising fact: throughout the later Middle Ages we find handbooks of penance and synodal acts returning to the need to punish public sin with public penance.59 This did not change during the sixteenth century; we find it discussed in manuals like the Summa Sylvestrina (1514) and recommended in Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi’s constitution for the removal of the abuses of the German clergy (1524).60 But after the middle of the century, public penance rapidly regained strength as the authoritarian wing among Catholic church leaders gained ground. The procedure was part of the inquisitorial rites of reconciliation, newly invigorated by the founding of the Roman Inquisition in 1541,61 and affected sacramental penance as well. The 59

Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:20-49; Cyrille Vogel, Le pécheur et la pénitence dans l’Eglise ancienne (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1966); Id., Le pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Age (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1969); and Id., Les “Libri paenitentiales,” Typologie des sources du Moyen Age occidental, no. 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978; with supplement 1985). (The term “penitential dichotomy” is Vogel’s.) See also Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners. Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995). 60 Sylvester Prierias, Summae Sylvestrinae quae Summa Summarum merito nuncupatur pars secunda... (Venetiis: apud Petrum Mariam Bertanum, 1606), c. 227v. On Campeggio’s constitution, see Duggan, “Fear and Confession,” 162. Giberti, though concerned about public sins, did not formally require public penance; instead, he ordered confessors to refer these cases to the bishop (Giberti, Constitutiones, tit. V, cap. 9; tit. VI, cap. 27). 61 John Tedeschi, “The Organization and Procedures of the Roman Inquisition: A Sketch,” in Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991), 127-55. For an analysis of the Spanish ritual, see Maureen Flynn, “Mimesis of the Last Judgment: The Spanish Auto de fe,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): 281-97.

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Council of Trent still ignored the issue during its discussions of the sacrament (1551). While a lively debate developed around the question of whether the act of confession should or could be public, it did not touch on the modality of penance. According to Trent’s sharpeyed historian, Paolo Sarpi, this omission had raised criticism among the theologians of Cologne, for (as Sarpi had them say) if public penance was “not reintroduced for heretics and public sinners, Germany w[ould] never be liberated...” We lack evidence to confirm the details of Sarpi’s report, but it is certain that at this stage of the council public penance was promoted by some for its disciplinary value. Barely a month after the confession decree was approved, the influential theologian Johannes Gropper, discussing church discipline in a sermon to the Tridentine fathers, pleaded for the active prosecution of “manifest sins, which scandalize the Church.” For this reason he urged that “synods and church visitations along with public penance (without which the former can in no way be carried out profitably)” be returned to their “legitimate use.”62 Gropper’s call was eventually answered. During its last phase, the Council not only rushed to resolve numerous issues left over from preceding sessions, but generally gave in to the factions promoting stricter church discipline. Thus public penance reappeared on the agenda. A reform proposal of 1562, written by a group of northern Italian bishops, justified the practice as part of the discipline of the ancient Church. Possibly related was the publication, also in 1562, of Mariano Vittori’s history of confession, which included a chapter on “ancient penances.” Early in 1563, the same Vittori joined the Council in the entourage of the papal legate and bishop of Modena, Cardinal Giovanni Morone; and later that year, public penance was formally proposed and discussed in plenary session. At this point almost all participants endorsed it without amendment, the only reservation being that bishops should have the right to commute public penances into secret ones. When Gerolamo Ragazzoni, bishop of Nazianze, finally summed up the overall achievements of the Council on 3 December

62 Sarpi, Istoria del concilio, 1:569. For Gropper’s remarks, made in an Epiphany sermon delivered on 6 January 1552, see CT, 7/2:48.

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1563, he cited public penance as a means to “reinforce the staggering and nearly crumbling church discipline.”63 Carlo Borromeo, who was himself deeply involved in the last stage of the Council, immediately tried to enforce the decree in Milan. He had the text read during the First Diocesan Synod (1564) and repeated during later councils. By 1573 it was clear that “public and solemn penance” was to become a regular part of the Lenten celebrations. The provincial council of that year ordered all candidates to report to their parish priests during the month before Lent; their penance would start the first day of that season and end with a solemn reconciliation rite on Maundy Thursday.64 Borromeo’s model was clearly historical, as had been that of the fathers of Trent. The Church, he noted early the next year, used to force public sinners to spend the Lenten period “dressed in sack, barefoot, and with their faces turned to the ground.” The bishop assigned them a public penance and excluded them from the church building, “just as Adam had been chased from Paradise,” until the end of Lent.65

Discipline and social order: occasions of sin Commenting on the confession decree of the Fourth Lateran Council, Henry Charles Lea noted long ago that through this “the scholastic theories of the power of the keys and the virtue of the sacraments ... became efficient levers in the hands of every parish priest to mould not only the internal but the external life of each member of his flock...”66

63 On the Italian reform proposal, see Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils, 4/1:110-11. Vittori (Marianus Victorius), the later bishop of Amelia and Rieti, published his book under the title De sacramento confessionis, seu paenitentiae, historia... De antiquis poenitentiis utilis libellus... (Romae: apud Paulum Manutium, 1562; repr. in 1566 and 1621); see F. Hurter, Nomenclator litterarius theologiae catholicae, 3:88-89. Vittori was not alone in his studies, as is evidenced by Arnaldus Alostanus, De poenitentia publica et solemni (Antverpiae, 1564); see Hurter, Nomenclator, 3:42. The Tridentine discussion can be found in CT, 9:795-879; for the final article, see ibid., 982; Ragazzoni’s remarks are in CT, 9:1100-01. 64 First Diocesan Synod, AEM, 2:802-04; First Provincial Council, ibid., 51-54; Third Provincial Council, ibid., 246-48. 65 AEM, 3:487-95 (at 490). 66 Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:228.

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We may legitimately doubt whether the Lateran decree ever achieved that much “efficiency” during the Middle Ages, but Lea’s remark captures the Borromean ambitions for confession with striking accuracy. Both the juridical turn of the sacrament and the reintroduction of public penance point in this direction. Particularly apt is Lea’s reference to the “internal” and “external” workings of penance: to the minds of the scholastics, the discipline of the soul was bound to affect social conduct and public order. This link, which has generally received only scant attention in studies on confession, gained in significance during the Counter-Reformation, as concerns about the social order came to dominate spiritual agendas, and as the public and private spheres became intertwined as never before. Confession, as a later chapter demonstrates, could accordingly be theorized as an instrument of social discipline. More implicitly, but no less clearly, the Borromean Avvertenze for confessors outlined a comprehensive program of social reform. Two passages, which stand out for their length, tone and content, allow us to reflect on the nature of this program, its principles and preconceptions. One deals with sumptuary norms, the other with “occasions of sin.” That a brief guide for confessors should devote so much attention to dress codes is a clear indication that the Borromean confessor was to play a crucial role in reforming the decorum of urban life. The initiative came at a significant moment. Compared to the other cities of northern and central Italy, sumptuary legislation had of old been relatively scarce and ineffectual in Milan. In 1565, civil authorities had introduced a severe new dress code; but rather than settling the issue, the law led only to controversy and, one suspects, little practical change. Still in 1580, the city of Milan sent an emissary to King Philip II requesting new legislation and countering the economic interests of the local textile and fashion industry with a classic social argument: the upward spiral of sumptuary competition led to the financial and social ruin of families. But the Milanese leaders also invoked a religious motivation: at stake was “the honor of God, who takes pleasure in Christian modesty, and moderation in all things.”67 67 Ettore Verga, “Le leggi suntuarie e la decadenza dell’industria in Milano, 15651750,” Archivio storico lombardo 27 (1900): 49-116 (at 63-64). The document on the 1580 mission is published in Angiolo Salomoni, Memorie storico-diplomatiche degli ambasciatori, incaricati d’affari, corrispondenti e delegati che la città di Milano inviò a diversi suoi Principi dal

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Meanwhile, pleas for sumptuary moderation were also made by the Milanese archbishop. In 1574, taking the initiative from the civil authorities, Borromeo turned the issue into an ecclesiastical cause, to be pursued in particular by the diocesan confessors. The argument used in the Avvertenze was strikingly similar to that advanced by the secular leadership, but for obvious reasons focused on moral implications. The confessor was to forbid clothes and jewelry whose production, acquisition, or display might somehow cause further sinful behavior or even set off a chain reaction of sins: negligence of feast days, discord in the family, blasphemy, illicit economic dealings, negligence in giving alms, and so on. The Avvertenze added a special warning against clothes that could be thought to lead to lasciviousness, whether by intrinsic effect or in the public’s view, because they broke class conventions or because they were made intentionally “to give off suggestions of indecent love ... with various colors or otherwise.”68 The problem posed by ‘superfluous adornment’ was about the social causation of sin. In the dense fabric of human interaction many forms of behavior were believed to be interconnected. Thus one small sin could lead to another; and to prevent a detrimental domino effect from ensuing, it was essential to lock the original trigger. The argument against sumptuary excess is especially significant because the Avvertenze immediately generalized it. The confessor was ordered to attack many social conditions to which the same detrimental potential was attributed. These included traditional concerns of public policy such as taverns, games and dances. In pre-Borromean Milan these had been subject to secular rather than ecclesiastical legislation, but Borromeo had swiftly shown his determination to exercise his episcopal authority in the matter. An early document drafted by Vicar General Ormaneto (1564-66) highlighted some of the problems. The list included extravagance in dressing, eating and the conduct of funerals; gaming tables and houses; prostitution; the presence in Milan

1500 al 1796 (Milano: Pulini, 1806; anast. repr. Cisalpino-Goliardico, 1975), 186-222 (quote at 202). On the role of fashion in Milanese public life, see Saxl, “Costumes and Festivals.” Generally on the problem of sumptuary regulation, see Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” in Disputes and Settlements. Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 69-99. 68 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1884.

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of numerous social undesirables — “parasites, scoundrels, charlatans, and other kinds of poor and idle strangers” — who committed theft, practiced evil arts and corrupted the good manners of the people; widespread blasphemy and false testimony; working on feast days; public balls; games of cards and dice; lack of devotion during processions and pardons; usury and illicit contracts; and idleness among Milan’s youth, the source of many vices. The document also suggests a concern for the social proliferation of sins: gaming houses not only invited players, but “curses, thefts, fights and enmities, the ruin of households, and the waste of time.” Yet Ormaneto relied on the secular authorities to solve the problem, urging them to reissue existing ordinances.69 Borromeo was to change this: lashing out against the same evils, his councils and synods assigned vital responsibilities to the diocesan clergy. Foremost among these were the confessors. Here the discussion of the Avvertenze proves its significance, for in this text the archbishop conceptualized and legitimized the confessors’ intervention in matters of public morality. He summed it up in one key term: occasions of sin (occasioni di peccato). The Avvertenze began by defining the term, which was clearly no common currency among the Milanese clergy. Occasions of sin were “all things that cause sin, either because they are by themselves conducive to sin or because they constitute the circumstances under which the penitent is so wont to sin that the confessor must reasonably conclude that the penitent, because of his bad habit, will not abstain [from further sinning] if he persists in these occasions.” Occasions of sin, in other words, were circumstances which made the repetition of sin likely, if not certain, and thus turned the culprits into habitual sinners. Therefore the bishop granted his confessors the power to require from 69

ASDM, IX, cart. 77, anno 1584; and see Angelo Turchini, “Il governo della festa nella Milano spagnola di Carlo Borromeo,” in La scena della gloria. Drammaturgia e spettacolo a Milano in età spagnola, ed. Annamaria Cascetta and Roberta Carpani (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1995), 520-21. On earlier secular legislation, see Storia di Milano, 10:391; and Alessandro Visconti, La pubblica amministrazione dello Stato milanese durante il predominio straniero (1541-1796) (Roma: Athenaeum, 1913), 91ff. Church laws before Borromeo usually ignored matters of public order. Thus, the long reform edict of Archbishop Giovanangelo Arcimboldi (1550) is mostly concerned with clerical abuses and refers for norms on the observance of feast days to imperial legislation; for an edition, see Joseph Antonius Saxius [Sassi], Archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium Series HistoricoChronologica... (Mediolani: In Regia Curia, 1755), 3:984-1006.

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their penitents not just the abstention from further sinning, but the removal of occasions of sin. The ensuing explanation about specific occasions of sin is unusually long, its tone peremptory, its purpose didactic — an indication not only of its urgency for the author, but of the novelty it was assumed to have for most readers. Its ideas were certainly not without precedents. The system of canonical penance of late antiquity had required penitents to abandon their trade, to give up the privileges of married life, and to renounce weaponry, in short, to agree to a complete change of lifestyle.70 The Middle Ages had seen a modification of this notion: the prohibitions regarded only those professional or social functions (officia) which could not be carried out without sin. In this context, the scholastic term ‘occasions of sin’ came to be employed: late-medieval confessors’ manuals such as St. Antoninus’s Confessionale “Defecerunt” included the fight against these conditions among the confessor’s tasks. Thus, according to Antoninus, he should force a penitent to abandon a risky “association with a man or a woman,” but only if this was feasible.71 The latter qualification is a sign (among others) that such medieval precepts remained relatively moderate, as well as brief and scarce. Carlo Borromeo, by contrast, took occasions of sin all too seriously; his decision to do so represented a deliberate choice of episcopal policy. In November 1573, only months before the publication of the Avvertenze, the archbishop emphasized his jurisdiction in the matter, referring for authoritative support to his Spanish colleague Martin Peréz y Ayala and, indirectly, to the ancient church father John Chrysostom. Both authors had discussed occasions of sin in the context of the Lenten observance (an argument whose relevance for Borromeo will soon become clear).72 In the Avvertenze, however, the policy took on a much 70 O.D. Watkins, A History of Penance, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1920), 1:482-83; Vogel, Le pécheur ... dans l’Eglise ancienne, 38-39. 71 Antoninus, Confessionale “Defecerunt,” c. 30r: “...si conversatio eius [of the penitent] cum aliquo vel aliqua est occasio ei alicuius ruine, debet imponere sibi quod dimittat si potest.” On the concept of ‘occasions of sin’ see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 2:35-41; and (for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon, 91-99. 72 AGBR, Minute di lettere a o da Carlo Borromeo, vol. II, fols. 74v-75r (4 November 1573). The reference to Peréz de Ayala can be traced to his De divinis, apostolicis atque ecclesiasticis traditionibus... (Coloniae: Iaspar Gennepaeus, 1549), cc. cxciiiv-cxciiiir; Ayala in turn quoted Chrysostom’s sixth homily on Genesis.

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more comprehensive and sweeping character. The text distinguished three kinds of sinful occasions. Some were considered “by their nature ... conducive to sin”; these included cardgames, concubinage, and familiarity with women in general. Others were by themselves licit but dangerous enough that “it is reasonable to expect that the penitent will return to the same sins which he has already committed under these [circumstances] if he persists in them.” In practice, this category comprised “almost all arts and occupations”: the military, for being a breeding ground of blasphemy and fornication; the law courts, as a scene of injustice and malice; and the world of trade and commerce, for engendering usury, fraud, and perjury. Some of these occasions, finally, were the more despicable for being of no “need and utility”: balls, taverns, and the company of blasphemers, bandits, or other evildoers. In its combination of analysis and concreteness, this passage affords a precious glimpse of Borromeo’s social thought. To his mind, the ‘domino effect’ of sinful causation was so powerful as to affect many, if not most, spheres of secular society. Occasions of sin were nothing but temptations hardened into social customs and institutional mores. There is one implication that should not escape our notice. The fight against occasions of sin implied a deep mistrust of free will. Already Cardinal Cajetan had been aware of the connection. In his confessors’ manual of the 1520s, he had rejected rigorism in this matter on the grounds that to expose oneself to the risk of sinning might be criticized as a lack of caution, but was not “in itself a mortal sin, for to sin mortally remains an act of free will even in those occasions of sin.”73 Around the middle of the century, the Jesuit and secretary of Ignatius, Diego Laínez, addressed the problem more elaborately in a discussion on “women’s make-up and adornment” (he thus had the same starting-point as Borromeo’s Avvertenze). Was it sinful for a woman to embellish her own appearance, on the grounds that it constituted a cause or occasion of sin for others? Laínez’s response was ambiguous. He started out on a lenient note with a reference to free will: female adornment could be sinful only when displayed to excess, and even then was not a “sufficient” cause or occasion of sin, “because sin is caused neither by the flesh nor by demons nor by any other 73 De Vio, Summula peccatorum, cap. “Exponere se periculo corporis vel animae an sit lecitum” (ed. Venetiis: Nicolini, 1572), 399-400.

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creature, but by one’s own will.” Yet, for Laínez, the condition of the woman remained sinful: “for a person to sin by scandalizing someone else, it is not necessary that the former causes the latter to sin (for it is impossible to scandalize a person in such a way), but it suffices that, by some act that is bad or has the appearance of something bad, the former creates an occasion of sin for the latter.”74 In this way the question remained unresolved. Clearly, Laínez had trouble establishing a logically tenable position between his wish to safeguard the freedom of the will and his objections against occasions of sin. Soon his hesitation was translated into a more general dilemma among post-Tridentine church authorities; again it took the form of a choice between force and persuasion. Here a comparison between Borromeo and his Bolognese colleague Gabriele Paleotti proves enlightening. Paleotti founded a less interventionist, more educational form of episcopal government than Borromeo’s on a markedly different conception of free will. “Since God created human volition free and its own arbiter,” he believed, “it can be forced by no chains, but only sparked with the help of God’s grace.” Borromeo had a much darker view of human nature, which, “already tainted by sin, is by itself so inclined to evil that we easily neglect and forget to do good.” “Therefore,” the archbishop concluded, “we need help and stimulants to live well, and always someone to remind us of it.”75 The implications of this simple statement are enormous: Borromeo’s pessimism about free will provided the rationale for the vast array of exterior pressures and constraints — rhetorical, legal, institutional, and (as we will see) material — which he put in place to lead his charges towards a “new life.”

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De fuco et ornatu mulierum, in Jacobi Lainez ... disputationes Tridentinae, ed. H. Grisar, 2 vols. (Oeniponte: F. Rauch, 1886), 2:491-92. The two (otherwise identical) manuscripts differ on a crucial terminological point: in one the issue is whether female adornment constitutes the “cause” for sinful behavior, in the other, whether it is the “occasion” of sin. 75 For the Paleotti quote, see Paolo Prodi, Il cardinale Gabriele Paleotti (1522-1597), 2 vols. (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1959-67), 2:17-18; see also Id., “San Carlo Borromeo e il Cardinale Gabriele Paleotti: due vescovi della Riforma Cattolica,” Critica storica 3 (1964): 140-41. Borromeo made his remark in his Ricordi ... per il vivere christiano (1577), AEM, 3:649.

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Occasions of virtue ‘Occasion of sin’ was not merely a term of theological debate or a confessor’s technical tool to coerce persistent sinners to change their ways. In Milan it entered into the more general vocabulary used in synods, sermons, and edicts, to accuse, justify, and exhort. In short, it became part of the ‘discourse’ of reform. Soon its usage also went beyond the bishop and his collaborators, to be adopted by regulars, parish clergy and the laity as well. Within years after the publication of the Avvertenze, we find Milanese Jesuits reporting to their Roman general about their successes in removing “occasions of sin.” And in 1579, the provost of Settala declared without further ado that the salvation of souls, the prime requirement of his “pastoral office,” was achieved “by removing all abuses and occasions that lead one to sin,” and he proceeded to narrate his actions against dancing youth. Later that year, when the city of Milan sent two representatives to Rome to complain about many of their archbishop’s policies, their list of grievances included his fight against “occasions of sin.” There was no basis in theology, they claimed, for the requirement “that actions which by their nature are not sinful, but can merely be occasions of sin, such as dances and jousts, be amended by anything but exhortations.”76 The priest of Settala and the Milanese city officials unwittingly used the same language to reach the opposite conclusion — the language of free will. The former agreed with his archbishop in viewing the “malice and fragility that nowadays unfortunately reign in the world” as a justification for decisive intervention. The latter feared that to forbid things “to which human fragility is so easily inclined” would only prove

76 The Jesuit reports include, for example, ARSI, Med. 76/I, fol. 39v (littera annua, 25 January 1578): “Molte persone si son levate dal peccato, et huomini et donne, et provisti alli scandali, et alle ingiustitie, et occasioni di peccati”; and ibid., fol. 47v (littera annua covering the year 1580): “Alcuni han mutato stato lasciando le occasioni de peccati, et tra essi alcune persone di rilievo lassando la mala vita, nella quale erano invecchiati”; the priest of Settala’s text is in ASDM, IX, 19, q. 20, fol. [6]: “L’officio mio pastoralle mi stringe a procurare in ogni modo la salutte dell’anime a me credutte, il che si fa con il rimuovere tutti gli abusi et occasioni ch’al peccato inducano...” (letter of 20 June 1579). The text of the civic protest is published in Marco Formentini, La dominazione Spagnuola in Lombardia (Milano: Giuseppe Ottino, 1881), 492 (Instruttione per la legatione di Roma..., 10 December 1579); for a further analysis, see pp. 245-55 below.

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“a trap and precipice for the souls”; for priests, moreover, it would constitute the “most certain danger of disobedience.” Examples like these could be multiplied. They indicate that the fight against occasions of sin became part and parcel of the attempt to create social settings favoring devout and exemplary behavior — settings which we could call ‘occasions of virtue.’ It is a key objective of Borromeo’s reform programs for institutions like the family, the workshop, the confraternity, and the school of Christian Doctrine.77 The rite of confession became itself subject to these pressures. The “exterior preparation” discussed earlier in this chapter was in line both with the sumptuary restrictions advocated elsewhere in the Avvertenze and with the general rules of conduct in the church. In addition, as the next chapter will show, public confessionals were the answer to the fear of impropriety during the confessions of women and the wish to create a decent, public environment for the sacrament. Similar objectives also came to shape other elements of divine worship. Borromeo’s episcopate is notable for its consistent efforts to juxtapose, oppose, or substitute customary forms of secular sociability and popular culture with exercises of devotion, private but especially public.78 Here as elsewhere in Europe, the symbolic and political center77 On these institutions, see Danilo Zardin, “Il rilancio delle confraternite nell’ Europa cattolica cinque-seicentesca,” in Il Concilio di Trento nella prospettiva del terzo millennio. Atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 25-28 settembre 1995, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Iginio Rogger (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997) (along with the same author’s earlier studies); Miriam Turrini, “‘Riformare il mondo a vera vita christiana’: Le scuole di catechismo nell’Italia del Cinquecento,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 8 (1982): 407-89; Paul F. Grendler, “The Schools of Christian Doctrine in XVIthcentury Italy,” Church History 53 (1984): 319-31; Id., “Borromeo and the Schools,” in San Carlo Borromeo. Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century, ed. John M. Headley and John B. Tomaro (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), 158-71; Angelo Turchini, Sotto l’occhio del padre. Società confessionale e istruzione primaria nello Stato di Milano (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), esp. 66-75; Danilo Zardin, “La ‘perfettione’ nel proprio ‘stato’: strategie per la riforma generale dei costumi nel modello borromaico di governo,” in Carlo Borromeo e l’opera, 115-28; and Angelo Bianchi, “Le scuole della dottrina cristiana: linguaggio e strumenti per una azione educativa ‘di massa,’” ibid., 145-58. 78 Arnalda Dallaj, “Le processioni a Milano nella Controriforma,” Studi storici 23 (1982): 167-83; Gianvittorio Signorotto, “Milano sacra. Organizzazione del culto e consenso tra XVI e XVIII secolo,” in Milano e il suo territorio, ed. F. Della Peruta, R. Leydi and A. Stella, 2 vols. (Milano, Silvana Editrice, 1985), 2:581-629 (at 584-589); and Turchini, “Il governo della festa.”

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piece of this effort to create a holy community was an energetic attack against Carnival; indeed, a “triumph of Lent” (to borrow Peter Burke’s expression) would have had much larger implications than a mere extension of the traditional penitential season. Not surprisingly, the archbishop’s creation of a Milano sacra was not unopposed and led in 1579 to a notorious conflict between the archbishop and the city government.79 Significantly, Borromeo’s ritual program took shape in the period coinciding with the drafting of the Avvertenze. On 21 November 1573, the archbishop inaugurated an attempt to promote Advent by urging the faithful to prepare for the coming of Christ through confession and communion, fasts, and works of charity, and by abstaining from “those games, debaucheries, excesses, profanities and so many sins that usually accompany them.”80 In February of 1574, there followed a campaign to reform and intensify Lent, in particular by extending the commemoration of Christ’s passion backwards by several weeks. Thus Borromeo wrote a pastoral letter to dedicate the weeks following Septuagesima Sunday (the third before Lent, in 1574 February 6) to preparations for the Lenten fast: “fasts, prayers, visiting churches, attending sermons and sacred lectures,” as well as “frequenting confession.”81 The polemical intent was obvious. People were to engage in these devotional exercises “to divert them from those vanities and occasions of sin into which diabolical corruption draws them more easily these days” than in the past: that is, from Carnival, the traditional counterpoint to Lent.82 In this confrontation, one day gained symbolic status: the Sunday following Quinquagesima, customarily the last day of Carnival. Borromeo was to provoke much controversy

79 For a general interpretation, see Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 2nd revised ed. (Aldershot, Hants.: Scolar Press, 1994), 207ff. A more detailed analysis of the Milanese affair shows indeed that the “triumph of Lent” was far from assured: see pp. 245-55 below. 80 Lettera sopra l’Advento, AEM, 3:481-87 (at 486). 81 Lettera sopra la Settuagesima, 1 February 1574, AEM, 3:487-95 (at 492). 82 Letter to the vicari foranei, 1 February 1574, AEM, 3:1193-94; the emphasis is mine. Borromeo used the same expression, “divertirlo [il popolo] dalle vanità e occasione de peccati,” in a report about an encounter with the governor (letter of 27 February 1574 to Ormaneto, BAM, F.47 inf., fols. 87-88, quoted in Enrico Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima nell’età di s. Carlo Borromeo,” Ambrosius 34 (1958): 51-73, at 59-60 n. 34).

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in later years by claiming that day as the true and original beginning of Lent according to the Ambrosian rite. But already in 1574 he marked it for special devotional efforts. He held up a plenary indulgence, obtained in 1572 from Pope Gregory XIII, as the reward for those who, on that Sunday, resisted the lures of Carnival entertainments and went to confess and take communion instead. Participation in confession became an important marker of piety and defiance of the world.

Sanctifying everyday life Thus Borromeo’s concerns about public morality led to a remarkable attempt not merely to restore the Lenten season to a presumed former glory, but to suppress its traditional carnevalesque counterpart altogether. The underlying assumption was that penance was not to be an annual or otherwise recurrent event, but a continuous process; the ultimate goal was not to reject the lures of worldly diversions on certain occasions only, but to sanctify social life altogether. The Avvertenze suggest that confession was to play a vital role in this ambitious project. During Lent, the faithful were to increase the frequency of confession, so as to avoid the superficiality of the one-time confession immediately preceding Easter. Accordingly, during Holy Week confessors should admit no penitents who had not already confessed at least once between Quinquagesima and Palm Sunday.83 Similarly, during the rest of the year, confessions were appropriate not only on important feast days, but should become a monthly or even weekly routine. And so the Avvertenze, building on the traditional practice of yearly confession, ended up recommending ‘frequent’ confession as the basis of a comprehensive program of personal devotion. Penitents were to establish a durable relationship with one confessor, or ‘director of conscience,’ marking their conversion with a ‘general’ confession of all sins committed during their lifetimes, and keeping up the effort through a rigorous practice of self-examination (or ‘examination of conscience’)

83

The measure is reminiscent of the ‘double confession’ (confessio bina) advocated in various fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century dioceses: see Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 41-43, 79-82.

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outside the confessional.84 Borromeo borrowed these techniques no doubt from the Jesuits. While frequent confession had precedents in medieval monastic spirituality and was occasionally mentioned in late medieval summas and synodal law, it was Ignatius and his followers who developed and successfully promoted the practice for general application, soon followed by Counter-Reformation bishops.85 In the case of Borromeo, we have already seen the close collaboration with Jesuit advisors early on during his episcopate; and it is not hard to see that the intensive practice of confession they advocated fitted particularly well with the radical conversion the Milanese archbishop envisioned for his entire flock. When the Jesuits began to propagate their spiritual techniques in their earliest missions in Lombardy, he integrated key elements in his disciplinary program. Thus we find frequent confession, spiritual direction, and the examination of conscience packaged neatly with the juridical measures that formed the core of the Avvertenze. The archbishop summed up his views on the matter a few years later in an urgent plea “for a Christian lifestyle” directed at the people of Milan. In it, the chronological calendar replaced the liturgical calendar: “Confess your sins often. The more often, the better: every week, or at least every month.” The periodic settlement of cumulative sins became an instantaneous corrective to be applied after each sin committed: “See to it that you never go to sleep with any mortal sin, but confess it as soon as you can...” And there was always the presumption of sinfulness, for penance must 84

Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 220-39; O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 87-88, 136ff.; Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 144-75. See also J. Calveras, “Los ‘confesionales’ y los ejercicios de San Ignacio,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 17 (1948): 51-101; Pierre Gervais, “Ignace de Loyola et la confession générale,” Communio 8 (1983): 69-83; Lucien Ceyssens, “La pratique de la confession générale: La ‘confession coupée’ suivant le P. Christophe Leutbrewer,” in Jansénius et le Jansénisme dans les Pays-Bas. Mélanges Lucien Ceyssens, ed. J. van Bavel and M. Schrama (Louvain, 1982), 93-113. 85 Thus, aside from Borromeo, also Ercole Gonzaga, bishop of Mantua, in his Breve ricordo ... delle cose spettanti alla vita de Chierici, al governo delle chiese, et alla cura delle anime di questo suo Vescovato di Mantova (Mantova: per Giacomo Roffinello, 1561), c. 7r; Giulio Antonio Santoro, archbishop of S. Severina, in Rituale sacramentorum romanum Gregorii papae XIII. Pont. Max. iussu editum (Romae, 1584), 260; Luis de Granada (an author recommended by Italian bishops like Borromeo and Gabriele Paleotti), Prattica del viver christiano nella quale familiarmente s’ammaestra nelle virtù della nostra fede, così i Padri e Madri di famiglia, come gli loro figliuoli (Venetia, 1594), c. 10v; on Granada’s influence, see Prodi, Il cardinale Gabriele Paleotti, 2:10-12, 103-04.

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be a continuous business: “Do some kind of penance every week, such as fasting, discipline, wearing a sackcloth, sleeping on a hard surface, and so forth.” Finally, penance came with obedience: a priest of choice was to become the guide of this ascetic discipline — not the detached administrator of the Easter sacraments, but the trusted “spiritual father and guide of your soul,” with whom to “discuss ... all your doubts and all important things that may reflect on your conscience,” and whom to obey.86

Penitence and pestilence: Carlo and the plague In sum, penance was the master key of Borromean spirituality. The term merged the general meaning of an all-encompassing ascetic ideal with the more technical notions of sacrament, act of expiation and spiritual exercise. The practices it represented may be considered a Counter-Reformation answer to Luther’s challenge that the entire life of Christians be one of penance. But it combined the spiritual drive of the early Reformation with a new disciplinary spirit. Thus, as has been said, Borromeo marked the institutionalization of an experimental movement, the transition from pre-Tridentine evangelism to postTridentine confessionalism.87 This transformation came with a fullfledged program of social discipline based on the interdependence between individual and society, and between the private and public spheres. The full scope of the underlying conceptions of sin, punishment, and penitence became clear a few years after the publication of the Avvertenze, when Milan and many other parts of Italy were in the grips of a fierce instance of the bubonic plague. Originating in the area of Trent in late 1574 and reaching some places in Lombardy and Switzerland the following year, the epidemic spread all over northern Italy in 1576; the first outbreak in Milan occurred in late July. The disaster immediately mobilized the archbishop and kept him fully 86 Ricordi ... per il vivere christiano (1577), AEM, 3:652-53; see also the remarks in the Avvertenze (AEM, 2:1893-94). We return to the issue of frequent confession on pp. 177-83. 87 Paolo Prodi, “Riforma interiore e disciplinamento sociale in san Carlo Borromeo,” Intersezioni 5 (1985): 273-85.

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occupied until 20 January 1578, when Milan was officially declared “free and clean,” and even beyond that date. A string of pastoral and ritual initiatives, as well as an intense personal engagement, turned the occasion into a defining moment for his episcopate and long-term reputation. On the practical level the archbishop was directly involved in relief activities; his particular concern was to press a reluctant clergy into assistance to the sick and dying. The focus of these activities was the large lazzaretto outside Milan’s Porta Orientale, where the infected were forced into isolation. Borromeo was also the chief inspiration for the city’s sacral response, organizing public prayers, processions, and acts of collective penance to implore divine mercy over the stricken city. Those initiatives were rooted in the cardinal’s tormented conviction that the plague came as God’s revenge for the sins of the Milanese, and inspired by his views on the expiatory and exemplary functions of public ritual. In the first mass processions of October 1576, the archbishop impersonated the role he believed appropriate for the entire citizenry: he presented himself as a public penitent, walking barefoot, with a thick rope around his neck, and carrying a large crucifix.88 In and of itself there is nothing unusual about this response, or about its underlying assumptions. In premodern Europe, catastrophic hardship was commonly interpreted as divine punishment, leading moralists to chastize human society for the sins that brought it on, and inspiring church leaders to mount ritual counteroffensives.89 Ever since the fourteenth-century Black Death, recurrences of the plague had created especially fecund opportunities to impress the lessons of Christianity on fear-stricken, hence susceptible, populations. Borromeo fit neatly into this tradition, using edicts, pastoral letters, and the passionate Memorial to His Beloved People (1579) to brandish the two-edged sword of culpability and conversion. With one stroke, the archbishop lashed out against the sins of his flock, laying responsibility for the catastrophe squarely on their shoulders; with another, he imparted lessons of Christian edification. He did the latter most insistently in his 88

On the plague and Borromeo’s activities, see Storia di Milano, 10:235-47. See, among recent titles, Grazia Benvenuto, La peste nell’Italia della prima età moderna. Contagio, rimedi, profilassi (Bologna: CLUEB, 1996), 60-61, 129-42; and Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, ed. T. Ranger and Paul Slack (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 89

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wide-ranging Reminders for a Christian Lifestyle for Every Class of Persons (1577), which combined general admonitions about human nature, the fear of God and the Last Judgment with detailed advice about the care of the soul, proper conduct, the sacraments, and the religious responsibilities of heads of family and workshop personnel. A centerpiece was the practice of frequent confession.90 For all the conventionality of this strategy, it also had original features. In this as in other cases, moralistic invective and pastoral lessons functioned as part of a precise ideology in a particular historical setting. It is not hard, for instance, to discover in the Causes and Remedies of the Plague (1576), a short tract by Marco Gonzaga, bishop of the nearby diocese of Mantua, a series of concerns specific to his time and ecclesiastical milieu: as general background to the current epidemic, Gonzaga discussed the advance of the Turks, and among its particular causes he included heresy, sodomy, madrigals, and images of nudes.91 In Carlo Borromeo’s interpretation, the personal imprint is even more evident: the plague confirmed and exacerbated his views on sin and penance, especially in the area of public morality. In that sense, his exalted fight against the epidemic did nothing but continue, albeit under vastly different conditions, his offensive to purge Milanese society of its public sinfulness. That offensive had been particularly intense in the period immediately preceding the plague; during the first half of 1576 the Milanese church calendar was dedicated to a solemn jubilee, a local reenactment of the universal jubilee held in Rome the preceding year.92 Undoubtedly, Borromeo organized this extraordinary season of repentance, requiring special papal approval, to reinvigorate his campaign against Carnival and for Septuagesima and Lent. The event was an obvious success but did not remove the existing tensions over public sociability with the civic authorities and the citizenry at 90

On christianization and plague, see J.N. Biraben and Jacques LeGoff, “La peste dans le Haut Moyen Age,” Annales E.S.C. 24 (1969): 1484-1510. I consulted the Memoriale in the edition by Giacomo Pozzi Bellini: Carlo Borromeo, Memoriale ai Milanesi (Milano: Giordano Editore, 1965). For the Ricordi ... per il vivere christiano a ogni stato di persone, see AEM, 3:644-60. 91 Marco Gonzaga, Cause et rimedii della peste, et di qualsivoglia altra infermità... (Macerata: appresso Sebastiano Martellini, 1576), cc. 9r (on Turks) and 12v ff. (on “particular causes”). 92 For the official documents concerning the jubilee (February 12 until June 28, 1576), see AEM, 3:513-42.

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large. When the plague hit the city very soon thereafter, the archbishop interpreted the disaster in light of that confrontation. Clearly, the jubilee had not achieved full victory, and divine judgment followed in the form of the plague. As Borromeo was to declare in his Memorial, “Now remember, Milan, the masks, the comedies, the pagan games, the dances, the banquets, the excesses of ostentation, the extravagant spending, the fights, the disputes, the murders, the lewdness, your monstrous craziness and depravity.”93 Borromeo’s discourse derived particular force from the insistent use of one rhetorical device: he turned the plague into the ultimate expression of the depraved human condition, both literally and metaphorically. Terms of malady precisely paralleled those of sin, to the point of becoming interchangeable. Thus a sinful life was a “plague of vices,” sins were “infectious” just as the epidemic was, and the “corruption” of manners went side by side with that of the body. The use of medical metaphors to indicate states of the soul was of course nothing new, but in the midst of pestilential horrors they became particularly compelling. Borromeo imaginatively exploited their range of variation to express the concerns closest to his heart. Measures of physical isolation in the city obtained a spiritual equivalent in the form of a “quarantine as penance for sin.” The burning of infected clothes was to be matched by the purging of sinful hearts. And the foci of plague infection kept close company with occasions of sin: penitents had to remove not only “every occasion which is likely to pose the risk of [physical] contagion,” but also “every suspicion and occasion of sin.” Medical, political, and religious discourse were tightly woven together.94 The sacrament of penance (as the last remark confirms) was a favorite locus for the use of metaphors of healing and disease; complementing the confessor’s role of judge of the soul was that of spiritual doctor. The variations were infinite, constituting an essential part of penitential preaching.95 During the plague, however, the juxtaposition of body and soul gained new meaning in the confessional, 93

Borromeo, Memoriale, 149. For the distinction of three ‘scripts’ of plague, see Colin Jones, “Plague and Its Metaphors in Early Modern France,” Representations 53 (1996): 97-127. Examples of the quoted terminology can be found in the pastoral letters of 20 October 1576 (AEM, 3:600-05) and 2 February 1577 (ibid., 618-23). 95 For an example, see p. 178 below. 94

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appearing at times to transcend metaphor. In the physical realm, confessors monitored their penitents’ obedience to sanitary laws, such as prohibitions on stealing or hiding infected goods; in the spiritual, they took on the cleansing of souls. It was necessary to confess all sins, including criminal neglect or exploitation of the plague, because the slightest infection was detrimental in the spiritual as much as the corporal sphere. And if penitents were given a new lease on physical life, their recovery also required spiritual renewal, “with the firmest resolve and intent to take on a truly new life.” In this new life, penitents “should stay far from every occasion of sin,” flee the company of “people stained with impurities of vice and immorality,” and eliminate the “‘seeding grounds’ (seminaria) of sin in which a depraved habit previously tied them up.”96 In the plague, therefore, the penitential program which Borromeo had developed in the preceding years reached a dramatic climax. The epidemic was the ultimate crisis provoking an all-encompassing response. This response expressed a ‘total’ vision of human society, which attempted to join the spiritual and the physical, the personal and the social, the private and the public in a seamless fabric. Only in light of these connections, and their inevitable tensions and conflicts, can we fully appreciate the Borromean project of confession. Likewise, the same connections return as we explore related interventions in the ritual order. Let us turn, then, from the discipline of the soul to the discipline of the body.

96 See for these quotes the pastoral letters of 20 October 1576 (AEM, 3:600-05) and of 2 February 1577 (ibid., 618-23), the edict on contagious clothes, 22 March 1577 (AEM, 3:623-26), and the Fifth Provincial Council, 1579 (AEM, 2:617).

CHAPTER THREE

CONSTRAINTS OF THE BODY: THE CONFESSIONAL AND CHURCH DESIGN

In early 1576, only months before the violent outbreak of plague, the Milanese devout had their minds set on a very different matter: the celebration of a general jubilee. Penitents flocking towards the Duomo in search of indulgences made their confessions in newly installed furniture. The confessionals were impressive enough to elicit praise from a keen local observer, the carpenter Giambattista Casale, and no doubt contributed to the solemnity of this season of repentance and forgiveness of sins. The papal official Gerolamo Ragazzoni, upon concluding an apostolic visitation of the Milanese church province a few months later, cited the same confessionals as a model for all its parish churches.1 The next year a normative description found its way into a new archdiocesan handbook, the Instructions for Church Fabrics and Furnishings, and through this text gained wide notoriety in the Catholic world at large. Thus the years 1576 and 1577 were decisive for the history of this church furniture. While confessionals had been used sporadically for some time, the jubilee marked their effective introduction in the Milanese diocese and their codification as standard equipment of the Counter-Reformation church.2

1 Thus Casale’s observation: “... et quando si fece la ditta cesata si fece ancora quei belli confessionari in domo”; see Carlo Marcora, “Il diario di Giambattista Casale (1554-1598),” MSDM 12 (1965): 281. The new confessionals are also mentioned in the Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano (Milano, 1881), 4:139. For Ragazzoni’s visitation decrees, see AEM, 2:1187-88: “Confessionalis ipsius perfecta forma in Cathedrali ecclesia poterit cognosci; ad quam unusquisque suum redigat...” On the visitation, see Angelo Giorgio Ghezzi, “Conflitti giurisdizionali nella Milano di Carlo Borromeo: la visita apostolica di Gerolamo Ragazzoni nel 1575-76,” Archivio storico lombardo 108-109 (1982-83): 193-237. 2 A note on terminology: I use the noun ‘confessional’ to refer to the furniture used for confessions; alternative terms like ‘confessional box’ make assumptions about design and function that do not necessarily apply to early-modern Italian confessionals.

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The Borromean confessional, whose evolution and construction are here analyzed for the first time, is a remarkable contraption.3 Meticulously designed, it makes manifest its maker’s adamant wish to control the physical execution of all worship. The sacrament of penance was a particularly sensitive ritual because of widespread suspicions of abuse. With the propriety of the relations between confessors and female penitents being questioned in many quarters, church authorities sought ways to minimize the risk of transgression and scandal. One of these was to provide confessors with firm instructions for appropriate conduct during confessions. Another was to manipulate the material conditions under which confessions were heard: the confessional was meant to separate confessor and penitent, while providing a public setting for the sacrament. This finding plainly contradicts the modern assumption, also common in the historiography on the subject, that the confessional was a vehicle for the ‘privatization’ of confession. Furthermore, the introduction of this furniture was part of a wide array of measures aimed at disciplining behavior inside and outside the church building. Fears and complaints about disorderly conduct prompted the issuing of guidelines for devout comportment during all religious functions. In addition, as is evident from Borromeo’s instructions of 1577, the Milanese authorities introduced architectural revisions to back up these measures with physical constraints. Like the confessional, these innovations carefully manipulated the public space with devices of inclusion and separation — of women and men, the sacred and the profane.4 Rules of conduct and elements of design were to cooperate to create an optimal environment of devout behavior. This package of ‘reforms,’ precisely attuned to the moral-psychological principles discussed in the last chapter, thus formed the ritual component of Borromean social discipline. 3

But see my preparatory study, “‘Ad audiendi non videndi commoditatem.’ Note sull’introduzione del confessionale soprattutto in Italia,” Quaderni storici, nuova serie, 77 (1991): 543-72. 4 On the gendered nature of physical discipline during the Renaissance, see Adrian Randolph, “Regarding Women in Sacred Space,” in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. Geraldine A. Johnson and Sara Matthews Grieco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 17-41; on the French Counter-Reformation, see James R. Farr, “The Pure and Disciplined Body: Hierarchy, Morality, and Symbolism in France during the Catholic Reformation,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21 (1991): 391-414.

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Confession and the advances of private devotion In his landmark article on the “social history of confession” (1974), John Bossy described the confessional as a visual manifestation of an increasingly ‘internalized’ devotional practice. Its appearance in early modern churches, Bossy suggested, denotes a deep shift in the socio-religious functions of confession, largely taking place beneath the surface of the controversies, critiques and ‘reforms’ making up the Reformation. The age-old sacrament of penance was transformed from a community ritual focused on the settlement of social conflicts into an instrument of personal devotion and spiritual direction.5 Bossy’s influential thesis, though quite original in several respects, nevertheless shares some commonly held assumptions about confession and (early) modern Catholicism — to this, no doubt, it owes part of the acclaim it has received. First, historians (as well as non-historians) frequently describe the confessional as a guarantor of privacy or anonymity, and accordingly attribute those features to the act of confession. Second, such an interpretation fits in well with the notion that early modern Catholicism witnessed the spreading of personal spiritual routines centered around confession. In short, the introduction of the confessional was part of the same trend that produced frequent confession, the examination of conscience, and spiritual direction — avidly advocated, as we have seen, also in Borromean Milan.6 For all its appeal, the thesis invites further scrutiny. For one thing, the success of the new devotional practices among the laity at large is questionable (an issue to which we will return in a later chapter); for another, the thesis makes implicit but untested assumptions about the physical functionality of the confessional. The same is true for a less common reading, which portrays the often elaborately crafted confessionals as an integral part of the 5 Bossy, “The Social History of Confession,” 30, expanded in Id., Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 45-50, 127-28, 132-35, and reiterated in Id., Peace in the Post-Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13. I will return to the broader implications of Bossy’s thesis in Chapters Five and Seven. 6 See, for example, Paola Barocchi, Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento fra manierismo e Controriforma, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1962), 3:447, n. 2; Angelozzi, “Interpretazioni della penitenza sacramentale,” 80; Briggs, “The Sins of the People,” 280; Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 238; and Niccoli, “Il confessore e l’inquisitore.”

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Counter-Reformation church interior, a conspicuous element in a restored public worship, and an imposing embodiment of the Church’s reaffirmed claim to jurisdiction over the soul.7 This hypothesis contains elements of truth, but ignores (like its competitor) the primary intentions underlying the design of the confessional. What is called for, then, is an ‘archaeology’ of the confessional, which reconstructs the gradual evolution of this furniture, the historical reasons explaining its elementary features, and its place in church ritual and architecture.8 Essential in this study is the distinction of intent and effect; as will become clear, a material intervention in a practice as complex as confession was bound to produce tensions, contradictions, and unforeseen results. The confessional was indeed, as Bossy called it, a “sleep-walking innovation.”9

Instructions for church architecture An introduction to our main source, Borromeo’s seminal Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, is in order. In 1573, the Third Provincial Council held in Milan ordered that a manual for the design and outfitting of churches be compiled for the benefit of all Lombard bishoprics. In other words, the initiative originated in the same period of restless legislation as the Avvertenze and numerous other editorial projects. This plan, however, languished until 1576, when the jubilee provided a new stimulus for architectural and ritual innovation, only

7

See Franco Molinari, San Carlo e la Controriforma (Milano, 1988), 231-32; Marco Navoni, “Confessionale,” Dizionario della Chiesa ambrosiana (Milano, 1988), 2:888-892; and Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 134, 141. 8 Existing studies, mostly concentrated on art-historical aspects, include: Abbé Barraud, “Notice sur les confessionaux,” Bulletin Monumental 34 (1868): 697-755 and 825-47 (and the Abbé Cochet’s response, ibid. 37 [1871], 51-56); P. Fierens, Chaires et confessionaux baroques (Bruxelles, 1943); Edmund W. Braun-Troppau and Otto Schmitt, “Beichtstuhl (confessionale),” Reallexicon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, 2:183-94; Ad. Jansen, “Ontstaan en evolutie van de biechtstoelen,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis en Folklore 14 (1951): 3-31; Emile Jombart, “Confessional,” DDC, 14:64-66; Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:394-95; Wilhelm Schlombs, Die Entwicklung des Beichtstuhles in der katholischen Kirche. Grundlagen und Besonderheiten im alten Erzbistum Köln, Studien zur Kölner Kirchengeschichte Bd. 8 (Düsseldorf, 1965). See further n. 99 below. 9 Bossy, Christianity in the West, 134.

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to be delayed again by the subsequent plague. The text finally came out in late 1577.10 Just as Borromeo’s Avvertenze for confessors fitted uneasily in the tradition of confession manuals, similarly the Instructiones were not an architectural treatise in any conventional sense of the word.11 The text was concerned less with the aesthetic canons of architectural theory than with the use of churches.12 This should not surprise us, since the Instructiones were not authored by an architect, but by diocesan officials, no doubt under the close supervision of the archbishop himself. While Borromeo’s main editor Pietro Galesino probably penned the text in its polished Latin version, the true author, responsible for writing the vernacular draft, was in all likelihood the episcopal collaborator Ludovico Moneta (1521-98). Over the course of a long career, this diligent and devout churchman had held numerous positions in the curia, including those of prefect of female convents and prefect of church fabrics. His experience in both areas, gathered through the 10 Instructionum fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae libri II... (Mediolani: apud Pacificum Pontium, 1577). I cite from the edition of Book I in Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:1-73 (another edition, including Book II, is available in AEM, 2:1409-1589). MayerHimmelheber has rightly stressed the relation between the Instructiones and the ritual offensive undertaken during the jubilee; however, her argument that the text first came out in 1576 is untenable for lack of evidence; moreover, there is correspondence of July 1577 (quoted by the author herself) reflecting the last stages of the editorial process (Susanne Mayer-Himmelheber, Bischöfliche Kunstpolitik nach dem Tridentinum. Der Secunda-Roma-Anspruch Carlo Borromeos und die mailändischen Verordnungen zu Bau und Ausstattung von Kirchen [München: Tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1984], 287-89). For the 1573 decree, see AEM, 2:265-66. 11 The best commentary is offered by Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:383-89, 403-06, 425-64; see also Mayer-Himmelheber, Bischöfliche Kunstpolitik, 90ff., and Evelyn C. Voelker, Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, 1577. A Translation With Commentary and Analysis, PhD thesis, Syracuse University, 1977 (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1979). For the text’s publication history, see John Bury’s bibliographic essay in Les traités d’architecture de la Renaissance. Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 1er au 11 juillet 1981, ed. Jean Guillaume (Paris: Picard, 1988), 488. 12 Hanno-Walter Kruft, Storia delle teorie architettoniche da Vitruvio al Settecento [1985], It. trans. (Bari: Laterza, 1988), 107; and Richard Haslam, “Pellegrino de’ Pellegrini, Carlo Borromeo and the Public Architecture of the Counter-Reformation,” Arte lombarda 94/5 (1990): 21. The text’s genre is probably to be held accountable for its paradoxical status in modern architectural scholarship: while its paramount importance for Counter-Reformation architecture is recognized, it remains understudied. Despite various partial studies and commentaries, some of them excellent, a comprehensive interpretation is still lacking.

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continual practice of church and convent visitations, is clearly reflected in the Instructiones. Moneta owed his appointment to these functions certainly in part to a personal predilection for matters architectural. A biography of Moneta, written anonymously soon after his death to exalt his piety and exemplary service to the Milanese church, recounts how Moneta liked to dabble in the study of architectural theory, particularly Vitruvius, and enjoyed the high esteem of the city’s architects. The latter, according to Moneta’s biographer, “at times not only discussed their designs with him, but corrected them to suit his opinion; and in case of conflicting designs his judgment often won out.”13 Despite this praise, Moneta’s priorities were ecclesiastical rather than architectural. And so were those of his superior, Carlo Borromeo, who was reportedly quite interested in the study of architecture, but preferred early Christian basilicas over classical monuments, and St. John Chrysostom over Vitruvius.14 Consequently, Vitruvius, or Moneta’s study of him, did not leave noticeable traces in the Borromean Instructiones; and equally absent were humanist influences from authorities such as Leon Battista Alberti and Moneta’s contemporaries Pietro Cataneo, Pellegrino Tibaldi, and Giacomo Vignola.15 The Instructiones essentially ignored the favorite themes of classical architectural theory, devoting barely a word to facades, columns, and issues of perspective. On matters of style, orna-

13

The biography, written in or before 1607, is published in Carlo Marcora, “Mons. Ludovico Moneta collaboratore di S. Carlo in una biografia coeva,” MSDM 10 (1963): 446-94 (quote on 450). The vita attributes the Instructiones “quanto alla sostanza” to Moneta and the Latin text (“stile e lingua”) to Galesino (451; see also 491). Two letters by Galesino (10 and 18 July 1577) confirm this (Sala, 3:671f.). Moneta’s role is also evident from marginal notes in a manuscript of the Instructiones (ASDM, VII, 7, e.g. fols. 21 and 38). See also Mayer-Himmelheber, Bischöfliche Kunstpolitik, 84-90, 287-302; further on Moneta, S. Carlo Borromeo, Arte sacra (De fabrica ecclesiae), trans. and notes by Carlo Castiglioni and Carlo Marcora (Milan: n.e., 1952), 8-9. 14 Castiglioni and Marcora in Borromeo, Arte sacra, 10. 15 Leonbattista Alberti, L’Architettura di Leonbatista Alberti tradotta in lingua fiorentina... (I consulted the edition Venetia: Appresso Francesco Franceschi, 1565); Pietro Cataneo, I quattro primi libri di architettura (Vinegia: In casa de’ figliuoli de Aldo, 1554, revised ed. 1567; repr. 1964); Pellegrino Pellegrini [Tibaldi], L’Architettura, ed. Giorgio Panizza, intr. and notes by Adele Buratti Mazzotta (Milano: Il Polifilo, 1990); Iacomo Barozzio da Vignola, Regola delli cinque ordini d’architetura (Venetia: appresso Girolamo Porro, 1596). In her commentary, Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:425ff., discusses such precedents and parallels as can be indicated.

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mentation, and sometimes even construction, the text systematically deferred to the expertise of the architect. This was done with one caveat, however: the architect might advise, but the bishop decided. As Federico Borromeo was to say later, his cousin Carlo certainly appreciated fitting proportions, elegance and other architectural concerns, but on condition “that this art be accommodated and subservient to ecclesiastical needs.”16 The Instructiones, then, were a compendium of the minimum requirements imposed by the Milanese archbishop on all church buildings, both new and existing, in his province. Not unlike a checklist, the text was to accompany architects, church visitors and parish priests in their various pursuits. Moral, ritual, and disciplinary concerns underlay its guidelines, yet it did not elaborate on what they were. This is all the more reason to study the Instructiones not so much as an architectural tract, as some art historians have attempted, but as a member of another class of texts: Borromeo’s numerous instructions concerning the proper use of church buildings.17 Among them is a decree of the Fourth Provincial Council (1576), which not only anticipated some rules about church fabrics, chapels and altars, but also discussed, without apparent transition, the ornamentation, decorum, and cleanliness of churches, conduct in sacred places, and issues concerning prayer and preaching. Church design and comportment formed a seamless continuum.

The Borromean confessional The chapter on the confessional is among the most remarkable of the Instructiones.18 Added late in the editing process, it is longer than 16

Federico Borromeo, De pictura sacra (1624), ed. Carlo Castiglioni (Sora, 1932), 54f., quoted in Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:439. 17 In this sense the approach followed here differs from several existing interpretations, including Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, “Le ‘Istruzioni’ di S. Carlo e l’ispirazione classica nell’architettura religiosa del Seicento in Lombardia,” in Il mito del classicismo nel Seicento (Messina-Firenze, 1963), 101-23; and Aurora Scotti, “Architettura e Riforma cattolica nella Milano di Carlo Borromeo,” L’arte 18/20 (1972): 55-90. I have more affinity with Barocchi’s commentary (see n. 11 above) and Liliana Grassi, “Prassi socialità e simbolo dell’architettura delle ‘Instructiones’ di S. Carlo,” Arte cristiana 73 (1985): 3-16. 18 Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:63-68.

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many key sections (on the church structure, the facade, the apse) and abounds in detail.19 Ludovico Moneta was an amateur woodworker, as his vita reports, and this may explain some of his attention to the confessional. In addition, there was the novelty of this church furniture, and the urgency with which it was introduced. While (as we will see) the concept of the confessional had gradually evolved in various parts of Italy during the preceding decades, Moneta’s design was the first technically specific model to find its way into print. Hence there is a good deal of truth in the common wisdom that considers Carlo Borromeo the inventor of the confessional, and Milan the first diocese to adopt it. In essence, the confessional was a wooden structure consisting of a chair (the confessor’s seat) and a kneeling bench (for the penitent) mounted against one of its sides (Fig. 2). Vertical panels enclosed the seat from behind and on two sides, while leaving it open at the front. The whole structure sat on a large, low base, and was topped by a roof. Particular attention was given to the panel separating the seat and the bench: it had a small ‘window’ closed off by a metal sheet with tiny holes and covered on the inside with a piece of cloth — in other words, the grille. At the front of the confessional, a narrow, vertical plank was constructed against the same dividing panel, extending partly to the side of the penitent, partly to that of the confessor. Finally, the confessor’s space had a door made of bars or a large grille within a frame. With this new design the Milanese authorities clearly intended to regulate the physical execution of confession. This does not imply, however, that they meant to change the traditional ritual. On the contrary, the design was in perfect harmony with most existing rules. The formal conduct of confession, as medieval liturgists had prescribed it, could be summarized as follows.20 The confessor was seated on a chair, 19

AEM, 2:1461-65. None of Moneta’s early drafts of the confessional survives: all extant manuscripts of the Instructiones (ASDM, VI, 43; VII, 7; and XIV, 84) reserve space for a chapter “de confessionalibus et eorum numero” without using it. A letter by Moneta of 6 May 1587 contains a sketch of confessionals for the Collegio Borromeo at Pavia (BAM, G.138 inf., fol. 780). 20 Tentler, Sin and Confession, 82ff. Ann Eljenholm Nichols has developed Tentler’s conclusions on the basis of iconographical evidence, in “The Etiquette of PreReformation Confession in East Anglia,” Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (1986): 145-63. For an outline of the liturgical history of penance, see P.-G. Gy, “Histoire liturgique du Sacrement de Pénitence,” La Maison-Dieu 56 (1958): 5-21.

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Figure 2. Sketch of the confessional described in Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae

a position which expressed and emphasized his authority as a spiritual judge. Penitents knelt down at his side and bent their head to display the humility befitting repentant sinners. For Cardinal Cajetan, comportment was the last of four levels on which this humility should operate. First, penitents should recognize intellectually that they were “poor sinner[s] unworthy of mercy”; second, their attitude of submission toward the confessor expressed their heart’s submission to divine judgment; third, their words expressed the “reverence and trepidation” of those who stood before Christ; and fourth, both sexes expressed humility in their physical conduct by kneeling down, the men with their heads uncovered, “health permitting.”21 For various reasons 21 De Vio, Summula peccatorum, 59f. Another classic manual for confessors, Guido de Monte Rocherii’s Manipulus curatorum..., was shorter: “Debet ergo confessor peccato-

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(soon to be clarified), many authors stipulated that eye contact between the confessor and the penitent be avoided. Finally, the rite was to take place in an open spot in the church.22 The Borromean instructions not only allowed but reinforced the observance of these rules; it provided a material form to sustain a series of traditionally required actions. However, this does not explain the need for such a device in the historical setting that concerns us. Two essential elements of the Borromean design may point the way to that explanation: the separation of confessor and penitent, and the openness of the chair. The separation device was a relatively recent innovation, probably attributable to the Veronese bishop Gian Matteo Giberti. His Constitutiones of 1542 had ordered that in all confessions of women, “between [the confessor] and the woman a panel be placed with a window, onto which a grille or perforated plate is constructed: we call this panel a confessorium.”23 The new name and the rudimentary character of the device suggest that it was still in a stage of experimentation. But evidently only a small step was needed to pass from the confessorium to the confessional, in the sense of a chair against which such a partition was mounted. Perhaps this step was already taken in Giberti’s rem docere et monere ut ad pedes eius humiliter sedeat, nec patiatur eum sedere de pari” (Venetiis: in aedibus Francisci Bindoni et Maphei Pasini, 1538, 100). For the post-Tridentine Roman Catechism, such gestures of humility did not pertain to the sacramentality of confession, but were nevertheless useful in manifesting its “dignity” and “celestial power,” as well as preparing the penitent for the gift of God’s grace and for the need to beseech him for this (Catechismus ex decreto... [Lovanii: apud Ioannem Bogardum, 1567], 276-77). On harmony between external and internal behavior as an ideal of Christian perfection, see Giovanni Pozzi, “Occhi bassi,” in Thematologie des Kleinen. Petits thèmes littéraires, ed. Edgar Marsch and Giovanni Pozzi (Fribourg, 1986), 161-211. 22 On the setting of confessions, see the indications given by Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:394, and Tentler, Sin and Confession, 82; for more detail, see Francis J. Fazzaloro, The Place for the Hearing of Confessions. A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 1-9. Fazzalaro refers especially to thirteenth-century councils, on which see also Roberto Rusconi, “De la prédication à la confession: transmission et contrôle de modèles de comportement au XIIIe siècle,” in Faire croire. Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle (Rome: Ecole Française, 1981), 67-85. 23 Giberti, Constitutiones, 99: “... volumus, quod inter sacerdotem confitentem, et mulierem sit tabula una cum sua fenestella, super qua sit una gradata, seu lamina perforata; quam tabulam confessorium denominavimus...” The text was drafted between 1536 and 1540, most likely at the beginning of 1540 (Prosperi, Tra Evangelismo e Controriforma, 255-61).

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Verona,24 but the full-fledged confessional first entered church legislation in Milan. There the First Provincial Council (1565) required the use of “seats in which the penitent and the confessor are completely separated by a panel.”25 A direct Veronese influence is anyhow likely, for the Milanese council was organized by none other than Giberti’s old collaborator Ormaneto, then Borromeo’s vicar general. Even without him, however, the Gibertian confessorium would probably have reached Milan sooner or later, for by 1565 other Italian bishoprics, including Syracuse, Brescia, Fiesole, Bologna, and probably Naples, had adopted similar tools.26 The confessional itself was 24

Riforma pretridentina della diocesi di Verona. Visite pastorali del vescovo G.M. Giberti 1525-1542, ed. Antonio Fasani, Fonti e studi di storia Veneta, 13, 3 vols. (Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989), 3:1455 (“gradus pro confitentibus ad confessorium...”), 1495 (“scabellum ad confessorium pro penitentium genuflexione”), 1685 (“confessorium amovibile”), 1692 (“ponatur ad confessorium crates seu banda perforata,” the same on 1703), 1706 (“aptetur bredela confessorii”), 1730 (“ponatur ferrata ad confessorium et aptetur bredela ipsius confessorii”). See furthermore the occasional order “fiat locus pro audiendis confessionibus,” which seems to indicate an attempt to designate a fixed space for the hearing of confessions (ibid., 3:1652, 1663, 1665); elsewhere the need for visibility is stressed (“fiat confessorium in loco apertiori,” 3:1735). 25 AEM, 2:52: “Sacerdotes, nisi ex causa necessaria, mulieres ante solis ortum, vel post eius occasum, confitentes ne audiant. Neve in cellis, sed publice in ecclesia, in sedibus, in quibus tabella omnino inter confitentem et confessorem interiecta sit...” In Milan, the term ‘confessional’ appeared in the Instruzione generale (probably 1567, certainly between 1566 and 1569), which also contained a more detailed description (AEM, 2:1967). 26 For Syracuse, see Synodales constitutiones Syracusanensis ecclesiae ... plena synodo promulgatae, die octavo mensis Septembris 1553 (Panhormi: s.e., 1555), cc. 32v-33r: “inter sacerdotem confitentem et mulierem sit tabula una cum sua fenestrella, super qua sit una gradata, seu lamina perforata, quae tabula confessorium denominari solet...”; this is no doubt a partial quote from the Veronese constitutions. For Brescia, see Constitutiones Reverendissimi Domini Dominici Bollani Brixiae Episcopi (Brixiae: apud Ludovicum Sabiensem, 1564), [11]: “... interposita etiam tabella, fenestellam inter ipsas ... et sacerdotem habente.” For Fiesole, Memoriale et precetto in genere di quanto si debba osservare per tutta la Diocesi Fesulana, in esecutione della Synodo Diocesana... (s.l.n.a., but the synod was held on September 12, 1564): “... col tener’ancho del continuo tra la faccie loro [i.e. of the confessors] et di esse donne, qualche graticola di legno, o ferro, o vero cortina di tela.” For Bologna, Ordinationi publicate nella sinodo diocesana di Bologna sotto il di 16 d’Ottobre MDLXVI... (Bologna: per Giovanni Rossi, 1567), c. 20r: “Tra il confessore, et confitente vi sia una tavoletta con una fenestrella ferrata...” For the Synod of Naples (1565), Acta et decreta Synodi Neapolitanae (Neapoli: apud Antonium Baccolum, 1568), 187: “in loco patenti et omnibus manifesto confessoria aptent et teneant” (possibly a reference to confessionals proper, not merely the Gibertian partition).

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even more successful: Borromeo’s 1565 decree was echoed in many similar prescriptions all across Italy.27 Clearly the time was ripe. The second essential trait of the Borromean confessional was, as the Instructiones insisted, that its front “be completely open, and in no way closed off.”28 The confessional might have a door to keep beggars and other undesirables out, but during confessions that door had to remain open. Installation guidelines complemented these design elements. The proper place for the confessional was an open spot in the church, preferably the nave, or else a sufficiently spacious side chapel or other location. Hence, as Apostolic Visitor Ragazzoni commented, the act of confession should take place “in everybody’s view, so that all can easily see both the confessor and the penitent.”29 Why this insistence? Clearly, the new rules found their place in traditional medieval legislation requiring the public character of the procedure. No other motivations are usually given, but cryptic remarks occasionally provide us with further clues. We find references to confessions in private homes, which (the norms insist) are allowed only in case of serious illness and on condition that the door of a woman’s bedroom remain open. Equally emphatic is the injunction never to hear the confessions of women in sacristies or “cells.” Here we probably have to think of spaces attached to churches, especially monastic

27 See the councils of Ravenna (1568): Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. G.D. Mansi (Parisiis, 1901-1927), 35:619-20; Florence (1573): Mansi, 35:762; Genoa (before 1574, possibly 1567): Mansi, 36bis: 574; Naples (1576): Mansi, 35:820-21; Cosenza (1579): Mansi, 35:923; Sorrento (1584): Mansi, 36bis:292; Trani-Salpense (1589): Mansi, 36bis:875; Salerno (1596): Mansi, 35:987; S. Severina (1597): Mansi, 35:1046-47; Benevento (1599): Mansi, 36bis:440; and Siena (1599): Mansi, 36bis:532. See also the synods of Trent (1593), in Concilia Germaniae (Coloniae Augustae Agrippinensium, 1769), 8:414; and Alba (1594), in Decreta edita et promulgata in Synodo Dioecesana Albensi (Astae: apud Virgilium de Zangrandis, 1594), 12. For Venice, see the regulae generales (1581) issued by the Apostolic Visitors Lorenzo Campeggi and Agostino Valier, and published in Constitutiones et decreta sub reverendissimo D. Ioanne Trivisano patriarcha Venetiarum ... promulgata... (Veronae: apud Sebastianum et Ioannem Fratres a Donnis, 1581). 28 AEM, 2:1461-65. 29 Thus a decree by Apostolic Visitor Ragazzoni (1576), AEM, 2:1187-88: “Confessionale autem ipsum loco aperto atque conspicuo sit in omnium oculis collocatum, ut et confessarius et confitens possit ab unoquoque facile conspici.”

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churches, in which confessions were administered.30 In 1565, the civic authorities of Chiari, in the diocese of Brescia, urged their bishop to close such cells in the church of the friars of S. Bernardino; the bishop agreed and ordered that henceforth confessions only be heard “publicly in the church.”31 And in 1575, Pope Gregory XIII generally enjoined the mendicant orders and the Jesuits to give up hearing confessions “from cells within the monastery provided with grilles through which [the confessors] hear their penitents.” Wishing instead “that the priest and penitent [be] in full view of the people,” he ordered the installation of confessionals. The decree occasionally met with resistence and led to some exemptions, notably in Spain.32 Nevertheless, it passed into the Rituale Romanum (1584), compiled at Gregory’s request by the powerful Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santoro, archbishop of Santa Severina, and from there into the definitive version of this church manual, published in 1614.33 We will never know how widespread the condemned practices actually were, but the cited examples strongly suggest that the reaffirmed publicity of the ritual, given material form in the Borromean confessional, signalled real change in the practice of confession. Contrary to what is usually assumed, this change meant a reduction, not an enhancement, of the privacy of the encounter. 30 For the precautions concerning confessions at home, see for instance Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1873-74. On the use of cells for the hearing of confessions, see Schlombs, Die Entwicklung des Beichtstuhles, 30-34; however, I do not share the author’s hypothesis that post-Tridentine confessionals developed directly out of these medieval cells. Vasari described such a cell (confessionario) in the Veronese church of S. Bernardino as an enclosed room with a door connecting it to the church choir (Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ piú eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti [Firenze: Le Monnier, 1853], vol. 9, 199). 31 Bollani, Atti della visita pastorale, 70. 32 The papal order is reported in a letter of Card. Maffei to Carlo Borromeo, 27 August 1575: the order generals “levino l’abuso di sentire le confessioni dalle celle di dentro del monastero che hanno le grati nel muro delle chiese per le quali sentono li penitenti” (ASDM, IX, 7, fol. 55r). In 1576, the Jesuit general Mercuriano rejected a complaint against the 1575 decree by the province of Aragon (ARSI, Congr. 97, fol. 220v), but three years later similar protests voiced by Jesuits from other Spanish provinces led to papal permissions to use confessionaria that were open only on the penitent’s side, thus presumably allowing the existing habit of hearing confessions through grilles in church walls (ARSI, Congr. 41, fols. 204v-205r; Congr. 97, fols. 278v, 317r, and 337r). 33 Rituale sacramentorum romanum, 261; see also B. Löwenberg, Das Rituale des Kardinals Julius Antonius Sanctorius. Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Rituale Romanum (München, 1937). Rituale Romanum Pauli V Pont. Max. iussu editum (Romae: ex typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, 1614), 41.

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Confessing women, occasions of sin Fra Giuliano Desio of Barzago, writing in 1569 to the Milanese vicar general Gianbattista Castelli, told his superior that it was “shameful to confess women outside the church,” in the private home. Moreover, women “would be ashamed themselves,” since “they come to church for more propriety and devotion, and with the fear of God.”34 The friar’s dutiful statement (a response perhaps to allegations or suspicions unknown to us) is one clue out of many that gender was the main category by which the newly imposed publicity of confession — hence the structural features of the confessional — must be explained. Indeed, early-modern church legislation required the furniture only for female penitents. By contrast, these documents hardly ever explained the underlying motives, only occasionally warning against “scandals which sometimes happen during sacramental confessions” (Giberti) or “any irreverence and danger of sin” (Council of Florence).35 For all their reticence, these clues conjure up the specter of abuses — that catalyst of Counter-Reformation reform — specifically the fear that priests might become personally or sexually involved with the women whose confessions they heard. Participants at the Council of Trent, meeting in 1547 to discuss abuses in sacramental practice, voiced their apprehension about clergy who tried “to tempt the chastity of virtuous women even during confession and dare abuse this solemn sacrament for seduction.” This suspicion was the more alarming since it was often shared by the public and resulted in serious scandal.36 That risk also explains the official silence surrounding the problem. It was to be discussed, several Tridentine fathers insisted, in a “modest” fashion,

34

BAM, S.Q.+.II.19, fols. 71r-72v. Giberti, Constitutiones, 99: “scandala, quae in confessionibus sacramentalibus solent hinc inde quandocunque contingere”; Giberti’s words are almost literally echoed by the Council of Cosenza (1579; Mansi, 35:923). Mansi, 35:762: “omnis irreverentia, et peccati periculum” (Council of Florence). 36 CT, 6/1:404; and pp. 30-31 above. See also the unusually explicit decree of the Synod of Forlì (1564): “Curati sopra tutto habbiano riguardo all’honore delle donne, et spetialmente di quelle della lor parrocchia, guardandosi di non dar scandalo per occasioni di quelle, né in parole o gesti, o fatti, massime sendo lor figliuole spirituali doppiamente, et per la cura et per la confessione...” (Constitutioni sinodali per la Città, et Diocesi di Forli, con una breve instruttione in fine per i Curati semplici [Bologna: per Alessandro Benaccio, 1564], 29). 35

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“in order not to reveal our shame.”37 When they subsequently drafted a canon requiring publicity and visibility in the confessions of women, it was merely “to put an end to the scandals of the petty and the insinuations of the vicious.”38 One prelate, however, had voiced an objection: the bishop of Saluzzo (Piedmont) argued that the issue should not be on the agenda at all, because to tempt a woman’s chastity during confession was “a crime, not an abuse.”39 These were prophetic words, for the abuse of temptation soon became the formal crime of solicitation (sollicitatio ad turpia). In 1561, Pius IV allowed the Spanish Inquisition to prosecute the offense in all regions under its authority, and his successors extended the license in the early seventeenth century, first to the Portuguese, then to all other inquisitorial offices as well.40 This development, as well as reflecting a shift in the role and jurisdiction of the Inquisition, was an unmistakable sign of a growing alarm about the practice — whether real, alleged, rumored or only feared — that it meant to counter. 37

Thus the archbishop of Uppsala: “Sed de enormibus abusibus fiat modesta relatio, ne pudenda nostra discooperiamus” (CT, 6/1:581). The bishop of Camerino similarly insisted that “dictiones inhonestae deleantur, ut de blasphemia in Italia et de mulieribus et lenociniis etc.” (ibid., 584); his colleague of Albi wished that “nulla mentio fiat de scelestis sacerdotibus et delictis enormibus” (ibid., 585). 38 CT, VI/1, 678: “... ut, dum audiens pariter et confitens palam ab universo populo videri possit, et pusillorum scandala et pravorum hominum iudicia temeraria cessent.” The canons compiled during this phase of the Council were never approved and issued, but formed the basis for subsequent discussions; they are, in many cases, more explicit and therefore informative about the existing concerns. 39 CT, 6/1:585: “... in quibus [canonibus] non est ponendum, quod sacerdotes tentent pudicitiam in confessione, cum id sit delictum, non abusus.” 40 The 1561 bull is published in Pietro Gasparri and I. Serédi, Codicis Iuris Canonici Fontes (Romae: typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1923-39), 1:181 (no. 102). The general law, the constitution Universi dominici gregis of Gregory XV (30 August 1622), can be found ibid., 1:384-85 (no. 201). Still useful on the legal aspects is Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:382-93; Id., History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, third ed. (New York: Macmillan Company, 1907), 2:251-96. Most recent studies concentrate on Spain: Adelina Sarrión Mora, Sexualidad y confesion: la solicitacion ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio (siglos XVI-XIX) (Madrid: Alianza universidad, 1994); and Stephen Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional. A Sacrament Profaned (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). For Italy, see Claudio Madricardo, “Sesso e religione nel Seicento a Venezia: la sollecitazione in confessionale,” Studi veneziani 15 (1988): 121-70. Prosecution statistics can be found in The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe. Studies on Sources and Methods, ed. Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), esp. 110-19, 144-47.

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Toward the end of his life, Niccolò Ormaneto found himself caught up in the middle of that storm. In December 1575, Borromeo’s former assistant was serving Pope Gregory XIII as nuntius at the Spanish court, when he wrote an unusually explicit report to the Roman curia: From all sides zealous people approach me to lament the great abomination of many impious men who violate the sacrament of penance by attempting to satiate their unbridled and bestial appetite with their spiritual daughters during or outside the act of confession. And I have heard serious charges involving this abominable sin, and some who are well informed about spiritual affairs and the local practices here fear that the situation is actually worse than what is being rumored.41

This grim diagnosis prompted the nuntius to call for a considerable expansion of the inquisitorial jurisdiction in the matter, well beyond the limits outlined in the bull of 1561.42 At the same time, Ormaneto favored “removing the occasion as much as possible” by forbidding confessions in side-rooms (camerette) and installing public confessionals instead.43 With this last remark the nuntius not only echoed the policy 41 ASV, Nunziatura di Spagna, vol. 8, fol. 548r: “Da diverse parti molte persone di buon zelo lacrimano meco la gran abominatione di molti homini impii che violano il sacramento della penitentia, tentando nell’atto della confessione et fuori d’essa di satiar il suo sfrenato et bestial appetito con figliole spirituali; et di questo abominevole peccato ho sentito gran querele, et qualche persona pratica delle cose spirituali et che conosce assai de gli andamenti di qui, teme che non sia piú in fatti di quello che va attorno in parole...” 42 According to Ormaneto, one of the problems of the existing legislation was that many offenses occurred shortly before or immediately after confessions. The nuntius therefore proposed to widen the juridical definition of solicitation to include the whole period during which the penitent was in the church. He even suggested granting the Inquisition the authority to prosecute any sexual offense involving confessors and their spiritual daughters. The Pope was not convinced by these arguments, considering that “li errori che direttamente non contradicono a la fede Cattolica non debbano esser conosciuti dal Santo Officio” (letter of February 20, 1576, ASV, Nunziatura di Spagna, vol. 9, fol. 73v). Ormaneto insisted (letter of April 5, 1576, ibid., vol. 10, fol. 91r), but apparently never got his way (ibidem, vol. 9, fols. 95v-96r). 43 Ibid.: “... aiutando anche la materia con levar l’occasione quanto maggiormente si può: et laudarei che si levasse l’uso di confessar nelle camerette, et s’introducesse qui l’uso di confessionarii posti in luoco patente della Chiesa con quel tramezzo tra’l confessor et la donna penitente, come già ordinò la santa memoria di Pio Quinto, ma qui non fu essequito.” (A search for this order among the papers of Pius V in the Vatican Archives remained fruitless.) In his subsequent correspondence, Ormaneto returned

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articulated a few months earlier by the Pope himself (but apparently not yet fully enforced in Spain), but explicitly linked the introduction of the confessional to the inquisitorial prosecution of solicitation. The latter was to penalize offenses once they had occurred, the former to prevent them by taking away the “occasion.” Borromeo’s associate thus described the problem of solicitation in terms we have analyzed in the previous chapter: confession constituted an occasion of sin. This realization may account for much of Ormaneto’s dismay: that the gravest of sins could be provoked not only by games, dances, and Carnival, but by a sacramental act.

Between publicity and privacy In fact, the apprehensive and mistrustful eyes of the Tridentine leadership viewed the confessions of female penitents as inherently fraught with danger. Not only did they provide women with a rare opportunity for licit private contact with a priest, but the encounters were easily sidetracked into the dark and perilous alleys of lechery. What better occasion was there for temptation but confession, whose express purpose was to probe, recount, and review sins? Among the “many dangers in the administration of this sacrament,” according to the Avvertenze, there was the risk for the confessor “of somehow being left with his soul stained after hearing the filth of others.” This necessitated a thorough preparation on the part of the confessor: he had to pray for God’s help “in washing the stains of other persons’ souls without getting dirty himself,” and avail himself of the purgative powers of Psalm 50: Cor mundum crea in me Deus... (“Create in me a clean heart, O God...”).44 repeatedly and insistently to the subject; see ASV, Nunziatura di Spagna, vol. 10, fols. 39r-41v, esp. 41v; and vol. 9, fols. 73r-74v and 95v-96r. At this time, Rome was clearly instrumental in spreading the use of the confessional outside Italy, even though, as early as December 1565, the Council of Valencia had prescribed “confessionalia, in quibus apto et patenti loco confessiones, potissimum feminarum, audiri possint” (Collectio maxima omnium conciliorum Hispaniae et novae Orbis, ed. Josephus Saenz De Aguirre [Romae: J.J. Komarek, 1693], 4:417). On the later spreading of the confessional in Spain, see Henry Kamen, The Phoenix and the Flame. Catalonia and the Counter Reformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 18, 64, 125-26. 44 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1874-75. The text from the Psalms is Ps. 50:12-16 (Vulgate) or Ps. 51:10 (King James Version).

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The fear was, then, that the healing of souls might revert into its opposite, and in particular that the sin of lechery would be aroused by the very fact of being discussed, whether in the priest or the confessing sinner. The Jesuit Polanco, Ignatius’s secretary and author of a manual for the order’s growing ranks of confessors, admonished the confessor to be prudent “both towards the penitent ... and himself,” and cautious “in interrogations on subjects that can lead the incautious into temptation.” A few decades earlier, Cardinal Cajetan had especially warned against “prying too deep into the circumstances of sexual matters.” The circumstances of sin were an essential element for the confessor to establish guilt, and hence an obligatory point of his interrogation; but the difficulty of separating the relevant from the trivial or even dangerous was notorious. Cajetan provided a suggestive example: “If ... a woman confesses to having been known outside the natural vessel, this suffices; it should not be asked in what part of the body.”45 This restraint extended to the language of the exchange. The paramount virtue was to be prudent with words, which meant to “avoid indicating in a shameful way what is shameful to hear.” Thus, in instructing the penitent about “natural” intercourse, the priest could say “that the woman’s face has to be turned towards the sky, and the man’s towards the ground.” That phrasing was sufficient to determine transgression, whether “they did it the other way around,” or “the woman had her back turned towards the man.”46 Prudence with words required

45 Juan Alonso Polanco, Breve directorium ad confessarii ac confitentis munus rite obeundum (Coloniae: apud Maternum Cholinum, 1560), c. 8v (on Polanco’s Directorium, see O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 141, 142-43). De Vio, Summula peccatorum, cc. LXXIILXXIIII: “verbi gratia si mulier confitetur se cognitam extra vas naturale, sufficit, et non queratur in qua parte corporis...” Similarly, the Mantuan curia warned the confessor against a too detailed interrogation of young women, “interrogandole vitiosamente del movimento et uso de loro membri, percio che dove è tal esca sono ancora apparecchiati li lacci et le reti del diavolo per tentarne et pigliarne” (Libro del debito del sacerdote di S. Thomaso d’Aquino per la Chiesa et Diocese di Mantova [in Mantova: per Giacomo Roffinello, 1560], c. 13v). 46 De Vio, Summula peccatorum, cc. LXXII-LXXIIII: the confessor “potest dicere quod est ut mulier faciem habeat versus celum, et vir versus terram; et sic intelliget si opposito modo fuerit, aut si spatulas habuit mulier ad virum...”

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a neutral, non-suggestive, technical vocabulary. It was enough “to understand what is being said.”47 If the colloquy of confession thus presented inherent dangers, its physical setup could enhance the occasions of undesired intimacy; by the same token, material strictures, along with stern rules of behavior, were thought to contain such occasions. One manifest fear was about bodily proximity or contact. In 1560, the diocesan authorities of Mantua bluntly instructed confessors not to hold a woman’s hands, “as some fools do,” or to touch them at all, for the priest “should fear the instigations of our old astute enemy, who ... is always out to tempt us.”48 This kind of worry was of course not limited to the practice of confession: it pervaded ecclesiastical discourse of the time. Strikingly graphic obsessions with the body are also reported of Carlo Borromeo and his faithful Ludovico Moneta. The latter, according to his biographer, made his own stockings or had a male servant make them, “so that [they] would not be touched by a woman”; and during convent visitations he was careful not to touch women’s slippers and clothes.49 The stereotypical flavor of such encomiastic remarks does not exclude the reality of the underlying concerns, particularly when it becomes clear that these concerns were translated into action. In the confes47 Polanco, Breve directorium, c. 8v; see also Antoninus, Summula confessionalis, c. 25r; De Vio, Summula peccatorum, cc. 82-84; Giberti, Constitutiones, 99. Such caution was meant not only to avoid compromising the relation between the confessor and the penitent, but also in order not to instruct and stimulate the penitent about forms of sexual conduct. Tentler, while mentioning the latter concern (Sin and Confession, 93, 196), appears unaware of the complexities of sexual discourse during confessions, calling some of his sources “disturbingly vague” (189), or characterized by “a surprising degree of caution” (197). Michel Foucault, in contrast, has recognized the significance of the development of a specialized sexual vocabulary in the confessional; see his History of Sexuality, 1:58ff. On this problem, see now Pino Luca Trombetta, La confessione della lussuria : definizione e controllo del piacere nel cattolicesimo (Genova : Costa & Nolan, 1991). 48 Libro del debito del sacerdote, c. 13v: “Et il sacerdote mentre confessa non stii a pigliare le mani della donna fra le sue, come fanno et hanno già fatto qualche pazzi, né in modo alcuno tocchi la donna, ... et habbia paura il sacerdote della instigatione del nostro antico astuto nemico...” 49 Marcora, “Mons. Ludovico Moneta,” 468. For Borromeo’s “angelic chastity,” see Giussano, Vita, Libro ottavo, cap. XXII, 331-35 (ed. Napoli: Tipografia Arcivescovile, 1855); on these “componenti sessuofobiche,” see also Maria Franca Mellano, “La donna nell’opera riformatrice di S. Carlo,” in San Carlo e il suo tempo, 2 vols. (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1986), 2:1083.

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sional we see this process at work, as testimony about the Roman Oratorian Filippo Neri (1515-95) eloquently confirms; the example is all the more revealing since Neri’s philosophy of “Christian joy” distanced him on many points from Borromeo’s stern asceticism. The renowned and sought-after confessor reportedly always shrove his female penitents from “behind the iron grille,” only to relax this routine late in life, when (as he claimed) “for him to touch the hands of women or young men was no different from touching those of the old, or ... from touching a dry block of wood.” He urged other confessors, however, “not to take him as an example, because God distributes his grace differently, as he sees fit...”50 It is no surprise that Filippo’s confessional was to survive as a relic, evidence of his saintly life.51 Thus a taboo against physical contact in sacred space gained ground. Erecting crude barriers to prevent it no doubt went a long way toward disembodying the rite of penance, as John Bossy has stressed. The confessional thus made one age-old ritual gesture impossible to perform: the laying on of hands by the priest during absolution. Faced with this difficulty, the German liturgist Jakob Müller assured his readers that the gesture was not essential anyway. Liturgical handbooks like the Milanese Ambrosian Ritual (1584) and the Roman Ritual (1614) retained it only in vestigial form, with the absolving priest elevating his hand toward the penitent.52 It is less obvious what other effects — ritual, social or psychological — the confessional’s tactile obstructionism may have produced. I doubt we may simply conclude with Bossy 50 Thus the testimony of the canon Germanico Fedeli at Neri’s canonization process in 1610; Fedeli stressed he was an eyewitness to Neri’s confessions (“l’ho veduto con proprii occhi”); for his deposition see Il primo processo per San Filippo Neri..., ed. G. Incisa Della Rocchetta and N. Vian, Studi e Testi 205, vol. 3 (Città del Vaticano, 1960), 282. 51 The confessional is still kept in Filippo Neri’s private quarters at the Chiesa Nuova in Rome. 52 Thus the Ambrosian Ritual: “Deinde caput operit: manu dextra supra caput poenitentis elevata, et extenta absolvit hac formula...” (AEM, 2:1323); and the Roman Ritual: “Deinde, dextera versus poenitentem levat, dicit...” (quoted in M. Righetti, Manuale di storia liturgica, 2nd ed. [Milano, 1950], 1:391-92). Jakob Müller, Ornatus ecclesiasticus.../ Kirchengeschmuck... (München: Adam Berg, 1591), 135. See also Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:50-54. The Roman penitentiaries’ habit of touching the head of the penitent with a long rod may have similar origins as the impositio manus; see Gaetano Moroni, Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica..., 53 vols. (Venezia: Tipografia Emiliana, 1840-61), 16:83, 52:61 and 52:68.

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that it “more or less abolished the sacrament as a social ritual,” since the physical separation of the two participants was counterbalanced by their integration in the public space.53 There is a further complicating factor: more was involved than the sense of touch. By all accounts, sixteenth-century reformers worried even more about vision. The concern was an old one: medieval summistae had already warned against eye contact during confessions and ordered penitents to kneel down, not in front of the confessor but at his side. This position might reduce the penitent’s sense of shame and thus contribute to an honest and complete confession; for some, by contrast, it bridled any inappropriate audacity and reminded the penitent that confessions were made to God, not to a human.54 To the confessor, vision posed an equally insidious trap, because (as Antoninus of Florence put it) “the face of a woman is like a blistering wind.”55 By the mid-sixteenth century this biblical metaphor and the fear it expressed had acquired such urgency as to inspire attempts at material intervention in the rite of confession. Thus Antoninus’s image of women’s faces returned literally in Giberti’s draft for the confessorium.56 Time and again, later legislation reiterated the wish to hide those faces even

53 Bossy, “Social History of Confession,” 29; Id., Christianity in the West, 134; Id., Peace, 13. 54 Tentler, Sin and Confession, 82-83. For examples, see Guido de Monte Rocherii, Manipulus curatorum, c. 100 (against audacity); Polanco, Breve directorium, c. 11r; and the Borromean instructions De sacramento poenitentiae, AEM, 2:1313 (confession to God). The Mantuan handbook for priests, Il libro del debito del sacerdote, ordered that the eyes of confessor and penitent be at different levels, so that the woman might not be inhibited by shame, and the priest would not sin “with some strange and illicit thoughts” (c. 13r-v). 55 Antoninus, Summula confessionalis, c. 8v: “Et si mulier est facias eam ex transverso stare; nec in faciem eius aspicias: quia facies earum ventus est urens ait propheta.” For a similar expression, see Guido de Monte Rocherii, Manipulus curatorum, 100. The expression is derived from Hab. 1:9 (“Omnes ad praedam venient, facies eorum ventus urens...”), apparently a refererence to the agression of the Chaldeans against the Israelites. In biblical usage, ventus urens often signifies acts of agression or invasion, never the allures of women (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. R.E. Brown, J.A. Fitzmyer, R.E. Murphy [London, 1969], 1:297). 56 BAV, ms. Vat. Lat. 6338, fol. 169v: the passage quoted above (p. 93, n. 23) is followed by the injunction “prout in omnibus ecclesiis tales tabulas, seu confessoria in usu haberi mandavimus pro audiendibus confessionibus feminarum, quum mulieris facies sit sicut ventus urens: secus facien[tes] nostram gravem non evadent ultionem”; the part in italics (my emphasis) is crossed out in the manuscript and does not appear in the printed version.

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while allowing verbal communication.57 It materialized most poignantly in the Borromean grille, with its tiny holes and the thick cloth that covered it. Conceived as an enforcer of sensorial discipline, the confessional was as ingenious as it was elegant. The design allowed its users speech and hearing but not seeing, while it invited others (whether inspecting clergy or passers-by) to seeing without hearing. A deeply private meeting was thus opened up to public scrutiny. Almost inevitably, this created tensions and conflicts. Newly exposed to public viewing, the confessor’s demeanor might be revealing; hence the injunction not to “make any sign or gesture that may suggest to bystanders the seriousness of the sins of the person he has in front of him.”58 The even more serious risk of overhearing prompted similar warnings from the Milanese authorities. But their own words betray contradictory goals: These confessionals have to be placed in a spot in the church that is so open that they can be seen from all sides; at the same time one also has to make sure, if possible, that they are sheltered enough to prevent any other persons from getting too close to the confessional.59

Not surprisingly, concerns about privacy led to complaints about the open construction of the confessional. Various solutions were tried out, including the removal of bystanders from the immediate vicinity or the use of low gates that would not block the view.60 The confessional itself, however, remained untouched (at least in early modern Italy). Only one structural element possibly reveals an intent to

57 The Council of Sorrento (1584) required a “lamina ferrea exiguis foraminibus, ad audiendi non videndi commoditatem, perforata, maxime pro audiendi mulierum confessionibus” (Mansi, 36bis:292); and the Council of Siena (1599) ordered that “intermedia fenestrella crate et tela ita munita sit ut audiri, non videri mulier possit” (Mansi, 36bis:532). 58 AEM, 2:1881. 59 AEM, 2:1874 (my emphasis). 60 The Avvertenze ordered confessors to remove “le genti troppo vicine” (AEM, 2:1874). In 1584, following complaints from noblewomen that confessionals were so open as to endanger confidentiality (“confessionaria nostra absque ianuis omnibus sint patentia atque pro comperto habeatur multoties confessiones a circumstantibus mulieribus audiri”), church authorities of Aragon introduced gates for those waiting in line (“Fiant lignei cancelli, qui prospectum non impediant, et tamen non pateat reliquis accessus”: Munich, Hauptstaatsarchiv, “Jesuiten,” 9, Responsiones [Responsiones diversis provinciis...], fol. 20).

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enhance privacy. As we have seen, the Instructiones prescribed that a narrow plank be attached vertically against the front of the dividing panel. By extending sideways it partly enclosed — but only minimally — the spaces for confessor and penitent at the place where they were closest together. Perhaps the point was to prevent their hands from touching; perhaps the device was also to add a modicum of visual protection without impairing overall visibility. If so, it expressed a fragile compromise between publicity and privacy.

The confessional and the church In a final show of stubborn meticulousness, Borromeo elaborated on the relation between the confessional and the church building. The Instructiones required a minimum of two confessionals for each parish church, located on opposite sides of the nave or aisles (only exceptionally in chapels). Whatever their location, the confessor’s seat had to be closest to the choir, so that the penitent would always face the altar. This arrangement not only made sense liturgically but served disciplinary purposes as well. To understand both reasons we must examine Borromeo’s overall plans for the church interior and its usage. Some time around 1570, church inspectors examining religious images throughout the Milanese bishopric reported that the town of Guenzate featured “an open-air chapel decorated with expensive paintings. In front of this chapel people play, make music, dance, sing, and swear publicly.” The officials suggested three ways to remedy this shocking situation: “eliminate these disturbances, destroy the chapel, or build a wall in front of it.” These were no half measures. Even the most lenient one still required that the spheres whose contact provoked scandal be materially separated. That idea really came as an afterthought (as the manuscript makes clear), when the visitors had realized that it might not be so simple either to deprive the town of its chapel or to interfere with forms of popular sociability which had their traditional focus in the town square.61 61

Ottavio Lurati, “Pene ai bestemmiatori, indulgenze, reliquie e `immagini profane’ nella Diocesi milanese (e nelle Tre Valli) ai tempi di San Carlo,” Folclore svizzero 60 (1970): 41-52 (quote at 47). The author, or perhaps a supervisor, added the last solution (“o farvi una pariete avanti”) in the margin after cancelling an earlier marginal

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The solution here proposed was characteristic for many of the Borromean interventions in the church building. The separation principle was at work not only in the confessional but in various other applications. One is well known among the students of CounterReformation architecture: gates around sacred objects and spaces of cultic practice. The Instructiones described with characteristic precision the materials, sizes and construction of the cancelli closing off the choir, chapels, and altars.62 The demarcation and segregation of the sacred was a well-established architectural principle, justified in symbolic terms by such medieval commentators as Sicardus and Durandus. Monastic churches were especially notable for physical and visual separation of the choir and nave, although in the sixteenth century those barriers were often lowered to allow an unobstructed view of the main altar in churches open to the public.63 In any case, the Borromean Instructiones were devoid of symbolic references and emphasized disciplinary issues instead: superimposed on the distinction of secular and sacred space we find the attempt at crowd control. Altar gates barred the faithful from the areas of liturgical celebration, allowed the officiating priests sufficient working space, and prevented the clergy and laity from socializing in ways considered offensive and dangerous. Chapel gates and doors in confessionals kept out the unauthorized, whether beggars or dogs, outside the hours of religious functions. Visitation records and episcopal decrees shed some light on the underlying concerns. A report on the state of the Milanese Duomo, probably drawn up in 1563, offers an impressive inventory of behavioral “abuses and defects,” centered on the improper mingling of sacred and profane. The document accused cathedral canons, other priests, and the lesser clergy of shamelessly inviting lay people into the choir, note (“se non si può”); for these details, see ASDM, XIV, 67, q. 5, fol. 47r. A 1578 conflict about football in Parabiago was also played out in the town square; see Danilo Zardin’s microhistory, Riforma cattolica e resistenze nobiliari nella diocesi di Carlo Borromeo (Milano: Jaca Book, 1983). 62 Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:20, 22, 28, 31-32. 63 On rood screens, see Marcia B. Hall, Renovation and Counter-Reformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Sta. Maria Novella and Sta. Croce, 1565-1577 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Luciano Patetta, “La tipologia della chiesa ‘doppia’ (dal Medioevo alla Controriforma),” in Id., Storia e tipologia. Cinque saggi sull’architettura del passato (Milano: CLUP, 1989), 11-72; and Alessandro Nova, “I tramezzi in Lombardia fra XV e XVI secolo: scene della Passione e devozione francescana,” in Il Francescanesimo in Lombardia. Storia e arte (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 1983), 196-215.

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altar areas and sacristy, laughing, winking and engaging them in idle and nefarious conversation. Particularly, the presence of “impudent people [dressed] in lecherous clothes or carrying weapons,” “prostitutes, whores, pimps, servant girls of ill repute, and other people of this stripe” had turned the Duomo into “an emporium of the infamous.”64 These and similar complaints found a punctual response in Borromeo’s legislation. In his 1574 Editto per il conversar con riverenza e divozione nelle chiese, an outraged archbishop imposed a barrage of rules for proper conduct in the church, forbidding laypeople to enter the choir during divine services, approach the altars, lean on holy water vessels and baptismal fonts, sleep in confessionals, and much more.65 Fencing off these areas obviously constituted a material reinforcement of behavioral norms. But the separation principle was to find an even more clamorous application: the segregation of the sexes. The Instructiones required, and meticulously described, large wooden screens aimed at dividing the church nave into male and female areas. The screen was five cubiti (about seven feet) high and traversed the nave all the way from the facade (where it split the main entrance into two halves) to the choir. Assuming a church with an apse directed toward the east, Borromeo designated the northern half of the nave as the female section, and the southern as the male.66 Like the confessional, the device was not a complete novelty, although its prehistory remains unclear at the current state of research. In previous centuries, and still during the Cinquecento, gender separations found their most elaborate applications in female convents, for instance to allow nuns to participate in religious services without being seen by other churchgoers.67 There are also examples of segregation 64 Enrico Cattaneo has published the document in Il Duomo di Milano: Congresso internazionale, Milano ... 8-12 settembre 1968, ed. Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, 2 vols. (Milano: La Rete, 1969), 2:66-71. 65 AEM, 2:1118-24. 66 Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:68-69. 67 Caroline Bruzelius, “Hearing is Believing: Clarissan Architecture ca. 1213-1340,” Gesta 31 (1992): 83-91; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Art, Enclosure, and the Pastoral Care of Nuns,” in Id., The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 35-109, esp. 38-57. Such practices continued after Trent, as evidenced by Borromeo’s Instructiones; for Milanese examples, see Alessandra Omazzi and Francesca Zucchi, “Esempi milanesi (XVI-XVII sec.) oggi scomparsi di chiese con diaframma,” Arte lombarda, nuova serie, 96-97 (1991): 60-65.

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by sex within lay congregations. Fifteenth-century moralists like San Bernardino and Girolamo Savonarola delivered their sermons to male and female audiences divided by curtains, as artists like Sano di Pietro attest. Yet how widespread the practice was remains obscure.68 In the following century, it was again Bishop Giberti who had staged a decisive experiment. During Lent of 1542, a division appeared in the Veronese Duomo in the form of a “fence made of panels”(septum quoddam tabularum). During his first years in Milan, Borromeo introduced the physical separation of men and women in processions; during Lent he also required that the two sexes be assigned alternate hours for church use. From the early 1570s we find references to divisions made of cloth (pannum or tila). In 1573, the diarist Giambattista Casale noted, such tile were used in stationary churches “so that the women would go to one side and the men to the other, for more devotion and honesty.” The next year that practice was extended to churches frequented for their indulgences or special feasts. Finally, the Duomo acquired a wooden division (intermediata assidum) during the Milanese jubilee of 1576. It probably served as prototype for the Instructiones.69 The division was both physical and visual, as was the case with the confessional, and similarly produced conflicts and technical solutions. The obstruction of view could in fact clash with the need to see the preacher during sermons, or to watch a priest celebrating Mass on one side of the church. The higher panels were therefore made detachable in such a way that the screen could be temporarily lowered to three cubiti (about four feet) during the sermon and to two cubiti (three feet) for the celebration of Mass, when the faithful would be down on their knees. Finally, the screen could have doors to allow for necessary transit between the two sections. Although this remarkable piece of interior design was apparently not a firm requisite for all parish churches, the Instructiones generally 68

Randolph, “Regarding Women in Sacred,” esp. 21. For Giberti, see his Constitutiones, tit. II, c. LII, 39-40; and Zini, Boni pastoris exemplum, 268. Borromeo’s earlier legislation includes the Instruttioni ai vicarii foranei (1568), AEM, 2:1938-57; the Fourth Diocesan Synod (1574), decr. 36, AEM, 2:896; the Editto per il conversar con riverenza e divozione nelle chiese (1574), AEM, 2:1118-24; see also Giovanni Francesco Besozzo, Historia Pontificale di Milano (rev. ed., Milano: Malatesta Pandolfo,1623), 238-39. Casale’s remarks are published in Marcora, “Il diario di Giambattista Casale,” 263 and 281; for the screen in the Duomo, see the 1576 entry of the Annali della Fabbrica, 4:139. 69

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assumed its use. The subdivision of the church had in fact consequences for the construction of the main entrance, and led to the designation of the side doors in the facade for male and female usage. In related measures of crowd control, the Instructiones eliminated all other lateral or back doors (except those giving access to the sacristy, cemetery or clerical residence) and demanded that all windows be placed high enough to prevent any visual contact between inside and outside. Inside the church, moreover, the male-female division required the installation of separate holy water fonts, side-altars, and confessionals for men and women. Here, then, was the disciplinary rationale for having confessionals on both sides of the nave, the purpose being, as the Instructiones added in a rare explanatory gloss, “that ... men and women will not mingle in a disorderly manner nor be pressed closely together when the attendance of holy confession is at its peak.”70 Again, Borromeo’s rules of conduct confirm this intent. In the stern Editto per il conversar con riverenza e divozione nelle chiese, a general program of behavioral discipline took the form of a long list of prohibitions, forbidding loitering at church doors, walks (passeggiate) inside the church, idle conversation, and any other activity that might disturb religious functions. The contacts between the sexes were at the center of these concerns: the Editto fulminated against “scurrilous talk,” “obscene words or signs,” and “dishonest acts,” and ordered men never to “place themselves in front of women” or to direct “dishonest gestures, looks, words or signs toward any woman, even of the wanton kind.” Discipline in the church thus extended from movement and physical interaction to verbal and visual communication. It finally included the appearance of the body. Women, in particular, should be prevented from going to church “in pursuit of vanity rather than religion.”71 A dress code thus forbade churchgoers to wear jewelry, rich fabrics, and lively colors. And the fear of women’s faces re-emerged in the insistent call for the reintroduction of the veil. This veil, it was stressed, was not to be so transparent as to “stimulate the cupidity of 70 Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:64. On doors, windows, and holy water founts, see ibid.,14-15, 17, 61. On side-altars, see ibid., 24; more explicit are the Avvertenze ... per amministrare il santissmo sacramento dell’Eucharistia in chiesa (1574), AEM, 2:1775-93, and the Sacramentale Ambrosianum, AEM, 2:1302-03. 71 Thus Giussano’s life of Borromeo, here cited from the Latin edition, De vita et rebus gestis S. Caroli Borromei Cardinale Archiepiscopi Mediolani libri VII (Mediolani, 1751), 244-45.

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the eyes all the more intensely,” as frequently happened, but rather opaque enough to “protect the face from the gaze of men.”72

Dinah’s fault and the sins of the senses These changes in the church building, particularly the parish church, qualify it for inclusion among the growing number of early modern institutions engaged in disciplining the body. As recent scholarship has suggested, the authorities involved in projects of political centralization and confessionalization adopted available models of behavioral control, developed particularly in monastic and courtly settings, for much broader applications in society.73 Schools, for instance, from simple grammar schools to Jesuit colleges, focused as much on instilling and enforcing a common code of conduct as on imparting knowledge. Such programs of social discipline frequently came in a religious wrapping. This was true not only for the vastly expanding field of organizations dedicated to lay piety and religious instruction, like schools of Christian Doctrine, confraternities and seminaries, but also for nonecclesiastical institutions, such as the family and the workplace.74 While in each instance a particular form of discipline was designed for its specific environment, it rested on general notions about human conduct. These notions, which pervaded the discourse of the time, may allow us to reconstruct the often unexpressed rationale underlying specific interventions in the social realm. In the case of Borromean Milan, the shaping of the church building and a matching code of comportment appears to rest especially on a body of theological speculation about the senses and the social ramifications of sin. Up to a point, these ideas were no doubt traditional and common currency among 72

AEM, 2:1118-24. On the veil, see also the extensive legislation of the Third and Sixth Provincial Councils (1574 and 1582), AEM, 2:265-67 and 753-54; and the Eleventh Diocesan Synod (1584), AEM, 2:1035-46. The quote is from Giussano, De vita et rebus gestis, 244-45. Borromeo was certainly influenced by Tertullian’s and Cyprian’s doctrine, for which see the article “Voile,” Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Litérature, 15/2:3186-93, esp. 3188-90. 73 See, e.g., Jacques Revel, “The Uses of Civility,” in Passions of the Renaissance, ed. Roger Chartier, A History of Private Life, vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 167-205; and Knox, “Disciplina.” Fundamental is still Elias’s civilization theory, discussed on pp. 143-46 and 148 below. 74 See the bibliography cited above, p. 75, n. 77.

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the ecclesiastical elite, but Borromeo used them selectively to express his own intellectual outlooks and moral concerns. First, the archbishop’s architectural projects were grounded in and justified by a theory of vision. We can trace it back to a long tradition of medieval thought which described the senses as intermediaries — in metaphorical parlance, “windows” or “gates” — linking mind and soul to the outside world. This principle allowed scientific application in the context of optics and aesthetics (we find it for instance in Leonardo’s Notebooks), but was also popular among moral theologians such as Antoninus of Florence.75 The elaborate psychology they developed portrayed the human faculties of perception as capable of transmitting not only aesthetic and intellectual qualities, but virtues and vices as well. This turned the senses into moral danger zones: as physical organs they were neutral, but precisely for this reason they would not stop pernicious influences that abounded in the world outside. Such notions resurfaced insistently during the Counter-Reformation. Catechisms and handbooks of confession routinely devoted separate paragraphs or chapters to the sins deriving from an imprudent use of the “bodily senses.” The latter had to be guarded with special diligence, as a Milanese catechism explained, for they “are the windows through which often the soul is invaded by sins, and consequently by death.”76 Vision usually received special attention. Already Antoninus had warned: “To be sure, we have to restrain all senses with the bridle of modesty ... but our eyes deserve particular care, because the nobler the organ and the stronger its perception of things and its sensitivity to nuance, the more harmful it is when it is not governed by reason...”77 A confessor’s manual widely used in the later sixteenth century and recommended by Carlo Borromeo himself, the Methodus confessionis, 75 The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, trans. and ed. Edward MacCurdy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), 1:220; on Antoninus, see n. 77 below. 76 Interrogatorio della dottrina christiana... (Cremona: per Barucino Zanni, 1593), 32. Commenting on the “sentimenti del corpo,” the text declares “alla custodia de quali si deve metter molta diligenza, percioché sono le finestre, per le quali spesso entra il peccato nell’anima, et conseguentemente la morte.” The window metaphor, of course, was an old one; see Hans-Jürgen Horn, “Respiciens per fenestras, prospiciens per cancellos. Zur Typologie des Fensters in der Antike,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 10 (1967): 30-60. 77 Antoninus of Florence, Summa maior et aurea (Lugduni: per Johannem Cleyn, [1516]), pars IV, tit. IV, cap. X, § II (“De modestia sensuum”). Antoninus justified his remark by quoting Jer. 9.21: “Mors ascendit per fenestras nostras, scilicet sensuum, ingressa est domos nostras” (the addition scilicet sensuum is obviously Antoninus’s interpretation).

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closely echoed this view: vision was all the more dangerous for being “superior” to the other senses, and could “incite man to many sins when unrestrained by the force of reason.” There followed a long list of “visual” sinners, including those “who cast impudent glances at a woman they desire,” and those “who prefer to watch vain entertainments, infamous things and novelties rather than that which pertains to the reverence of God and the salvation of the soul.”78 Carlo Borromeo discussed the workings of vision most incisively in a sermon delivered in Lecco on July 2, 1583. Significantly, his subject was a biblical text long used to warn women against leaving their household and venturing unprotected into the outside world — the tale of Dinah (Gen. 34). Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, had gone out to visit the women of her region, but was surprised and abused by Shechem, the prince of the land. Thereupon Dinah’s brothers Simeon and Levi swore vengeance and seized Shechem’s city, killing him, his father Hamor and all other males. A relatively minor episode in the grand drama of Genesis, the story had spawned an exegetical tradition leading from Jerome and Gregory the Great to Bernard of Clairvaux and Richard of St. Victor, from the scholastics to late medieval preachers, and on to sixteenth-century reformers. The red thread linking most of these readings was Dinah’s sinful curiosity, identified as her main incentive for exposing herself to the dangers of the world. Beyond this, the variations of interpretation were considerable. Medieval theologians, who pictured Dinah as an adult, tended to focus on her sinfulness and possible complicity in the rape itself: curiosity, pride, vanity and lust might have led her down her disastrous path. Luther and Calvin appeared to assume that Dinah was a minor; without denying her sin, they concentrated on Jacob’s situation as a father, and drew lessons about parental responsibilities. In most interpretations, the rapist Shechem remained in the background.79 78

Methodus confessionis, hoc est: Ars, sive ratio, et brevis quaedam via confitendi... (Venetiis, s.a. [sec. XVI]), c. 124r. The authorship of the text appears uncertain: Bernos, “Saint Charles Borromée,” 187, attributes it to the Spanish Dominican Pedro de Soto, and gives 1550 as the date of the first edition, while Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 98 and n. 95, considers it to be a work by the Benedictine Claude de Viexmont. 79 Joy A. Schroeder, “The Rape of Dinah: Luther’s Interpretation of a Biblical Narrative,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997): 775-91. Schroeder does not discuss the mendicant preachers; but see, e.g., Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul campo di Siena 1427 (Milano: Rusconi, 1989), 863; and Roberto Caracciolo, Opere in volgare, ed. Enzo Esposito (Galatina: Congedo Editore, 1993), 187.

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In contrast, Borromeo supplemented the traditional exegesis with an argument that linked Dinah’s initial sin with the ensuing sequence of events. The explanation closely echoes the archbishop’s social thought analyzed in the previous chapter. Taking Dinah’s curiosity as his starting point, Borromeo allowed that this sin was slight in and of itself: “So what evil was there to it? Or whom did she hurt by going out to see [her friends]?” The problem was that it triggered an unintended series of catastrophic events: Dinah’s offense was minor if we only look at her curiosity. Yet consider the monstrous effects of it: hence the rape of a virgin, hence the fury and ire of the sons of Jacob, hence the slaughtering of so many men, hence the forced departure of Jacob and his sons, because he had incurred the fierce hate of all those peoples!

Having thus, with all due nuance, blamed Dinah for the disaster, Borromeo spelled out the lesson: My children, we have to resist the small beginnings [of evil], and avoid the occasions of sin; for he who loves danger, will perish in it, and he who despises small things will fail little by little [Ecclesiasticus 19:1] in the big ones.

In short, Borromeo’s domino theory of social causation provided the key to Dinah’s guilt: she had sinned by creating an occasion of sin. In a further twist to this plot, the senses became the agents of the initial transgression. First among them were the eyes: “They are like two gates to the castle of our body. So when they are in the Devil’s control, he is also the master of our heart, and can introduce into our soul whatever he wants.” The conclusion was clear: “Consequently, since the eyes can introduce great mischief into the soul, they are to be guarded with the utmost diligence. For death has come up through our windows [Jer. 9:21]: therefore we have to keep them shut.”80 It was a stunning conclusion: the dangers inherent in eyesight required that it be impeded. To be sure, Borromeo’s argument about vision had as many traditional elements as that about curiosity. Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, had referred to Dinah’s experience to warn against wandering eyes, and Antoninus had cited Jeremiah for the 80

Saxius, 1:377-78 (all italics are the editor’s); Borromeo proceeded by pointing out the dangers represented by the other senses. Carlo Bascapè, Borromeo’s faithful biographer and later bishop of Novara, used the Dinah episode, interpreted in almost identical terms, to condemn dances (Lettera pastorale de’ balli [Novara: Hier. Sesallo, 1598]).

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same purpose. Yet the conclusion that the windows of the soul were better kept “shut” had particular poignancy in the sixteenth century, for what were confessionals, partitioning screens and the veil meant to achieve if not to block the eyes? They represented the compulsive urge to force the senses when human free will alone could not be trusted. Another evolution is equally worthy of note: whereas Bernard and most other medieval authors had directed their warnings about Dinah’s act of seeing (and being seen) to audiences of monks or nuns, Borromeo spoke to ordinary parishioners — the same whose viewing practices he attempted to direct and constrain.81 Finally, what better illustration of Borromeo’s radicalism is there than the comparison of this text with those (quoted above) of St. Antoninus and Pedro de Soto: whereas the latter argued that “reason” should control the senses, for Borromeo it was the force of prescription. At this point we can only speculate about the larger historical development of conceptions and practices of vision.82 But there is no doubt that, with the passage of time, the ecclesiastical discourse about vision, and the use of related devices, left deep marks on the general conduct in church, affecting the relations between men and women, clergy and laity.

A battle over decorum The story of Dinah (in Borromean rendering) confirmed that the life of the senses had much to do with the public sphere. Was it not the curiosity of Dinah’s eyes that had made her venture into the outside world and there unleash a host of sins? Was an inadvertent use of 81 For medieval interpretations of Dinah’s “seeing,” and their intended audiences, see Schroeder, “The Rape of Dinah,” 776-79. 82 Existing studies tend to stress the ‘visuality’ of early-modern Catholic culture, often contrasting the latter to the verbal nature of Protestantism: Margaret R. Miles, Image as Insight. Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 95-126; David Chidester, Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 111-28; and Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes. The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 21-82. Whatever the merits of such contentions, this chapter would seem to support Carlo Ginzburg’s suggestion of a progressive ‘eroticization’ of vision (Ginzburg, “Titian, Ovid, and Sixteenth-Century Codes”).

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the senses not responsible for creating an occasion of sin? Once more we need to return to that seminal term: it may further our understanding of the Milanese transformation of the church building. As we have seen, Ormaneto defined the confessional as a device that might “remove the occasion” of solicitation; Borromeo himself defended the church screens in similar terms, claiming that their absence “often created the occasion for serious offenses against God”; and Carlo Bascapè, a close episcopal aide, remarked that by remaining far removed from the sight of men, unadorned and veiled, church-going women might “flee every occasion of sinning by seeing or being seen.” The confessional, the screens, and the veil were all preventive devices, strategically installed to pre-empt threats against public morality. And it was possible to view the entire church building in this light. The code of conduct proposed in the Editto of 1574 rested in fact on this objective, “that where we go to ask God’s pardon for our sins, we do not give occasion to sin.”83 The church building, defined as a place of penance, should not revert into its opposite, a cesspool of sin. The statement seems simple and obvious enough. Its significance, however, and the deep frustration it conceals, can only be appreciated with an eye on the context. Borromeo issued his Editto in the middle of his penitential campaign, which (as we have seen) was aimed at replacing the sinful occasions of secular sociability with the pious ones of religious ceremony. What, then, if the church building and the rites of Christian worship were themselves potential occasions of sin? Borromeo’s antagonistic view on the secular and the sacred explains much of his prohibitionist confrontation with a world in which the two were often inextricably intertwined. It was thus imperative that indecent places of divine worship be turned into their opposite: environments conducive to devotion, occasions of virtue. Much less clear is just what Borromeo considered constitutive of such an environment, beyond the absence of abuses. The Instructiones remain reticent on this point, discussing images, for instance, for the errors they contained or the scandals they produced 83

On Ormaneto, see p. 99 and notes 41-43; the remark on the screens is in the decrees of the Fourth Diocesan Synod (1574), AEM, 2:896; Bascapè’s remark, from his De’ balli (published 1609), is quoted in Alessandro Arcangeli, “L’opusculo contro la danza attribuito a Carlo Borromeo,” Quadrivium, n.s., 1 (1990): 72; the reference on the church building in AEM, 2:1118 (“accioché dove si va per dimandar a Dio perdono de peccati, quivi non si dia occasione di peccare”).

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rather than their devotional function. Positive criteria are only hinted at, almost surreptitiously, in the form of brief adverbs added to building or design instructions: “piously,” “decorously,” “decently,” “religiously.” Most insistent among them are the derivates of the term decorum. It referred of course to a fundamental classical concept, defined by Forcellini as “beauty deriving from honesty and decency of things or acts, rendering decent and honest the person who owns these things or performs these acts.”84 Decor was not only an aesthetic and moral, but also a social category: inherent either in material objects or personal conduct, it reflected on the people most immediately identified with these. This social definition was still current in early modern parlance. Decorum could refer to the conventions of behavior, as in one of Bandello’s novellas, where a male speaker said that men can speak more freely in the absence of women, “thus preserving the decorum of time and place.” Decorum was similarly relevant to dress: sumptuary competition, Paolo Segneri was to say, made it impossible to maintain “the decorum appropriate to our honor.” Finally, decorum was also of architectural concern. In his Vitruvius commentary of the 1550s, Daniele Barbaro defined it as “respect for people’s dignity and status”; buildings should reflect that status.85 These uses of an ancient word were surely as familiar to Borromeo as to the class of which he was a member. They allow us better to understand his conception of the church building. A conventional phrase called the church the ‘house of God.’ Borromeo used the expression to apply the social values of decorum to the religious domain. 84 Egidio Forcellini, Lexicon totius latinitatis, 4th ed. (Patavii: Typis Seminarii, 1864-87), 2:22-23: “pulcritudo ex honestate et decentia sive rerum sive actionum, qua sit, ut deceat atque honestetur, qui habet illa, vel facit.” 85 Bandello, Le novelle, parte 1, nov. 30, in Id., Tutte le opere, 1:386; Paolo Segneri, Prediche ossia Quaresimale (Firenze, 1679), 22.4; Daniele Barbaro, I Dieci libri dell’Architettura di M. Vitruvio (Venezia: appresso Francesco de’ Franceschi, 1584), 296 (decorum “altro non è che un rispetto alla dignità, et allo stato delle persone. Fatta adunque la distintione delle persone bisogna a ciascuna secondo il grado suo fabricare...”). Currently, Renaissance decorum receives special attention for its art-historical implications; see Decorum in Renaissance Narrative Art. Papers delivered at the Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, London, April 1991, ed. Francis Ames-Lewis & Anka Bednarek (London: Birkbeck College, 1992); and R. Haussherr, “Convenevolezza: Historische Angemessenheit in der Darstellung von Kostüm und Schauplatz seit der Spätantike bis ins 16. Jahrhundert,” Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur in Mainz. Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Klasse 4 (1984).

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Both the building and the behavior of its guests should honor the master of the house and live up to his status. In a material sense, this meant decorating it richly; and thus the Instructiones begin with a reminder of all the gold and silver that the early Christians lavished on their churches.86 And while the archbishop was acutely aware of the poverty of most of his parishes, the harsher was his condemnation of secular riches. In one sermon, delivered in the Milanese Duomo on 9 June 1583, he turned his old objections against sumptuary excess into the counterpoint of neglect of church decoration: You vain women indulge in silken and gilded clothes, rings, gems, pearls, collars, ear-rings, and a thousand other gilded strings with which demons tie you up; and you men daily invent new kinds of boots and clothes; but in your parishes Christ resides, naked and poor, on naked altars, here without pyx, there without veils...87

To Borromeo that neglect was all the more offensive since it was precisely the material aspects of the church, especially the altar, that ought to instill proper respect in the faithful. Five days later, when consecrating a parish church in the Swiss pieve Bedero (Valtravaglia), the archbishop reflected that “the meditation of the dignity both of the church itself and of all things belonging to divine worship” should teach us “the kind of piety, modesty, and reverence with which one should stay in the house of God.” There was thus an absolute continuity between the “things” and “acts” of Forcellini’s definition. The care of the church building found its counterpart in disciplined behavior: orderliness, modesty of dress, silence, and a combination of visual restraint and concentration, focused in particular on the altar. This outward decorum became in turn the premise and expression of inner devotion. And so the material properties of the church could become a metaphor of the soul: “If we owe so much reverence to the material church altars, made of stone and marble, good heavens! how much more pertinent is the interest of this spiritual altar, our soul!”88

86

Barocchi, Trattati d’arte, 3:4-5. Saxius, Homiliae, 1:199. 88 Saxius, Homiliae, 1:226 and 227-28. 87

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Reception, success, and modification In short, Borromeo’s battle for purification of the church building, however strident, appealed to conventional values of honor and propriety, and the theological discourse about sin and its causation was entirely compatible with the social language of decorum. The archbishop therefore expressed himself in ways that must have been widely understood. To what extent, then, did his reforms rest on shared outlooks? While this difficult question must largely remain unanswered at the current state of research, a few things can be said. On the one hand, the Milanese secular elite is likely to have agreed to a considerable degree with the archbishop’s principles. Orderly and modest behavior in church had been subject to civic legislation in Milan well before Borromeo’s arrival. Not only were the civil authorities responsible for public order during religious functions, but they had at times seen fit to pursue some of the same issues we have reviewed. In 1539, for instance, the governor had prohibited the same strolling in church that Borromeo was to lash out against a quarter of a century later; and the following year, an ordinance had called for sumptuary restraint in terms that could have been Borromeo’s: women were sternly ordered to go to church “in decent attire, which is humble and honest, veiled, and not in the vain and lascivious outfits one wears to theatrical shows.”89 On the other hand, in the reactions to Borromeo’s reforms a notable opposition becomes evident. The archbishop’s insistence that women wear the veil in church was met with widespread disobedience, also (perhaps especially) among the highest nobility, and so were orders that women and men frequent stationary churches at different times.90

89 The ordinance (grida) of 1539 is published in Formentini, La dominazione Spagnuola, 321-23; that of 1540 is quoted in Ettore Verga, Storia della vita milanese (Milano: L. F. Cogliati, 1909), 157. Generally on the civic maintenance of public order in Milan, see Visconti, La pubblica amministrazione, esp. 91-116. 90 A ms. note, probably of the early 1570s, in ASDM, VI, 144, qq. 15-16, affirms episcopal jurisdiction in the matter, declares a woman’s refusal to wear the veil a mortal sin, and requires confessors to refuse absolution. ASDM, XIV, 139, fols. 118-23 documents refusals and protests against the archiepiscopal policy (one of 1583, the others undated but presumably of the same period), including an extensive list of noblewomen cited for disobedience. On gender separation in stationary churches, see ASDM, XIV, 84, q. 4 (letter of the penitentiary, 1579, reporting complete neglect of Borromeo’s edict of 8 March 1578, for which see AEM, 2:1124-28).

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Something similar happened to some of Borromeo’s architectural reforms. In 1579, when worsening relations between the Milanese state and church exploded over the issue of Carnival, the time was ripe for a general outburst of discontent. A long list of complaints, presented by the city of Milan to Pope Gregory XIII, included protests against the archbishop’s architectural interventions, especially the closing and walling-up of the sidedoors of many churches and the introduction of screens to separate the sexes. The arguments used by the city representatives are of particular interest: the cardinal’s provisions and reforms, the document stated, referring specifically to the gender separation, were detrimental for the city’s reputation, presenting it as “less Catholic and more profligate than the others.” In other words, Borromeo’s policies announced to the world that for his ‘solutions’ to be necessary, Milan had to have grave problems. As for the effects, the civic leaders contended that Borromeo’s reforms “constituted an occasion for errors and scandals rather than correction of perverse customs.”91 In short, they responded in kind. In their view, Borromeo’s fight for public morality had turned into its opposite; the archbishop erred not in his principles, but in crossing the line of what was deemed socially acceptable. They seem to have found some sympathy in Rome, for Borromeo soon received papal pleas for moderation. In any case, the most radical elements of his behavioral program, especially the gender separation, appear not to have left a lasting mark on the Ambrosian Church.92 The confessional proved the exception. Very soon it became established as a standard of decorous behavior for the clergy, though less accepted perhaps by the laity. That is poignantly suggested in the life of the Milanese Barnabite Don Battista Crivelli (ca. 1586-1651) as described by Francesco Barelli. The biographer presents the story as an exemplum of the necessary vigilance “in guarding the external senses, and in particular the eyes,” thus confirming the confessional’s 91 Thus the letter of the Milanese Decurioni presented to the Pope in May 1579, published in Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 67-73 (quotes on 67 and 68; complaints about architectural innovations, 71). 92 On this crisis and its outcome, see further, pp. 245-55. Castiglioni and Marcora suggest, however without providing evidence, that while the screens disappeared in the Milanese diocese, curtains continued to be used during instruction of Christian Doctrine, and that the separation of men and women during church services survived in some rural towns (Borromeo, Arte sacra, 118-19).

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original function. Despite its pious overtones, the anecdote is specific enough to merit some trust in its historicity. Don Battista, a well-born clergyman and repeatedly general of his order, had long served as confessor to Princess Maria Aldobrandina, a niece of Pope Clement VIII, and wife of Giovanni Paolo Sforza Visconti, Marquis of Caravaggio. Once, Barelli recounts, the princess sent for Crivelli from her country villa to hear her confession. Upon his arrival “in this place of delight,” the confessor noticed that the chapel lacked a confessional. Thereupon, “considering that it was improper to hear her face to face, without any screen separating her and himself, he took a painting from the wall and positioned it in such a way that he could minister the sacrament without his seeing the penitent, and her seeing him.” The princess protested sharply, however, and at first even refused to confess in this way, “because to her it seemed superfluous scrupulosity to use similar precautions in the case of a long-time penitent like her, and a lady of her position.” Yet the confessor was adamant, and got his way.93 Both responses are telling. Crivelli’s behavior indicates that seventeenthcentury clergymen had internalized the use of the confessional; confessing women without the grille was now “improper” by itself. The princess shows by her reaction that some experienced this scrupulosity as a slight against their social dignity, because it suggested there was something dishonorable to be feared. The clash over religious decorum that took place late in Borromeo’s episcopate thus returns in a nutshell in this edifying exemplum. Meanwhile, the design of the confessional underwent some significant modifications. When the woodworker Rizzardo Taurini was commissioned to construct five confessionals for the new Jesuit church of S. Fedele (1580-81), his design differed at least in two respects from Borromeo’s model of 1577 (ill. 3).94 In the first place, it provided kneeling stalls on both sides of the confessor’s seat, allowing one penitent to prepare for confession while the other was engaged with the priest. This arrangement was clearly the most efficient way to deal with long lines of penitents. In the 1590s, the Jesuit order obtained 93 Francesco Luigi Barelli da Nizza, Memorie dell’origine, fondazione, avanzamenti, successi, ed uomini illustri in lettere e in santità della congregazione de’ Cherici Regolari di S. Paolo chiamati volgarmente Barnabiti, 2 vols. (Bologna: per Costantino Pisarri, 1703-07), 2:683-84. 94 Stefano della Torre and Richard Schofield, Pellegrino Tibaldi architetto e il S. Fedele di Milano. Invenzione e costruzione di una chiesa esemplare (Como: Nodo Libri, 1994), 234-35.

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general approval for it, but on one condition: to maintain the secrecy of confessions, designers had to make sure “that both grilles can be shut on the inside with wooden shutters closing that side where the confessor is not hearing a penitent.”95 This adaptation was to become a common feature in many confessionals, but its success meant the defeat of Borromeo’s liturgical intent of having the priest always seated closest to the main altar, and the penitent facing it. In the second place, Taurini’s model made the penitent turn face and body toward the back of the confessional, not sideways toward the confessor’s seat. This element met with the archbishop’s strong disapproval. In this way, the provost of S. Fedele reported Borromeo as saying, “the confessor can easily touch the woman’s feet with his own.” The annoyed provost added: “He greatly insisted on this, as if lust enters [the body] ... through one’s shoes, and he is unaware that in his [confessionals] the woman’s mouth is close to the confessor’s ear...”96 The remark is as revealing of Borromeo’s motivations as it is suggestive of the skeptical reception his innovations met in some quarters. The perceptive Jesuit realized that even the hardest wood and most forbidding grille might be ineffective in blocking human sensuality and could even enhance the experience. Paradoxically, that suspicion was to accompany this most successful of Borromeo’s instruments of moral technology in much of its later history.

95

Letter of the Jesuit general to all provincials, 15 April 1595 (ARSI, Instit. 41, fol. 121r), granting the right to install confessionals, “con grade d’una parte et l’altra, che d’ambe le parti si possano udire le confessioni,” wherever the flux of penitents or other factors might require this. The risk (and reason for earlier prohibitions) that confessions might be overheard “da quelle che aspettano per confessarsi, mentre dall’altra parte l’altra persona si confessa,” is remedied by “il fare che ambedue le grade dalla parte di dentro del confessionario si possano serrare con li sportelli di legno, che fatti a corridore tirandosi con facilità chiudano quella parte dove il confessore non ascolta la penitente.” 96 Quoted in Della Torre and Schofield, Pellegrino Tibaldi architetto, 234-35: “et di questo [Borromeo] ne faceva gran caso, quasi che la concupiscenza entri ... per le scarpe, et non fa caso che ne i suoi [confessionali] la bocca della donna sta allo orecchio del confessore...”

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Conclusion Between 1704 and 1705, the sculptor Andrea Fantoni (1659-1734) built a monumental confessional for the Duomo of Bergamo (now in the church of S. Maria Maggiore in that city).97 It is a splendid example of Baroque artisanry applied, a century and a half after the introduction of the confessional, to this idiosyncratic church furniture. Fantoni’s creation demonstrates how confession, this most secretive of judicial acts, had paradoxically — but all the more triumphantly — moved center stage in the public worship of the Baroque Church. Easily recognizable in Fantoni’s sumptuous design are the stern and precise rules of the Borromean Instructiones. The sculptor opened up his confessional at the front and the sides to allow for its original functions of social control. Even in the early eighteenth century, therefore, Fantoni’s masterpiece belies the modern assumptions we have tested in this chapter: the privacy of the penitents (or the invisibility of the confessor) did not enter into the designer’s plans.98 An era that may have witnessed an intensification of confessions among some groups, in particular women, produced equipment to regulate — not necessarily facilitate — such private devotions. Yet it remains important to distinguish intentions and effects: once introduced, the confessional took on a life of its own. Whether the separation of penitent and confessor produced the desired results is uncertain (the prosecution of solicitation only increased), but there is no doubt that the changes in sensorial experience affected the sacramental interaction in significant ways. Practically undocumented, however, these effects remain very hard to gauge. We are better informed about some modest changes of design, made for reasons of convenience, crowd control, or aesthetic appearance. It is equally clear that the openness of the confessional prompted complaints about dangers for the seal of confession. Such complaints led to various

97 A.M. Pedrocchi, A. Fantoni e la decorazione lombardo-veneta fra ‘600 e ‘700 (Tesi di laurea, Università di Roma, 1969-70), 165-75; Andrea Fantoni, Confessionale in Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo Alta (Bergamo: Monumenta Longobardica, 1974); I Fantoni. Quattro secoli di bottega di scultura in Europa, ed. R. Bossaglia (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1978). 98 Nor did the penitent’s anonymity: as will become clear in Chapter Five, a new system of monitoring sacramental performance required confessors to know their penitents’ names.

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accomodations but no structural modifications, at least in early modern Italy. There the confessions of women remained emphatically on public display. Andrea Fantoni not only followed these conventions but enhanced the public function of his confessional by framing it — hence framing the act of confession itself — in an elaborate iconographic commentary. The central point was to justify the sacrament of penance and the priestly jurisdiction over the soul. Hovering over the seat of the confessor was God himself, wrapped in clouds, presiding over the sacrament but delegating his supreme judicial powers to the confessor. Indeed, right above the latter’s seat Fantoni depicted the transferral of the keys to St. Peter — the biblical foundation of the priestly powers of binding and loosing. Completing this linear hierarchy were the penitents’ kneeling benches, placed humbly below and to the sides of the confessor’s prominent seat. Other iconographic elements were aimed at reinforcing the desired spirit of penance: a penitential figure carrying a large cross, representations of ‘justice’ and ‘mercy,’ biblical symbols of penance (Mary Magdalen) and rebirth (the resurrection of the Widow of Nain’s son), along with various scenes from Christ’s passion (the flagellation, the Virgin in mourning, and so on). Applying his powers of representation and expression, Fantoni created a form for the confessional that was appropriate to its function: a physical setting conducive to repentance, submission, and obedience to church authority. Both the strategy and the spirit are, like the design, undeniably Borromean: the careful manipulation of physical and visual experience was to create an edifying ‘occasion’ of virtue. But this artist, along with many colleagues of his time, went well beyond the restrictive tactics and austerity typical of Borromean church design, to explore the artistic enhancement of desired states of mind. The spectacular confessionals of the Baroque, in Bavaria and Flanders as much as in Italy, paired the discipline of the body with its dramatic display.99

99

More generally on Baroque confessionals (along with the studies quoted in n. 8 above), Max Tauch, Der Beichtstuhl in den katholischen Kirchen des deutschen Barock (Bonn, 1969); S. Zajadacz-Hastenrath, Das Beichtgestühl der Antwerpener St.-Pauluskirche und der Barockbeichtstuhl in den südlichen Niederlanden (Brussels, 1970). On penitential piety in Bavaria, see Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 116-18, 144-45; in France, François Lebrun, “The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and Personal Piety,” in Passions of the Renaissance, 69-109, at 75-80.

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Andrea Fantoni’s confessional thus testifies to the powerful legacy of Carlo Borromeo in the Lombard Church; to this legacy we return in the following chapter, dedicated to the archbishop’s successor, Cardinal Federico Borromeo.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE POLITICS OF CIVILITY: FEDERICO BORROMEO AND THE LATER COUNTER-REFORMATION

A few decades after the publication of the Avvertenze, the second archbishop to succeed Carlo Borromeo, his cousin Federico, returned to the theme of penance in a talk to his diocesan confessors. Stressing the particular “dignity” of their office, the cardinal told his audience that they were “the fibers, arteries, and sinews of the body of the holy Church.” The remark summed up a complex but coherent view of the sacrament of penance, which had matured in the near-century separating Federico Borromeo from the beginning of the Reformation crisis. It confirmed the centrality of confession in the Counter-Reformation project of disciplining society; it marked the completion of a strikingly corporate ideal of the clerical estate; and it had profound implications for the broader political and cultural relevance of religion. The figure of Cardinal Federico thus allows us to examine the fate of Counter-Reformation conceptions of penance and confession over the medium-to-long term. Inevitably this requires us to take stock of Carlo Borromeo’s legacy in early seventeenth-century Lombardy. On the one hand, we are confronted with the long shadow cast by an archbishop whose canonization in 1610 was the clearest expression of his enshrinement in the temple of Tridentine orthodoxy, in Milan as elsewhere in the Catholic world. On the other hand, we should be careful not to mistake San Carlo’s unquestionable influence for simple historical continuity. Federico Borromeo had a notably different understanding of the office of bishop, moderating his cousin’s activism with a combination of diplomacy and stoic resignation, and he incorporated these values into his expectations of the clergy.1 The attitudes of one who described himself as a “Christian philosopher” may have derived from personality differences and may betray the mindset of a humanist rather than a lawyer (such 1

See on these points the brief but perceptive remarks of Paolo Prodi, “Nel IV Centenario della nascita di Federico Borromeo. Note biografiche e bibliografiche,” Convivium 33 (1965): 337-59; and Id., “Borromeo, Federico,” DBI, 13:33-42.

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as his cousin Carlo), but they also reflected a different phase of confessionalism. By this time, the mechanisms of institutional control set up in the wake of Trent had become fully entrenched but slackened into a bureaucratic routine. Concomitantly, combining his sobering experience of church government with his humanistic outlooks, Cardinal Federico defined a form of social discipline that relied on tact rather than confrontation, on prudence rather than sincerity, on interior discipline rather than public shame. But as for his sainted predecessor, the goal remained at once religious, political, and social: no society could hope to maintain its integrity without the controlled and concerted exercise of Catholic piety. New, however, was a cultural emphasis: the later Borromeo elaborated a view in which Christianization was also a civilizing process.

In San Carlo’s shadow: Federico Borromeo and the later Counter-Reformation The study of early seventeenth-century Italian religion has acquired an almost inevitably retrospective quality. The period is seen as an outgrowth, a later phase, of the reform movement immediately following the Council of Trent. This distinction owes much to Alphonse Dupront’s thesis of ‘Christian optimism.’ In a well-known study of 1932, Dupront described Filippo Neri, the towering figure of late-Cinquecento Roman spirituality, as the master of a new humanism. Neri’s philosophy of ‘Christian joy’ reconciled religious outlooks on sin and redemption with a humanistic appreciation of the world. According to Dupront, the resulting philosophy of ‘Christian optimism’ marked not only a group of church leaders who frequented Neri’s celebrated Oratorio — including Agostino Valier, Cesare Baronio, Silvio Antoniano, and Federico Borromeo — but affected broader outlooks of the late sixteenth century. In a deep cultural shift, the grim world view of the earlier Counter-Reformation was replaced by a brighter, more ‘optimistic’ assessment of the human condition. A new generation of Christian humanists abandoned the institutional defensiveness of their Tridentine predecessors to promote an “interior reform” of the Church. Their goal was to offer the masses a religion “of love.”2 2

Alphonse Dupront, “Autour de St. Filippo Neri: De l’optimisme chrétien,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’Ecole française de Rome 49 (1932): 219-59, esp. 257-59. Without referring to Dupront, Robert Bireley has recently declared ‘optimism’ to be a characteristic feature of Counter-Reformation political philosophers as well (see n. 26 below).

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The notion of a generational change of the guard, leading to a reorientation of church governance and religious practices, has also found its way to the study of the Milanese Counter-Reformation. Dupront himself described Carlo and Federico Borromeo as representative, respectively, of the first and second phases of the CounterReformation. In her recent book on Federico Borromeo, Pamela Jones chose the same perspective for an analysis of the cardinal’s activities as a patron of the arts. Acknowledging that either pessimism or optimism may not have predominated any period of the CounterReformation, and questioning Dupront’s two-phase model, Jones unhesitatingly places her subject in the camp of the optimists. For her, a humanistic emphasis on the “essential goodness of the harmonious, divinely ordered cosmos” informed the cultural program for the cardinal’s most prized creation, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.3 This conclusion, however, leaves two intriguing implications of the Dupront thesis untested: first, that a generational caesura replaced Carlo Borromeo’s institutional ‘counter-reformation’ with ‘interior reform’; and second, that Federico’s pastoral activities can be explained in terms of the Oratorian philosophy of so-called Christian optimism. While these ideas contain elements of truth, they ignore three essential components of Federico Borromeo’s experience: the fundamental continuity in Milanese church governance between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the cardinal’s socio-political reflections on religion, and his ideal of civility. All three suggest that Federico, rather than abandoning the forms of social discipline established by his cousin (as the Dupront thesis would imply), developed them to suit his own, not necessarily ‘optimistic,’ purposes and outlooks. Let us begin with the relationship between the younger and older Borromeo. From the time Cardinal Federico took up the reins of the Milanese archbishopric, continuity was the watchword of his episcopal policy, as it had been that of his immediate predecessor Gaspare Visconti. In the years following his death, Carlo Borromeo had acquired an officially endorsed and promoted reputation of sanctity 3 Pamela Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana. Art Patronage and Reform in Seventeenth-Century Milan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 9-10 (further 87-89, and passim). In her critique of Dupront, Jones draws in part on John W. O’Malley, “Early Jesuit Spirituality: Spain and Italy,” in Christian Spirituality III. Post Reformation and Modern, ed. L. Dupres and D.E. Saliers (New York, 1989), 3-27.

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based on the notion that he had been a model-bishop. His successors were thus fully justified in continuing his policies, keeping his instruments of church government in place, and (in the case of Federico) promoting the decade-long process that was to lead to Carlo’s canonization in 1610.4 Well before that time, Federico Borromeo had erected a monumental pedestal for his cousin’s achievement by publishing his legislation in the massive Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis of 1599. The text had been in the making for several decades. Not only had the six provincial councils convened by Carlo Borromeo been published in various editions, but in 1582 Pietro Galesino had designed a comprehensive publication, entitled Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, which also included many other episcopal instructions.5 The impact of these Acta had been immediate and far-reaching: within years after Carlo Borromeo’s death, extensive excerpts, or Pastorum Instructiones, were published in places as far away as Antwerp (1586) and Cologne (1587).6 Cardinal Federico, however, gave the Acta their near-definitive shape. At the request of Italian as well as foreign prelates, he had the text republished in a considerably expanded edition (1599). The latter was to become the vehicle of Carlo Borromeo’s huge international influence, as is evidenced by numerous editions and translations. This success has rightly been called “singular,” for never did a set of local reforms

4 Alberigo, “Carlo Borromeo come modello di vescovo,” 1039-46 (noting, however, that the Veronese bishop Agostino Valier advised “cautious imitation” to the young Federico Borromeo); Turchini, La fabbrica di un santo, 33-39; Id., “Roberto Bellarmino.” These studies all indicate (with different emphases) that by 1610 the image of the holy bishop had been absorbed (for essentially political reasons) by a more generic ideal of personal sanctity, and thus relegated to the background. 5 Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis tribus partibus distincta, quibus concilia provincialia, conciones synodales, synodi dioecesanae, instructiones, litterae pastorales, edicta, regulae confrateriarum, formulae, et alia denique continentur, quae Carolus S.R.E. Cardinalis tit. S. Praxedis, Archiepiscopus egit (Mediolani: apud Pacificum Pontium, 1582). Early reprints include: Brescia, 1582; Milan, 1583; Novara, 1584; Cremona, 1595; and Venice, 1595 and 1596. 6 Pastorum instructiones ... ab ill.mo ... D. Carolo Borromaeo ... editae, nunc autem ex Ecclesiae Mediolanensis actorum libro excerptae opera Silvestri Pardonis (Antverpiae: ex officina C. Plantini, 1586); Pastorum concionatorumque instructiones ... ex ecclesiae Mediolanensis actorum libro excerptae opera ... Joannis Francisci [Bonhomii] (Coloniae: apud M. Cholinum, 1587). Other editions of the Pastorum instructiones were published in Douai, 1616 and 1624; Louvain, 1664 and 1701; Rouen, 1701; Augsburg, 1758 and 1762; Ghent, 1828; Innsbruck, 1846; and Münster, 1846 and 1860.

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gain such canonical status in the Church at large.7 Within the Milanese context, however, the publication of this collection also denoted a sense of closure and almost a recognition that not much could be added. Thus, after Carlo’s death, only one more provincial council was convened (1609), and the more frequent diocesan synods did not produce enough new legislation to warrant their publication. Most of the action in church government, it seems, took place behind the closed doors of special meetings, such as the yearly congregations of the bishop and his vicari foranei. Official legislation gave way to bureaucratic elaboration.8 Much the same can be said for the Avvertenze. There is evidence that Federico Borromeo considered polishing and systematizing this rather disjointed text, but a draft for such a revision was abandoned and replaced by literal reprints. Carlo Borromeo’s two immediate successors published three such re-editions — in 1588, 1612, and 1623.9 Meanwhile, the text’s inclusion in the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis guaranteed it an audience and influence that reached far outside the diocese. Its status and accessibility increased further at the hands of one church administrator and one scholar: in 1588 Niccolò Galerio, vicar general and penitentiary of Padua (formerly Borromeo’s collaborator in Milan), published a Latin translation of the Avvertenze in a handbook for seminarians; and five years later, the Jesuit Antonio Possevino included the same version in his famous collection, Bibliotheca Selecta.10

7

Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ... Federici Borromei Archiepiscopi Mediolani iussu undique diligentius collecta et edita (Mediolani: Ex officina typographica quon. Pacifici Pontij impressoris archiepiscopalis, 1599). On the text’s “singular fortune,” and its later editions (Brescia, 1603; Paris, 1643; Lyon, 1683; Bergamo, 1738; Padova, 1754, etc.), see Enrico Cattaneo, “La singolare fortuna degli ‘Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis,’” La Scuola Cattolica 111 (1983): 191-217, esp. 207-14. 8 Such is also the judgment of Prodi, “Nel IV centenario,” 348. 9 Milano: per Francesco et gl’heredi di Simon Tini, 1588; Milano: per l’herede del quondam Pacifico Pontio, et Gio. Battista Piccaglia, 1612; and Milano: per l’herede di Pacifico Pontio, et Gio. Battista Piccaglia, 1623. The ms. BAM, P.228 sup., fols. 1r-44v, offers a reorganized version of the Avvertenze, probably prepared during Federico Borromeo’s early years but never published. 10 Niccolò Galerio, Evangeliorum per universum annum explicandorum ratio... Item, ad libri calcem, de ratione docendi Catechismi, et audiendarum confessionum (Brixiae: apud Petrum Mariam Marchettum, 1589 [reprint of first ed., 1588]), cc. 275-324. Antonio Possevino, Bibliotheca selecta qua agitur de ratione studiorum in historia, in disciplinis, in salute omnium procuranda, 2 vols. (Romae: ex Typographia Apostolica Vaticana, 1593), 1:286-302.

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But the true measure of its influence outside Milan is given by the numerous Italian and foreign editions that began appearing during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.11 Along with the Acta and the Pastorum Instructiones, the Avvertenze constituted a crucial tool for the spreading of the Tridentine reforms as interpreted and exemplified by the sainted Milanese archbishop.12

Confession and the body politic: social discipline and inner discipline Yet the conscious imitation of a historical model does not imply historical continuity; indeed, the imitation itself introduces a novel element and hence contributes to historical change. Thus, while in Milan confession continued to be regulated by the first Borromeo’s Avvertenze, its practice almost inevitably evolved, even when viewed from the limited perspective of episcopal policy and expectations. This becomes particularly clear when we analyze Federico Borromeo’s Sacri ragionamenti, a posthumously published collection of spiritual discourses addressed to the laity and the clergy alike. In one evolution of earlier views, Federico Borromeo came to express the post-Tridentine development of confession in explicitly political terms. As we have seen, Carlo Borromeo had employed the sacrament of penance in a project to reform the social order; in the technical terms of canon law, the governance of the external forum came to rely heavily on the spiritual jurisdiction enacted through the internal forum. That finding (as we concluded) is highly significant for the current debate on social discipline: it means that Catholic church leaders purposefully penetrated the intimate sphere of the conscience 11

Later Italian editions include: Milan, 1641, 1643, and 1910; Rome, 1700, 1701, 1705, and 1726; Parma, 1764; Venice, 1773; Bergamo, 1824. French editions appeared in Toulouse, 1648; Rouen s.d. [but seventeenth century], and 1707; Paris, 1659, 1665, 1672, 1695, 1700, 1702, 1736, 1756, and 1847; Aix-en-Provence, 1672; Lyon, 1672, 1686, and 1707; Angers, 1683; and Autun, 1705. Spanish translations were published in Madrid, 1766, 1768, 1792, 1796, 1798, and 1817; and Barcelona, 1770. In the German-speaking world several Latin editions appeared: Vienna, 1737; and Augsburg, 1758 and 1767. 12 On the European reception of the text, see Bernos, “Saint Charles Borromée”; San Carlo e il suo tempo, 481-82 (Spain), 515-23 (France), and 541 (Poland); and San Carlo Borromeo, 197 (Spain), 219-22 (France), and 242, 245 n. 7 (Germany).

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to bolster their efforts at confessionalization. The later Borromeo drew the inevitable political conclusion: the confessor thus conceived was a public servant. In this vein the archbishop admonished his confessors to perform their office “in a saintly manner because of the public good that it produces.”13 In another speech to his diocesan confessors, Federico Borromeo used a remarkable metaphor to elaborate on this view. Discussing the particular “dignity” of their office, he told his audience that they were the fibers, arteries, and sinews of the body of the holy Church, for their function and activities closely resemble the working of these parts of the body: through secret channels they make it move, and if they are ill-disposed, the other members cannot function and remain languid. Infinite harm is thus the immediate result for this mystical body, the life of which, without these supports, is no life but death.14

These remarks are perfectly complementary to the images evoked in the Avvertenze. Whereas the latter, primarily concerned with the individual’s condition and progress, charged the confessor with breaking the socially rooted patterns of sinful behavior, Federico Borromeo approached the issue from the opposite side. He pointed to the usefulness of confession as a basic support of the Church: confession constituted a capillary network through which all “members” of the Christian society could be reached. Federico Borromeo’s image of confession was not new. During the preceding century, the metaphor had turned up at key junctures of the Reformation to justify the utility of the sacrament of penance. In 1523, Johann Eck had defended confession against Luther’s attacks as “the nerve of our religion and of Christian discipline.” Eck’s argument, and the same body metaphor, returned seven years later in the 13

Sacri ragionamenti, 3:87: “... persuadervi che quello [uficio] santamente esercitaste per rispetto del pubblico bene, che ne risulta.” 14 Sacri ragionamenti, 3:100: “quanta stima dovrassi fare di que’ sacerdoti, i quali tolti sono dal numero di molti altri, non solamente ... ma per esser’ impiegati ne’ servigi di sì degno sacramento, che può, mediante l’ecclesiastica podestà, legare, e disciogliere, e giudicare, e divinamente imperare? Essi sono le fibre, e le arterie, ed i nervi del corpo di santa Chiesa; poiché nel loro uficio e nelle loro opere ottimamente all’uficio di queste corporali parti si rassomigliano. Per segrete vie essi danno il moto: ed essendo mal disposti, il rimanente delle membra far non può il proprio uficio, e languido ne rimane: e quindi subitamente infinito danno ne segue a tutto questo mistico corpo, la vita del quale, senza tali sostegni, non è piú vita, ma morte.”

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Catholic confutation of the Augsburg Confession, which highlighted confession’s usefulness in promoting discipline and obedience along with its spiritual benefits.15 Whereas in those instances ‘discipline’ presumably recalled humanistic notions of self-control, that changed over the course of the century. The influential neo-Stoic philosopher Justus Lipsius used the concept in a markedly socio-political sense,16 and so did church authorities of various creeds as they became interested in the maintenance of public order. In Protestant circles, especially among Calvinists, the body’s nervous system thus came to signify church discipline.17 The authors of the Roman Catechism (1566), for their part, continued to employ the metaphor in defense of confession but gave it a social twist as well. Having explained the sacrament’s salutary effects on the soul, they took care to stress “the usefulness of confession especially for social life and its cohesion.” Without it, the text insisted, society would soon be plagued by all sorts of crime.18 No doubt Carlo Borromeo, who as cardinal-nephew had supervised the

15 Johann Eck, De poenitentia et confessione secreta semper in Ecclesia Dei observata contra Ludderum libri II (Romae: per Iacobum Mazochium, 1523, c. P Ir), quoted by Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 266 (who interprets ‘discipline’ as self-control); Die Confutatio der Confessio Augustana vom 3. August 1530, ed. H. Immenkötter, Corpus Catholicorum, vol. 33 (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1979), 174-77: “Quare admonendi sunt, cum confessio integra nedum sit ad salutem necessaria, sed etiam nervus existat christianae disciplinae et totius quoque oboedientiae...” 16 Hence his importance in Oestreich’s work on social discipline: Gerhard Oestreich, Antiker Geist und moderner Staat bei Justus Lipsius (1547-1606). Der Neustoizismus als politische Bewegung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989). 17 Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xii.i, ed. John T. McNeill, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics, 20-21 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 2:1229-30. The Lyon Reformed minister Pierre Viret used the same metaphor in 1565: Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” Past and Present 90 (1981): 65; the metaphor, however, does not seem to support Davis’s thesis that the “holy company” was viewed as “a human communication network.” The “ligaments and the nerves in a body” here stand for “discipline”: the discourse is about the integrity of the social order and, therefore, about power and control rather than communication. The expression disciplina nervus ecclesiae returns in a register of the Nîmes Reformed consistory, according to Raymond A. Mentzer, Jr., “The Calvinist Reform of Morals at Nîmes,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 89. 18 Catechismus ex decreto, 173: “Neque vero illa confessionis utilitas praetermittenda, quae ad vitae societatem et coniunctionem magnopere pertinet.”

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preparation of the catechism, would have subscribed to this remark.19 The social emphasis of his reform program in general, and that of confession in particular, was there to show it. Yet it took longer before such ideas about the socio-political significance of the Catholic religion, including confession, were systematized. Only decades after Trent, a historian like Baronio, a controversialist like Bellarmino, and a political philosopher like Botero sat down to take stock, and reflect on the implications of the astonishing conflict that had marked the preceding century. Giovanni Botero (1544-1617) is of particular interest here. An aspiring Jesuit in his young years, but restless and recalcitrant enough to be removed from this order in 1580, Botero had drastically changed course under Carlo Borromeo’s personal protection and guidance (1580-84) to find his vocation in religious and political writing.20 The Reason of State (1589), in particular, often considered the Counter-Reformation answer to Machiavelli’s The Prince, presented Christianity as an indispensable asset of the state. It was the Christian religion, Botero affirmed in a famous expression, “according to which not merely the bodies and possessions but even the souls and consciences of [the ruler’s] people are subject to him: their affections and thoughts are bound, as well as their hands...” Clearly, the remark applied only to Catholicism; Luther, Calvin, and the other Protestants had wrought the opposite of political order, “sowing everywhere the seeds of heresy, revolution and the overthrow of kingdoms.”21 This political theory was certainly part of Federico Borromeo’s cultural baggage. Indeed, the same Botero had served as a mentor to the young Federico when the latter was finding his way in Rome amidst 19 On Borromeo’s role (though perhaps not, as has been suggested, his chairing the editorial committee), see Pedro Rodriguez and Raul Lanzetti, El Catecismo Romano: Fuentes e historia del texto y de la redacción (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1982), 88-89. 20 Luigi Firpo, “Botero, Giovanni,” in DBI, 13:352-62. 21 Giovanni Botero, Della ragion di Stato. Delle cause della grandezza delle città, ed. C. Morandi (Bologna: Cappelli, 1930), 94-95. I quote from P.J. and D.P. Waley’s translation: Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State & The Greatness of Cities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956), 66-67. For comments, see Robert Bireley, The CounterReformation Prince: Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 61-62; and Silvio Suppa, “Ragione politica e ragione di Stato (Rileggendo Machiavelli e Botero),” in Botero e la ‘Ragion di Stato,’ ed. A. Enzo Baldini (Firenze: Leo Olschki, 1992), 59-89, esp. 80-81.

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ecclesiastics, courtiers, and humanists (1586-95).22 Federico Borromeo, therefore, was in Botero’s daily company when the latter composed his famous treatise, and must have been intimately acquainted with its arguments. Later, in his Sacri ragionamenti, the then archbishop was to return repeatedly to “reason of state.” Clearly, the concept continued to dominate the political debate, also in Milan, where the prominent physician and philosopher Ludovico Settala (1550 or 1552-1633) produced a short treatise on the subject.23 In this debate, the mature Federico Borromeo became an adamant critic, who came to polemicize, implicitly but undeniably, against Botero’s thought. Thus Federico cried out on one occasion: we must consider not just worthy of the greatest reprehension but foolish those people who, when speaking about religion, speak at the same time about reason of state, whether it be good and laudable, or treacherous and unjust.24

Treacherous and unjust, Borromeo explained, was the prince who manipulated religion for his own self-interest; good and laudable might be the one who applied it toward the common good; but it was in any case a sacrilegious intrusion into “matters divine.” The remark is of uncertain date, and its context reveals little about the historical circumstances in which it was made, but the polemic certainly reflected the archbishop’s bitter experience with the Milanese secular authorities. Almost from the beginning of his episcopate, old jurisdictional conflicts between state and Church had flared up again, as fiercely as they had during the period of Carlo Borromeo, and they returned with a vengeance also in the last decade of Federico’s life.25 In the latter’s remarks, then, we can see the leader of a confessional

22

G. Gabrieli, “Federico Borromeo a Roma,” Archivio della Società Romana di storia patria 56-57 (1933-34): 157-217, esp. 164-66. 23 Storia di Milano, 10:479-80. More generally, Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince, 51. 24 Sacri ragionamenti, 2:314: “non solo degni di grandissime riprensioni, ma sciocchi ancora estimar si debbono coloro, i quali, della religione parlando, parlano insieme di Ragione di stato, o sia essa buona e laudevole, overo ingannevole ed ingiusta.” 25 The periods of greatest tension were 1597-98 and the mid-1620s: see Agostino Borromeo, “La Chiesa milanese del Seicento e la corte di Madrid,” in ‘Millain the Great.’ Milano nelle brume del Seicento (Milano: Cariplo, 1989), 93-108.

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Church resisting the protective but burdensome mantle of the state.26 Some time toward the end of his tenure, the archbishop took the feast of St. Ambrose, Milan’s model bishop of ancient memory, as another opportunity to lash out against temporal exploitation of spiritual jurisdiction. Reason of state, according to Cardinal Federico, should rather be called “perverse reason,” because it “led away from the straight path of the sacred laws.” This perversion undermined private as well as public life. In the arena of princely power, it occurred when a battle between reason (the true kind) and will was decided in favor of the latter and resulted in tyranny. At that point the Church was obliged to resist. Acting on this principle, Ambrose had excommunicated Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of thousands of Thessalonians following the killing of a barbarian army commander. The Milanese archbishop’s principled stance had led the emperor to repent: “Oh Ambrose, your bitter laments against me are all too just...” Acknowledging the injustices wrought by “perverse” reason of state and surrendering to ecclesiastical authority, the supreme leader of the Roman Empire then redeemed his sin through contrition, confession, and the willingness to do penance.27 Thus the princely usurpation of church authority was expiated through a ritual in which Federico’s audience could easily recognize the rudiments of sacramental penance. This trenchant invective appears to imply a clear rejection of Botero’s religious philosophy — and it does, at least on the issue of political control. Yet Cardinal Federico shared one fundamental assumption with his former mentor, namely that confession was a legitimate and powerful political instrument. In fact, the Cardinal came 26 See Reinhard, “Disciplinamento sociale,” 111. Borromeo’s outlook, then, seems to be more shaded than other Catholics’ “fundamentally optimistic vision of the Christian’s relationship to the world,” an optimism which Bireley considers “a principal feature of the Counter-Reformation and the Baroque” (Bireley, The CounterReformation Prince, 221). As a representative of the institutional Church, Borromeo differed no doubt from those members of the regular clergy, often confessors, who played vital political roles at the early modern courts; see Flavio Rurale, “Il confessore e il governatore: teologi e moralisti tra casi di coscienza e questioni politiche nella Milano del primo Seicento,” in La Lombardia spagnola. Nuovi indirizzi di ricerca, ed. Elena Brambilla and Giovanni Muto (Milano: Unicopli, 1997), 343-70. 27 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:73: “quella perversa ragione pur’allhora dal volgo ignorante contra ogni dovere chiamata Ragione di stato ... dal diritto sentiero delle sacre leggi travia.” The confrontation between Ambrose and Theodosius is recounted ibid., 73-75.

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remarkably close to Botero’s views on the need to influence citizens’ “minds and consciences” for purposes of government. Elaborating on the body metaphor about confession (cited above), he remarked: For there is no doubt that it would be equally harmful for a city if it came to lack the confessors’ authority in judging and punishing and if the people had no fear of their just punishment, as if it banished all human justice: for this would open the way to all kinds of crime, and the general destruction [of the city] would not be far.28

In 1566 the Roman Catechism had already made a similar point, stating that “if sacramental confession is removed from Christian discipline, secret and unspeakable crimes will certainly soon abound.”29 But while the Catechism was engaged in a polemic against Protestant alternatives of “Christian discipline,” Cardinal Federico took issue with the pretenses of secular government, proposing confession as a superior alternative to “human justice.” Hence it was an act of good government when the Church introduced “the good habit of doing secret confessions” to a single priest: It is a custom which is to be recommended highly, not so much because it conforms to the law of God and Christ, as because it is by itself highly praiseworthy and also according to human and natural reason most useful for the good government of the Christian republic. No other republic, however well organized, ever developed such an excellent way of governing.30 28

Sacri ragionamenti, 3:100: “Ne punto è da dubitarsi che altrettanto grave non fosse per seguirne il danno in una città, qualhora in essa non havesse luogo l’autorità de’ confessori così nel giudicare, come nel punire, ed i popoli niun timore havessero delle giuste loro pene; quanto grande ne seguirebbe la ruina tuttavolta che da essa venisse affatto sbandita l’humana giustitia; intanto, che ad ogni scelleratezza aperta fosse la via, e la generale distruttione di quella si vedessa assai vicina.” It is worth comparing this passage with Viret’s text (see n. 17 above): “Without these [i.e., “the ligaments and the nerves” of church discipline], you have just a confused jumble of vices and of vicious persons — a synagogue — rather than a church of God and a holy company assembled in the name of Jesus Christ” (quoted and translated by Davis, “The Sacred and the Body Social,” 65). 29 Catechismus ex decreto, 173. 30 Ibid.: “Quindi potete assai agevolmente comprendere, con che alto consiglio, e con che divina providenza sia stato in Santa Chiesa introdotto il bel costume di far le confessioni ad un solo per segreta maniera; il qual costume hassi sommamente a commendare non tanto perché sia uniforme con la legge divina, e di Christo, quanto perché per se stesso è oltremodo laudevole, ed etiandio secondo le humane e naturali ragioni al buon governo della Christiana repubblica utilissimo. A questo così esquisito

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Here the full implications of Federico’s body metaphor, the starting point of his talk on confession, become evident. His purpose was to discuss political theory and contribute to its quest for the best form of governance. He singled out confession as a superior political instrument for its capacity to reach otherwise unattainable layers of human activity and there exercise a subtle influence: The Romans had their consuls, but these dealt only with exterior things, discernable to everyone’s eye, registered by every ear, and affecting only matters of public interest or harm. Nor could they with their rigid laws produce a good man; on the contrary, only concerned with the interest of the city and community, they did not mean to do anything by these means but to form good citizens.31

Thus, Federico implied, the confessional society (unlike the Roman state) was interested in more than ‘exterior things,’ the public interest and good citizenship: through the inner discipline of confession, it wished to shape ‘good men.’ By itself, there was nothing new in attributing the effectiveness of confession to its private nature; according to the Roman Catechism (1566), penitents “reveal their secret thoughts, deeds, and words to a prudent and faithful friend, who can help them in word and deed.”32 But for Federico, the political utility of confession depended on more than a confidential relationship, valuable though “the effect of private love and private charity” might be. The cardinal allowed that the ancient ideal of friendship proposed by philosophers like Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato prefigured the relation of confessor and penitent in its usefulness “for the correction and universal remedy of perverse habits.” He was surely also aware of the Aristotelian conception, common in humanist discourse of his time, which presented friendship as

modo di governare mai non potè alcuna Repubblica, quantunque ben ordinata, pervenire.” The emphasis is mine. 31 Ibid.: “Hebbero i Romani i loro consoli: ma essi intenti erano solamente alle cose esteriori, le quali dagli occhi d’ognuno potevano esser comprese, e dagli orecchi raccolte e ricevute; e solo a quello, ch’era pubblico danno, o giovamento, haveano riguardo; né potevano in alcun modo con le loro rigide leggi produr’ un’ huomo, che buono fosse: anzi, riguardando l’unico bene della città, e della comunanza, altro con tali mezzi non intendevano, che di formar’ alcun buono cittadino.” 32 Catechismus ex decreto, 173.

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a means to further social cohesion.33 But he detected limitations precisely in this public utility. According to the cardinal, friends lacked a necessary power that confessors possessed, namely that of counselor, master, even lord and superior, “an authority which is not human but divine, and which operates with secret power in the sacrament of penance and its minister.”34 While for Cardinal Federico confession might have elements of the Oratorian spirit of love, it was fundamentally (to borrow Foucault’s definition) “a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship.” In this relationship, the confessor was not simply a personal friend or adviser, but (again in Foucault’s phrase) “the authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console, and reconcile.”35 Cardinal Federico’s argument about confession suggests a consummate notion of social discipline. In the subtle eyes of this humanist ecclesiastic, discipline obtained its optimal effectiveness if exercised in the private sphere, where the soul was most malleable, but backed up by the authority attached to a public office. As a friend and superior, the confessor combined both forms of power. Besides the obvious continuities connecting this model of discipline with earlier notions, it was Federico’s insistence on the interiority of confession that represented a notable evolution. As we will see, the emphasis on harsh external constraints evident in Carlo Borromeo’s reform programs gave way to softer strategies of persuasion and interior discipline. This shift is evident both in Federico Borromeo’s ideas about the priestly office and his reflections on confession.

33

Michel Rey, “Communauté et individu: l’amitié comme lien social à la Renaissance,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 38 (1991): 617-25, quotes characterizations of friendship as “lien de société” (Antoine Hotman, 1583), “le lien et le ciment de toute la société humaine” (Jacques Davy, cardinal Du Perron, 1618), etc. 34 Sacri ragionamenti, 3:101: “... imperocché gli amici sono ben sì disposti a farci di molti e vari benifici, e ad esserci aiutatori ne’ nostri mali, ma in loro risposta non è alcuna sovrana potestà, che pienamente giovar ci possa. Quanto essi fanno, è solo effetto di privato amore, e di privata carità: ladove nel confessore riconoscer possiamo gli aiuti, e le utilità non pure degli amici, ma de’ consiglieri, e de’ maestri. Lascio stare, che i confessori sono signori, e superiori nostri, ed autorevoli sopra ogni altro, sì come privilegiati di singolare autorità, a fine di recarci sommo benificio e giovamento: la qual’ autorità non è humana, ma divina; e con occulta virtù nel sacramento della penitenza, e nel ministro di essa si contiene.” 35 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1:61.

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The civilized priest Federico Borromeo often trod familiar ground when lecturing or sermonizing to his diocesan clergy, as he frequently did at synods and other meetings. His discourses demonstrate, for example, that the anticlerical invective of the Tridentine era was still very much alive. In 1610 (as we have seen) San Carlo’s biographer Giussano invoked the past decadence of pre-Borromean memory to express an apologetic message about his hero; yet around the same time Cardinal Federico lamented present clerical abuses in patently traditional terms. Avarice, ignorance, and lechery were old themes that recurred insistently in his critique of his own priests. Moreover, the cardinal expressed continuing concerns about overly close relations between confessors and penitents — whether resulting in solicitation, flattery, or excessive lenience — in frequent appeals for caution, prudence, and personal restraint when dealing with penitents. Extending the old medical metaphor of penance, he told the confessor to behave like a physician in front of a contagious disease: “He neither flees nor approaches too much, but looks out for the dangers nearby. He tries to heal the disease, but seeks likewise with utmost diligence to save himself.”36 Yet such calls for distance and detachment also suggest a conspicuous novelty. Federico Borromeo’s concerns about his priests were imbued with a distinctive view of clerical identity and conduct. Like much of the social discourse of this humanist archbishop, this view was grounded in his reflections on natural law, in particular on human and animal nature. Two convictions stand out: first, like all social groupings, the clerical estate was meant to be distinct and separate from others; and second, it had to adhere to the behavioral norms imposed by civilization.

36 Sacri Ragionamenti, 3:103. Cardinal Federico’s ragionamenti sinodali, directed to his own clergy, are full of references to clerical abuses such as avarice, lechery, negligence, ignorance, and secular habits; see, e.g., Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:44ff., 54ff., 68ff., 101, 426ff., 436-39, and 452ff. The increasing concern about solicitation, culminating in the papal bull Universi dominici gregis (1622), found local reflections in a remarkable appendix “De periculo familiaritatis dominarum vel mulierum” to the Avvertenze edition of 1588, meticulous controls on the design and use of confessionals (see the warnings of the Seventh Provincial Council, AEM, 4:351), and clerical discussions (e.g., ASDM, XIV, 143, fol. 157; and ibid., 112, no. 77, fol. 318).

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The animal world, the cardinal claimed on one occasion, was divided into species. Those species were destined to remain separate, so that “the lion never couples with the whale, nor the eagle with the dolphin.” Something similar applied when one left the “horrid bushes and waters” behind to enter the “civilized cities” (costumate città). There “we know that nobles often converse and socialize with nobles, smiths with smiths, and sculptors with sculptors.” Social distinctiveness, required by natural but also divine law, should similarly apply to the clergy, who “ought to refrain very carefully from ample contacts with secular persons.”37 A priest had nothing to gain from, and was often left “diminished” by, his contacts with an important lay person, because he might forget that he was really “the more prominent of the two.” Nor could he expect to be loved by one who really despised him.38 In such blunt expressions we see Federico’s philosophical views of class and status blend with a deep suspicion of the secular world, reinforcing an already existent, ingrained sense of opposition between the sacred and profane worlds. In Federico, however, this hostility turned from antagonistic activism (the attitude characteristic of Carlo Borromeo) into defensiveness. The shock troops of the early Counter-Reformation, we might say, had become a standing army. Whereas his cousin had urged the clergy to be outgoing, interventionist, and confrontational if necessary, Cardinal Federico advocated a more cautious approach. Priests had first of all a group loyalty to build, a public image to defend, and an exemplary function to perform. “Let us all preserve our own dignity by appearing rarely in public and by staying far from others.”39 Current reality was clearly different, which made the archbishop wonder wistfully whether the time would ever come “when I can see my

37

Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:73-74: “... anzi io veggo, che le ecclesiastiche persone, etiandio secondo la legge della natura, guardar si deono molto bene dal conversar di soverchio con le secolari persone. Sono le adunanze degli animali bruti ancora tutte divise secondo le loro spetie... Quindi è, che il leone mai non si accoppia con la balena, né l’aquila col delfino... Uscendo poi dagli horridi boschi e dalle acque, ed entrando nelle costumate città, quivi pure ritroviamo la medesima legge comunemente scritta e custodita. Il nobile col nobile, il fabbro col fabbro, e lo sculture con lo scultore sappiamo sovente ritenersi, e conversare.” 38 Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:77-8. 39 Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:79: “Conserviamo tutti la propria dignità col comparir di rado in pubblico, e con lo star lontano dagli altri.”

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priests, as if enclosed within themselves, socialize only with their peers, that is other priests.”40 The ideal came close to monastic seclusion. Nevertheless, the pastoral tasks of the clergy made interaction with the lay world obviously inevitable. Cardinal Federico urged that such contacts be controlled and moderated with etiquette, politeness, and the art of persuasion. It is thus that rules of comportment became essential to the correct performance of priestly duties. Federico’s ideal priests were well-dressed: “Your clothes will be appropriate if they look neither worn out nor dirty, and if their form is proportionate to your figure, both in length and width.”41 Their conduct was always “pleasing” and “honest,” their lifestyle not merely saintly but cultured (costumato), in particular through the voluntary study of letters.42 Good manners should also be evident in the treatment of others; accordingly, priests should hone their diplomatic skills. When reproaching their flock, they had to remain within the bounds of appropriateness (convenevolezza) and discretion, and avoid “overly irritating the souls for no good purpose.”43 An example was set by St. Ambrose, who, in his bitter confrontation with the emperor Theodosius, had gained the upper hand through wisdom and tact: He understood that people hate to be faced directly with the naked truth, which resembles the sun’s brightest light, but will tolerate it under a veil filtering its excessive splendor. Now this veil consists of discreet speech, adroit scolding, and pleasant manners, which achieve much more in princes than threats...44

Gentleness (mansuetudine) was in fact a priestly virtue, not a shortcoming. Indeed, the use of force against subjects diminished the authority 40 Ibid.: “quando ne verrà mai quel tempo, che io veder possa i miei sacerdoti, quasi in se stessi ristretti [my emphasis], conversar solamente co’loro pari, cioè l’un sacerdote con l’altro?” 41 Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:69: “Convenevoli saranno le vesti, se elle non si vedranno né logore, né bruttate; e se la forma loro sarà di lunghezza e di larghezza proportionata alla persona.” 42 Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:69 and 434. 43 Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:408. 44 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:75: Ambrose “intendeva, che punto non piace ad alcuno di vedersi posta dinanzi agli occhi, quasi lucidissimo Sole, al quale molto si rassomiglia, la verità ignuda, ma sì sotto alcun velo, che il souerchio suo splendore almen’in parte ricuopra. Hor questo velo è il discreto parlare, le destre riprensioni, e le piacevoli maniere, le quali ne’ Principi assai più possono, che le minacce.”

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imposing it, for it was “a manifest sign that he has been unable to cure them with his skills, i.e. by persuading, enticing (allettare), rewarding, and threatening.”45 In short, a mastery of language and rhetoric became a requisite for success in the priestly enterprise. For Borromeo, himself a diligent linguist and student of sacred eloquence, the priest had to refinish the form of his message to ensure its effectiveness. These suggestions amount to a remarkable project. Federico Borromeo based his archiepiscopal goals for the clergy on a humanistic program of self-fashioning.46 The precepts of civility were to allow a professional group, operating in the sphere of the sacred, to differentiate itself and enhance its status and success. The significance of this project becomes all the more evident when considered in the context of Norbert Elias’s classic work on the civilizing process.47 Elias’s civilization theory has much in common with the social discipline paradigm, a fact deriving no doubt from their shared roots in early twentieth-century German sociology.48 The premise of both is the early modern process of state-building, by which central authorities gradually extended their direct control over their subject territories and peoples. Once the new absolutist states established an effective monopoly on violence, Elias argued, the distribution of power and prestige within those states was drastically altered. Less and less able to pose a military threat to the integrity of the Renaissance state, noble elites came to seek social distinction and political advancement in part

45

Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:112. See on the term “mansuetudine,” Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:22ff. 46 On Renaissance self-fashioning, see most recently John Martin, “Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1309-42. 47 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford-Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994; first published in German in 1939). Elias’s enduring influence is evident in recent studies of manners and discipline of the body: see Revel, “The Uses of Civility”; and Edward Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 117-46. 48 On Elias and Weber, see Johan Goudsblom, “Zum Hintergrund der Zivilisationstheorie von Norbert Elias: Das Verhältnis zu Huizinga, Weber und Freud,” in Macht und Zivilisation: Materialien zu Norbert Elias’ Zivilisationstheorie 2, ed. Peter Fleichmann, Johan Goudsblom and Hermann Korte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), 129-47 (esp. 133-37); on Oestreich and Weber, see Breuer, “Sozialdisziplinierung,” esp. 45-56; on all three, Alessi, “Discipline,” 16-21.

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through the cultivation of manners. The resulting code of conduct, exemplified in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528), was class-bound in origin, but over time became a tool for general social advancement. Erasmus’s enormously popular Manners for Children (De civilitate morum puerilium, 1530) made the point that civility acquired through education could help overcome class barriers.49 Recently, Dilwyn Knox has objected that behavioral discipline had its intellectual roots and earliest applications in the monastic culture of ancient and medieval Christianity. That correction is no doubt valuable, but does not undercut the essence of Elias’s argument: the generalization of ‘civilized’ comportment as a tool of self-affirmation in society can only be explained in terms of the socio-political transformations of the time in which it occurred. Its principles might have historical antecedents, but its success was (in Elias’s terminology) “sociogenetic.” Elias’s analysis may also shed light on the disciplinary pressures on the clerical class since the beginnings of the Counter-Reformation. While such pressures had not been absent in earlier periods, they received a major impetus from post-Tridentine confessionalism. Perceiving a crisis of ecclesiastical authority and social unity, Carlo Borromeo forced the priest to relatively crude forms of bodily restraint expressed in distinctive dress, control of the senses, and decorous public behavior. We may call these efforts ‘civilizing’ in the sense of aiming at a socially acceptable code of conduct, but only under Cardinal Federico were they developed into an explicit and fully-fledged ideal of civility. With his public persona (Federico suggested) the priest was to appear not only socially distinctive but well-mannered, not only irreproachable in conduct but refined in spirit, not merely honorable but capable of entertaining pleasing relations with other social groups, especially the more elevated. Perhaps most importantly, while these social qualities were to a degree group-specific, they corresponded largely to a general code of civility. (We will return to this shortly.)

49 Revel, “The Uses of Civility.” In Italy, the upbringing of children found a Counter-Reformation expression in Silvio Antoniano’s Educatione christiana dei figliuoli (Verona, 1584), written at Carlo Borromeo’s behest. However, this text appears intent on instilling obedience and conformity to socio-religious norms rather than “civilizing”; see Vittorio Frajese, Il popolo fanciullo. Silvio Antoniano e il sistema disciplinare della controriforma (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1987), 44-56.

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Thus Federico’s prescriptions for the clergy contain the essentials of an Eliasian civilizing effort — the adoption of good manners to facilitate a group’s social interactions and success. The reasons as to why the cardinal defined this program, however, require further explanation. Elias conceived of any civilizing process as a gradual and largely anonymous phenomenon. Early-modern European attitudes toward comportment became subject to tectonic movements as social groups, starting with the elites, adapted to the slow integration and centralization of socio-political structures. Critics of Elias have pointed out that this analysis leaves politics out of the picture.50 If (as we are suggesting here) civilizing efforts were part of confessionalization, this happened not only because Europe’s political map was drastically redrawn in the wake of the Reformation, but because political authorities responded to these changes by imposing the norms of civility along with other disciplinary measures. By the same token, the imposition of civility on the clergy was an extension of the post-Tridentine current of clerical discipline. For this reason, the social connotations of this program were varied. On the one hand, Cardinal Federico drew on the cultural aspirations of the nobility into which he was born (thus confirming Elias’s insistence on the courtly origins of civility). Unlike his cousin Carlo, who notoriously offended the members of the Milanese elite by scorning their aristocratic lifestyle, the later Borromeo was less resistant to the trappings of class, in part no doubt because he had matured at a time when nobility became an increasingly exclusive and thus ever more desirable commodity in society at large.51 On the other hand, as we have already seen, he insisted stubbornly on the separate status of the clergy and continued an established tradition of clerical discipline (a tradition emphasized in Knox’s interpretation). The result was a peculiar blend of aristocratic and ecclesiastical ideals. In the model the Milanese archbishop proposed to his clergy, the priest should hone 50 Pierangelo Schiera, “Disciplina, Disciplinamento,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italogermanico in Trento 18 (1992), 315; Id., “Disciplina, Stato moderno, disciplinamento: considerazioni a cavallo fra la sociologia del potere e la storia costituzionale,” in Disciplina dell’anima, 35; Alessi, “Discipline,” 20-21. 51 Claudio Donati, L’idea di nobiltà in Italia. Secoli XIV-XVIII (Bari: Laterza, 1988); Patriziati e aristocrazie nobiliari. Ceti dominanti e organizzazione del potere nell’Italia centro-settentrionale dal XVI al XVIII secolo, ed. Cesare Mozzarelli and Pierangelo Schiera (Trento: Istituto storico italo-germanico, 1978).

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the social skills of civility even while cultivating the saintly seclusion of his professional cohort. Both elements were in evidence when the cardinal compared the Lombard priests to the ancient Hebrews: just as Solomon wanted “noble manners” and “civil discipline” to adorn Israel’s sons, the Milanese archbishop expected his clergy to observe the “order of [their] estate and the laws of saintly manners.”52 The ideal of civilized behavior, then, took on distinctly corporate features: polishing one’s manners became a way to affirm group identity and allow successful contacts with other groups in society. Federico’s priest thus joined the gallery of seventeenth-century ‘Baroque personae,’ alongside the preacher, missionary, artist, and bourgeois, whose social profile bore the marks of civility.53

Discipline of the spirit Yet Federico Borromeo’s ideal of civilization was not limited to the clergy. The disciplined, civilized priest was himself to instill discipline and civilized manners in the lay people subjected to his authority, most importantly through the practice of confession. Here, too, the Milanese archbishop developed the forms of social discipline inherited from his predecessors in a novel direction. Aside from adopting the legal instrumentarium developed by his cousin, Cardinal Federico often sounded familiar themes when instructing his confessors: how to instill a true spirit of penance? how to read its signs? and how to wield the power of absolution appropriately and effectively? Such questions repeatedly prompted discussions about the psychological mechanics of confession. In one ragionamento, the archbishop recommended self-love to confessors whose misplaced love of others led them to be too indulgent of their penitents and thus to absolve the unrepentant. In another, he urged them “not only to absolve but to teach, correct, chastize if only with words,” adding that

52

Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:69. Baroque Personae, ed. Rosario Villari (1991), trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1995); see esp. the remarks by Salvatore S. Nigro on “The Secretary,” 82ff.; Manual Morán and José Andrés-Gallego on “The Preacher,” 126ff.; Adriano Prosperi, “The Missionary,” 168-70; and Giovanni Careri, “The Artist,” 299-300. 53

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“sometimes the denial of absolution is a reasonable thing.”54 Nor had the disciplinary themes and tones of Tridentine memory — or those of Carlo Borromeo — disappeared: in his pastoral addresses as in his legislation, Federico returned repeatedly to the application of the penitential canons and public penance.55 In a similar vein, the archbishop liked to lecture his lay audiences on the “impediments to true penance.” Ragionamenti urging penitents to know and regret their past sins, abandon current occasions of sin, and intend future betterment were variations on a well-known theme — the Tridentine definition of sacramental confession — dressed up in the rhetoric of seventeenth-century oratory. Yet this rhetoric had already distanced itself considerably from earlier discourse on sin and repentance. Carlo Borromeo’s insistence on public morality — the rejection of Carnival, public ostentation, and so on — is noticeably lacking in his cousin’s preaching, which remains generally abstract and far removed from social reality. The earlier emphasis on outward constraint had made way for a discourse about the creation of a suitable inner disposition.56 Federico dwelt on occasions of sin just as his predecessor had, but spoke less of their social roots than of the soul’s reluctance to flee them.57 Placing far greater trust in human freedom than his older cousin, he prompted the faithful to overcome this reluctance through an effort of the will and enlighten their spirit through knowledge and reason. The confessor’s authority was thus to be matched by self-examination, self-knowledge, and self-control. The result should be, in Federico’s words, a “military discipline of the spirit,” or the art of governing one’s passions and affects. Spiritual progress took shape as a battle of reason and the senses, in which reason found its most loyal ally in “prudence.”58

54 Sacri Ragionamenti, 3: ragionamenti “all’adunanza de’ confessori,” no. 1, 87-90 (on self-love); no. 3, 95-99 (against quick and easy absolutions); and no. 5, 103-06 (on maturity in absolving). 55 Sacri Ragionamenti, 3:93-94 (on penitential canons); public penance was officially confirmed at a congregation of vicari foranei of 1604 (AEM, 4:316-18), and in the Twenty-Fourth Diocesan Synod of 1611 (AEM, 4:424). 56 See the sermon against pleasures, in Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:56. 57 On occasions of sin, see Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:183, 269; and 3:196-99. 58 See the ragionamento “dell’esaminare la coscienza,” dedicated mostly to the prudent usage of reason (Sacri Ragionamenti, 3:185-88); another on knowing “the occult evils in us, brought on by original sin” (ibid., 188-93); a third on the “occult battle”

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In interpreting these remarks, Norbert Elias’s analytical categories may again be helpful. Elias argued that while civilizing processes are initiated by social constraint (Fremdzwang), they can become effective only when internalized through self-discipline (Selbstzwang), which is itself induced by social constraint.59 Federico Borromeo theorized the disciplinary functions of confession in similar terms — except that Fremdzwang was here not a generic social constraint, but the legally defined control by church officials. Whereas Carlo Borromeo had favored authoritarian forms of external control out of a patent mistrust of free will, his cousin shifted the balance toward softer strategies of persuasion and a reliance on free will. However, this interior discipline came with a profound contradiction: on the one hand, Federico urged his audience toward self-examination, on the premise that humans could and should not judge others; on the other hand, they were the least capable of judging their own soul and should therefore assume their own guilt and trust the judgment of others — and here Federico obviously thought of confessors as directors of conscience. Outer discipline and self-discipline thus coexisted in an uneasy balance; as the archbishop admitted, the combination made for an “occult battle of the spirit.”60 In its combination of external constraint and self-discipline, this improvement of the self was part of a comprehensive civilizing effort. Cardinal Federico’s treatment of language reveals how.

Language and civilization As we have noted, the moral discourse of the Sacri ragionamenti is usually abstract. Whether addressing confessors, other clergy or laypeople, their author generally refrained from treating concrete sins like homicide, arson or adultery. One exception, however, is remarkable both for the sheer number of references and the insight it allows

against our “spiritual enemies” (ibid., 193-96), etc.. The metaphor of military discipline is used in Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:56; Federico frequently adopted a military vocabulary to describe the process of self-examination. On governing the passions, see Sacri Ragionamenti, 1:69. 59 See especially Elias, The Civilizing Process, 443-60. 60 Sacri Ragionamenti, 3:193.

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us into the Archbishop Borromeo’s pastoral agenda. The theme in question is “indecent” speech — those forms of verbal expression that might breach the rules of religious as well as social decorum. Especially in later years, the issue left a deep imprint on the cardinal’s reflections and policies. Federico certainly did not invent a novel category of sinful behavior. Moralists had long sermonized about the sins of the tongue. The Tuscan friar Domenico Cavalca (1260-1342), for instance, dedicated two specialized and highly successful works to the theme. Pungilingua (“The Stinging Tongue”) treated blasphemy, backbiting, slander, perjury, lying, and many other speech-related sins, while the companion volume Frutti della lingua (“Fruits of the Tongue”) explained virtuous uses of the tongue, such as the practice of confession.61 Confessional manuals proposed the same topics, along with sins connected to hearing, in chapters on the five senses. Such standard treatments lived on in the aftermath of Trent and could thus be found in catechetical texts and instructions for confessors. Otherwise sins of the tongue appear not to have been cause for major concern except for their most grievous variety: blasphemy. Offenses against the name of God, Christ and the saints, already subject to civil prosecution in many cities, became a matter of intense concern to the Roman Inquisition, starting with its founding father Cardinal Carafa, and came to claim an increasing share of inquisitorial caseloads, justified by the suspicion of heretical implications.62 In evidently competitive zeal, bishops like Carlo Borromeo also combatted this sin with great vigor by fulminating against it in sermons, including it among reserved cases, and ordering the clergy to report any offenders during visitations and synods.63 By contrast, and even if we allow for the traditional connotations of the genre, Federico Borromeo’s campaign against improper speech strikes an unmistakably different tone. Whereas conventional rules 61

Both works were reprinted well into the sixteenth century. I consulted: Pungi lingua. Il libro molto utile al fidele christiano... (Vinegia: Comin de Trino di Monferrato, 1547); and Libro devotissimo et spirituale de’ frutti della lingua (In Venetia nella Contrada di Santa Maria Formosa, al segno della Speranza, 1563). On this theme in general, see Carla Casagrande and Silvana Vecchio, I peccati della lingua: disciplina ed etica della parola nella cultura medievale (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1987). 62 Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 359-61. 63 See pp. 219 and 223 below.

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chastized utterances whose content was directly offensive to God or fellow-humans, thus upsetting the religious or social order, the second Borromeo objected to expressions that were shameful by themselves, violating “the laws of decency and shame” (honesto rossore). Without further definition, the cardinal variously referred to these words as being “indecent” (dishonesto), “ugly” (brutto), “deformed” (sconcio), “obscene” (osceno) or “lewd” (impudico). They offended “public decency” and disturbed the relations between the sexes or between age-groups. Clearly the Cardinal spoke primarily about sexually charged locutions. Adam and Eve (he remarked at one point) had seen fit to preserve their shame by covering their nudity; “by contrast, miserable mortals are not ashamed enough to conceal with their words the things and parts they take care to hide with their actions.”64 The archbishop’s campaign marks a significant evolution from the days of his sainted predecessor. Whereas the latter had inveighed particularly against acts of public lechery conveyed through visual means, Cardinal Federico focused on the spoken word. As we have seen, Carlo Borromeo had singled out female ostentation in dress as a root cause for a wide range of sins. Now, his younger cousin warned against the similarly catastrophic effects of indecent speech: “enmities, fights, homicides, and the ruin of entire cities and peoples.” And like Carlo’s sumptuary infractions, Federico’s indecent words could create an occasion of sin and thus constitute a mortal sin, sometimes even doubled by the scandal they caused.65 In short, Cardinal Federico applied the existing discourse of sin and its causation to the field of language. This shift in emphasis surely reflected Federico’s personal inclinations. It is little wonder that a refined nobleman and humanist, who in his literary studies worried deeply about issues of style and taste, should be appalled by vile language overheard in palaces and streets.66 But more was required to qualify this concern as a worthy subject for an intense pastoral campaign. For Borromeo, indecent speech should be eliminated on grounds that were at once religious and social. On the one hand, it constituted an “offense against divine purity”; on the other, it was “unworthy of a Christian and civil person.” Civility is 64

Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:477. Salutevoli ricordi per l’emendatione delle brutte parole (1619), AEM, 4:539. 66 Silvia Morgana, “Gli studi di lingua di F. Borromeo,” Studi linguistici italiani 14 (1988): 191-216. 65

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no doubt the seminal concept here: proper speech was the attribute of “whoever professes to live with civility.” But it also marked the morally righteous person: indecent speech was an “innate vice,” whose mending consequently required forceful action against nature itself.67 Federico Borromeo was not alone among his contemporaries to see Christianity and civilization as equivalents. In the Catholic missions that had taken off in the mid-sixteenth century, these values represented the two sides of the same coin. This was true not only in newly colonized areas overseas, but also in rural backwaters in southern Italy such as the barren mountains of Calabria. Jesuit missionaries had come to call those regions “other Indies” — not unlike those other, extraEuropean territories of Christian expansion — for the combination of paganism and unkempt manners that characterized their inhabitants.68 Nor was Lombardy exempt from such perceptions: in 1597, Jesuits traveling in the bishopric of Como found among the Alpine people “so much barbarity not only of words but of manners” and “so much ignorance of Christian doctrine” that the region might be called “an India in Italy.”69 In those parts, doctrinal instruction, moral correction, and education of manners had to be fellow-travelers. Yet Federico Borromeo did not primarily address ill-behaved mountain-dwellers. Most of his ragionamenti on improper speech were directed to Milanese urbanites, and he often appealed to their civic pride in his attempts to convince them: their collective vice was apt to blemish the community, putting the city in “disrepute among the other nations.”70 Another rhetorical strategy was to attack any sense of urban superiority over a barbaric countryside; thus the cardinal remarked that the “laws of decency and shame” were faithfully 67 See for these quotes Santa opera per emendare il brutto parlare et inhonesto (1619), AEM, 4:533: penitents “innati huius vitii emendationem procurent, vi etiam naturae adhibita,” in the understanding that sin not only offends God, but that it is also “christiano civilique homine indignum”; and Penitentiary Girolamo Settala in his introductory letter to the Santa opera, ibid., 531: “chiunque professa vivere con civiltà...” 68 See Adriano Prosperi, “‘Otras Indias’: Missionari della Controriforma tra contadini e selvaggi,” in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura. Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Firenze, 26-30 giugno 1980 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1982), 205-34; and Id., Tribunali della coscienza, 551-61. 69 ARSI, Med. 76-I, XXIX (littera annua 1597), 223v: “Hinc tanta morum (non solum verborum) alpinos hosce homines barbaries oppresserit, tanta doctrinae christianae ignoratio invaserat, ut Indiam aliquam in Italia diceres...” 70 Thus the expression used in the Santa opera, AEM, 4:531.

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observed in remote parts of the world such as the arid and deserted countryside of Scythia.71 Not the state of nature was at fault, but human society. Within that society, class difference played a role. At several points, Borromeo praised his own peers, members of the nobility, for heeding his warnings, unlike “persons of low condition.” Nevertheless, he directed his efforts at Milan’s entire populace and intended to raise general standards of conduct according to a model in which polite manners, Christian morals, and humanist educational values were inextricably linked. This civilizing project was a universal one indeed, unaffected even by the particularist reservations evident in Federico’s ideas about the clergy. Most characteristic of the Milanese archbishop was his conviction that language should constitute the core of any such project. Speech mirrored general behavior; in Federico’s words, it was a “shadow of our actions,” in which were “depicted” our manners. And what is more, words also revealed the inner self. The result might not be flattering, however, as the cardinal warned his fellow-Milanese: “With your own tongue you sketch a filthy self-image and defame yourself; you thus open the heart which nature wisely left closed.”72 Language thus constituted a crucial link between the interior and the exterior, between the individual and society. Safeguarding, polishing, and cultivating one’s speech served the common good. No city, Federico suggested, could hope to live in peace, order, and harmony if its inhabitants were not well-spoken. This was the lesson of Babel’s tower, and the “strange confusion” of languages that tore it apart.73 The archbishop’s reference to secular values like honor, harmony, and civility was presumably both sincere and calculated to appeal to the civic interests of his fellow-citizens. This makes it easy to forget that his message was also a religious one — as we have seen, civilization went hand in hand with Christianization. Twice Cardinal Federico chose Pentecost to proclaim his call for linguistic purity. To him it was not a coincidence that the Holy Spirit had descended in 71

Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:477. Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:478: “il parlare è quasi ombra delle nostre operationi, e con esso vengono dipinti i nostri costumi...” 73 See Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:496, where Federico claims that the city he has lived in so far is not “una ordinata città, e ripiena di honorevoli cittadini, e di costumati huomini, i quali molta pace, e concordia fra loro studino di mantenere; ma che più tosto io dimoro vicino alla torre di Babel, dove la strana confusione delle lingue si udiva.” 72

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the form of fiery tongues, for it was meant first and foremost to purge, ignite, and illuminate human speech. The conclusion was unavoidable: “If you do not speak honestly, as you are supposed to, that is a sign that the Holy Spirit does not now dwell in you. Certainly your heart has not changed if your tongue has not.”74 In short, the Holy Spirit was itself a civilizing force; conversely, proper language marked a person as bestowed with that divine power. Speech was therefore as transparent and ‘readable’ as general manners. The correspondence between the disposition of the soul and the conduct of the body — a common axiom, as we have seen, of existing social thought — extended to verbal expression. And so did, presumably, the premise of sixteenth-century educational theory that civilizing one’s behavior would result in inner improvement as well. But Federico never stated this explicitly. Instead, he hinted more than once that if the cultivation of speech did not remove the impurities of the soul, it would at least hide them. Civilization implied dissimulation. Archbishop Borromeo entrusted the enactment of this ambitious cultural program to his own clergy, and as so often, success depended on the education of the educators. In this light we should read not only Cardinal Federico’s ragionamenti to his diocesan clergy, but also the pastoral instructions on proper speech issued by his curia officials. In 1619, the penitentiary Girolamo Settala, citing unsatisfactory results of the archbishop’s personal admonitions, sent the diocesan clergy two sets of detailed guidelines. These explained the nature of the sin in considerable detail — very much along the lines of the archbishop’s ragionamenti — and suggested opportune remedies, ranging from prayer and meditation to penance and the sacraments. To carry out the policy, preachers were ordered to sermonize against the offense, while curates should make their rounds through their parishes, instructing all heads of family to police the habits of speech in their homes. But most importantly, the penitentiary addressed the diocesan confessors, secular as well as regular. They were to “devote particular attention” to improper language, so that penitents would “realize the gravity of the sin, blush, and work on mending this innate vice.”75 74

Sacri Ragionamenti, 2:478 and 494. Santa opera, AEM, 4:533: confessors “singularem praestent diligentiam cum poenitentibus, ut peccati gravitatem agnoscentes erubescant et innati huius vitii emendationem procurent...” 75

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During Lent of 1624, the vicar general M. Antonino returned to the charge, urging that confessors not be content with asking whether the sin had been committed, but diligently inquire about place, time, persons involved, possible scandal created, and other concomitant sins. This was all the more important, Antonino pointed out, since penitents “might not have scruples about [indecent speech] and fail to confess it, or only say it with veiled or general words.”76 The sin was especially serious if it happened in places or at social occasions where women or children were present, or in churches. Moreover, priests should threaten obstinate and notorious offenders with potential episcopal reservation or postpone absolution and Easter communion pending improvement on their part. Judging by the tone and content of these diocesan publications, Cardinal Federico’s campaign against verbal impropriety met with numerous obstacles — most seriously, it seems, with indifference. But he did not tire of lashing out against it, mobilizing his clerical and lay collaborators, especially his confessors, and promoting the disciplinary tools his cousin had refined in the battle against other sins: deferral of absolution, reservation of the sin, harsh treatment of recidivist sinners, and the suppression of occasions of sin. Even if it had limited success, Federico Borromeo’s cultural program is highly significant historically. First, the Milanese archbishop articulated a comprehensive program of self-fashioning and civility which, while retaining classist elements, was meant for general application among the population. Combining civility with Christianity, it proposed good manners which were socially useful and morally sound. Second, this was a political program: Cardinal Federico used the existing moral-theological categories and juridico-institutional instruments to enforce this program. The disciplinary revolution of the earlier Borromeo was both normalized and extended to farther-reaching goals of human interaction. In this sense, the two Milanese archbishops may well be said to represent two distinct phases of the CounterReformation.

76

Contra peccatum inhoneste loquentium (11 March 1624), AEM, 4:633-34.

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The crisis of civilization: Federico and the plague Under Cardinal Federico, Milan was again visited by the plague, as it was under Carlo. Unlike his cousin, Federico was not to survive the catastrophe for very long; on September 21, 1631, he succumbed, though apparently not to the disease itself. The epidemic nevertheless posed an exceptional challenge to him as a church leader and an intellectual. Like his predecessor, he responded with a string of public initiatives, rituals, and statements. In these we can read the signature of a complex personality put to an extreme test. They allow a final insight into his mental world, as well as a last comparison with the defunct but ever-present figure of San Carlo, whose reputation for sainthood was derived to a considerable degree from his conduct during the plague of 1576-77. During the late 1620s, fear and rumors of plague came and went in Milan as in the rest of northern Italy.77 These were years of general social dislocation. War over Valtellina had brought violence to Lombardy; combined with failing harvests, it had caused many peasants to flee to the city and beg for support. Civic and ecclesiastical authorities struggled to feed them, contain their discontent, and reconcile conflicting interests of bakers, speculators, and the citizenry at large. In this climate the plague, whose first signs became apparent during the fall of 1629 but were generally recognized only the following spring, came as the last straw. Not surprisingly, the return of the plague was read as an ominous sign of the times and evidence of supernatural intervention. In this regard the Milanese plague of 1630 was no different from other instances of the epidemic, earlier and elsewhere. In this case, however, the search for an explanation produced an extraordinary mass hysteria centered on the suspicion that the infection was caused or spread by pestiferous ointments. Throughout the period, until as late as 1633, the city’s ruling elite and general population lent a willing ear to accusations that malicious untori applied such contagious substances to walls, doors, assiti (the panels separating men and women in churches), and wells. These suspicions were to lead most notoriously to the trial, conviction, and death of Guglielmo 77 I follow the basic narrative of Storia di Milano, 10:499-557, as well as Paccagnini’s chronicle in Processo agli untori, Milano 1630: cronaca e atti giudiziari in edizione integrale, ed. Giuseppe Farinelli and Ermanno Paccagnini (Milano: Garzanti, 1988), 9-143.

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Piazza and Giacomo Mora, whose bodies were crushed by a wheel, burned, and dispersed as a horrendous example to all.78 Cardinal Federico responded to the crisis in ways that were mostly conventional; starting in the spring of 1630, he launched an impressive ritual offensive. In so doing the archbishop consciously drew on San Carlo’s example. Not only did he refer to his predecessor in numerous sermons devoted to the plague, but he ordered the clergy to follow the diocesan emergency instructions of 1576 scrupulously. In keeping with these, Federico reiterated the need for confessors to assist the souls of the sick (even while admitting the validity of confessions “in voto” only) and issued permits for speedy absolution. Even more significantly, he enlisted the saint himself in an intense devotional campaign — composed of church services, processions, fasting and prayer sessions, confession and communion — aimed at imploring God’s mercy. This culminated on June 11, 1630, when after ten days of material and spiritual preparations San Carlo’s remains were carried in solemn procession around the city.79 Cardinal Federico’s ragionamenti about the plague also followed traditional patterns of interpretation. In one of the earliest, delivered during the feast of Epiphany (6 January) of 1630, when he believed the plague had not yet reached Milan, the archbishop reminded his audience that God speaks “through scourges.” The current devastations of war, food shortages, and fear of the nearing plague were therefore “no dreams but words of God: they openly argue with us, echoing widely, with so much power as to rouse the souls of us mortals from their sleep.” It was only a matter of prudence and self-preservation to heed such warnings and “remedy those evils through penance and amendment of manners.” The argument was essentially identical to the one made fifty years earlier by Carlo Borromeo, and followed conventional discourse about sin and disease. More idiosyncratic was Federico’s call for class-specific responses: the nobility was to grow in piety, merchants had to be more generous toward the poor, and the lower classes were to modify their habits of speech.80 Both elements 78

See the trial documents published in Processo agli untori. The instructions were later published in: Federico Borromeo, Instruttioni, ordini, et avvisi dati ... con l’occasione della pestilenza dell’anno 1630... (Milano: nella Stamperia Archiepiscopale, [1631]), 40-71. 80 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:502-03. 79

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— the cardinal’s interest in class and his insistence on virtuous behavior — were to remain central themes in following sermons. The archbishop urgently scolded his fellow-citizens for a wide range of vices, including lechery, ostentation, gluttony, greed, usury, and injustice.81 He often broke these down according to social condition: in one instance, he reproached the nobles for their pursuit of riches and power, their cruelty toward the poor, and their love of luxury; he accused merchants of sexual exploitation of poor virgins, illicit contracts, and unjust profits; and he scolded the poor for their habit of frequenting taverns, indulging in debauchery, and drinking to excess rather than enjoying a modest life at home. In all cases he presented the plague as proper punishment. The cardinal even went so far as to assign each class its particular calamity: war to the nobility, plague to the merchants, and starvation to the poor.82 Overall, the lesson was grim: “If you don’t do penance, you will perish” like the victims of Siloam’s tower in the gospel of St. Luke.83 Most striking in this sad invective is Federico’s indignant return to the sins of the tongue. In his view these had only worsened since his campaign against them had begun. Here the cardinal’s discourse is permeated by an unmistakable weariness: “For this vice I have so often scolded you that these reproaches alone would fill a large book.” Yet how difficult could it be to overcome the bad habit of indecent words and learn “that new language”? The diatribe reached a remarkable climax in the middle of May 1630. The cardinal, addressing the faithful after a procession to S. Barnaba, used that church’s sacred fount as the starting point for a sermon about purification. His main target was the “filth” of the mouth. The latter resembled the leper’s mouth, which biblical law (Lev. 13:45) required to be covered with a cloth to prevent its bad breath from contaminating bystanders. The comparison was particularly astute: it rhetorically established a link between bad language and the plague. Hence the admonition: “Leprous and plague-infected people, close your mouths!” The archbishop admitted that all was not bad; he allowed that nobles and other people of “honorable parentage” had heeded his past warnings rather more 81

E.g., Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:541. Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:513-14; see also, ibid., 517-18, 568-71. 83 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:522; the reference is to the fallen tower of Siloam, and Jesus’s comment on the sinfulness of its victims, in Luke 13:3-4. 82

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than the plebeian crowds. Yet he refused to flatter the former and unjustly to accuse the latter. Nobles had little to boast since their improvement was partly due to “shame and the awareness that [this vice] was unbecoming to their lineage”; common people lacked that stimulus, but made things worse by defending their habit as an old custom. So all of Milan was concerned here, and Federico urged it not to leave a dismal legacy to its children and grandchildren. With an eye on history, he therefore asked his audience to end “this reign of the devil,” leave “idolatry in this fount,” radically to change their lives and customs, and have “these baptismal waters” erase their guilty habits.84 In this fashion Federico presented the plague as an almost apocalyptic test for his grand civilizing project. The epidemic forced that project onto center stage as a battleground between God and the devil, between true religion and idolatry. Unmistakably, the cardinal interpreted the calamity in terms of his own intellectual and pastoral agenda. He did so by grafting it onto a traditional pattern of thought, presumably familiar to most of his audience, which established a causal or at least explanatory link between disease and sin, and between healing and penance. At a closer look, however, his viewpoint turns out to be more complex. For one thing, the archbishop hesitated to blame his entire flock for the catastrophe that had befallen the city. He admitted to his audience that they were least likely to have brought God’s wrath down on the Milanese: churchgoers were by definition the most God-fearing of all.85 As a careful observer, Borromeo refused to lump the good and evil together; as an orator, he was reluctant to alienate his audience and tried to distribute praise and blame evenhandedly.86 Yet Federico’s very 84 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:536-38. According to Castiglioni, the procession to S. Barnaba (hence the sermon) was held on May 16, according to Farinelli, on May 21: see Castiglioni, Il cardinale Federico Borromeo, 229; Farinelli, in Processo agli untori, 53. 85 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:521: “io vado credendo assai probabilmente, che coloro, i quali al presente mi odono, non sieno que’ peccatori scellerati, per cui colpa si vede in questa nostra patria una così grave ruina.” 86 Frederick McGinness suggests that in the sermonizing tradition of CounterReformation Rome moral objections against praise for the living gave way by the 1590s to acceptance of its usefulness; such praise could focus on a person like a Pope but also on a city like Rome (Right Thinking, 162-65 and 190). This shift in emphasis, perhaps reviving an earlier tradition of humanist oratory (on which see John W. O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome. Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450-1521 [Durham: Duke University Press, 1979], esp.

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considerateness created an intellectual and moral problem: the plague did not distinguish between sinners. It could not be the case that the pious were punished, because “punishment presupposes guilt.”87 How then to explain their victimhood? How to interpret the lesson the plague had in store for them? Unable to find a reasonable answer, the archbishop resorted to a game of words hardly masking his perplexity: harm to well-meaning people should not be called punishment, but “tribulations, anguish, and miseries, which God sends their way in secret deliberation.”88 The depth of Federico’s uncertainties is further illustrated in a final text he dedicated to the plague. In early August of 1631, less than two months before his death, he collected his thoughts in a treatise De pestilentia. While he felt assured that the plague was on its last legs, he was still struggling for an explanation. But the assumption with which he started was markedly different from the lesson of his own Ragionamenti: I confess that judging by the pious inclinations of our Milanese, the city’s customs and laws, the devotion of the sacred orders, and an observance of divine worship that has perhaps nowhere been greater, it would never have occurred to me to fear or expect such mournful examples and the divinity’s wrath against this people and this city.89

By turning his earlier blame into overall praise for the city, the cardinal cast doubt on the moralistic suggestions of his own anti-plague sermons: there was no general sinfulness that could have brought on the plague, or at least he, the city’s pastor, had been unaware of it. This premise did not exclude a more limited connection between sin and disease. In fact, Federico lent some credence to the theory that untori might have caused the epidemic. He acknowledged the power of magic over natural processes: “both toxic substances and magical

36-76), may have affected the rhetorical preferences of Cardinal Federico, whose intellectual formation took place in the late sixteenth-century Roman circles studied by McGinness. 87 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:526: “Il punimento presuppone la colpa.” 88 Sacri Ragionamenti, 4:526: “ma si dicono tribolationi, affanni, miserie, che Iddio manda per segreto suo consiglio.” 89 Federigo Borromeo, De pestilentia (La peste di Milano del 1630), ed. Giancarlo Mazzoli (Pavia: Almo Collegio Borromeo, 1964), 18. La peste di Milano, trans. Armando Torno (Milano: Rusconi, 1987), 42.

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potions are capable of destroying life.”90 During the plague years, the archbishop had indeed prohibited all magical means to influence the plague, whether through amulets, malie, or other forms of recourse to the devil. In addition, he had ordered the systematic benediction of houses to cleanse them from any contagion, because of the “likelihood that this could be connected to and fomented by malie...”91 Nevertheless, now that the disease was waning, Cardinal Federico seemed reluctant to embrace a religious explanation of the plague, “because the human mind is almost blind and we are surrounded by darkness.” Doubts about human understanding again precluded definite insight into the deeper motives behind the epidemic, although the archbishop could not resist the thought that its relative mildness in Milan might be considered a sign of “divine favor” and evidence “that ours is not the worst nor the most despicable of Italy’s cities.”92 In any case the author appeared to be more convinced of the force of natural causes, to which he devoted most of the remainder of his memoir, while he left it up to physicians to find the corresponding natural remedies. In writing these pages, however, the archbishop was aware that they raised questions about his own conduct as an archbishop. If a religious explanation was uncertain, what had been the use of his ritual campaign, the penitential processions, and all the rest? The cardinal’s response is as cryptic as it is apologetic. Fearing the spreading of demons, he said, the common people had asked that the city be purified with prayers and ceremonies, “and I satisfied their pressing desire.”93 It is not easy to make sense of the archbishop’s words and actions, let alone detect an overarching coherence in them. To ascribe the discrepancies between the Ragionamenti and De pestilentia to different requirements of genre — those of a pastoral sermon and a humanistic tract — does not solve the problem: these discrepancies are based as much on diverging views as on different rhetorical strategies. To accept without question the cardinal’s own excuse that his ritual campaign

90

Ibid., 53. Instruttioni, ordini, et avvisi, 39-40, 118-19, at 120: “è nato dubio assai probabile che [questo male contagioso] possa esser congiunto con malie, e da esse fomentato, nella maniera che proviamo.” For the problem of magic and superstition, see Chapter Eight. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 53-54. See Processo agli untori, 80. 91

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came in response to popular demand would be simplistic, but to dismiss it entirely would be equally unwise. After all, there is good evidence that he consented to the famed translation of San Carlo’s body only reluctantly and “after many pleas” of the civic authorities.94 Similar hesitations could easily lead to contradictions: on May 15, the same day on which the archbishop announced mass processions to S. Ambrogio and S. Barnaba, he also ordered his parish priests to keep processions of the SS. Sacramento limited, “since I consider it inexpedient that people meet in groups these days.”95 Perhaps we should consider these contradictions and tensions as a characteristic feature of Federico’s personality, resulting from a combination of conventional beliefs, traditional expectations coming with his role as church leader, and intellectual habits developed in the very different milieu of humanists. In any case, he conjures up a complex and shaded self-portrait, strikingly different from the more monochromatic but consistent image of his predecessor and example, Carlo Borromeo. On the one hand, he publicly interpreted events like the plague in terms of sin and punishment, updating this traditional outlook with contemporary fears of magic (no doubt shared by himself) and his own concerns about language and civilization. On the other hand, he cast doubt on this religious framework by resisting the very propitiatory acts he organized and by endorsing a naturalistic viewpoint in his personal writings. The resulting uncertainty about things supernatural, which the archbishop sometimes even admitted in public, has obvious consequences for the themes that concern us in this book. Implied in his statements is a slackening of the long-assumed ties between the material and the spiritual, between social behavior and divine intervention, between sin and punishment. Implied is also, inevitably, a change in the meaning of penance, whose purifying and redemptive functions similarly loosened their direct connection to the material and social order, to be relegated to the spiritual realm. But the cardinal never arrived at acknowledging, spelling out, and sharing these shifts with his listeners and readers.

94 Letters of the Venetian Pietro Antonio Marioni and the Milanese gran cancelliere Ferrer cited in Storia di Milano, 10:523. 95 Quoted in Processo agli untori, 53.

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PART TWO

ADVANCES AND RETREATS

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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO

It is one thing to understand the basic features of a program of discipline; it is quite another to grasp its connections to and bearing on social reality. To an extent, its norms and methods may reflect common values or expectations, but when applied in practice they are equally likely to provoke those at the receiving end. Accordingly, they can elicit various gradations of approval, rejection, or neglect. Consent and reception may vary from group to group, or from person to person. Finally, the implementation of such a program may have consequences of its own, often unintended and unforeseen. Grasping the complexity of these outcomes is the real challenge of any study of social discipline. In the first half of this book we have traced the rise of confessionalism in Counter-Reformation Milan. As in other parts of Europe, the religious and political crisis of the era spawned ecclesiastical initiatives to ensure religious orthodoxy and social conformity through an ambitious disciplinary project, which included the reshaping of the clergy, the application of confession for purposes of public order, changes in church ritual and architecture, and the imposition of disciplined or ‘civilized’ codes of conduct. In some instances — the confessional, changes in church design, Federico Borromeo’s campaign for proper speech — it became clear that the program received mixed reviews. In the following chapters, we will investigate its reception and social consequences more systematically. This requires us, first, to reconstruct the institutional apparatus of enforcement. Controlling the attendance at the confessional, implementing episcopal directives, supervising the solution of cases of conscience, screening confessors’ activities, enhancing their reliability — these and other new pursuits of the church hierarchy came to influence the social components of religion in multiple ways. Second, and even more importantly, we will study this disciplinary apparatus at work, and attempt to gauge its performance, the responses it received, and the effects it produced. Most sources studied here are products of the ecclesiastical organs of control themselves. Like the normative texts examined in the first half of the book — manuals of confession, sermons, church laws —

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they derive their unity and perspective from the disciplinary intent of the authority who ordered them written down. Beyond this, however, their range is considerable: this vast and little explored documentation includes records as diverse as certificates of confession, synodal inquiries, parish sermons, pastoral visitations, judicial investigations, and reams of correspondence between the local clergy and the central curia. They allow us to approach the practices of confession from a variety of angles, and to take a far closer look than normative materials usually allow. The following chapters explore the episcopal discipline of confession at four levels of increasing subtlety. The first is purely external: controlling attendance at the confessional. The Milanese church leadership attempted both to police the performance of basic sacramental requirements and to promote greater degrees of participation. They did the latter by advocating and institutionalizing the new devotional program of ‘frequent confession’; however, the success of these efforts appears uncertain. In contrast, the traditional routines of annual confession remained solidly in place, including their established functions of social reconciliation. Yet their dynamics were deeply affected as the Easter sacraments became a yearly checkpoint, not only to verify attendance but also to pursue other priorities of episcopal policy, whether they concerned orthodoxy, usury, dancing, or other sins. In some of these matters, as the next chapter reveals, the bishop actively reached into the confessional by reserving their absolution to himself or requiring confessors to consult with the curia. Implemented with ecclesiastical sanctions and show of force, this bold attempt to control the substance of confessions proved subject to serious limitations. That became clear most spectacularly when Carlo Borromeo’s campaign to reconfigure Milanese public life caused a popular backlash and a crisis of authority reverberating as far as papal Rome and the Spanish royal court. Probably more influential in reshaping the forum of conscience, though slower, more indirect, and less reliable, was a tool of discipline discussed in the seventh chapter: the supervision, instruction, and training of the local clergy. Evidence about newly required meetings of priests across the diocese shows the complexity of forging a new professional class, imbued with a group spirit, reliable in carrying out a ‘care of souls’ that tackled ambitious social goals, and equipped with up-to-date technical knowledge. Thus social discipline was to an important degree a cultural problem, which ultimately

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played out at the level of interpretation, conceptualization, and language. A disagreement about popular healing practices, studied in the last chapter, illustrates how episcopal policies could easily go unobserved, by both clergymen and the laity, unless they could be made to stick in the depths of the mind as much as the will. In this case, detecting and suppressing ‘superstitions’ required inculcating a definition of the term that was novel for confessors and penitents alike. Penitential discipline depended on a combination of power and knowledge.

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CHAPTER FIVE

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS: PIETY AND OBLIGATION

“As for the well-being of these souls, thank God we have made enormous progress.” In these glowing terms, a priest of Frassineto commented on his activities in a letter of January 1571 to the Milanese curia. What was the measure of his success? “Let me just say that I am forever occupied in confessions and the holy sacraments, in settling disputes, and in correcting a thousand disorders among these poor souls; I think part of it is due to some rough talk that I do on Sundays.”1 The remark offers a brief glance at the functions of a rural parish priest, including those — closely related to one another — of confessor and peacemaker. At the same time, it also reflects a fraction of the multiple ways in which the post-Tridentine reform programs were implemented. This report, chosen at random from a wealth of similar letters, was part of a regular correspondence between clergymen in the ecclesiastical peripheries and their superiors stationed in diocesan headquarters. As a channel of communication in a business relationship, such letters were meant to monitor the “progress” made by lower clergy in the field. In fact, an enormous distance separated the reform plans sketched out on episcopal drawing boards from their implementation on the ground. The gap was filled by an extensive apparatus of surveillance and enforcement. This administrative network came to affect the practice of confession as much as other elements of parish life, despite the obvious difficulty of steering a practice protected by confidentiality. All controls were therefore necessarily indirect. This chapter will highlight the most external of them, which bypassed the content of confessions altogether: the various ways in which the curia sought to control or 1 BAM, X.293 inf., letter of the vice-provost of Frassineto, 31 January 1571: “Quanto si spetta al beneficio di queste anime, Dio gratia si è fato grandissimo frutto, et dico tanto che continuamente sono occupato nelle confessione et santissimi sacramenti, nel accordar le differenze, et rafformar mille disordini di queste povere anime; penso che parte sia provenuto da quatro rozze parolle che io le dico la festa...”

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stimulate attendance, most fundamentally by checking compliance with the Lateran requirement of annual confession. This information was relatively simple to obtain in most individual cases because it remained unambiguously outside the secrecy of the confessional. Nonetheless, Counter-Reformation bishops undertook an enormously ambitious and practically unprecedented task when they decided to track these data systematically for entire diocesan populations. To make it feasible, they took advantage of the bureaucratic methods that confessional churches across Europe developed to oversee religious and social behavior. With this information in hand, the hierarchy could detect and correct any infractions against the Easter obligation. Moreover, the Milanese church leaders sought to increase individual attendance of the sacraments well beyond the required minimum. From their perspective, ‘frequent’ confession was not only laudable in the laity as an intensive form of spirituality, but also because it could serve as a means of clerical supervision. What happened to the practice of confession under these circumstances? Some recent interpretations suggest that the advances of frequent confession as a devotional routine heralded a deep transformation in the social functions of confession, turning a periodic rite of reconciliation into a personalized regime of interior discipline. The evidence studied here calls for a revision of this hypothesis. While it leaves the practice of frequent confession largely in the dark, it does show that the Easter confession remained the yearly high point of penitential practice, and that reconciliation continued to be a basic component. While the Lenten routine was even more punctually enforced and observed than in the past, it also suffered the strains and stresses of heavy-handed management. The penitential spirit coexisted uneasily with the culture of bureaucracy, while traditional peacemaking techniques came to operate under the shadows of judicial enforcement.

Institutions and society Institutional reorganization and development were the backbone of the Borromean (as of any other) project of social discipline. For this reason a brief description of the Milanese diocesan bureaucracy is in order, along with an historiographical perspective on its importance, before we enter into the thick of this chapter’s theme. Carlo

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Borromeo came to the episcopal see with a strictly hierarchical view of the Church, not only as a sacred body but as an organization.2 What he found was an institution whose power structure was utterly fragmented and full of irregularities, and whose wealth, jurisdiction, and privileges were variously controlled by laymen and ecclesiastics, themselves carved up in multiple categories of secular and regular clergy. Despite these obstacles, Borromeo was by and large successful in imposing his hierarchical vision on at least one group: the secular clergy. He did so by forcing them into a pyramidal structure of command, headed by himself, whose ideal and simplified outlines can be sketched as follows. In conformity with Tridentine legislation (ultimately going back to the Fourth Lateran Council), Borromeo designated the parish as the cornerstone of lay religion, with the parish priest, or curate, as its minister. In the countryside (the ‘diocese’ in contemporary terminology), curates became subject to the authority of rural vicars (vicari foranei), responsible for territories called vicariati foranei (often, but not always, coinciding with existing pievi). The vicariati, in turn, were combined to form six large ‘regions,’ each under the supervision of a regional visitor. In the city, the parishes were divided into six quarters, or porte, and answered to the authority of prefects (prefetti delle porte). All lines of authority and communication came together in the central episcopal curia. There the bishop had a considerable, and growing, staff to assist him: the vicar general, along with specialists for areas such as criminal justice, the care of female monasteries, church buildings, and so on.3 Three means of communication formed the lifelines 2 Massimo Marcocchi, “L’immagine della chiesa in Carlo Borromeo,” in San Carlo e il suo tempo, 1:210-36 (repr. in Carlo Borromeo e l’opera della “grande riforma,” 25-36); Prosperi, “Chierici e laici.” 3 Danilo Zardin, “Tra continuità delle strutture e nuovi ideali di ‘riforma’: la riorganizzazione borromaica della Curia arcivescovile,” in Lombardia borromaica, Lombardia spagnola 1554-1659, ed. Paolo Pissavino and Gianvittorio Signorotto, 2 vols. (Roma: Bulzoni, 1995), 2:695-764. For some comparisons, see Paolo Prodi, “Lineamenti dell’organizzazione diocesana in Bologna durante l’episcopato del Card. G. Paleotti (1566-1597),” in Problemi di vita religiosa, 323-94; Id., “Strutture e organizzazione della chiesa di Venezia tra il XV e il XVI secolo: ipotesi di ricerca,” Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna, Classe di scienze morali, Memorie, 61 (1970-71); Id., “Tra centro e periferia: le istituzioni diocesane post-tridentine,” in Cultura, religione e politica nell’età di Angelo Maria Querini, ed. G. Benzoni and M. Pegrari (Brescia, 1982); and Angelo Turchini, “L’organizzazione di un archivio vescovile nel ‘500: il caso di Cesena (da un inventario inedito),” Studi romagnoli 30 (1979): 155-96.

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of the diocesan machinery. First, there was an incessant stream of correspondence — letters, petitions, reports, inquiries, summonses — between the center and the periphery of the diocese. Second, the diocese was inspected during yearly rounds of visitations by the bishop, the vicar general, regional visitors, or rural vicars. Third, church officials gathered in countless meetings (congregazioni) at all levels of the hierarchy: in small, specialized committees at the top, clerical gatherings in local districts, annual meetings of the bishop and his rural vicars, diocesan synods, and provincial councils. In the literature on confessionalism, administrative organizations such as the Milanese are described as prime engines of social change. They embodied the centralizing and bureaucratizing tendencies of territorial churches (as well as states) of the post-Reformation, introduced a major new factor in the relations between the laity and the Church, and carried out the disciplinary projects designed by the latter. Their impact on Italian society, however, remains an underdeveloped field of research. Paolo Prodi has rightly insisted that social discipline took shape in “complex processes of interaction between institutions and society.” These processes spawned a “connective tissue in which collective models of conduct [were] formed; models which in turn, after a constant interplay of elaborations, impositions, filters, and controls, solidif[ied] into structures.”4 However, this theoretical insistence on an interactive view of discipline has so far produced only modest applications in historical research. This is due in part to the legaland institutional-historical interests many historians of social discipline have brought to bear on their subject: hence a heavy emphasis on norms and institutional development. Implicit in much research remains also an assumption of the first scholars of social discipline, notably Oestreich and Reinhard, namely that discipline took the form of top-down imposition, transmission, and inculcation of social norms.5 This has created the impression of an essentially unified and unilinear process, sometimes called ‘modernization,’ which was certainly subject to temporary setbacks, resistance or differences of speed, but whose success must ultimately be taken for granted. Critics of these assumptions have begun to investigate the confrontation between the new institutions and society, highlighting the active part subjects of dis4 5

Prodi, “Controriforma e/o Riforma Cattolica,” 235. See, e.g., numerous recent studies collected in Disciplina dell’anima.

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cipline took in the process.6 In continuing this research, still scarce for Italy, the issue is not only one of investigating strategies of resistance, selectiveness, and appropriation, but to investigate the workings of disciplinary instruments themselves, not merely in theory but in practice, and with an eye for effects, even if involuntary, as much as intentions.7 Such an approach is also called for in the study of confession. To be sure, the paucity of direct evidence about a practice wrapped in secrecy seriously impairs socio-historical approaches to the topic, and has contributed to historians’ almost exclusive reliance on moral-theological and normative sources. Despite serious efforts at close reading, attentive to the reflections and inflections of social reality, scholars have not always avoided a blurring of the lines between precept and practice, between imposition and reception.8 This has reinforced 6

See, e.g., Hsia, Social Discipline, 123 and135-73; Marc Forster, The CounterReformation in the Villages. Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560-1720 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); and Kommunalisierung und Christianisierung. Voraussetzungen und Folgen der Reformation 1400–1600, ed. Peter Blickle and Johannes Kunisch, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, Beiheft 9 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989). Acknowledging these criticisms of Oestreich’s work and of his own, Reinhard suggests that they can be integrated into the study of social discipline; nevertheless, he downplays their significance by denying that relations between authorities of Church or state and popular communities were “antagonistic” and by reducing them instead to “a fairly complex give and take” (Reinhard, “Disciplinamento sociale,” 118, 120-21). 7 Studies on Italy include Angelo Torre’s important work, Il consumo di devozioni. Religione e comunità nelle campagne dell’Ancien Régime (Venezia: Marsilio, 1995), anticipated in “Politics Cloaked in Worship: State, Church and Local Power in Piedmont, 1570-1770,” Past and Present 134 (1992): 42-92. More inclined to accept the successes of confessionalism is the likewise heavily documented study, concentrating on marital discipline, by Oscar Di Simplicio, Peccato penitenza perdono. La formazione della coscienza nell’Italia moderna (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1994); Di Simplicio speaks of “un lungo ciclo pedagogico che riplasma le coscienze di generazioni di individui inculcando il principio dell’obbedienza ai valori sociali ed umani imposti dallo stato confessionale mediceo” (ibid., 394). On unintentional effects, see Reinhard, “Disciplinamento sociale,” 115-16. On the limits of missionary impulses and the difficulty of penetrating the European countryside, see Louis Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions in Europe and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, ca. 1500-1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1997). 8 Examples include Lea, A History of Auricular Confession; Tentler, Sin and Confession; Delumeau, L’aveu et le pardon (on which see Schilling’s critique, “Die Kirchenzucht,” 38); and Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk” (on which see my review in Sixteenth Century Journal 28 [1997]: 897-98).

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a view of confession as a system of top-down ecclesiastical control, which might be lax or severe, but whose practice more or less followed the trends of church policy. The broader range of source materials studied in the second half of this book suggests a far more complex reality, in which discipline was exercised at various levels and with differing degrees of efficacy.

Rhythms of confession The first level is that of the external controls on sacramental attendance. As Tridentine reformers of parish life sat down to redirect sacramental practices, they infused age-old practices with new goals and applications, but without (at least intentionally) surrendering their traditional features. Confession meant, most fundamentally, fulfilling the ancient requirement for all adult Christians to confess their sins once a year to a priest. Codified by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), this requirement had found its niche in the liturgical year — that cycle of religious ritual, marked by the clock and the calendar, and linked with the seasons, the patterns of work, and the customs of sociability and entertainment.9 Confession took on a function at the heart of the most incisive and protracted of religious events, the forty-odd days of Lent. Preceded by the ritual counterpoint of Carnival, the yearly season of fasting and penance led up to Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, on which all adults were expected to partake of communion. Medieval theologians generally viewed confession as a necessary preparation for communion, and so it was only natural for the Lateran requirement to become identified with the Lenten confession. Complementary parts of one sequence, confession and communion were the culmination of a long penitential season.10

9 Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), esp. 43-53; Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 55-80. 10 Historical studies on the Lenten season have overwhelmingly concentrated on Carnival (see Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe, 85-116). For the seasonal aspect of penance, see Hervé Martin, “Confession et contrôle social à la fin du Moyen Age,” in Pratiques de la confession, 117-36, at 121; Bossy, Christianity in the West, 42-45, 50-51; and Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 38-47.

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Deeply ingrained in collective religious life, Lent was no matter for liturgical or doctrinal revisions in the sixteenth century; thus the decrees of Trent kept silent about it. But a glimpse at Carlo Borromeo’s activities suffices to show how passionately this CounterReformation bishop took the old idea of seasonal penance to heart and thus renewed a favorite theme of late medieval preaching.11 Borromeo combined yearly exhortations and instructions, written and verbal, with a major bureaucratic effort to make optimal participation in the Lenten celebrations arguably into his first priority in matters of religious observance.12 The archbishop expressed his fervor most dramatically, with an annual crescendo of personal exasperation and civic confrontations throughout the 1570s, in his fight against Carnival. Borromeo’s campaign to blot out this (in his view) stain of secular dissolution at the beginning of the holy season took the form of a bitter liturgical dispute. Milanese custom had it that Lent started not on Ash Wednesday, as in the Roman calendar, but on the following Sunday. As a consequence, that day had become the culmination of elaborate Carnival festivities. And so the Milanese Carnival had gained wide notoriety in Italy for its extended length as well as its brilliance. Borromeo attempted to reverse this situation by introducing the Roman custom, which resulted in a bitter conflict with the secular authorities. Moreover, as we have already seen, he underscored his intentions by mounting a ritual counteroffensive in the weeks before Lent: the liturgies of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima were dusted off as a devotional alternative to the secular inauguration of the penitential season.13 Borromeo’s writings on the subject reveal a characteristic mixture of traditionalism and outrage. On the one hand, he expressed a conventional view of Lent in comparisons with the annual cycles of agriculture. “This period,” as he told the Lenten confessors of 1584, 11 This continuity remains underexplored, but see Franco Barbieri, “La controriforma nello Stato di Milano da S. Antonino a S. Carlo Borromeo,” Bollettino della Società pavese di storia patria 12 (1912): 119-50 and 237-58; John W. O’Malley, “Saint Charles Borromeo and the Praecipuum Episcoporum Munus: His Place in the History of Preaching,” in San Carlo Borromeo, 139-57. 12 See, apart from the conciliar and synodal decrees, the edicts collected in AEM, 2:1113-34; the pastoral letters, e.g. AEM, 3: 487-504, 679-84; in addition, Borromeo heavily promoted the Lenten penance in his preaching, e.g. Saxius, 4:1-41. 13 See pp. 76-77 above, and p. 248 below.

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“can justly be called harvest-time. For among the other days of the year there is no time more appropriate to dispel the diseases of the souls and to incite them more effectively to virtue... If fruits can be hoped for at any point of the year, now is certainly the time to collect them.”14 On the other hand, the very rituality and repetitiveness of the occasion stirred the bishop’s concern about spiritual superficiality. Hence, “Listen to ... Jeremiah, who described our grief and the unhappiness of our times with utmost clarity: ‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved’ [Jer. 8.20]. So many Lents have passed, and little or no harvest has been collected.”15 Yet if Borromeo lamented an imperfect devotion degrading the penitential season, he nowhere doubted that the routine itself was firmly in place — a conclusion which we will see confirmed further on. Borromeo’s penitentialism, combined with his predilection for public worship as a means of shaping the social order, also made him exploit the rest of the liturgical year for collective fasting, penance, and purification: there were major feasts like Pentecost, Assumption, All Saints, and Christmas; there were special events, such as jubilees, which lured the faithful with the reward of plenary indulgence.16 Remaining in place as occasions to confess, of course, were also personal circumstances thought to require ritual demarcation and spiritual preparation: a trip, a military campaign, an illness, a pregnancy, and most of all the deathbed.17 14 Saxius, 4:2: “Tempus hoc appellari merito potest tempus messis, cum inter ceteros anni dies nullum opportunius tempus occurrat, ad animarum morbos depellendos, easque ad virtutem solidius incitandas... Si aliquando in anni decursu fructus sperandus fuit, nunc certe maximus colligendus offertur...” 15 Saxius, 4:2-3: “Audite eumdem Jeremiam, doloris nostri et temporum horum infelicitatem praeclarissime describentem: Transiit messis, finita est aestas: et nos salvati non sumus [Jer. 8.20]. Transierunt jam tot Quadragesimae; et parva aut nulla collecta est messis.” 16 For the frequency of confession, see generally Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1892. A general jubilee was held in Milan in 1576 as an extension of the Roman Holy Year of 1575; on occasion, there were also extraordinary jubilees. On the phenomenon, see now Genoveffa Palumbo, Giubileo giubilei : pellegrini e pellegrine, riti, santi, immagini per una storia dei sacri itinerari (Roma : RAI ERI, 1999). 17 See esp. Sixth Provincial Council (1582), AEM, 2:741-42; De sacramento extremae unctionis rubricae seu instructiones (ca. 1586), AEM, 2:1368. The plague was a prime time for confession, both for those threatened by the disease and the recovering patients; see Fifth Provincial Council (1579), AEM, 2:569-70 and 617-18. On soldiers, see Sixth Provincial Council (1582), ibid., 770-71; on pilgrims, Fourth Diocesan Synod (1574),

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Despite his traditionalism, Borromeo also adopted a markedly different mode of confession whose rise (though not origins) scholars have placed in the sixteenth century. It aimed at establishing an intensive spiritual relationship between a confessor, or director of conscience, and a penitent, and it assumed a high frequency of confession to fuel and sustain this lasting rapport made of trust, the wish to impart and receive advice, and confidentiality. In advocating this regime of ‘frequent confession’ (as we have already seen), Borromeo and other bishops of the Tridentine generation took their cue from Jesuit devotional practices, but the Milanese archbishop carefully integrated it in his program of diocesan reform.18 In addition to exploiting frequent confession selectively for disciplinary purposes (as we will see shortly), Borromeo advocated the practice to the laity at large in fervent texts like his admonitions “for a Christian lifestyle,” written in the aftermath of the plague, and instructed his clergy to take up the same cause, most extensively in his Avvertenze for confessors.19 We have some evidence that they did. The Jesuits active in Lombardy were obviously as interested in promoting this penitential strategy as Borromeo. Once Jesuit missionaries appeared on the scene, so their annual reports suggest, the faithful flocked in droves toward confessionals, examined their conscience in ‘general confessions,’ and committed themselves to a new life. The very first report sent from Milan presented one such conversion in terms of the miraculous. When a person burdened with numerous unconfessed sins presented himself, candle in hand, for communion, a worm came out of his mouth, extinguishing the candle and preventing him from taking the Eucharist. “Confused and contrite, he came to one of our priests and confessed generally the sins of all his life and promised to do severe

decr. 23, ibid., 886-87. See also the guidelines of the Mantuan bishop Ercole Gonzaga: the parish priest “monstri loro che in alcuni casi sono tenuti a confessarsi più volte l’anno, come son tempi di peste, di malatia, di guerra, di parto, quando si piglia viaggio pericoloso di ladroni, o di mare” (Gonzaga, Breve ricordo, c. 7r). 18 See pp. 77-79 above. 19 First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:42; Instructiones de sacramento Poenitentiae (ca. 1586), AEM, 2:1309. The Avvertenze (AEM, 2:1892) instruct the confessor on how to convince the reluctant to ever more frequent confessions: first, on the main church feasts, then, once every month, and finally, once a week.

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penance in the future.”20 While such quasi-hagiographical exempla are not uncommon in the Jesuit reports, their authors were more often matter-of-fact in recounting the year’s successes. In 1572, during his time among the Lombard Jesuits, Giovanni Botero reported that “in Milan a single priest has heard more than fifty [general confessions] this year, and there is almost no week in which we do not hear five or six.” And Botero went on to illustrate the “usefulness” of this technique. Many persons of ill repute had “entered monasteries or at least changed their lifestyle, by leaving behind evil practices, theft, fornication, or adultery, and making restitution of thousands of scudi–from 300 to 600 up to 800 ducati.” Thanks to “the same means of confession,” Botero exulted, a thief who one night had cleared out an entire shop had returned great quantities of stolen goods.21 A similar report of 1576 elaborated in particular on men who had been convinced to remove their concubines from their homes, and immoral women induced to become nuns or to marry.22 Parish priests sometimes made similar efforts, as is evident in a sermon of 1569 by the curate Giacomo Pozzo of Rosate. He explained the need of frequent confession by way of a vivid medical metaphor: “Just as we can remove rotting humors — the cause of bodily fevers — by vomiting, in the same way we drive out of our mouths the sins of conscience — the cause of our spiritual fevers — during confession.” The more often this spiritual purgation was performed, the better: “A Christian must

20

ARSI, Med. 75, fols. 59v-60r (littera annua, 16 May 1565): “L’onde confusa et insieme conpuncta venne da un delli nostri saccerdoti et si confessò generalmente di tutta sua vita promettendoli di volere fare per l’avenire aspera penitenza.” The author, Lelio Bisoglio, considered the case “assai maravigliosa.” 21 ARSI, Med. 75, fols. 92v-93r (letter of 10 June 1572), following a remark about general confessions heard in Forlí, Genoa, and Venice: “In Milano un sol sacerdote ne ha uditto in quest’anno meglio di 50, e non passa forsi settimana che non se n’odino 5 et 6 e più. ... in Milano persone, che l’honestà loro poco curavano, o sono entrate in monasterij, o almeno hanno mutato stile, lasciatesi male pratiche, furti, fornicationi, adulterij, fatte restitutioni d’alcune migliaia di scudi di 300 et 600 et sin’alla somma d’800 ducati in un luoco uno ha fatto restitutione di gran somma di robbe, che spogliando di notte una bottega havea preso, co’l medesimo mezzo delle confessioni.” 22 Ibid., fol. 20r (littera annua by Antonio Sambusita, 31 January 1576). Sambusita was similarly interested in numbers: “Multorum sunt auditae confessiones generales a nostris, quorum nonnulli quinquaginta hoc anno, aliqui quattuor vel etiam quinque una die aliquando exceperunt.”

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confess every month — especially those of you who are registered in the school of the Holy Sacrament — and every time that you have stained your soul and your conscience with a mortal sin.”23 The reference to the company of the Holy Sacrament was not a coincidence, for Carlo Borromeo tried to use the institutions of lay piety to stimulate frequent confession. Monthly confession and communion became a standard prescription in most confraternity rules; some also favored general confessions, the daily examination of conscience, and the direction of a “spiritual father.”24 Moreover, in a striking parallel with devotional trends in Lutheran and Calvinist Europe, Borromeo came to envision the family as a locus of intense spiritual exercises. He entrusted heads of family, fathers in particular, with the task of 23

ASDM, XIV, 52, no. 28: “La febre del peccato se cura per la confessione sacramentale, imperoché sí come nel vomito corporale si cacciono fuora gli humori corrotti, quali sono materia de la febre, in questa maniera ne la confessione si mandono fuori per la bocca i peccati de la consienza, che sono materia de la febre spirituale... O confession santa! Si debbe adunque frequentare, non solamente tre volte lo anno, ma ogni mese il christiano si doverebbe confessare, massime vuoi altri che sete descritti ne la scuola del Santissimo Sacramento, e ogni volta che havete machiati la anima, et la conscienza di peccato mortale.” For more examples, see in the same volume (no. 11) an anonymous sermon of 3 April 1569 (“e non si vol andare a questo sanctissimo sacramento come haveti fato fin adesso: bisogna andarli con più preparatione et intelligentia, et più spesso che sarà molto più utilità ale anime vostre”); and ibid., 55, fasc. 4, a sermon by Battista Visino, curate of Morterone (“Pilliate adoncha il ditto de Simon Petro: Petro confesa esser peccator, cossì dovemo far noii confessandosi spesse volte non esser ritrosi...”). 24 E.g., Regole della Compagnia generale del S. Sacramento, AEM, 3:262-66; rule of the Compagnie della Penitenza (1569), ed. in Danilo Zardin, San Carlo Borromeo ed il rinnovamento della vita religiosa dei laici. Due contributi per la storia delle confraternite nella diocesi di Milano (Legnano: Memorie Società Arte Storia, 1982), 52 (requiring fortnightly confession); Regole della confraternità de i disciplinati, AEM, 3:302 (with great emphasis: “Il sacramento della penitenza e quello della sacra communione sono le due colonne che hanno da reggere e conservare fermo e stabile l’edificio spirituale di questa confraternità”); Constitutioni e regole della compagnia e scuole della dottrina christiana (1572), AEM, 3:152-62, 244-45. On sacramental practices in Tridentine confraternities, see Roberto Rusconi, “Confraternite, compagnie e devozioni,” La Chiesa e il potere politico dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. Giorgio Chittolini and Giovanni Miccoli, Storia d’Italia, Annali 4 (Torino: Einaudi, 1986), 484-85; Danilo Zardin, “Le confraternite in Italia settentrionale fra XV e XVIII secolo,” Società e storia 11 (1987): 112-13; Christopher F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 90; on the companies of Christian Doctrine, Turrini, “‘Riformare il mondo,’” esp. 443; recent studies on Milanese schools pay relatively little attention to their devotional regimes (see p. 75, n. 77 above).

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encouraging and organizing daily Mass attendance, prayer, and the examination of conscience, as well as frequent confession and communion. Family members were to confess preferably with one and the same confessor, “so that he can better provide for their spiritual needs,” and they were to communicate together.25 Borromeo’s ideal thus integrated confession and related spiritual exercises in a continuum of religious observance, which was personal as well as social. When it comes to assessing the outcome of these efforts, we would be unwise to underestimate the cumulative effects of missionary initiative, penitential rhetoric, and pastoral injunction. On the other hand, we should not automatically conclude that these pressures drastically modified the average attendance of the confessional. Yet this is what many, if not most, interpretations of early modern confession imply. Downplaying attendance at the sacrament during the later Middle Ages, while heralding a jump in the frequency of confession as the mark of the post-Tridentine age, scholars have created the illusion of a dramatic shift. The issue is not merely a quantitative one, for the extremes of the perceived change have often become identified with the two very different forms of confession that we have examined: one called ‘seasonal,’ or ‘ritual,’ and the other ‘frequent.’ This has resulted, most markedly in the work of John Bossy, in the suggestion that a periodic rite of reconciliation was effectively turned into a personalized regime of inner devotion. According to Bossy, the medieval practice of penance was perfectly integrated in the mechanics of community life. Its main focus was on the redemption of socially disruptive behavior — sins of greed and hatred ranging from homicide and theft to usury and adultery. Confessors played the role of social arbiters, working for the reconciliation of all members of their flock, not only with God but also with their local community. In the early modern period, however, a process of individualization took place, and confession turned inward. The approach that came to prevail was less concerned with the individual’s “exterior” social relations than with his or her “interior” 25

Ricordi al popolo..., AEM, 3:664-65; see also Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1893. On patriarchy and post-Tridentine Catholicism, see Albano Biondi, “Aspetti della cultura cattolica post-tridentina. Religione e controllo sociale,” in Intellettuali e potere, 253-302. On the Lutheran family, see the contrasting interpretations of Steven E. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); and Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

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relations with God. In this view, confession took on its “modern” shape as a means of interior discipline, of individual devotion and spiritual perfection. The confessor was accordingly transformed from a social arbiter to a director of conscience.26 We may safely assume that the frequency of confession and its outcome and function were correlated. But it is unclear whether either term of the equation underwent wide and significant change in the period that concerns us. Neither the normative sources studied so far nor the records of diocesan administration examined in this study permit estimates of the extent to which the Lombard laity adopted ‘frequent’ confession. Sample studies of rural areas suggest that a majority of parishioners fulfilled the minimal requirements but not much more.27 We are probably justified in assuming, following Angelozzi and other scholars, that frequent confession and the devotional practices associated with it were more likely to flourish in cities than in the countryside, and that they were more widespread in institutional settings like confraternities, colleges, and convents than among ordinary parishioners.28 And thus we could, for instance, try 26 Bossy, “Social History of Confession.” Bossy’s influence is evident in recent studies such as Angelozzi, “Interpretazioni della penitenza sacramentale”; Briggs, “The Sins of the People”; Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk”; and Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Schilling accepts the interpretation of post-Tridentine confession as a regime of interior discipline, and hence distinguishes Catholic discipline from Calvinist forms of community discipline (Schilling, “Die Kirchenzucht,” 37-40). 27 See, e.g., Francesco Braghetta, Le ‘Tre Valli Svizzere’ nelle visite pastorali del Cardinale Federico Borromeo (1595-1631) (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1977), 131-32. Richer Neapolitan data studied by Romeo suggest a continued minimal attendance until the turn of the seventeenth century, when a remarkable increase took place, attributed by Romeo to the waning of parochial discipline; this promising hypothesis invites further verification (Romeo, Ricerche su confessione dei peccati, 54-57, 85-88). My assessment of the Lombard situation echoes that of François Lebrun, “The Two Reformations: Communal Devotion and Personal Piety,” in Passions of the Renaissance, 69-109, at 75-86. 28 Angelozzi, “Interpretazioni della penitenza sacramentale,” 80f. Châtellier’s work on the early-modern Marian congregations, too, views pious institutions as pillars of the new devotional practices (Louis Châtellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society, trans. Jean Birrell [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1989]). No doubt frequent confession caught on especially in the post-Tridentine convents: Adriano Prosperi, “Dalle ‘divine madri’ ai ‘padri spirituali,’” in Women and Men in Spiritual Culture, XVI-XVII Centuries. A Meeting of South and North, ed. Elisja Schulte van Kessel (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1986), 71-90; Giovanna Paolin, “Confessione

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to measure the success of frequent confession by the spreading of lay confraternities. As for Milan, the current state of research does not allow us to undertake this test; moreover, we run into the contrast between abundant normative sources and very few direct reflections of religious life in these pious associations. Danilo Zardin’s extensive research on the Lombard confraternities contains a stern warning not to confuse episcopal ideal and social reality. “It is very likely,” according to Zardin in one case study, “that still in the seventeenth century the confraternities of the Holy Sacrament were unable to embody in any rigorous way the model proposed by the Borromeos.”29 And it is equally plausible, as studies of other regions suggest, that confraternal devotional and penitential practices, especially in the countryside, continued to foster traditional goals of community concord rather than reclusive forms of private devotion.30 Another approach sometimes taken — the study of Jesuit statistics — also has to be pursued critically. To be sure, the annual reports sent by Lombard Jesuits to their Roman headquarters are full of claims about massive frequentation of the sacraments. “The number of those enjoying the celestial meal is so large that our priests can hardly hear all confessions,” Antonio Sambusita reported in 1576 about the twenty priests of the Milanese Brera college; in one provincial town, two Jesuit preachers had attracted three hundred communicants at the beginning of Lent.31 Claims such as these are fairly common. Despite the obvious interest the authors of annual reports had in impressing e confessori al femminile: monache e direttori spirituali in ambito veneto tra ‘600 e ‘700,” in Finzione e santità, 366-88; Rudolph M. Bell, “Telling Her Sins: Male Confessors and Female Penitents in Catholic Reformation Italy,” in That Gentle Strength: Historical Perspectives on Women in Christianity, ed. Lynda L. Coon et al. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 118-33; and Jodi Bilinkoff, “Confessors, Penitents, and the Construction of Identities in Early Modern Avila,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800). Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, ed. Barbara B. Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 83-100. 29 Zardin, Confraternite e vita di pietà, 142. For a similar, more comprehensive assessment, see Id., “Riforma e confraternite nella Milano di Carlo Borromeo,” in Il buon fedele. Le confraternite tra medioevo e prima età moderna, Quaderni di storia religiosa (Caselle di Sommacampagna: Cierre, 1998), 235-63, esp. 250-58. 30 Torre, Il consumo di devozioni, 74-81. 31 ARSI, Med. 76-I, fol. 20v (31 January 1576): “tantus est numerus eorum, qui coelestibus epulis perfruuntur, ut omnes confessiones nostri sacerdotes vix possint udire.”

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their Roman superiors, their proud statements probably contain more than a grain of truth. But the reported conversions may not have outlasted the missionaries’ stay by much; only where the Jesuits had a permanent presence, in the form of colleges and churches, do they appear to have formed lasting clienteles. That was the case in Milan, as one incident of 1579 illustrates. Investigating charges that the Jesuits attracted fewer penitents in their new church of S. Fedele than in their old one, the visitor Sebastiano Morales found the opposite to be the case. Not only were several fathers out of town, but the church simply looked larger than its predecessor. Moreover, a Jesuit rule to limit the faithful to a maximum of one communion per week had prompted some eager penitents, “albeit few,” to turn to other churches in town, where they were served on demand. To make things worse, their own Jesuit confessors, sympathetically inclined toward the highest possible sacramental frequency, encouraged them to do so. The provost of S. Fedele had attempted to stem a further exodus by authorizing two weekly communions on top of the Sunday communion, “but they are not satisfied even with this.”32 Despite their suggestiveness, we should be careful not to generalize such findings of devotional enthusiasm. They surely testify to the successes of the Jesuits’ pastoral efforts, as well as their overtly competitive spirit in acquiring souls. However, absent vital information about sacramental frequencies, numbers of penitents, their social status, and their residential provenance, we can draw few conclusions about the Jesuits’ (or others’) long-term success in fostering frequent confession and related devotional practices among the Lombard faithful at large.33 32

ARSI, Med. 74 (Ordinationes, 1563-97), fol. 37v. Underlying the once-a-week rule were perhaps personnel considerations, the wish to prevent devotional excess or superficiality, or the fear of overly close relations with women. For the latter, see the general Roman injunction, probably of 1575, to keep women’s confessions limited to one a week, as well as short: ARSI, Instit. 41 (Ordinationes 1573-1601), fol. 23r. 33 Jesuit sources on Counter-Reformation Lombardy lack the kind of quantitative information available for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Bavaria. On the basis of reported numbers of hosts distributed, David Myers has concluded that sacramental frequency greatly increased in that area (Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 189-90). Impressive though these figures are, it remains unclear how they were assembled and what segments of society they reflect. The variables are numerous: numbers of confessors, variations within the population at large, occasions of communion, gender, residence in city or country, membership of confraternities, to name but a few.

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Monitoring confession We are in a much better position to reconstruct the sacramental routines of Lent and Easter. The reason is simple: church authorities had powerful reasons, both religious and political, to start tracking the annual participation in confession. In an age of confessional divisions, symbolically marked by divergent liturgical practices, fulfillment of minimum sacramental requirements became more than ever before a test of religious fidelity, legal compliance, and social conformity. As confession became integrated into a re-energized practice of public worship, the negligent, or inconfessi, invited prosecution and punishment for breaching the social order. They were lumped together with usurers and concubines among the most disreputable of moral offenders: public sinners. Carlo Borromeo made the issue into a priority as soon as he assumed the episcopal staff; among his earliest appointments we find an official specifically charged to deal with the inconfessi. When the latter reported some initial successes, the bishop sent his compliments but warned that “harsher remedies,” namely ecclesiastical sanctions, were needed if a charitable approach did not suffice. Emphasizing the public nature of the offense and its correction, he added that “the example of the[se] few will benefit many.”34 Borromeo and his collaborators gave special priority to check-ups on Milanese travelers to Protestant lands. For them, regular confessions were not merely a token of orthodoxy, but an antidote against heretical “infection.”35 This medicinal use of confession was not limited to heretics: frequent confession became a regular prescription for blasphemers, the superstitious, the habitués of occasions of sin, or those at risk of relapsing into such grave sins. The Fifth Provincial Council went so far as to require weekly confession of converted Jews. The same disciplinary tactic also proved its value in the fight against inconfessi themselves: 34 AGBR, Minute di lettere scritte da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fol. 47v (C. Borromeo to Ormaneto): “Mi piace che habbiate posto all’impresa de gli inconfessi, et contumaci Mons. Asaphense et ch’egli vi riesca così bene...; con gli altri obdurati et impenitenti, poi che già si è usata tanta charità, converrà venire a più aspri rimedii, acciò quelli che non son inclinati dalla piacevolezza, siano sforzati dalla pena; et per ventura l’esempio di pochi potrà portar giovamento a molti.” The bishop of Asaph arrived in Milan as auxiliary bishop in early 1565 (ibid., fols. 19v-20r, 30r, 30v-31r). 35 See below, pp. 190-92.

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a certain Antonio Citerico of Cremnago, who had neglected confession for several years, received a penance that included the obligation to confess monthly for a whole year. In other such cases, parish priests required repeated confessions before readmitting the penitent to the sacraments, or enrolment in a religious confraternity with the obligation of frequent confession.36 The principle that confession was an integral part of ecclesiastical discipline soon led to the introduction of tight inspections to make sure that the minimum requirements of confession were met. It was a true innovation: although the obligation of annual confession was as old as the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), never was compliance checked so thoroughly and methodically as during the Counter-Reformation, in Milan as elsewhere in Italy. This was made possible by the development of a capillary system of bureaucratic surveillance. Clearly, this development went far beyond the practice of confession alone. Across confessional divides, a variety of post-Reformation churches engaged in systematic attempts to track the faithful for their effective performance of essential socio-religious rites — a development marking the beginnings of modern population registration.37 The parish was chosen as the organizational unit to monitor this as well as other religious behavior: control was tied to residence. As elsewhere in Europe, parish registers became the repositories 36 In the late 1560s or early 1570s the rural vicar of Arsago proposed as a “rimedio” against superstition “che quelli che saranno caduti doppo esserne confessati una volta, intrino nella compagnia del Corpus Domini confessandosi più volte fra l’anno secondo la regola, dal curato non da altri” (ASDM, XIV, 67, q. 3, fol. 1r). The suggested “remedy” against blasphemers in Sforzatica was “di trattenerli alla Pascha, di non comunicarli et fargli confessare ogni settimana” (ASDM, XIV, 67, q. [5]; for the date and nature of these two documents, see further chapter VIII, n. 9). On frequent confession as a weapon against occasions of sin, see Avvertenze (1574), AEM, 2:1885. The injunction that converted Jews practice frequent confession is in the Fifth Provincial Council (1582), AEM, 2:513-22. The case of Antonio Citerico is discussed in ASDM, X, Mariano, 4, q. 19, fols. 8r, 10r. For the role of confraternities in disciplining social or religious dissidents, see Zardin, “Le confraternite in Italia settentrionale,” 112. 37 For Italy, see Le fonti della demografia storica in Italia (Roma: CISP, 1972), 1:3-236; ‘La conta delle anime.’ Popolazioni e registri parrocchiali: questioni di metodo ed esperienze, ed. Gauro Coppola and Casimira Grandi (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989). On the controls on the Easter obligation, see Paolo Morelli, “Osservanza del precetto pasquale e pubbliche penitenze in una parrocchia della Valdera lucchese fra Cinque e Seicento (Soiana, 1596-1623),” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 44 (1990): 451-65.

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of comprehensive demographic information, recording in particular attendance at the sacraments. Information and control were linked in the hands of the man who was already — at least theoretically — in the best position to know the local community: the parish priest. In the words of a curate of Malgrate, Hieronimo Di Basti, “the reverend knows his flock, and he knows the defective from the sound, that is to say he knows those persons who do not want to mend their ways, and since they do not want to abstain from sin he will not admit them to the communion of the Eucharist.” In Hieronimo’s view, exclusion from the sacraments provided enough social stigma for these sinners to make them “mend their ways because of their confusion and disgrace...”38 It was precisely this confidence in local knowledge and social control that made some diocesan clergymen balk at the new bureaucratic controls. According to a survey among rural vicars, probably of the early 1570s, the priests of Gorgonzola believed “that since they know all the people in their town they cannot be mistaken in their knowledge of who has confessed and communicated, and who has not.” The clergy of the Tre Valli rejected bureaucratic check-ups outright, either “because our people do not raise suspicions” or because priests “talk together and discuss persons whenever there is suspicion.” The same was true for Valle Capriasca, whose priests were “quite trusting of the devotion of the people, who confess happily,” but nevertheless kept “an eye on a few they do not trust very much.” In the Tre Valli, moreover, priests were opposed to the method itself, “because it would invite condemnations from laypeople and churchmen alike.”39 But arguments of local self-sufficiency did not impress Milanese curia regulators enough to renounce their plans. Their determination to enforce centralized control stemmed in part from the political pressures of the time. But the battle over local 38 Thus a sermon by Di Basti, delivered to the clergy and laity of the pieve of Lecco in 1574 (quoted in De Boer, “The Curate of Malgrate,” 196). 39 ASDM, VI, 137, fasc. “Della communione generale alla Pasqua”: the priests of Gorgonzola “dicono che conoscendo loro tutte le persone della sua terra non puono fare errore in sapere chi si sia confessato et comunicato o no.” In the Tre Valli it was argued that “le persone non ne dano sospetto,” that priests “raggionano insieme et discorrono sopra le persone dove ci è qualche sospetto,” and that a bureaucratic control system “sarebbe castigato anco dalli secolari non che da ecclesiastici.” The priests of Valle Capriasca “si confidono asai nella devotione di quella gente, che si confessano volu[n]tieri” but “avvertiscono a certi pochi de quali non si confidono molto.”

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religion had a longer history. The original legislation for the sacrament of penance had envisioned a parochial framework of control: in making annual confession obligatory, the Fourth Lateran Council added the crucial provision that penitents must confess with their “own priest” (proprius sacerdos). Yet this requirement had soon run into a good deal of trouble. As the Franciscans and Dominicans rose to prominence as professional confessors, they increasingly claimed the right to perform all confessions, including Easter confession. Ensuing conflicts of jurisdiction with diocesan and local authorities were often resolved in their favor. A myriad of juridical exemptions thwarted any efforts at centralized control.40 Counter-Reformation bishops intended to ensure some measure of control, not only (as we have seen) by subjecting confessors of the regular orders to their authority, but by devising what they hoped was a watertight system to keep track of penitents, including all those who frequented regular confessors. Enforcing the deceptively simple Lateran precept thus came to require systematic and sophisticated tracking procedures. Administering the sacraments became among other things an administrative chore. It involved at least four kinds of paperwork: the parish register (status animarum), the certificate of confession (fede, or colloquially bollettino), the list of approved confessors, and the list of inconfessi. The parish register, of course, was the general record of the “state of the souls” of the parish, listing all households with each member’s name, age, and religious standing.41 The bollettini were the forms that confessors had to fill out for all persons they confessed, and that these penitents were obliged to hand over to their curate before being accepted at the communion table. This allowed the curate to check their names against the parish register, make note of the inconfessi, and proceed against them. In case of doubt the curate could verify the credentials of the confessor by consulting the official list of approved confessors. Finally,

40 N. Knopp, Über den “Sacerdos proprius” zur Verwaltung des Bußsacraments... (Regensburg, 1851). 41 Detailed Avvertenze a ciascun curato per fare i libri del stato delle sue anime were published in 1574 (for a modern edition, see AEM, 2:1934-38). Not coincidentally, they came out at the same time as instructions concerning confession (Avvertenze ... ai confessori, on which see pp. 38-39 above) and communion (Avvertenze ... ai curati della città et diocese sua per amministrare il santissimo sacramento dell’Eucharestia in chiesa [Milano, per Valerio et Hieronimo fratelli da Meda, 1574]; AEM, 2:1775-1794).

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regular confessors themselves were also recommended to keep a personal record of their penitents. If we are to believe the survey just quoted, this system was functional in a majority of Milanese parishes by the early 1570s.42 With the publication of the Avvertenze for confessors (1574), it became mandatory. The curia standardized the certificates of confession and made them available as printed forms. A further precaution required penitents to present their bollettini to their parish priest at least three days before Easter. This allowed the curate time, in case of need, to verify the authenticity of the documents and the legitimacy of the confessors.43 Whether this last safeguard was followed or not, it indicates that the bureaucratic solution to one challenge — checking the participation in Easter confession — could engender a problem of its own — fraud. Later documents only confirm how nervous authorities were about unsigned, falsified, or otherwise unreliable certificates. These concerns were about confessors as well as penitents. Diocesan officials, meeting with the assembled vicari foranei in April 1582, warned “Fra Leonardo, confessor in S. Eustorgio ... not to let another hand sign his penitents’ certificates, nor to sign for several penitents on one form.” No doubt the curia had traced Fra Leonardo through such certificates bearing his signature. Similar controls also touched on the contents of confession: in another measure, parish priests were ordered to submit

42

ASDM, VI, 137, fasc. “Della communione generale alla Pasqua.” Of the 24 pievi surveyed, 17 used bollettini to monitor the parishioners’ Easter performance; in one pieve, a different system of record-keeping had been adopted; for another, no information was available. Apparently the system had been introduced a few years previously: in the pieve Gorgonzola “s’è osservato il primo anno solo che fu or[dina]to.” 43 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1891: “La forma della fede sarà questa: 1574. A dì ——— del Mese di ——— Ho ministrato il Sacramento della Penitentia a ——— habitante nella Parochia di ———. Scriva nel primo bianco, il dì che si sarà confessato, nel secondo il mese, nel terzo il nome, et cognome di esso penitente, et nel quarto il nome della Parochia dove habita; nel fine poi il Confessore sottoscriva il suo nome, et cognome, et il titolo del Beneficio, o officio ecclesiastico, dal quale più communemente si denomina, come dire: Rettore, Vicerettore, Canonico, o Cappellano della chiesa N. o, essendo Regolare, habitante nel Monastero N. et tutto ciò che si ha da scriver ne i bianchi della detta fede stampata, sia di mano dell’istesso Confessore, o almeno il dì, et mese, et la sodetta sottoscrittione.”

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any bollettini of obstinate public sinners for episcopal inspection before approving them.44 Clearly, the known behavior of such penitents suggested that absolution had been granted all too easily, and the certificate of confession made it possible to identify the lax or negligent confessor. In 1584 the archbishop himself confirmed that this was indeed the practice: he frequently inspected certificates of confession to “ascertain to whom similar shameless persons have confessed their sins; this justifies us to suspect that the undersigned confessors accepted them though they were totally unprepared and so ill-disposed that they would immediately return to their vomit.”45 In short, the minutiae of bureaucratic compulsiveness show the extent to which the privacy of the confessional kept tantalizing central authorities, pushing them to the limits of what formal, exterior, but unavoidably superficial checks could accomplish. It led to one more significant (though not very well documented) novelty: a bureaucratic check on the confessions of the sick. During the First Provincial Council (1565), Carlo Borromeo ordered physicians to make sure that their patients had confessed their sins before receiving medical treatment. The requirement had a long history in canon law, but was at this time apparently obsolete. Around the mid-sixteenth century, theologians and canonists talked of reviving it, and bishops of such dioceses as Verona and Brescia made attempts to do this; the trend culminated, only months after Borromeo’s decree, in a bull of Pope Pius V (8 March 1566). Characteristically, Borromeo did not leave it at that. In his zeal to enforce strict observance, he found one more application for the bollettini system, allowing medical treatment only if and when the patient 44

See ASDM, VI, 184, which contains the proceedings of several meetings of vicari foranei held between January and April 1582. High on the agenda were discussions “de essecutione ordinationum et decretorum circa confitentes et communicantes tempore pascatis ne fraudulenter et dolose praecepto ecclesie fraus fiat”; the document outlines several measures to make the bollettini system more effective. Moreover, “[s]chedulae confessionis eorum qui sunt et perseverant in publico delicto ad Illustrissimum Dominum [the bishop] mittendae antequam approbentur a proprio paroco...” And “Fr. Leonardus Sancti Eustorgii confessarius moneatur ne aliena manu signet fidem confitentibus, aut in una cedula signetur fides pro multis.” 45 Saxius, 4:4: “Plerumque nos solemus inspicere testimoniales syngraphas, quibus compertum sit, cuinam hujusmodi protervi homines peccata sua confessi fuerint; inde vero de confessariis subscriptis non immerito dubitare nobis contingit, ne eos ad confessionem admiserint nulla praeparatione dispositos, aut animo tam male affecto, ut statim reverterentur ad vomitum.”

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submitted a certificate of confession to his doctor.46 Once more, it was proof that spiritual health had precedence over physical health. Like most methods of population registration, the Borromean system of detecting inconfessi in the Milanese diocese was based on residence. However tightly organized, it was baffled by one category of people: itinerants. Milan, a vibrant center of international trade, a strategic military station of the Spanish, and a vital border area between Italy and transalpine Europe, was of course hardly a closed entity. It was in a state of continuous osmosis, with merchants, soldiers, and other transients traveling freely in and out. They appear every now and then in our documents, to be discussed with a note of alarm. Residential instability inspired suspicions of religious laxity if not heresy. During a visitation to Oggiono in 1571, the nobleman Giovanni Paolo Crivelli, interrogated by Archbishop Borromeo, admitted to blasphemy and neglect of the Easter obligation. In eighteen years as a soldier in Piedmont and elsewhere, he had never taken communion. His return home, two years previously, had coincided with a return to the sacraments, although his record was still not stellar.47 Apparently, his colleague Bernardo of Mariano had been more observant during his campaigns; still, a string of witnesses was needed to make sure that he 46 Pius V’s decree ultimately went back to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), c. 22 (COD, 245-46). It was reiterated in Giberti’s Veronese Constitutiones (1542), 58-59 (tit. IV, cap. 11), and in Constitutiones, et edicta observanda in Sancta Brixiensi ecclesia, et eius tota Dioecesi noviter per ... D. Ioan. Petrum Ferrettum ... promulgata (Brixiae: Damianus Turlinus, 1545), cap. XXXXVI. Around the same time a group of Roman theologians as well as the Tridentine fathers meeting in Bologna pressed for official reconfirmation of the Lateran decree (see the texts of, respectively, 1543 and 1547 published in Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia (Roma: La Civiltà Cattolica, 1930--), 2/2:660-61, and CT, 6/1:407). But they had to wait until the bull Supra gregem dominicum (8 March 1566) of Pius V (Bullarium Romanum, 8:430-31). The essential Milanese legislation was laid down during the First and Fourth Provincial Councils (AEM, 2:51-52 and 358), and in Avvertenze (AEM, 2:1873). A curia memorandum of the early 1580s urged strict observance (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 5); a specific case of 1583, including a statement of the treating physician, is in ASDM, IX, 41, q. 11, fols. 5-7. Gaspare Visconti kept insisting on the precept; see the Seventeenth Diocesan Synod (1593), AEM, 4:213-14. 47 ASDM, X, Oggiono, 5, q. 1, fols. [2]-[4]. Apart from a public penance (“domandi perdonanza publicamente nella chiesa prepositurale della bestemmia, et dello scandalo dato per essa”), and a threefold pilgrimage to a chapel above Civate, Crivelli was ordered to present written proof of all his preceding confessions, “che poi deliberaremo quanto si harà da fare.” But Crivelli apparently died before he could comply (see ibid. 13, q. 6, fol. [19v]).

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could be buried in sacred ground when he died without the last rites in October 1566. A fellow soldier testified (among others) that Bernardo had performed his Easter obligation that year in La Spezia, on the Ligurian coast; and a Spanish companion of arms stated in broken Italian that Bernardo had been repentant when he died.48 Not surprisingly, the fears were most intense when heresy was suspected. Calvinist, Lutheran, and other Protestant communities in or across the Alps were well within the range of Milan’s commercial and personal travelers. Early in 1576, Pope Gregory XIII notified Carlo Borromeo of nine Milanese merchants residing in Lutheran Nuremberg, warning the bishop of the double risk that they might get “infected” with heresy and then spread it at home through “contagion.” Many contemporary diocesan documents reveal the same concerns.49 The issue is interesting not because heretical infiltration was in this period particularly threatening, but because it exposed a fundamental weakness of the confessional society: realizing a homogeneous, disciplined, religious culture by means of centralized control required a closed society that did not exist. Measures taken to counter this weakness came down to religious border control, in which participation in confession and communion was a crucial test. This is, for instance, how a diocesan report on existing “contacts with heretics” listed suspected persons: The people from Val Bregaglia, Graubünden, who graze their cattle in the Alpine pastures of the pieve Incino; but they confess and communicate at the required times... Monza, Treviglio, Bollate, Varese: people from all these places go to Germany to buy horses, especially during Lent. The people from Monza confess and communicate before they leave, the others upon their return. No one has so far aroused suspicions... Settala: there is someone who has a relative in France; it is unknown if he has confessed. 48

The dossier is in ASDM, X, Mariano, 4, q. 9. ASDM, XIV, 246, q. 16, fols. 102r-103v, letter of the Cardinal of Como to C. Borromeo, 26 February 1574: “La Santità di Nostro Signore sa che in diversi luoghi d’Alemagna infetti d’heresia pratticano et habitano molti Italiani per causa di mercantie, et principalmente in Norimberga, la quale è forse de le più infette città, che sia in detta provincia. Et ... da questa prattica et commercio si può dubitare anzi tener per fermo, che possa generarsi qualche contagione, et sia per far danno non solo a quelli stessi habitatori, ma agli altri ancora con l’occasione de ritorno a la patria...” 49

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Tre Valli: ... There are many who go to work in Bohemia, Austria, and in the heretical [Swiss] cantons; they are gone for years and do not confess, saying that they would if they had the chance. But when they go home they live like Christians.50

Soon the approximation and anonymity of the general survey were replaced by the specificity and comprehensiveness of the bureaucratic method. Pope Gregory XIII indicated that the Milanese merchants of Nuremberg should perform their Easter confession in the nearest Catholic church and send written proof of this to their bishop in Milan; after their return, they had to repeat confession and communion and be kept under surveillance. In fact, these became regular diocesan requirements: to confess and communicate after a prolonged absence; to present certificates of confession upon returning from a shorter trip; and for the local clergy, to inform the curia of the Easter performance of all foreigners staying in their parish.51 At one point, the inquisitor of Como, especially concerned about heresy in the Graubünden, insisted that travelers in that area not only confess annually and send in their fede, but inform the Inquisition as well. But he also asked what confessors should do if people ignored the precept, “because this happens many times.”52

Easter practice Watertight or not, this was a system that would not allow a single soul to be passed over. That conclusion emerges unequivocally from the 50

ASDM, XIV, 65, q. 4, fols. 24r-27v: “Quelli de Valbregaia, Grisoni, che stanno su le Alpe della pieve d’Incino alla cura de bestiami si confessano però et si communicano a tempi debiti... Monza, Treviglio, Bolate, Varese: Di tutti questi luochi vanno a comprar cavalli in terra Todescha, specialmente nel tempo della quaresima. Quelli di Monza sogliono confessarsi et communicarsi avanti che si partino. Li altri doppo che sono ritornati. Né da niuno sin hora si ha havuto sospetto... Settara: Vi è uno che ha un parente in Franza et non si sa se sia confessato... Tre Valle... Vi sono molti che vanno a lavorar in Boemia, in Austria, et nelle cantoni degl’heretici, et stanno via a anni, et non si confessano dicendo che se havessero commodità lo fariano, però quando vanno a casa vivono da Christiani.” 51 Thus the “memoriali diocesani” (probably synodal or conciliar reports of the 1570s) in ASDM, VI, 27, q. 4, fol. [4r] and q. 5, fols. [1r]-[2v]. 52 See the undated “Domande dell’Inquisitore di Como” (BAM, F.3B inf., fols. 590r-v and 599).

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voluminous diocesan records that have survived. They document a mass phenomenon newly entered into the purview of an ambitious bureaucracy. The traditional Lenten routine survived, but was altered by the weight of diocesan management, rules for orderly conduct, and new functions of control imposed on the confessor. Most elementary in any reconstruction of penitential practices is the observance of Easter confession. In this case, some valuable data about pre-Borromean Milan are available. Testimony of parish priests during a rare pastoral visitation in 1550 suggests a general compliance in the diocesan countryside: in parishes ranging in size from 40 to 400 adults, the number of inconfessi, while variable, could be counted on one hand.53 Later figures tend to confirm this impression. In or shortly after 1567, the first important results of the episcopal efforts were recorded.54 In 1568, the communicants of the parish of S. Nicolò in Lecco numbered 450, and those of neighboring Volate 140: all of them had fulfilled their Easter obligation, “except a few [in Lecco] who for good reasons and with my permission could not take communion at the present.”55 At the western side of the diocese, in Ligurno (pieve of Arcisate), there were nine inconfessi out of 376 communicants that same year; the nearby parish of Giubiano (Varese)

53

Visitations in the pievi Brivio and Missaglia, August-September 1550 (ASDM, X, Brivio, 21, q. 1; ibid., Missaglia, 21, qq. 13, 20), published in Marcora, “La chiesa Milanese,” 430-40. In the pieve Brivio no inconfessi are reported for the parishes Porchera (with ca. 50 to 60 communicants), Airuno (ca. 40), and Mondonico (ca. 40 to 50). For Arlate (35 to 40) five names are listed, for Merate (ca. 400) two. In Brivio itself, out of “circa 400 communicants,” 25 unnamed persons are estimated yearly to abstain from confession (more surprisingly, only “100 o puoco più” are reported to go to communion). In the pieve Missaglia, the curates of Cernusco Lombardone mention two names (out of ca. 100 communicants), and one (out of 100), respectively. Note that the total figures, as given by the parish priests, are all explicitly approximations. 54 See Borromeo’s letter to his rural vicars of 7 July 1567: “Ogni curato venghi con la lista delli inconfessi, et non communicati, se pur vi sarà chi n’habbia nella sua cura; dichiarando la caussa nella medesima lista per la quale si presupponga, che siano restati; et faccia anco il medesimo de’ concubinarii, et usurarii publici, et di altre persone di simil sorte” (BAM, P.27 inf., fols. 152r-153v). 55 The list of penitents can be found in ASDM, X, Lecco, 3, q. 7. See Longo’s statement of 24 April 1568 (ibid., 4, fols. 118r and 120r) for the total number of communicants, “quale si sono communichate a questa santissima Pasqua ... reservato alchunii quali per digni respecti et con licentia mia non si puo[ter]o di presente communichare.” See also the status of ca. 1569, in which the figures are 450 and 138 respectively (ibid., 11, qq. 1-3).

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had two out of 108.56 Closer to the center of the diocese, in Carugo (Mariano) three out of 200 adults had not fulfilled their obligation;57 in the southeast, in the town of Treviglio, the number was “four or five” out of 3,320 confessees.58 The figures seem to have remained fairly stable, or slightly declined, over time.59 It would be as labor-intensive as futile to attempt a more comprehensive reconstruction of sacramental attendance on the basis of highly fragmentary and dispersed data. Random samples such as the above overwhelmingly suggest that a large majority of Milanese fulfilled their Easter obligation, without significant variations between the mid-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. Beyond this, conclusions become more problematic. On the one hand, we might consider overall compliance as an important indicator of religious conformity; on the other hand, we can imagine a wide array of motivations, ranging from grudging compliance to genuine devotion, that brought Lombard people to the confessional. The confessors’ behavior, the thoroughness of their scrutiny, and the severity of their judgment were probably equally variable. Not surprisingly, it was the quality and standards of confession and the penitential regime, rather than the formal fulfilment of the Easter obligation, that worried the ecclesiastical authorities most of all.60 In short, we have to go beyond sheer numbers to understand the social dynamics behind the Easter routine and the effects of the new hierarchical pressures. To begin with, quantity 56

ASDM, X, Arcisate, 4, q. 2, fol. [2r]; ibid., Varese, 1, q. 7, fol. [2r]. ASDM, X, Mariano, 4, q. 42, fol. [2r]. 58 Letter of Bernardino Butinoni, 24 April 1568 (BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 255r-v). The situation was not very different in the neighboring diocese of Brescia (Daniele Montanari, Disciplinamento in terra veneta. La diocesi di Brescia nella seconda metà del XVI secolo [Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987], 176-77). Bishop Bollani, on visitation in his diocese between 1565-1567, found 29 inconfessi in Leno (out of 1,600 adults), 15 (out of 700) in Rudiano, and 7 (out of 225) in Barco. 59 In 1608, for example, three out of the 340 communicants of Annone were inconfessi (ibid., X, Oggione, 23, fol. 268). In that same year Lecco had four inconfessi out of 639 communicants, Volate none out of 167; the numbers in other parishes of the pieve are in the same order. For the whole pieve of Lecco (3,584 communicants) 18 inconfessi are reported, not counting the many in Castagna who had not been able to confess because of a vacancy in the office of vice-curate (ASDM, X, Lecco, 26). Other studies report a slow decline of inconfessi during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Di Simplicio, Peccato penitenza perdono, 222; Morelli, “Osservanza del precetto pasquale”; and Montanari, Disciplinamento in terra veneta, 178. 60 See pp. 52-53 above. 57

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and quality (however defined) were inextricably related: the very fact of being a mass phenomenon imposed serious limitations on what the Easter confession could accomplish in any individual case. Naked figures, scattered remarks of overburdened confessors, and hints in the diocesan legislation can only partially conjure up an image of the throngs of Lenten penitents awaiting their turn at the confessional. Diocesan authorities, well aware of the situation, aimed at spreading and managing the crowds. Denouncing the parishioners’ tendency to delay until the last, they urged people to go and confess well before Palm Sunday. Fearing disorderly conduct and a dangerous mingling of the sexes, they instructed curates to split up their penitents by neighborhood and household, or by age and sex. The very insistence on these measures confirms the scope of the problem.61 A few surviving registers of confessors active in the city of Milan give a sense of the numbers of penitents any individual confessor could face. In 1584, the friar Amadeo Olicii of S. Anna in Porta Cumana shrove 1,135 persons during the thirteen days preceding Good Friday; during Holy Week, he reached peak days of more than 120 penitents. Even on the day after Easter he heard 18 confessions.62 Fourteen years later, his colleague Don Eliseo da Milano, a Canon Regular of S. Maria della Passione, absolved 966 penitents during the Lenten period; the number rose to 1168 in 1600, and to 1240 in 1601.63 Under these circumstances confessions may not have lasted longer than a few minutes. What could reasonably have been discussed in so short a time, once we discount all protocol, prayers and benedictions? And how much attention can we expect confessors to have mustered by the end of Lent, when, “tired by the massive attendance of the faithful, they are usually so crushed by their task that, in the thick of the crowd, they can barely administer so great and salutary a ministry adequately”?64 Compounding these problems of mass management, the Milanese authorities attempted to be more selective in recruiting confessors than ever before. Not surprisingly, the diocesan correspondence of the 61 Aggionta per i curati alle avvertenze de i confessori (1574), AEM, 2:1895-96; Fifth Provincial Council (1582), AEM, 2:551; Instructiones de sacramento poenitentiae (ca. 1586), AEM, 2:1309-10. 62 Amadeo’s full list of names, organized by day, can be found in ASDM, VI, 43, q. 29. 63 See his registers, ASDM, X, Santa Maria della Passione, vols. 1-3. 64 Fifth Provincial Council (1582), AEM, 2:551.

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first Borromeo is full of complaints about shortages of confessors and requests for assistance in the hearing of confessions. Not only was there a considerable number of vacant parishes at any given time, but the new standards and procedures of admission for confessors — examinations, subordination to episcopal direction, and especially the prohibition of financial gain — may initially have discouraged members of the regular orders from offering their services.65 In the words of a priest from Monza, Orazio Luzio, “many confessors have withdrawn because they did not have the permission to confess.” And he speculated, “God forbid that it was for the lack of the usual profit, for the wholesome custom of giving nothing at confession already seems to be taking hold, and is the reason that they will not present themselves for examination.”66 As for the examinations, we do not know how many confessors were rejected on account of their performance. There is reason to believe that the authorities refrained from being too harsh precisely because of personnel shortages. This was certainly the approach preferred by the same priest of Monza, when he asked his bishop for permission to examine and elect confessors himself. But his reasons must surely have raised some eyebrows in the curia: “It seems to me that not much knowledge is needed with most persons 65 For instance, a Jubilee in November 1567 led to such complaints as: “et se ho comunicato 300 persone, se havesse hauto aggiuto de confessori, sarebbeno stato più de 600” (the provost of Desio to Castelli: BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 254r); and “il ditto curato [di Merato] lo trovato molto ocupato in la sancta confescion per questo santo Giubele, et vedendo il grande populo che luii ha esendo solo io ho piliato presuntion in farlo restar per sei giorni” (Francesco Dagan, provost of Brivio to Castelli: ibid., fol. 264). Luzio complained to Cardinal Borromeo (28 July 1568) about “i gridi, et desiderii di persone devote, ch’hanno tralasciato la confessione per mancanza de confessori: e non potendo io suplire al bisogno che piú volte mi sono provato di ascoltargli dal principio di matutino sin’all’ultimo di tutti gli uffitii, ch’apena m’hanno lasciato dir messa a hora conveniente; e nondimeno vi resta, chi ha fame di confessione, et communione” (BAM, F.116 inf., fol. 518r). For other examples, see BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 169v (1568); ASDM, IX, 49, q. 2, fol. [6r] (1582). On parish vacancies, see Prosperi, “Chierici e laici,” 257; for an eloquent example, see the petition of the men of Giubiano (Varese), in ASDM, X, Varese, 1, q. 7, fol. [1r]. On the more general dynamics of recruitment of the secular clergy, Xenio Toscani, “Il reclutamento del clero (secoli XVI-XIX),” in La chiesa e il potere politico, esp. 578, 580-82, 595-600. 66 Letter to C. Borromeo, 28 July 1568 (BAM, F.116 inf., fol. 518r): “molti confessori se ne sono retirati, per non haver autorità di confessare, et Dio voglia, che non sia, per non haverne la solita utilità, che già pare introdotta quella santa consuetudine di non dar niente alla confessione, che perció non vogliono sottomettersi a esamine.” For the new norms, see p. 33 ff. above.

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who frequent the sacraments.” And in a telling reversal, Orazio went on to stress the positive influence pious women and children could have on their confessors: “I believe, rather, that it may edify and impress the clerics to see so much constancy, purity, and devotion in the tender age and the weaker sex.”67 For this local priest, piety had priority over knowledge. The argument might once have been acceptable, but was certainly out of line with the new concerns of the ecclesiastical elite. Nevertheless, the curia was forced to accept Orazio’s basic position: an undated memorandum stated that all regulars “who know grammar” should be admitted as confessors or preachers, even though “not all are so perfectly deserving or fit for these offices as the sacred canons require and their degree assumes.” Old priests were to be “tolerated for now” even without sufficient knowledge of grammar. All efforts should be focused on the retraining of the active clergy instead (an issue to which we will return).68 New demands on the contents of confession only aggravated the tension between quantity and quality. Borromeo’s insistence that confessors follow an impressive checklist of prescribed questions, particularly on juridical matters such as reserved cases, increased the confessors’ workload considerably.69 In short, practical constraints of the Lenten routine make it unlikely that the Easter confession could get very close to satisfying Borromeo’s standards for a full confession of sins. And they go a long way toward explaining the insistence on a longer penitential season and on ‘general’ and ‘frequent’ confessions at other occasions of the liturgical year. 67 Ibid., fols. 518v-519r: “per le persone che frequentano gli sacramenti non mi par bisogno di molta dottrina; anzi mi pare, che gli religiosi più presto se ne possino edificar, o confonder, vedendosi tanta constanza, purità, e devotione in età, e sesso fragile.” 68 Copies in ASDM, XII, 3, fol. 25r and ibid., VI, 137 (see also ibid., XII, 6, q. 20): “Al’uffitio del predicar et confessar s’admettono tutti li m(aest)ri et padri ch’hanno grammatica indifferentemente, sì di Milano come della Diocese, che son stati esaminati. Et anchora che non tutti siano così perfettamente meritevoli, né sì intieramente idonei et atti a tali uffitij, come richiedono i sacri canoni, et presuppone il grado loro, tutti però a l’uno et a laltro ufficio per honore della religione approbiamo... Si tolerano per adesso li vecchi essaminati, sì di Milano, come della diocese, che non hanno grammatica, con patto che tutti ascoltino la lettione de casi, et più che tutti si facciano pratici nella somma Antonina volgare, altrimente non vogliamo siano approbati.” The date of the document is uncertain, but certainly within the episcopate of Carlo Borromeo. 69 For the norms, see p. 62 above; for the effects, see pp. 227-28 below.

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Confession and social conflict In attempting to spread out annual confessions over the entire Lenten period, the Avvertenze indicated that the Holy Week should ideally be reserved for reconciliations.70 The remark ranks high among Borromeo’s most unrealistic goals (of which there was no shortage), but is nevertheless significant. It suggests that, for all the novelty of their demands and expectations, diocesan regulators were keen on preserving and reinforcing a traditional function of the Lenten confession: the settlement of disputes and other forms of social disorder. According to a deeply ingrained custom associated with the Easter season since the Middle Ages, parishioners had to resolve any such blemishes on their spiritual record before participating in the Easter sacraments; from this, confessors and parish priests derived a natural role of arbitration. Archbishop Borromeo never questioned that custom, and indeed promoted its continuation, for instance by urging his flock in an edict on Lent (1581) “to abandon all hatred and enmity, and arrange for peace with everyone.” It may be true, as has been suggested, that for Borromeo this peacemaking tradition nevertheless took the backseat compared to religious conformity; certainly the diocesan interest in the matter was driven primarily by concerns about removing sacramental impediments, enforcing the Easter requirements, and ensuring compliance with moral precepts.71 Yet the two attitudes were not in conflict with each other. Social harmony and public order were as much in the interest of the confessional church as respect of church law; hence the episcopal attention paid to this old Lenten observance. The more important question is how the resulting curia interference affected the established practices. We may glean some insight into the basic routine of Lenten reconciliations from a fairly random example drawn from Borromeo’s earliest years: the main parish of S. Vittore in Varese. Shortly after Easter 1567, its chaplain Eliseo De Albertis reported a group of 46 70

AEM, 2:1896. On Lent and reconciliation, see Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 2:41-43. The more recent literature does not insist on this function, with the notable exception of John Bossy’s work; see in particular his “The Social History,” Christianity in the West, 45-46, and Peace, 12ff. (including remarks on Borromeo and peace). The Borromeo quote is from his Editto per l’osservanza della Quadragesima (4 February 1581), AEM, 2:1130. 71

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parishioners as inconfessi, specifying the cause of abstention in 26 cases. The majority (16 cases) concerned some kind of social dispute (questione or questione di parte, lite, vendetta, differenza or differenza d’honore). The second largest category of impediments was that of marital issues: seven penitents (five women and two men) were withheld absolution for living in separation from their spouses, but the chaplain noted that two of them had already promised to return to the marital fold. Two cases made up a third category: one man and one woman were delinquent on account of “negligence.”72 These three groups of impediments, and their relative importance, are fairly representative for the period. “Negligence,” or “obstinacy,” was clearly a default category, which may have concealed all sorts of motivations. Antonio Citerico from Cremnago (Mariano) reportedly had not confessed for several years “out of a lack of devotion and little fear of God and his superiors.”73 In Somma, a longtime inconfesso, who had “scandalized many for remaining so long without confession ... neglected to come to the confessional” even when his curate obtained permission to absolve him.74 A principled rejection of confession, that is explicit heresy, is hardly ever listed as a reason for being inconfesso. Obviously this does not mean that the phenomenon did not exist, but rather that it was kept out of the regular diocesan correspondence and reported directly and exclusively to the Inquisition.75 However, the overwhelming majority of obstacles revolved around social conflicts, whether marital discord or (more often) feuding and 72 BAM, S.184 inf., fols. 15r-16r. In 1575, the main parish of Varese had ca. 3000 souls (ASV, Congregazione del Concilio, Visite Apostoliche, C 45, Milano; Varese was visited on 10 June 1575). 73 ASDM, X, Mariano, 4, q. 19, fols. 8r, 10r. A similar case of “uno notorio inconfesso d’anni cinqui,” who despite the interdict never showed up for reconciliation, and could not be convinced to learn “il Pater, l’Ave Maria, il Credo ne li diece comandamenti,” in ibid., IX, cart. 9, 22, q. 5 , fol. [2]. 74 ASDM, IX, cart. 9, 22, q. 5 , fol. [2] (letter of Provost of Somma, 26 April 1582): “ha datto scandallo a molti per star tanto tempo senza confessarsi, ma doppo havutta tal facultà è stato tuttavia negligente in venire alla confessione.” 75 But there are exceptions. The priest Vincenzo Lupi of Melzo, asked by the Milanese inquisitor to investigate Battista Lampergo and Giovanni Antonio Colpano for heresy, also sends his report to the bishop; he suspects that fear of detection has long kept Colpano away from the confessional (BAM, X.292 inf., letter of 28 May 1570; Lupi’s report itself, originally attached to this letter, is lacking). See also the case cited on p. 14; on the function of confession to detect heretics, see p. 62.

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similar disputes; the predominance of the latter explains no doubt why most of the reported inconfessi were men. A refusal to settle meant exclusion from the sacraments, which could drag on for one or even several years. Notes like the following, from the parish of Ello (Oggiono), are typical: Niccolò Piacentino, who lives in Messer Jerando’s house in Ello: inconfesso for an enmity which does not end because of him. And according to what I hear he has not confessed nor taken communion for the last six years. Interdicted on 28 September 1572. Guidono di Re, living in Ello, inconfesso because of an enmity, in which he was hurt. He does not want to settle, nor — according to what I hear — did he take communion last year.76

It could also happen that one party to a conflict was willing to settle, while the other refused to give in. In Oggiono, Messer Cesare de Quarterone, his mother, and a third person remained “inconfessi per una questione [di] parte,” while their “aversarii” — Messer Giovanni Giacomo Riva, his son, and two others — were admitted to the sacraments.77 Examples such as these also hint at the social configurations hidden behind these feuds: in many cases we find clusters of people, usually family members, excluded from the sacraments for their involvement in one and the same conflict. It was precisely the social ramifications and high degree of publicity underlying these disputes that made the containment of inconfessi a higher priority for church authorities than their numbers might suggest. Because of their “scandalous” behavior, the inconfessi joined the ranks of the public sinners who, few though they might be, constituted a threat to the community’s moral integrity. This, at least, was the perspective of many clergymen. It led Filippo Regamunte to characterize the remote Alpine parish of Ligurno (Arcisate), where he arrived as a curate in 1566, as a godless and criminal den, in which “[s]landerers, 76 ASDM, X, Oggiono, 1, q. 10, fol. [1r]: “Nicolò Piacentino inconfesso, qual abita in casa di Messer Jerando in Ello per causa di una inimicitia qual non si termina per sua causa et per quanto ho inteso sono circa anni 6 che non si è confessato né communicato. Interdetto alli 28 settembre 1572. — Guidono di Re habitante in Ello, inconfesso per causa di una inimicitia, onde ne fu ferito, né si vol acomodar, ne l’anno passato si communicò per quanto ho inteso.” The two other persons reported by the parish priest were guilty of marital separation and concubinage. 77 ASDM, X, Oggiono, 1, q. 16. On the powerful Riva family, who owned almost half of nearby Galbiate, see Franzosini, “Clero e società locale, 277ff.

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the superstitious, murderers, and destroyers of the holy feast scarcely went to confess at Easter; the majority did not even observe Holy Week. The neighbors and people from the area testified of their wickedness in all this, and in other respects.”78 This rhetorically enhanced prelude allowed the curate subsequently to extol his own accomplishments. By threatening his parishioners continuously and “instructing [them] in the holy fear of God,” Filippo boasted, he had been able to turn the situation around. Or mostly: several bad seeds had survived, especially Battista Baij and his sons. Not only had “they never wished to fear any cleric,” but “this Battista has led our commune into evil and has evidently caused the ruin of many homes. He wants everybody to fear him; already four times guilty of homicide, he feels he must persevere in doing harm.”79 The present year, the priest had inflicted the interdict on Baij for working on holidays and refusing to pay the tithe. Now the priest asked the bishop “to impose on him a public penance here in S. Giorgio ad terrorem aliorum and to stifle his arrogance.”80 As for Baij’s sons, the priest reported them for being involved with seven others in “a murder committed on the day of Carnival” and inconfessi on account of that crime. But the curate assured his superiors, “I will not fail to see to it that they make peace.”81 Making peace evidently was, and continued to be, an essential task of parish priests and confessors. Recently, reversing some of his earlier views, John Bossy has come to a similar conclusion. But the Milanese correspondence also indicates that these functions of social reconciliation did not (as Bossy also suggests) go underground during the 78 Letter of F. Regamunte to C. Borromeo, including a status of the parish, 1 August 1568, in ASDM, X, Arcisate, 4, q. 2, fol. [1r]: “Mormoratori, pieni de superstitione, homicidiarij e destructori della santa festa apena che alla pascha de resurrectione si confessavano, che la magior parte stavano sine fatta la octava. Et di più et del tutto li vicini et circumvicini ne rendarano testimonianza delle sue male opere.” 79 Ibid., fol. [1r-v]: “Esso Baptista ha fatto piedegiare il nostro commune al torto, dove è statto causa della ruina de assai caxe, come è manifesto. Il vorrebbe che ogni homo lo temesse, perché havendo già facto quatri homicidij gli para a non potere fallar a fare del male.” 80 Ibid., fol. [1v]: “Ulterius voria supplicare la Illustrissima et Reverendissima Signoria Vostra che dando la absolutione a esso Baptista Baij quella fosse contenta ad terrorem aliorum farli far una penitentia publica qua in santo Giorgio per levarli questa sua superbia.” 81 Ibid., fol. [2r]: “La causa si è per uno homicidio qual fu fatto il giorno de Carnova[le], però io non mancho de veder a farli far la pace.”

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post-Tridentine period, to re-emerge after Cardinal Federico’s death.82 Indeed, letters from the Borromean period are full of reports of how parish clergy “settled some conflicts and disputes of great importance.” Likewise, Jesuit annual reports projected an image of Ignatius’s followers as zealous and effective peacemakers. The bringers of modern devotional techniques, in other words, eagerly wore this traditional mantle of confessors, mediating in marital conflicts, disputes between family members, and many other forms of social strife.83 How effective and lasting such efforts at mediation were overall remains hard to say; in this respect, we do not know much more about the Counter-Reformation than about the less well-documented Middle Ages. It is certain, however, that the new diocesan involvement was aimed at speeding up the process and increasing its efficiency with the force of law. The presence of a high church official could alone make a significant difference, as the case of the nobleman Giovanni Paolo Crivelli shows. Crivelli had been inconfesso ever since his confessor, a Milanese Franciscan, “refused to absolve me if I did not talk to a certain Santino whom I had given a beating.” But only under the stern gaze of Carlo Borromeo himself, during a pastoral visitation, did Crivelli reverse course to assure the archbishop that “now Santino is my friend, and I am ready to confess and communicate.”84 82 Bossy, Peace, esp. 26, 98; the author rightly notes the Jesuits’ adoption of peacemaking roles (ibid., 8-11). 83 According to the priest Giacomo Rossi of Frassineto, during a recent jubilee “si sono confessatti et communicati da circa a 200 perssone et quasi tutte principale, et accordate alcune litte et differenze di non pocca importanza...” (BAM, X.292 inf., no. 12, letter of 28 October 1570). For the Jesuits, see, e.g., ARSI, Med. 75, fol. 59v (littera annua, 16 May 1565), on issues of usury, restitution, concubinage, and “alcune paci importanti sì tra citadini et italiani del paese sì anchora tra soldati et capitani spagnoli”; Med. 76-I, fol. 20r (annua covering 1575): “Multae discordiae, ac dissensiones sedatae sunt...” (with lengthy account); ibid. fol. 38v (annua covering 1576 and 1577): during the jubilee of 1576 six Jesuits worked as full-time penitentiaries in the Duomo, “li quali quante faccende faccessero di confessioni generali, di restitutioni, paci, di levar dal peccato, conversioni sarebbe longa cosa à narrarlo”; ibid., fol. 47r (annua for 1580), on numerous “paci” in marriages and vendettas; ibid., fol. 223r (annua, 1597): “primarios inter viros odia inveterata complura pace restituta per nostros.” 84 ASDM, X, Oggiono, 5, q. 1, fol. [3r] (interrogation by Carlo Borromeo during a pastoral visitation in Oggiono, 5 September 1571): “essendo io andato da uno frate Alesio di Santo Francesco quale non volendomi assolver se io non parlai con uno Santino al quale io haveva dato delle bastonade, io mi partij così senza l’assolutione et per questo non mi sono poi confessato né comunicato più oltra. Ma hora detto Santino è mio amigo et sono parechiato di confessarmi et comunicarmi al presente.”

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More systematically, the curia attempted to increase compliance by introducing a timetable for mediations, backed up by the threat of interdict (entailing the prohibition of entry into church buildings and exclusion from church burial) and eventual episcopal prosecution. Initially, that timetable was relatively indulgent, at least in the countryside. Rural parish priests could give inconfessi a standard two weeks after Easter to fulfill those obligations. But with the permission of their local superior, the vicario foraneo, they could take almost another year, until the following Purification feast (2 February), “to negotiate a peace, or for a similar purpose,” except in the case of concubinages.85 By the mid-1570s, however, when the bureaucracy of tracking sacramental participation was firmly established, the curia increased the time pressure dramatically. The curate’s schedule now looked as follows: 1) on Easter Sunday, publicly announce one more week for parishioners to fulfill their Easter obligations; during the following days, attempt to resolve existing disputes or other impediments; 2) come week’s end, establish a list of inconfessi or incommunicati based on parish registers and confession certificates; declare them interdicted and publish their names; send a copy of the list to the curia, to arrive within one week if mailed in the city, within two if coming from the diocese; 3) allow inconfessi an extra week’s respite if that may serve “a good end”; 4) in rural areas, consider a third week’s delay under utterly compelling circumstances, but only by permission or order of the rural vicar; 5) for longer extensions or special cases, consult and defer to the curia as soon as possible after Easter.86 The rules suggest Orwellian visions of administrative efficiency, and certainly do not portray Borromeo in the role of a patient conciliator. But efficiency or timeliness may not have been the most conspicuous outcome of the new timetable; it is more likely to have complicated the Easter routine with an added level of diocesan bureaucratic procedure. The problem did not lie in clerical resistance, despite the initial grumblings against the diocesan system of monitoring the sacraments. The annual waves of correspondence in which parish priests discussed the year’s Easter observance in much personal detail reveals 85

Instruttione a i vicarii foranei of 1568, AEM, 2:1938-57. Avvertenze ... ai Curati della città e diocesi sua, per amministrare il santissimo sacramento dell’Eucharistia in chiesa (1574), AEM, 2:1775-93; and the Aggionta per i curati alle avvertenze de i confessori (1574), AEM, 2:1893-99. 86

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no lack of eagerness to defer to episcopal authority. Even before 1574, curates and sometimes regular confessors routinely consulted the diocesan curia about inconfessi. Consider, for instance, the 1567 agenda of Giovanni Pietro Della Porta, curate of Buscate (pieve of Dairago). On April 21, more than three weeks after Easter (March 30), he reported 16 men as inconfessi, mostly for negligence, “obstinacy,” and quarreling. On 17 May, he received episcopal permission to give them six more days. Eight days later, Della Porta wrote back to ask another fifteen days for 12 remaining penitents. By June 11, the list had shrunk to 7 persons, “whom I have urged several times to confess, but who did not come.” Finally, on July 5, Della Porta said he had secured promises to confess from the last offenders. This is the last we know.87 Epistolary exchanges like Della Porta’s show parish priests under various conflicting strains. On the one hand, it was in their own interest to enhance their chances at removing sacramental impediments, avoiding their socially disruptive consequences, and maintaining good relations with their parishioners. In their letters they might make apologies for penitents who “are prepared in good faith to confess, but first want to settle some differences and conflicts, for which there is no lack of mediators.” Under the circumstances, they would typically plead for more time: “Therefore we have postponed sending the list [of inconfessi] so that we can try for another week; if unsuccessful we will send the list after that.”88 The strategy was all the more understandable since it was the confessors and parish priests who, under strict orders from their superiors to enforce episcopal policy, bore the brunt of any discontent about this form of spiritual jurisdiction. On the other hand, the parish clergy also needed to maintain the trust of their diocesan superiors. For one thing, they were as much 87

Letters of Giovanni Pietro Della Porta, curate of Buscate, to Vicar General Castelli, 21 April, 25 May, 11 June, and 5 July 1567, BAM, S.Q.+.II.19, fol. 2r-v, S.184 inf., fols. 48r and 70r-71v, S.Q.+.II.19, fol. 4r. In 1575, Buscate had ca. 1300 souls (ASV, Congregazione del Concilio, Visite Apostoliche, C45, Milano; Buscate was visited on 4 August 1575). 88 Thus Giovanni Antonio Maria Visponto, provost of Garlate (BAM, X.292 inf., letter of 20 April 1570): “altri sono poi, che sono in bona fede di confessarsi, ma vorebono prima comodare alchune differenze de lite, e questione, alle quale non manchano mezadori per commodarle, et per questo si è tardato di mandarli in notta, et cossi inpetaremo anchora questa septimana se si può acomodar; se no gli mandaremo poi.”

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subject to episcopal scrutiny as was the lay population. Filippo Regamunte went to great lengths in his tirade against Battista Baij to demonstrate his own accomplishments and good name. Despite the hatred of his enemies, he said, I persevere in doing my duty, and if you wish you can inquire about this in Varese among clergy and lay people alike, and even more among neighbors and people from the area. And you will find that my people have been reborn because I eliminated blasphemy, stealing, false testimony, games, dancing, and superstitions; and now most people confess frequently and properly observe the holidays...89

Moreover, considering the heightened expectations of their performance, local priests might dearly need the bishop’s backing to shore up their own authority in the community. This was the explicit request of Tommaso Landriani, curate of Inveruno (pieve of Dairago), engaged in a bitter confrontation with the inconfesso Giovan Angelo de Miramondi: Aside from refusing to do his penance, [Miramondi] has stirred up many relatives and malevolent people against me by having them threaten revenge at all costs, in the belief that I can absolve him. What I wish from your Lordship is that you order him to ask my forgiveness in public for the many insolent words he has said, and has made others say, against me. This should instill terror in them ... because however the world may turn, I want to be feared and revered.90

89

ASDM, X, Arcisate, 4, q. 2, fol. [1v]: “si che Vostra Illustrissima Signoria se avertisse de questo odio che mi portano indebitamente; ma per questo io non resto di fare il debito mio. Et di questo se quella vorà ne haverà informatione in Varexio da religiosi et da secolari, et più dalli vicini et circumvicini, et trovarà che il mio populo è renasciutto imperoché io li ho levato la biestema, il robare, il testimoniare falso, il giochare, il balare, et le superstitione; et hora la magior parte si confessano spesse volte, et observano honestamente le feste...” 90 BAM, X.293 inf., letter of 23 January 1571: “Quel Giovanni Angelo de Miramondi oltre che gli non ha voluto far la penitentia ha commosso molti parenti, e malevoli contro de me con dir che se ne vogliono vendicar ad ogni modo, credendosi ch’io lo possa assolver. Quel che io vorrei da Vostra Signoria è che le commandasse che mi chiegga perdono publicamente de tante parole insolenti che gli ha detto e fatto dire contro di me, per metter terrore che non siano per l’havenir tanto licentiosi contro il suo pastore ... perché vada il mondo come si voglia voglio esser temuto et reverito.” For another example, see Zardin’s microhistory, Riforma cattolica e resistenze nobiliari.

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Indeed, the discovery of the weaknesses of the local clergy, evident in this as in many other cases, may well have been Borromeo’s chief inspiration for introducing a stricter timetable for reconciliations. If this speculation is allowed, the point was not so much to compress reconciliations within an impossibly brief timeframe as to hasten episcopal involvement, strengthen the curate’s hand, and jolt a local impasse out of deadlock. In brief, parish priests and confessors became the focal point of a complex power game in which the forces of local community life met with the reinforced vertical structures of the church hierarchy. The new arrival of diocesan administrators at the gaming table added significantly to the burdens of Easter reconciliations, if only because of the extra level of negotiation and communication it required. But local clergymen could also use this new presence to their advantage, provided they played their cards correctly. If they did not, the game was often precarious. What to do if people ignored priestly injunctions or even broke the interdict by going to church as if nothing had happened? Preventing them from doing so might only create further scandal. And what if inconfessi simply had recourse to a local friar, who might be unaware of their impediments or more lenient in resolving them?91 All these complexities come to the fore in the case of Domenico Di Mazza, which deserves some detailed attention.

A failed settlement On October 22, 1570, during a pastoral visitation at Asso, the 28-yearold parish priest Giuseppe Fontana was questioned about the behavior of his parishioner Domenico Di Mazza.92 Eight years previously (the priest reported), Domenico had wounded a woman named Maria Di Forni by hitting her in the head with a stone. Di Mazza never compensated his victim for her medical expenses of thirty lire — a consider-

91

For an example of the first, see BAM, X.293 inf., letter of 17 July 1571: interdicted by the vice-provost of Frassinete, some inconfessi “non sollo ne fanno pocca stimma ma ancho con sfaciatagine se ne vengono alla chiesa da certe hore che non possono se non portar scandalo il prohibirlo [sic]”; for the latter, see ASDM, X, Oggiono, 13, q. 6. 92 The dossier is in ASDM, X, Asso, 12, “Processus contra inconfessos.”

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able sum — and consequently stopped attending the Easter sacraments. Arriving in Asso in 1568, Fontana did not know the cause of Di Mazza’s apparent religious negligence and simply prodded his parishioner to confess the next year. Upon hearing this, however, Maria Di Forni complained to the priest, who ordered Di Mazza to pay the restitution. Di Mazza refused, was denied entrance to the church, and was once again unable to perform his Easter obligation. The year was 1569. Soon hereafter, the lord (padrone) and the son of Di Mazza approached the parish priest for a compromise. Together they agreed that Di Mazza would pay two scudi (less than half of thirty lire) in return for his readmission to the sacraments. Di Mazza thus confessed and communicated at the end of July, but the poor Maria Di Forni never received her money. Rumor had it (as Fontana testified later) that Di Mazza told his friends that the restitution left him indifferent since he had satisfied his religious duty, and that the parish priest would surely leave town sooner or later. In other words, the case would end up being forgotten and, for all practical purposes, forgiven. But the priest did not want to forget, nor to forgive: he denied Di Mazza and his son admission to the Easter sacraments of 1570 and renewed the interdict. But he dared not refuse communion to Di Mazza’s lord, when the latter managed to obtain absolution from another, unwitting confessor. The affair remained in deadlock even as both outcasts tried, first, to ignore the interdict by simply going to church, and then, when they were forced out, to seek sacramental services from the Zoccolante friars in the neighboring village of Erba. But by then — around the middle of August 1570 — the parish priest was determined not to lift the interdict as long as the restitution remained unpaid, and he sternly rebuked the friars for accepting the two offenders. Such was the situation when the visitor interrogated Fontana in October of the same year. The next day, on October 23, Domenico Di Mazza was summoned before the visitor. Asked why he had disregarded the interdict, Di Mazza feigned ignorance about its implications and confirmed that he had received the sacraments from the Zoccolanti of Erba. Unaware of the interdict (or so he claimed), he had informed his confessor about the restitution and about Fontana’s refusal to hear his confession. In his own defense, he had also denied having promised any money to Maria; nor could his son have made such a promise without his father’s consent. The Zoccolante had accepted this declaration and granted absolution.

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While we do not know how the case was finally resolved, it provides illuminating details on the confessor’s role as an arbiter and negotiator. His authority was based on his parishioner’s evident wish to partake in the normal Easter routine and his discomfort with the interdict. Equally clear, however, are the penitent’s reluctance to pay up and his attempts to circumvent the priest, even when the latter brokered an agreement with two men who claimed to represent him. The offender first speculated that neglect or oblivion might bring an end to the case; he then tried to ignore the priest’s orders, even the interdict, and to confess elsewhere in fulfilment of his religious duties. His lord and his son joined him in this, as soon as their attempt at mediation had failed. The negotiation is itself worth our attention. Once Domenico was formally interdicted, the mechanics of patronage and kinship were set to work: Di Mazza’s lord and son approached the priest for a deal. The parish priest was willing to take on the double role of arbiter of the conflict and defender of Maria Di Forni. As soon as a settlement was reached, Fontana held Domenico’s lord and son co-responsible for the outcome, perhaps because they had agreed to serve as guarantors. Consequently, when Di Mazza refused to go along, the two negotiators faced the same consequences as their protégé. From here, both went their own way, the lord by finding another confessor (and, apparently, advising his subordinates to do the same), the son by following his father. The difference was that the first was powerful enough to get away with it, the latter two were not. But what was the reason that the settlement failed? That question seems to have compelled the visitor to inquire about the lord’s reputation. Fontana answered: Aside from what I have just said, I do not know anything bad about this Messer Giovanni Antonio, nor about the others. And I cannot believe that they have done this out of contempt for the keys; rather [I should think they did it] for a grudge they seemed to harbor against me. For they said that it was not up to me to make peace nor to condemn one person or another.93

93

Ibid., “Processus,” fol. [2v]: “Interrogatus respondit: io non so alcuna cosa mala [sic] di detto M. G. Antonio altro che quello ho detto di sopra, né manco di quelli altri. Et non posso credere che habbiano fatto ciò in contemptum clavium, ma più tosto per un poco di gara, che pareva havessero meco, dicendo loro che a me non toccava di fare far pace né di condannar questo né quello.”

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One of Di Mazza’s own remarks points in the same direction. According to him, his Zoccolante confessor had accepted his confession saying “that he could not stop me [Domenico] from confessing because of criminal matters, since I had shown that reason was on my side.”94 Here we seem to touch the heart of the matter. Both declarations, although somewhat veiled and ambivalent, suggest that Di Mazza denied his parish priest the right to broker social settlements. He even hinted that the resolution of disputes and criminal offenses belonged to another jurisdiction altogether, namely that of a criminal court. Our documentation does not dwell any longer on this vital concern, but it may be symptomatic of a deepening rift between the domain of the conscience and that of the law.95

Conclusion The Di Mazza affair, along with a wealth of other evidence, establishes beyond a doubt that Lent remained a time of social reconciliation, and that the diocesan clergy retained a key role in bringing this about.96 But those peacemaking routines were exposed to new pressures as the church hierarchy, in an inexorable trend toward central control, came to use sacramental observance as a yardstick of orthodoxy, conformity, and public order. It is not easy to tell how the resulting interference, ranging from bureaucratic scrutiny to judicial enforcement, affected practices on the ground. A case can be made that it increased the chances to resolve social conflicts. When the bishop and his collaborators appeared on the scene, whether personally or in writing, they were likely to tilt the local power balance towards that outcome (how lasting the effect was is another matter). In contrast, John Bossy has argued that Carlo Borromeo’s heavy-handed tactics, combined with his relative disinterest in matters of peace, disrupted rather than aided the existing peacemaking practices in his parishes. That argument depends on a view about the moral economy 94 Ibid., “Processus,” fol. [3v]: “... il frate che mi confessò mi disse che non mi potea inhibir la confessione per cose criminale essendomi io esshibito di star a ragione.” 95 To this theme we will return on pp. 256-57 below. 96 For a similar conclusion, see Torre, Il consumo di devozioni, 257; for a German comparison, see David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 37-60.

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of pre-Reformation community life which remains as yet hypothetical.97 But it also oversimplifies the effects of Borromean discipline. Even if the priorities of diocesan governance were frequently at odds with established community life, the quest for peace survived. Not only did ecclesiastical authorities and Jesuit missionaries adopt it for their own purposes, but, more importantly, local parish priests steered a pragmatic course between episcopal demands and local realities, perfecting their bureaucratic skills of delay and exemption, and wielding the power of interdiction as effectively as they could. In this vein, the tradition appears to continue throughout the episcopates of Gaspare Visconti and Federico Borromeo. Under their rule, the diocesan systems of monitoring and imposing the Lenten observation remained in place, even as enforcement may have lost its severe, fastidious edge. The resulting documentation about inconfessi and reconciliations confirms this overall continuity.98 But under Cardinal Federico, social harmony reappeared as a virtue on its own terms. In line with his personal and philosophical bent toward diplomacy, prudence, and civility, Federico donned the mantle of peacemaker rather more eagerly than his cousin Carlo. During a visitation to Lecco (1608), for instance, where he was deeply concerned about “the instances of hatred and enmity to be settled,” the second Borromeo passionately preached the virtues of peace. There were in society, he admitted, legitimate disagreements, to be resolved in the courts of law. But there were also numerous conflicts “which derive from bad seeds,” are “harmful to humankind, and destroy civil gatherings.” For the archbishop, peace and concord were an essential ingredient of any civilized society.99 One might object that, considering the small numbers of inconfessi, the conciliatory functions connected to the Easter sacraments may have been quite limited overall, and that they were overshadowed by 97

As Bossy appears to concede, in Peace, 97. For examples, see Ottavio Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati a Milano dopo San Carlo (1586-1592),” La Scuola Cattolica 121 (1993): 679-721, at 709-11; Braghetta, Le ‘Tre Valli Svizzere,’ 130-31; and n. 60 above. Legislation by Federico Borromeo in AEM, 4:532-33 (Seventh Provincial Council, 1609) and 524 (decree for rural vicars); ASDM, XIV, 112, no. 57, fol. 247r-v (letter to urban parish priests, 1615, probably by the vicar criminal, ordering strict application of the interdict against the inconfessi of the previous year). 99 La pieve di Lecco ai tempi di Federico Borromeo, ed. Carlo Marcora (Lecco, 1979), 21, 28-31. 98

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the advances of new spiritual techniques and practices. Yet the opposite can be argued with equal justification. If we consider the inconfessi as the tips of an iceberg, these cases may actually suggest that interpersonal conflicts claimed much more time in the confessional than the sheer numbers of inconfessi would suggest. While definitive answers in this elusive matter remain impossible, there is an argument to be made for the second interpretation. As we will see in a later chapter, the sins of hatred continued to be a vital concern of the Milanese clergy. Thus an old ecclesiastical tradition of stemming violence and ending disputes lived on in early modern parishes, even as the administrative center of the confessional Church appropriated the process and took up its oversight. Seen from the episcopal offices, ensuring minimal sacramental performance was primarily a matter of public order (as a matter of conscience it found its way into inquisitorial courtrooms). For this reason it had a fixed place in curia agendas, but a minor one compared to Borromeo’s other, more ambitious policies in the same arena. As the next chapter will show, these prompted the curia to far greater interventionism, also in the confessional, and provoked considerable tensions and controversy.

CHAPTER SIX

GOVERNING THE SOUL: THE LIMITS OF DISCIPLINE

It is indicative of the ambitions of Counter-Reformation church leaders that they wished to turn the thousands of confessionals across their territories into outposts of social discipline and make them function (as Federico Borromeo put it) as “the fibers, arteries, and sinews of the body of the holy Church.” Nowhere, moreover, institutional centralization had more poignant implications than in this attempt to reform society by reaching into the inner recesses of the soul. Indeed, the Tridentine reformers envisioned a uniform and integrated practice of confession in which a compact body of confessors, acting in unison with other clergymen, were the faithful executors of ecclesiastical policy. Thus confession was conceived as a basic ‘safety net’ that would detect and correct sinful behavior at the grass-roots level well before it might end up in inquisitorial or episcopal courts. If this vision was to be implemented, however, church leaders had to deal with a stubborn reality: confession was as little streamlined as the clergy who administered the sacrament, and its confidential nature prevented outsiders from directly knowing, let alone influencing, its proceedings. Therefore central control — by bishops, in particular — could be exercised only through indirect means. These considerations go a long way toward explaining the Borromean project of confession. Carlo Borromeo made a radical attempt to integrate the administration of penance into the machinery of a hierarchical organization without compromising its confidentiality. He went to great lengths to subordinate confessors to his control, to back them up with the power of his centralized administration, and in case of need to apply all disciplinary instruments that canon law afforded. This included the episcopal right to remove select cases from the privacy of the confessional and resolve them in the offices of his palace. Here, at least, a bishop could influence the inner workings of confession, hold up select problems to his own standards, and use this experience to inform his general policies. The scope of the agenda was enormous: it included issues as diverse as usury, child-rearing, country

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dances, blasphemy, magic, and even heresy. Yet for all its efficacy (or perhaps because of it), this system of discipline ran into serious obstacles. Borromeo’s most far-reaching goals and his harshest methods of correction led to resistance that could be smoothed over only with partial retreats, legal exemptions, and bureaucratic negotiations. His ambitious plans to sanctify Milan’s public life, in particular, deeply compromised his credibility and led to a full-fledged conflict with the civil authorities. The implications of this failure are multiple. First, it shows that the Counter-Reformation conquest of the soul was doomed to backfire if it relied too heavily on the harsh and forbidding tools of legal enforcement. Second, public authorities could not achieve the supreme goal of social discipline — forming subjects who were obedient and ‘faithful’ — by invading the private sphere directly, regularly, and on a massive scale. Third, the confessional Church could neither suspend offenders from religious services too frequently and for too long, nor expose them to public penances, without the risk of destroying the very social unity it was meant to represent and foster. Reconciliation, however achieved, was therefore a necessity. Fourth, Borromeo put the consensus between Church and state — a sine qua non of confessionalism — in serious jeopardy by jealously protecting and promoting ecclesiastical privileges and the autonomy of the sacred sphere. Carlo Borromeo’s less powerful and more accommodating successors had little choice but to apply these lessons, whether they liked it or not, and while they retained the existing disciplinary apparatus, the latter became increasingly bureaucratized. Ironically, the archbishop whose experience had most clearly exposed the limits of centralized control of lay religion was elevated by the same generation of successors — albeit with some reservations and obfuscations — to the saintly rank of exemplary Counter-Reformation bishop.

Uniformity Underlying any project of social discipline is the notion that the order of society is served by imposing a single code of conduct on its members. This, however, assumes that the executors of such a project proceed in similar ways. While Carlo Borromeo had precisely this expectation of his diocesan confessors, mid-sixteenth-century realities

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hardly measured up to it. In curia circles, conventional concerns about priestly inadequacies, whether moral, professional, or intellectual, were thus deepened by the realization that a lack of uniformity among confessors made it very hard to use the sacrament as an instrument of public policy. Frequently discussed as a problem area was economic morality. Shifting and increasingly complex business transactions posed a challenge to the old practice of treating issues of restitution, usury, and contracts in the forum of conscience. Ignorance about such issues, according to Giacomo Carvajal, explained that “confessors frequently contradict each other, harmed many souls” and led to universal “doubt and perplexity”: “hence they allow many illicit things, question the irrelevant, and teach what should not be known.”1 Vicar General Ormaneto consequently called for uniformity, insisting in 1565 “that all confessors proceed in the same way, to avoid that one confessor will unbind what the other has bound, or the other way around.” He found his bishop in agreement, though always cautious, for “the danger of freeing who should be bound, or binding who should perhaps be freed, is all too great.”2 But Borromeo deplored the diversity of opinion among established theologians and instructed his vicar to investigate the most urgent problems. For Borromeo, clarity was the secret: the cases of conscience had to be defined in an “open and distinct” way. This was best done, according to this pragmatic bishop, by submitting the questions to the judgment, not only of

1

Carvajal, Circa confessariorum examen (1564 or 1565), ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 92r-v: “Item potissimos casus ignorant scilicet de restitutione, de usura, de symonia, de contractibus, de cambiis, circa quos tota nunc difficultas confessariorum versatur: isti enim casus et confessarios multos et penitentes ipsos magis dubios et perplexos reddunt. Eo fit ut saepius confessarii adinvicem contrarii sint, et maximo detrimento sint multorum animabus; item cum ista ignorant, multa permittunt illicita, multa interrogant impertinentia, et docent quae ignoranda fuissent.” 2 Letter to Ormaneto of 13 January 1565, AGBR, Lettere scritte da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I (copy in BAM, P.27 inf.), fols. 5v-7r: “Il determinar alcuni punti difficili, et più frequenti in cotesta città, come di cambii, usure et simili, acciò tutti i confessori procedessero con un modo istesso, né l’uno sciogliesse quello che l’altro liga, o per contrario, sarebbe veramente come voi dite opra necessaria et fruttuosa. Ma dall’altro lato mi par vedere che vi sia non poca difficoltà, et che bisogni procedere con molta maturità et circumspettione, atteso che si tratta dell’interesse dell’anima, ove troppo grave è il pericolo di sciorre [sic] chi doverebbe esser legato, o legar chi dovrebbe peraventura essere sciolto; tanto più per la varietà de dottori famosi et theologi principali, ai quali bisogneria ben guardar come si contradicesse.”

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theologians and confessors, but also of “the merchants themselves, and [of] men of practice in these dealings,” provided that their experience was matched by honesty and good faith.3 The problem was not limited to economic issues. Any pretense at overall consistency in the practice of confession required that confessors proceed in uniform ways. Uniformity in turn depended on a shared technical knowledge, the lack of which would inevitably lead to confusion and discontent, and therefore endanger the effectiveness of confession. In the long run, a streamlined education system for the clergy offered the best guarantees for dependable pastoral practice. Yet this was a slow and uncertain approach: what confessors did with their skills in the confessional remained unknowable. Not surprisingly, the Milanese bishops revived old ways of exerting more immediate control over select cases, and remade them in Tridentine fashion. They advised confessors to consult with the diocesan authorities about any questions that might arise. Similarly, if a regular confessor disagreed with his penitent’s curate, he should ask for central arbitration, while avoiding that the penitent got wind of the problem.4 More importantly, the bishops availed themselves of the right to take the treatment of problems considered particularly grave or urgent out of the hands of the ordinary confessor to ensure uniform treatment and to maximize the disciplinary effect of absolution.

Reserving absolution Medieval canon law allowed for a host of restrictions, or impediments, limiting the jurisdiction of the ordinary confessor and allowing the 3

Ibid.: “... sopra tutto fate formar bene i casi et come si suol dire, ponerli in termini con quanta maggior chiarezza si può, perchè il tutto consiste nella aperta et distinta formatione de casi: et perciò venendo a questo come per cagione d’esempio, nei cambii, dovrete farli formare non solo da theologi et confessori, ma da mercanti medesimi, et huomini pratici di questi maneggi; et meglio sará che con la esperienza havessero congiunta la bontà, perché più fedelmente aprissero ogni modo.” For similar concerns among the Jesuits, see Angelozzi, “Interpretazioni,” 77. It remains unclear to what extent merchants and other lay people were actually consulted. 4 Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1876: “occorrendo nella risolutione di qualche caso alcun disparere tra loro [i.e., confessori regolari], et curati, si governino con tal prudenza, che non venga a notitia de laici, et ricorrano a noi per la decisione”; see ibid., 2:1871-72, 1880.

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bishop to step in. Imbued with the legalistic spirit of Trent, Carlo Borromeo sought to revive and systematize these. The most important were reserved cases and censures like excommunication and interdiction. Persons subject to ecclesiastical censures were automatically excluded from the sacrament of penance. Their transgression required preliminary absolution in the court of public jurisdiction (or external forum), and by a competent authority (such as the bishop or the Pope), before it could be absolved in the court of conscience (or internal forum).5 The Milanese church authorities, in particular Carlo Borromeo, brandished the weapon of excommunication on many occasions as the ultimate sanction to back up their policies. They used it to enforce the new Tridentine laws on marriage, threatening lay people who plotted an illicit marriage or tried to prevent a marriage by means of poisons or magic. They employed it in monastic reform as a punishment for family heads who forced their daughters or sisters to enter a convent. Moreover (as we will see later in more detail), Carlo Borromeo turned excommunication into a favorite weapon in his battle for public morality, striking those (for instance) who organized games and shows on religious holidays. Finally he used it to discipline wayward priests — confessors lacking episcopal approval, curates who dared bury manifest usurers, or clerics who lived in concubinage.6 Strictly speaking, ecclesiastical censures remained outside the realm of the confessor. Yet he had to know them and be aware of them as impediments to absolution. A parallel and often overlapping system, the reservation of cases, also had the effect of preventing the ordinary confessor from bestowing absolution, but it did so within the internal forum. While the procedure was medieval in origin and elaboration, the Council of Trent 5 Elena Brambilla, “Giuristi, teologi e giustizia ecclesiastica dal ‘500 alla fine del ‘700,” in Avvocati, medici, ingegneri. Alle origini delle professioni moderne (secoli XVI-XIX) (Bologna: CLUEB, 1997), 169-206, at 179-82. On the medieval development of excommunication, see Elisabeth Vodola, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 6 See on marriage, Fifth Provincial Council (1579), AEM, 2:702-03, and Seventh Provincial Council (1609), AEM, 4:355; on nuns, First Provincial Council (1565), ibid., 2:133; on games and shows, “Editto per la prohibitione di giostre e spettacoli nelle Domeniche e feste” (1579), AEM, 2:1113-16; on confessors, First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:52, Avvertenze (1574), ibid., 1871, Fourth Provincial Council (1576), ibid., 357; De sacramento poenitentiae rubricae, seu instructiones (ca. 1586), ibid., 1312; and on clergymen living in concubinage, Sixth Provincial Council (1582), ibid., 746.

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had reinvigorated it in the interest of “the discipline of the Christian people,” giving the highest church authorities direct power over “certain more atrocious and grave crimes,” not only in “external governance” (externa politia) but “in God’s sight,” in the forum of conscience. In practice, bishops or the Pope could ‘reserve’ the absolution of select cases to themselves or to a deputy, requiring such cases to be referred to them for resolution.7 The Tridentine decree (1551) had urged that this power be applied “unto edification ... not unto destruction,” but when Borromeo confirmed it seventeen years later for the Milanese diocese, he left out that call for moderation.8 As for the nature of these cases, the Milanese Jesuit Carvajal believed reservation was especially appropriate if they “harmed the unity, truth, and purity of the Church.” Borromeo was to heed this advice all too well.9 Since the reservation of cases brought the grave sinner face to face with the bishop (at least in theory), it could also help the bishop in defining his general policies. According to the influential Spanish canonist Sanchez, “information gained through confession may help superiors to be more prudent in the external government of their subjects.”10 The experience garnered from individual cases might contribute to uniform ecclesiastical policy and find its way into general edicts and decrees. Borromeo’s interest in episcopal reservation was thus fully in line with the disciplinary function he attributed to confession. 7

Council of Trent, sess. XIV de poenit., cap. 7 (De casuum reservatione), COD, 708 (Canons and Decrees, 96). For the development of the system, Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 1:312-46; Tentler, Sin and Confession, 304-18. Older treatments include I.B. Bertagna, De casuum reservatione in sacramento poenitentiae (Taurini: P. Marietti, 1868); Emil Göller, “Die päpstlichen Reservationen und ihre Bedeutung für die kirchliche Rechtsentwicklung des ausgehenden Mittelalters,” Internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 4 (1910): 337-48, 363-78; and O. Neuenheuser, “Die Absolution von bischöflichen Reservaten in der vortridentinischen Zeit,” Kölnisches Pastoralblatt 46 (1912): 258ff. 8 COD, 708 (Canons and Decrees, 96); Second Diocesan Synod (1568), decr. XVIII, AEM, 2:820. 9 Carvajal, Circa confessariorum examen (1564-65), ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 94r): “... illi casus, qui maxime solent ecclesiae unitati, veritati, atque puritati nocere, secundum varia tempora, et locorum seu diocesum qualitates, solent, aut debent a praelatis reservari.” 10 Thomas Sanchez, Disputationum de sancto matrimonii sacramento ... libri decem (Venetiis, 1606-07), l. 3, d. 16, q. 1: “... casuum reservatio ideo in Ecclesia est, ut superiores ex notitia per confessionem habita prudentiores fiant ad externam subditorum gubernationem.”

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The topic figured prominently in his early correspondence. Here his main concern seems to have been to collect the rules of traditional canon law and publish them in a booklet for the use of parish priests. Not happy with Carvajal’s short treatment of the matter, he intended to entrust a Roman expert with this task, in all likelihood the papal canonist Michael Thomasius (also known as Taxaquet), who was in fact at work in this period, personally supervised by Borromeo, on a treatise about reservation and excommunication.11 A long list of reserved cases, published in Milan with the decrees of the Second Diocesan Synod (1568), was conceivably the result of Thomasius’s studies. The list was revised and republished towards the end of the first Borromeo’s episcopate and soon afterwards enshrined in the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis.12 Apart from the conventions of traditional canon law, Borromeo and his successors were yearly to add other reserved cases of their own choosing. Thus the system of reservations allowed the bishop to supplement his traditional rights in the forum of conscience with new claims expressing his pastoral priorities of the moment. For, as the standard introduction of these decrees put it, “the changing of the times makes it expedient for the bishop to adapt the reservation of cases.”13 While the bishop could declare reservations at any time, the annual synod was the regular occasion to promulgate a new list for the year. The selection, comprehensiveness, and number of cases published each time varied considerably: whereas the cases reserved

11

On Borromeo’s plans, see his letter to Ormaneto, 3 March 1565 (AGBR, Lettere a o da Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fol. 20r-v). On Thomasius’s involvement, see Cardinal Alciati’s report to Borromeo, 3 March 1566 (BAM, F.37 inf., no. 38), and Thomasius’s letter, 2 November 1566, suggesting that the work is almost ready (ibid., no. 213). The manuscript on reserved cases contained in ASDM, XIV, 193, is perhaps attributable to Thomasius, but no published his work on the topic ever appeared under his own name. On Michael Thomasius Taxaquet of Majorca, later bishop of Lérida (1577-78), see Filippo Tamburini, “S. Carlo Borromeo, Penitenziere Maggiore, e alcune suppliche di argomento lombardo nei Registri della Penitenzieria dell’Archivio Segreto Vaticano (sec. XV-XVI),” Studi e fonti di storia lombarda. Quaderni milanesi, n.s., 9/19-20 (1989): 5-44, at 10; Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica, 3:229. 12 This list, not reprinted in recent editions of the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, can be found in the 1582 version (edited by Pietro Galesino), 151-52. For the last update by Carlo Borromeo, of 30 April 1584, see AEM, 3:415-31. 13 Thus the introductions to Carlo Borromeo’s list of reserved cases of 1580 (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 5). The expression returns in edicts by Gaspare Visconti and Federico Borromeo of 1586, 1590, and 1596 (ASDM, IV, circolari for those years).

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in 1553 by Borromeo’s predecessor Arcimboldi numbered 31, Carlo Borromeo’s own list of 1568 contained 21 cases; that of 1580, 17; and of 1584, 28. They could include, to give a few examples, the rape of nuns, incest, magical practices, counterfeiting money or measures, the wrongful suggestion of matrimonial impediments, and (of women) the refusal to wear the veil in church.14 At times we find lists that appear to reflect the bishop’s current concerns even more closely. In early 1572, for instance, the priests of the church district of Casorate were specifically informed about five reservations: public games, public blasphemy, organizing or participating in dances, and masquerades.15 Clearly, the initiative was part of the archbishop’s campaign to promote Lent as a season of moral purification. Instances of excommunication or interdiction, and reserved or otherwise problematic cases of conscience thus became a regular matter of consultation between the diocesan clergy and the central authorities in Milan. Two kinds of functionaries were especially involved: at the local level, new officials called vicari foranei; in the curia, the penitentiary of the Milanese Duomo.

Intermediaries: the bishop’s agents In the Church at large, the function of episcopal penitentiary was far from new. Especially since the thirteenth century, when confession was made an obligatory and therefore regular part of church life, bishops had been inclined to delegate their responsibilities regarding the penitential regime to a representative, the penitentiary. This individual was the first confessor after the bishop, frequently hearing confessions in the Duomo, and entrusted in particular with the power to absolve from cases reserved to the bishop. In 1563, the Council of Trent had confirmed the need for all cathedral churches to have a penitentiary, ordering that this function be united with the first available capitular 14

See, respectively, Marcora, “La Chiesa milanese,” 451-53; AEM, ed. Galesino (1582), 151-52; ASDM, XIV, v. 85, q. 5; AEM, 3:430-31. Under Borromeo’s successor Visconti, the reservations effectively enforced numbered 29; see Ottavio Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati a Milano dopo San Carlo (1586-1592),” La Scuola Cattolica 121 (1993): 689-91. 15 Reserved cases enforced by the provost of Casorate in his vicariato, 23 March 1572 (BAM, X.319 inf., fol. [2]).

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prebend. Preferably, the penitentiary was to be a qualified theologian or canonist, at least forty years of age.16 It is unclear whether before that time — or at least in the decades preceding Carlo Borromeo’s arrival in Milan — any such official had been active in the diocese. In 1565, however, it is evident that there was none. The Tridentine decree, dutifully confirmed by the First Provincial Council, led to the appointment of Hieronimo Rabbia as penitentiarius major in the following year.17 Borromeo’s insistence on quick implementation becomes understandable when we realize that the bishop himself had just been appointed Cardinal Penitentiary in Rome, a post which he was to keep until 1572.18 The diocesan penitentiary was not supposed to work alone, but had to confer continually with theologians and canonists. This consultation was formalized in the course of Carlo Borromeo’s episcopate. Around the penitentiary a permanent committee, or congregatio Penitentiariae, was set up, which was to meet once a week. As all other committees in the Milanese diocese, it was chaired by the archbishop, or in his absence, by the vicar general; if both were unavailable, the penitentiary stepped in. As a rule, the committee also included the official theologian of the Cathedral, three other secular theologians, perhaps one regular theologian, and six doctors of canon law.19 In 1578, the

16 Lea, A History of Auricular Confession, 2:161; Moroni, Dizionario, 52:58-61, s.v. “Penitenziere.” The diocesan penitentiaries remain a largely unexplored topic. The papal penitentiary is gradually receiving more attention, especially due to Filippo Tamburini’s work, a summary of which can be found in his “Sacra Penitenzieria Apostolica,” Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione, 8:169-81; see also Gene Brucker, “Religious Sensibilities in Early Modern Europe: Examples from the Records of the Holy Penitentiary,” Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques 15 (1988): 13-25. 17 For the conciliar text, see AEM, 2:52; see also the Avvertenze, AEM, 2:1871. The Tridentine decree had also been read at the First Diocesan Synod on August, 1564 (ibid., 804). The papal bull instituting the canonry and prebend for the penitentiary (17 December 1565) is reproduced in AEM, 3:1462-65 (the ms. can be found in BCMM, cart. XXI, no. 17; see also ibid., no. 18). On Rabbia’s appointment, see AGBR, Lettere da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fol. 113. For a list of Milanese penitentiaries and summary indications on their function, see Fausto Ruggieri, “Penitenziere maggiore,” Dizionario della chiesa Ambrosiana, 4:2696-97. 18 Tamburini, “S. Carlo Borromeo, Penitenziere Maggiore,” 6ff. 19 See the Instructiones ad fori Archiepiscopalis reformandi usum pertinentes compiled in the course of Carlo Borromeo’s episcopate (AEM, 2:1630-37). For more particulars on the procedures (recorded probably at the end of the 1570s), see ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 1.

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vicar of civil cases and the inquisitor were members as well.20 Soon thereafter the office of the penitentiary was reinforced with several assistants (penitentiarii minores), whose main task was to hear confessions in the Duomo, but who also participated in penitentiary meetings. Their number was to increase over the years.21 While the administrative mandate of the penitentiary and his collaborators was clear in principle — to solve problems concerning the practice of penance, i.e. the internal forum — jurisdictional boundaries were frequently blurred in practice. Sometimes, for example, we find the penitentiary dealing with liturgical issues, and often matters of conscience were submitted directly to the bishop or vicar general, which could lead to squabbles characteristic of any bureaucracy.22 In many instances, however, confessors and parish priests did not turn directly to the diocesan curia to resolve cases of conscience. Especially outside the city of Milan these cases were frequently handled locally by new episcopal functionaries: the rural vicars (vicari foranei). The office had isolated precedents going back to the early fifteenth century (in Catania, Rieti, Novara and Treviso) or even the thirteenth (Lucca, Marsi). But it found wide application only in the aftermath of Trent, when Counter-Reformation bishops searched for administrative tools to penetrate even the remotest corners of their dioceses; early examples can be found Brescia, Vicenza, Bologna, and Rimini.23 20 Appointment by Carlo Borromeo, February 13, 1578 (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 1); the members had the right to subdelegate their task, however only to specified individuals (“singulariter et particulariter tantum non autem generaliter”). 21 By 1590, there were four minor penitentiaries participating in the penitentiary meetings (ASDM, XIV, 231, fol. 235v); in 1618, Federico Borromeo instituted and funded eight more positions (AEM, 4:507-20). 22 A conflict about jurisdiction is evident in a letter by Penitentiary Luigi Pocalodi, of 7 January 1579, in which he expressed frustration about a case submitted to the vicar general instead of himself (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 32, fol. [1r]). 23 Angelo Turchini, “Officiali ecclesiastici fra centro e periferia. A proposito dei vicari foranei a Milano nella seconda metà del XVI secolo,” Studia Borromaica 8 (1994): 153-213 (155-58 on medieval precedents). For some other areas, see Luisa Andrighettoni, I vicariati foranei della Valle Canonica nelle visite pastorali dal Concilio di Trento ad oggi (Brescia, 1976); G. Mantese, “L’origine dei vicariati foranei e gli inizi della riforma tridentina a Vicenza,” Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 15 (1961): 482-91; A. Erba, La Chiesa sabauda tra Cinque e Seicento. Ortodossia tridentina, gallicanesimo savoiardo e assolutismo ducale (1580-1630) (Roma: Herder, 1979), 349-55; Prodi, “Lineamenti dell”organizzazione diocesana,” 331-32; and Angelo Turchini, Clero e fedeli a Rimini in età post-tridentina (Roma: Herder, 1978), 16-20.

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Borromeo, who introduced it as early as 1565, is exemplary in both respects. The point of sending out permanent representatives into all rural areas of the diocese was to break up their traditional isolation and uncontrollability, “so that the bishop, from the city, may the easier oversee and take care of his external flock, as if he were present himself.”24 This was in line with Borromeo’s view of the diocesan clergy as an extension of the episcopal ‘body.’ Each vicar was responsible for a territorial unit (vicariato) consisting of a handful of parishes, and came armed with extensive powers of jurisdiction, overriding the authority of other local officials — regulars, parish priests and higher dignitaries like provosts and archpriests. In reality positions tended to overlap, so that many a provost was appointed to the office of vicario foraneo. Yet no automatism was intended; the vicar was a personal appointee of the bishop, and his loyalty was to be assured by the knowledge that he could be dismissed at any time.25 Intermediaries between local priests and the central administration, and thus new links in the diocesan chain of command, the vicars’ main responsibility was to exercise control over the clergy in their district (a task to which we will return in the next chapter). Yet, directly or indirectly, they also affected the religious life of the laity, including the practice of confession. To them, the bishop would frequently delegate the power of absolution from reserved cases; and according to a 1568 24

First Milanese Provincial Council, 1565, AEM, 2:79-80: “Ut episcopus in urbe etiam externum gregem facilius quasi praesens intueri et curare possit...” More detailed instructions were to follow in the Instruttione a i vicarii foranei of 1568 (AEM, 2:1938-57; a copy, dated 20 December 1568 and signed by Borromeo, is in the Biblioteca Trivulziana, K.109). On the clergy as the ‘episcopal body,’ see Michel de Certeau, “Carlo Borromeo, santo,” DBI, 20:261. Bishop Bollani of Brescia saw the vicars’ work as supplementary to his own visitations, “[n]on potendo noi personalmente, per l’ampiezza della nostra Diocese, replicar di continuo, come voressimo, la visita di ciascuna parte di essa et in questo modo sicurarci della buona disciplina ecclesiastica del nostro amato clero et popolo...” (Domenico Bollani, Ordini delle visite et congregationi sacerdotali della diocese di Brescia [Brescia: appresso Vincenzo di Sabbio, 1566], copy in ASDM, X, Brescia, 4, c. A1r). 25 Turchini, “Officiali ecclesiastici.” For Milanese case studies, see Danilo Zardin, “`Et subito esseguirò quanto la mi ordini.’ Contesto locale, vicari foranei e Curia arcivescovile di Milano sul finire del Cinquecento,” in La città di Angera feudo dei Borromeo (sec. XV-XVIII) (Gavirate: Nicolini, 1996), 253-89; and Lucia Pelagatti, “Gli inizi della riforma cattolica in una pieve rurale lombarda. Le congregazioni del clero a San Donato in diocesi di Milano (1567),” Studi e fonti di storia lombarda. Quaderni milanesi 15 (1995): 69-96.

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instruction, their task included tracking inconfessi, prohibited books, heretics, foreigners, and those who were in neglect of feast days.26 The rural vicar could also wield extensive powers to initiate trial procedures against suspected sinners; this is, for instance, what the vicar of Averara did when notified of an inconfesso who had allegedly expressed heretical opinions about confession.27 What this involvement meant in practice is evident in a report on blasphemy which the rural vicars presented to their superiors in 1574 (or slightly earlier). The document reveals an intense repressive effort conducted partly through the confessional, partly through other channels of communication. Apparently, the strategy was for parish priests to warn and absolve blasphemers once, and to refer those known to be stubborn, or who had earlier received the benefit of the doubt, to the rural vicar for penance, correction, or further investigation. The vicar, in turn, would report serious delinquents to the penitentiary or other curia officials in Milan; or, like the vicar of Arsago, he could arrest the suspect, impose a penance, and turn him over to a secular judge. Many vicars also had a hand in the detection of blasphemers, using members of confraternities or schools of Christian Doctrine as informants, or installing boxes in their churches for anonymous denunciations. In any case, the vicar played a vital role of coordination between parish priests, regular confessors, the central curia, cooperating laity, and secular authorities.28

26

Instruttione a i vicarii foranei (AEM, 2:1938-57). In his letter, of 21 November 1580, the vicar referred to “la facultà conces[s]emi da Monsignor Illustrissimo [Archbishop Borromeo] di piliar depositioni et far processo contra di eretici et suspeti de eresia” (ASDM, IX, cart. 9, v. 22, q. 15, fol. [2]). 28 ASDM, XIV, v. 67, q. 5, fols. [51]r-[56]r, published in Ottavio Lurati, “Pene ai bestemmiatori...,” 41-52 (for this account I have corrected Lurati’s sometimes inaccurate transcription). My dating is based on a reference to “Mons. Castelli in Milan,” namely Giovanni Battista Castelli, Milanese vicar general from 1567 until early 1574 (on 29 March 1574, he was appointed bishop of Rimini). The document was possibly prepared for a meeting of rural vicars in Milan, February 1574 (see p. 38 above). That the document was compiled by rural vicars, not parish priests (as Lurati affirms), is clear from internal evidence (e.g. repeated references to “suo vicariato,” the “rimedio qual usa detto vicario,” etc.). 27

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Procedures of governance This complex system of detection, consultation, and reservation produced an unstoppable avalanche of documents. Clergymen even complained that the paperwork on cases of conscience became so onerous a burden as to leave them little time for anything else.29 But their loss is the historian’s gain. The massive but dispersed correspondence between the diocesan center and periphery, supplemented with data collected for synods or visitations and a limited number of penitentiary documents, shows how impediments could be detected, reported to central authorities, decided, and acted upon.30 Initiating most procedures were local officials — parish priests, rural vicars, sometimes members of the regular orders — but in exceptional cases lay people wrote to the central authorities as well. In many cases we find the determination made by the penitentiary or other officials in marginal notes, drafts for answers, or formal replies. This documentation provides overwhelming evidence that local clergymen frequently resorted to their most powerful weapon — the refusal of absolution. They acted, in other words, as the Avvertenze told them to do. For all their differences, moral complexities and juridical technicalities, individual cases were reduced almost invariably to the simple question of whether and how absolution could be granted. One example must suffice to make this point. On 14 August 1578, the curate of Solaro (outside Saronno) wrote to the penitentiary with the following case: A noblewoman, parishioner of mine, copied a certain prayer containing several characters that she did not understand. She believed that by touching a husband and wife with it they would be incited to make love. And although she suspected from the beginning that it was a bad thing, she kept it for a while, without however trying it, and finally burned it. Since I am not sure whether she committed some serious sin by reading or 29

See the example about rural vicars quoted in Zardin, “Et subito essequirò,”

253. 30 The penitentiary papers, dating from 1578-84, are bound together in one volume: ASDM, XIV, 85. It gives a good sense of the multiple activities of the committee, including questions of procedure, reserved cases, and matters of general policy. A majority of specific cases brought to the attention of the penitentiary deal with marriage and religious vows. Other cases concern liturgy and public worship, usury, illicit contracts, heresy, and superstition.

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transcribing this text, I thought I’d better be safe and ask your permission to absolve her.31

In his answer, the penitentiary analyzed the woman’s possible sinfulness. He suggested that her behavior could only be sinful if she had intended to use the prayer. In that case, she had not sinned if the prayer was not forbidden or superstitious, “because a wife is allowed to stimulate her husband’s love with licit means, just as marriage itself is licit and holy.” If the woman had other motives — like protecting herself against her husband’s harassment — the sin was mortal but not reserved. That was the case only if “it is certain and she has confessed that she has used holy confirmation oil, or water exorcized and blessed for baptism; or else if she has invoked demons to obtain this result — and in that case I give you permission to absolve.”32 In short, the penitentiary saw three possibilities: the woman had not sinned at all; she had committed a simple mortal sin, which could be absolved by an ordinary priest; or her sin was reserved to the bishop, but could be absolved by the parish priest with an one-time permission. It would be wrong to assume, as this example might suggest, that the manipulation of absolution did not go beyond the correct application of complex legal rules and lacked serious consequences for the penitent. In this regard, two factors played a role. First, the theory behind the reservation of cases was that the higher authority of the bishop

31 ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 25, fols. [3r]: “Una gentildonna mia parocchiana copiò un dì una certa oratione, che haveva dentro alcuni carratteri, ch’ella non intendeva, con la quale si stimava, che toccando il marito, et moglie, li facesse amar insieme. Et se bene haveva sospetto sin da principio, che fosse cosa trista, l’ha tenuta presso di sè un tempo, senza però far pruova di tal effeto, et finalmente l’ha abbrugiata. Dubbitando io, che nel leggere o trascrivere tale scrittura sia trascorsa in qualche grave peccato, per maggior sicurezza m’è parso d’impetrar da Vostra Signoria la licenza d’assolverla...” 32 Draft of Pocalodi’s reply, ibid., fol. [4r-v]: “Quella gentildonna che trascrisse un oratione con caratteri, o che havea intentione d’usarne o no. S’ella hebbe intentione d’usarne, et presuposito prima che non fusse oratione prohibita overo superstitiosa o pur con caratteri et parole diaboliche, dico che non peccò, perchè si è licito alla moglie procurar con leciti mezi l’amor del marito non altrimente che è lecito et santo l’istesso matrimonio. Ma s’ella havesse havuto intentione usarne anco ad altro fine come saria per essempio per far che il marito non la puotesse offender, né molestar, né tan puoco abandonar ancor ch’ella si fusse messa a dishonesta vita, questo saria un peccato mortale solo, et non reservato. Se non costa et confessa haver usato per tal effeto olio santo de cresimato over acqua axorcizata [sic] et benedetta per il battesmo, o pur havesse invoca[to] demonii a tal effetto, et in tal caso venne concedo facoltà.”

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or his curial officials would prompt the reluctant sinner to quicker repentance; therefore it made sense actually to send penitents to Milan to face the bishop or a collaborator. In reality (as we will see) this happened only rarely, but in 1589 one rural vicar was so exasperated with the numerous habitual blasphemers in the mountain village of Taleggio that he requested permission to send the whole group to Milan to ask for pardon and absolution.33 Second, the confessor could make absolution dependent on the fulfilment of strict conditions. When, on 10 March 1568, the provost of San Donato reported that cemetery grounds in his pieve were being usurped for agricultural use, the vicar general sternly ordered the provost to defer absolution until the work had stopped and the land was returned to its designated function.34 Fifteen years later, when the curate Giovanni Giacomo Adamolo of Pagnona (pieve of Dervio) reported a case of incest, the penitentiary granted the right of absolution only if “a heavy penance [is imposed] and the occasion of sin is first removed.”35 Also in 1583, the curate of Bolladello (Gallarate) enraged one of his Easter penitents by making his absolution dependent on a written promise to cancel a contested land contract.36 All these cases reflected the episcopal requirement, spelled out in the Avvertenze of 1574, that confessors use the power of the keys to enforce verifiable changes of behavior and the abandonment of ‘occasions of sin.’

33 Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati,” 709; the author notes that this is the only such case in his documentation. 34 BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 132r (response by Vicar General Castelli): “Comando che sia terreno sacrato et cimiterii: non si assolvano li panconi se non lo relassano, et li massari non si assolvano se non restano di lavoralo [sic].” 35 ASDM, IX, cart. 9, 22, q. 7, fols. [6]-[7] (letter of 7 February 1583): “... nella mia cura se ritrova una povera anima la qual non ho mai possuta assolverla per esser intrigata in certi casi reservat[i] cio(è) di incesto et così io subplico [sic] a sua Signoria Reverenda che ella mi concede licentia di poterlo assolverlo [sic] di questo et anchora di altri se io ne ritrovarò, perchè non ha finuta [sic] di far la confessione trovando che io non lo poteva assolverlo et così in quanto io posso sapere a lasato questa praticha. [The answer is contained in a marginal note written in another hand:] Supplicanti concedo facultatem casuum reservatorum hac vice tantum pro hac persona tantum cum poenitentia gravi et sublata prius occasione peccandi.” 36 ASDM, IX, 41, q. 25, fols. [5r]-[6v]).

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The need to absolve The effects of these procedures are not easy to appreciate. Cumbersome, recurrent, and likely to be unpopular with the faithful, they clearly placed great burdens on confessors. Let us take as an example the inquisitorial (and episcopal) demand that confessors interrogate their penitents about their knowledge of heretics or forbidden books. Since the Milanese inquisitorial archives do not survive, we have only limited ways of exploring its implementation. Yet the edict evidently caused priests considerable headaches, for (as we read in a brief note jotted down by a frustrated curia official) “many times they remember it only after absolution or just after dismissing the penitent,” which left them “in great distress and doubt” and made them “interrupt hearing the confessions of other penitents waiting in line.” The note also complained about the obligation for confessors to ask “all the questions contained” in the edict: “especially in times of massive attendance, at jubilees, Easter, and other solemn feasts, that is impossible to carry out.”37 As for the penitents, the note suggested that the obligation was unsuitable for “children, rustics, and the ignorant,” and bothersome to avid frequenters of the confessional; finally there were those who preferred to make the required denunciation to the bishop rather than the inquisitor.38 If one edict caused such turmoil and difficulty, what did this bode for the rest of confessors’ long checklists? During Lent of 1579, that concern led the noted Jesuit preacher Giulio Mazzarino publicly to criticize the episcopal policies in matters of confession. The Cardinal, Mazzarino complained, published so many orders and edicts that “one 37 Note in a manuscript version of the edict, between 1573-85 (ASDM, XIV, 246, q. 5): “Nascano queste difficultà per la osservanza, ex parte confessoris: Li scropoli per la inadvertenza, o scordanza di domandare; et molte volte si ricordano subito dopo la assolutione, altri subito che il penitente è licentiato. Et restano con gran afflittione per il dubio si sono incorsi, et perciò si devano astenersi di udire le confessioni di altri circonstanti. Item perchè in virtù del’editto bisogna domandare tutti quei capi co’le cose che in essi si contegnano, et tutto ciò massime neli tempi di concorsi di populi, come di giubilei, pascha, et altre feste solemni, non si può osservare.” The policy is discussed on p. 62 above. 38 Ibid.: “Ex parte poenitentis. Altri sonno incapaci come figlioli, rustici, ignoranti; altri sonno dotti, li quali sanno tal’obligo, in maniera che sia indarno domandarli. Altri frequentano spesso, etiam piú volte la settimana, la santa confessione, et altri pretendono poter suplir lo denontiar all’ordinario.”

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needed a head larger than Bartolus to remember them.” And the Jesuit concluded that “if he were a confessor he would be unable to hear confessions on account of all the reserved cases that are published here.”39 Yet even if we assume that confessors could handle the system, the systematic suspension of absolution carried serious risks. The reason was at once social and political: a society which was by definition Catholic could not afford to exclude many sinners from church (hence public) life for very long. Even the harshest ecclesiastical sanctions could only delay the reacceptance of the sinner, not make it impossible. The question therefore was, from the point of view of the penitent, how easy it was to be readmitted, and from the point of view of the bishop, how far he could go in imposing conditions. The answer varied from case to case, but there were some patterns. First, the moment counted. At times when large crowds were expected to flock towards the confessionals, especially during the Lenten season, the curia was forced to a significant relaxation of the system. On such occasions it would grant the temporary right of absolution from reserved cases to a large number of confessors, whose names were posted in churches.40 For the rural clergy, too, it became quite easy to obtain the same right. In 1569, for example, the bishop granted it to all vicari foranei during the last week of Lent; the only cases excluded from this provision were voluntary homicide, assault of nuns, and violence against clergymen. The vicars, in turn, could subdelegate the absolution “to whomever you please among the curates of your district, but only (in cases) concerning women and children.” The right of absolution could even be extended to ordinary confessors if the size of the crowds attending the confessional warranted this.41 Any interruption of the penitential routine could cause scandal and was to be 39

Quoted in Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 234 (from ARSI, Hist. Soc., 164, fols. 37v-38); on Mazzarino, see further pp. 248-49. 40 See a list of “confessori deputati” for the feast of the Annunciation, 1583 (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 4); these lists were usually printed (for some examples, see ASDM, IV, circolari, passim). 41 AGBR, Lettere da o a Carlo Borromeo, vol. I, fols. 170v-171r: the delegation concerned all reserved cases “eccetto homicidii voluntarii, violatori di monache, et chi havesse battuto alcun chierico, i quali rimetterete a noi per l’assolutione”; the vicars could subdelegate the right “a chi vi parrà dei curati del vostro vicariato, ma per le donne, et putti solamente.” For other examples, see BAM, P.13, fols. 255v-56r (the bishop allowed the provost of Parabiago to absolve “quel che ha ammazzato quella

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avoided.42 Cardinal Federico’s curia routinely assigned two ‘extraordinary’ confessors to each pieve during Lent to absolve sinners caught in reserved cases, especially women and children.43 Such exceptions to the system of reservations soon became formalized. Each extraordinary confessor would receive a printed permit indicating for how long and under what circumstances he could absolve from which reserved cases. One such form allowed absolution from attempted but unsuccessful abortions, parental or spousal assent to prostitution (unless “the occasion of sin is still lasting or [the prostitutes] relapse many times in this sin”), and voluntary homicides, on condition that satisfaction be done before absolution. While Carlo Borromeo limited these exemptions to secret sins only, in agreement with his principles of public order, subsequent bishops eliminated even this clause.44 In short, what bishops took away with one hand, they often gave back with the other: in the busiest periods of confession the truly reserved cases were limited to the worst. This development is not difficult to explain: mass confessions put such a strain on the capability of the available personnel that confessions not only had to be short, but also had to result in immediate absolutions. Of course, the liberal delegation of absolution to the lower clergy created the risk that confessors might end up ignoring the reservation system altogether. By 1609, that was evidently so common that the Seventh Provincial sua concubina (e) quel servitore che ha fatto quello altro homicidio” and gives his permission generally to absolve from reserved cases for two more months, April 1577); BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 46r-v (request from the vicar of Varese, Francesco Griffi, to extend his permit to absolve those who do not belong to his district, 21 May 1567). During the plague of 1576-1577, such permits seem to have been granted almost automatically to most confessors; on 29 January 1578, however, the bishop revoked them all (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 7, fol. [1]). 42 Thus, when parish priests of Lugano (subject to the Milanese bishop) reported that they had stopped hearing confessions since they lacked an episcopal license, Francesco Griffi, vicar of Varese, feared that “this may create some scandals” (“... tal cosa potrebbe parturire qualche scandalo”). He therefore asked the vicar general to send the priests a license, not only to confess but also to absolve from reserved cases (letter of 23 May 1567, BAM, S. 184 inf., after fol. 46). 43 See the congregation of vicari foranei, 1628 (AEM, 4:648) and the order to confessors (AEM, 4:649-50). 44 An example from Carlo Borromeo’s episcopate is in ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 5; one from Federico’s in ASDM, IV, circolari, under 1601. The clause about public sins in the first (“Hanc autem absolvendi facultatem ... ita demum concedimus, si delictum, a quo absolutio petetur, publicum aut notorium non fuerit”) has disappeared in the second.

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Council intoned angrily against offending confessors, especially regulars, and introduced a new clause about reserved cases in confessors’ licenses to avoid the excuse of ignorance — a measure, one suspects, that tells us more about the advancing culture of fine print than about observance of the law.45 Even the select cases that effectively ended up on the bishop’s (or the penitentiary’s) desk were routinely absolved locally. Especially for secret sins the necessary permission was easily given. The reason for this had much to do with the existing perceptions of secret sins.46 First, as we have already seen, secret sins were much less of a priority than public ones. This explains why Carlo Borromeo would generally delegate the power to absolve from reserved cases if they were secret. The distinction between public and private sin could also determine whether or not a case should be reserved at all. This was the case when, during Lent of 1578, the archbishop added one more reservation to the existing list. In a general edict regulating proper conduct during the major Lenten ceremonies — the stations, indulgences, and prayers of the Forty Hours — he reserved “all mortal sins that men and women may commit [at those occasions] through lascivious words, gestures, or other acts.”47 However, on this point the bishop ran into objections from his own penitentiary committee. Fearing “many scandals which can derive from such severity,” one advisor suggested to restrict the reservation to behavior that caused scandal, and then only in churches.48 He found several colleagues in agreement, includ45

AEM, 4:351-52. See pp. 63-64 above. 47 “Editto del modo d’andare alla Madonna di S. Celso et altre chiese per occasione d’indulgenze, stationi, orationi, ecc.,” AEM, 2:1126: “In oltre riserviamo e dechiariamo riservati a noi tutti i peccati mortali, che con parole, gesti, overo altri atti lascivi si commetteranno da questo giorno innanzi nella città overo nella diocese da huomini o donne nelle chiese e luoghi sacri e vie pubbliche, etiam dalle fenestre e porte delle botteghe overo case, nelle occasioni delle donne che vi sono, passano per andar o tornar dalle divotioni di sopra...” 48 Don Lelio of S. Pietro Celestino (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 9, fol. [1r]): “Per ovviare ai molti scandali che da tal strettezza ponno derivare, et forsi a quest’hora ne son nati mol[ti], sará bene rifformare questo editto, come sarebbe il riservarsi quei peccati mortali che si commettono per conto de donne con att[i] lascivi et vani, et parole obscene, che possano portare scandalo al popolo et questo restringasi solo nelle giese, o vi siano stattioni o indulgenze o no, pur che apportino, come ho detto, scandalo. Et questo meritamente deve essere riservato, perché habet speciem sacrileg[ii].” 46

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ing the penitentiary himself, who insisted that the reservation only target public sins, not secret ones or those “of the heart.”49 A second obstacle inhibiting disciplinary action against secret sins was the danger of revelation. Sending a penitent to the Milanese curia, or even to a regional vicar, to be chastized was often out of the question. In early 1568, a young woman of Pessano (pieve of Gorgonzola), caught in a reserved case involving premarital sex (probably incest), refused to go to Gorgonzola to receive absolution from her own confessor, who had been authorized to that effect. Her reason was that for such a trip she needed the permission of her brothers, who “will want to know the reason, which will give rise to the greatest scandal.” She even objected to her confessor coming to Pessano, because “she has already been seen confessing with him.” Consequently, “those who are already suspicious will then consider the case certain, which would cause great harm to her honor and danger to her life.” And so it would be least conspicuous if her own parish priest of Pessano could absolve her just before Easter, on Maundy Thursday, “under the guise of reconciliation.”50 The case must not have been exceptional, for later that year Borromeo granted the general right to absolve women and children from carnal sins to all vicari foranei, who could in turn subdelegate this power to other confessors, except for first-degree incest.51 49 Giovanni Maria Caneparo noted (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 8, fol. [1]): “dell’ultima regola datta, che quelli ch’andaranno alle stationi facendo qualche peccato mortale, sia particolarmente reservato, a debisogno di temperationi, et questo bastarebbe cascasse nella chiesa, e non per la strada.” His colleague Don Felice of S. Maria della Passione agreed (ibid., q. 9, fol. [1]): “Reservatio ultima ab Illustrissimo [the archbishop] facta ad peccata solum quae in ecclesiis fiunt restringenda esse videtur.” And the penitentiary himself commented (ibid., q. 8, fol. [3r]: “Demum declarandum erit peccata cordis tantum et secreta, dum itur ad stationes, vel ad orationes XL horarum, et etiam in ecclesii[s] ipsis commissa non censeri ullo modo comprehensa et reservat[a] in edicto publicato die viii Martii 1578 [1578 crossed out] proxime preterito.” 50 BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 217r-v (letter of the provost of Gorgonzola, 11 April 1568): the woman’s “fratelli ... vorano saper la causa, che sarà occasione di grandissimo scandalo ... quelli che già suspettano di lei, terrebono poi il caso per certo, che sarebbe con suo grandissimo detrimento del honore, e periculo de la vita. Il detto suo parochiano vedendo il caso periculoso, non sapendo altra meglior resolutione, li disse che giovedì proximo che vene dovesse tornare dalui, sotto colore de reconciliarsi.” The woman was probably guilty of incest, for the provost went on to discuss another case “nel medemo grado di pechato quale è incesto in segondo.” Here the penitent in question, “una donna maretata,” was equally concerned about revelation of her sin: “dice che più presto vol restar di confessarsi e comunicarsi che corere tanto periculo...” 51 Thus the Instruttione a i vicarii foranei of 1568 (AEM, 2:1938-57).

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The risk of scandal similarly limited the conditions that could be attached to the absolution. Again, sexual sins proved problematic, particularly incest. When, in 1579, the provost of Besozzo (west of the Lake of Varese) discovered that a man had had intercourse with his wife’s sister — a case of incest by affinity — he inquired “if the confessor had to compel the two to divorce,” or, since the fact was “most secret and known only through confession,” if a dispensation in foro conscientiae was in order. The provost added that a revelation of the sin would result in “the greatest scandal” and the “utmost infamy for [the woman’s] family.” This was evidently what Luigi Pocalodi, the diocesan penitentiary, feared most. He sternly replied that “the confessor should in no way dissolve the marriage since the sin is secret,” but that the husband could not require the marital debt pending the dispensation request.52 In another case of incest, Vicar General Castelli imposed a penance of fasting on bread and water on Fridays for six months: but the woman in question should be careful “not to reveal her reason for fasting to anybody, whether family members or others.” As for her guilty partner: “When everything is completely safe, send the man to your [rural] vicar.”53 Here the avoidance of scandal superseded the gravity of the crime. That was even more obvious in a case of incest deemed serious enough to warrant the archbishop’s personal involvement and a consultation with the Pope, probably Pius V. As Borromeo reported, a woman had

52

ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 32, fol. [2] (letter of 7 January 1579): “Petrus cognovit sororem uxoris sue ante contractum matrimonii: Queritur an confessarius debeat compellere eos ad publicum divortium, cum peccatum sit occultissimum nec sciatur nisi per confessionem, an potius sit procuranda dispensatio in foro conscientiae, eo magis quia ex separ[atione] certe sequietur maximum scandalum, nam revelaretur peccatum viri et mulieris occultum; quae modo est uxor non [...]niret quod eam duceret, imo sequietur maxima infamia toti illi familiae.” The response of the penitentiary (15 January 1579, ibid., fol. [1]): “... in modo alcuno il confessore non deve separare detto matrimonio essendo il peccato occulto come scrive, ma si deve ben’avisar el marito che in questo mentre si procurerà la dispensa non può né deve richiedere il debito alla moglie, ma si bene ricercato lo deve rendere...” 53 The vicar general to the curate of Liscate (pieve Settala), 2 April 1571 (BAM, X.317 inf., fol. 427r): “Reverendo curato, assolverete quella vedova de quel mi scrivete dal incesto et li darete penitenza di degiunare per sei mesi ogni venerdì in pane et acqua, ma avertiteli che non liascii sapere ad alcuno né de suoi né altri la causa per che facci tal digiuno. Quando il caso sia totalmente securo l’homo poi lo mandarete dal vostro vicario.”

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given birth to a daughter fathered by her son, who in turn married this, his own, daughter and half-sister. Since evidently only the mother was aware of these facts, the Pope recommended that she and her confessor keep this knowledge to themselves: the case had to be dealt with in the strict confidentiality of the confessional. Nowhere did the papal reply hint that the doubly incestuous marriage should be dissolved, or that a matrimonial dispensation should be requested. We may safely assume that the mother’s penance had to remain utterly secret as well.54 For public sins the rules were entirely different. Not only did they allow public treatment of the case, but (as we have seen) they empowered the confessor and his superiors with a newly resuscitated form of discipline: public penance. Typically, public sinners spent the time of Mass during a number of holidays outside the church doors with a candle in their hand and a rope around their neck.55 The diocesan records confirm that this ancient form of public expiation and humiliation effectively made an important comeback, albeit not a popular one. In 1571, for instance, an annoyed provost of Lecco made several excommunicated parishioners do public penance while he said Mass, and absolved them only afterward. It was immediately pointed out to him that this action violated canon law and resulted in his excommunication. But in a letter of apology to the bishop, the provost argued that he had only followed the advice of a colleague, the archpriest of Mandello: the latter had been ridiculed by certain penitents, who after receiving absolution gleefully refused to do their penance. Frustrated by their impotence, both priests thus resorted to the unlawful solution of requiring public penance prior to absolution. They were not alone in doing so, for within years the practice led to general complaints from 54

Undated letter by an unknown Roman contact person; according to an archival note the Pope in question was Pius V (ASDM, XIV, 139, fol. 55r-v). Asked how the problem should be solved, the Pope had answered that, “essendo ... venuto questo caso a noticia di Vostra Signoria Illustrissima in solo foro conscientiae et che sia vero che la madre sola lo sappia, et il figliolo et la figliola siano de ciò ignoranti et vivano in buona fide,” the archbishop could “hora admonire la madre che defleat et confiteatur soli confessori et nulli alii dicat ma lo tenga secreto.” According to the Pope, this solution was identical to the one suggested in a similar case by Cardinal Cajetan “quando era in Germania.” 55 For a few examples, see ASDM, Oggiono, X, 13, q. 6 (visitation Carlo Borromeo, 1571); and BAM, X.319 inf., letter to the Vicar of Monza, 25 February 1572. Those of Valtravaglia who had broken the Lenten fast by eating butter also had to carry a dish of butter during their penance (ibid., letter of 13 June 1572).

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the Milanese government.56 In 1579, under circumstances that will soon become clear, the church visitor Giovanni Paolo Caimi encountered a true crisis of episcopal authority in the pievi of San Giuliano, San Donato, and Mezzate. There, as Caimi reported to Borromeo, vast numbers of penitents were struck by the interdict but showed “so little respect for this censure that they almost hold you in ridicule and contempt.” Adding public penance was not a sufficient remedy, “because they respect not even that.” In desperation, the priest recommended escalating the altercation even further with a pecuniary penance.57 In reality, the trend seems to have gone in the opposite direction: that of mitigation and commutation. The Council of Trent had sternly admonished — and several Milanese decrees dutifully repeated — that a public penance could be changed into a private one only after special episcopal approval.58 It is likely that practice was far more lax. In the summer of 1567, a number of inconfessi from Varese declared their willingness to return to the sacraments, but refused the public penance imposed by their vicar. His superior, Vicar General Castelli, opted for accommodation: “It is my opinion that we should acquire these souls at any cost; and if they don’t want to do public penance, then discreetly commute it into some other, secret, form of penance.”59 And clearly not all forms of secret penance would do. In 1571 one inconfesso of Frassineto eagerly accepted the commutation of his public penance “with the candle at the church doors” into three days of 56 ASDM, X, Lecco, 18, q. 3, fols. [9r]-[10v] (letter of 14 October 1571); aside from the archpriest’s advice, the provost was inspired by inquisitorial procedure: “considerando che anche li heretici quali abiurano publicamente se fanno prima star in pulpito o su la porta della chiesa avvanti [sic] che se assolvino...” For the civic complaints, see the letter of the Milanese Decurioni to Pope Gregory XIII, May 1579, in Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 69. 57 ASDM, IX, 19, q. 24, fol. [6]: “E’ gran cosa il vedere sì gran numero d’interdetti, et quello che piú importa che facciano si puoca stima della censura, in modo che quasi ella è ridotta a burla et a contempto. E però apparerebbe cosa molto ispediente che nello avvenire ... l’assolutione si dasse con pena pecuniaria e non con penitenza publica solamente, poiché nean[che] di questa se ne fa stima...” 58 Council of Trent, sess. XXIV, c. 8 de reform. (1563), COD, 764; First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:54; Third Provincial Council (1573), ibid., 247; Avvertenze (1574), ibid., 1890; and Avvertimenti particolari ... alli confessori, et penitentieri deputati per il Giubileo (1576), ibid., 1903. 59 ASDM, IX, 8, fol. 15r: “[I]l parer mio è di acquistare queste anime ad ogni modo; et se la penitenza pubblica non vogliono fare, discretamente gli la commutiate in altra sorte secreta...”

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incarceration and fasting on bread and water. But he was mistaken in assuming that this had escaped public notice, for according to his vice-provost, “the whole town knows about his penance.”60 In order to be private, penance had to be very inconspicuous indeed. What surprise is it, then, to find Penitentiary Pocalodi complaining in the 1580s: “Confessors rarely impose public penance on public sinners, or ask the bishop for permission to commute it into a secret penance.” The penitentiary took this neglect of public penance very seriously. For this faithful interpreter of his bishop’s social views, the absence of its threat “increases the audacity of the sinners,” while the lack of its public lesson “sets a pernicious example for many...”61 Pocalodi’s pessimistic estimation should not lead us to conclude that public penance had entirely died out. The diocesan papers of the Visconti episcopate demonstrate that it continued to be imposed, for example, for premarital sexual intercourse that had become public knowledge. Moreover, the penalty retained serious powers of intimidation. One inconfesso resisted his return to the confessional for fear that he might receive a public penance; only when struck by the interdict he pleaded for absolution and accepted a public penance after all.62 Under Cardinal Federico, too, public penance stayed on the books, but the frequency and effectiveness of its application remain uncertain.63 A vigorous campaign to reintroduce public penance thus met with a decidedly mixed, if not hostile, reception, and the practice appears to have declined over time. This fact has important historical implications. The comeback of public penance itself is noteworthy enough, but can be explained (as we have seen) in light of the disciplinary trends of post-Tridentine confessionalism; moreover, its principles 60

BAM, X.293 inf., letter of 17 July 1571: “A uno di luoro [i.e., inconfessi] si è commutata la penitenza della candella alla porta della chiesa in tre giorni di carcere con pane et aqua; et l’ha accetata voluntieri, e benché egli si creda che siia secreta, non dimeno si sa per tutta la terra della sua penitenza...” 61 ASDM, XIV, 65, fols. 79r-81v: “Rari sunt confessarii, qui publice peccantibus publicam iniungant poenitentiam, vel facultatem eam commutandi in secretam ab episcopo impetient, quae inobservantia multorum malorum causa, et origo est. Augetur enim temeritas peccantium, et pernicioso exemplo multi ad peccandum trahuntur contra decretum ultimum primi concilii provincialis.” 62 For these cases of 1587 and 1588, see Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati,” 705, 706, 707 (premarital sex), 710 (inconfesso). 63 See the decrees of a congregation of vicari foranei of 1604 (AEM, 4:316-18) and the Twenty-Fourth Diocesan Synod of 1611 (ibid., 424).

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were not at all incongruous at a time when secular courts continued to employ spectacular, exemplary forms of punishment. The resistance is all the more remarkable, then, and may be seen as a clear indication that what was acceptable in the world of justice would not do anymore (and had perhaps been unrealistic for quite some time) in the forum of conscience. We will soon encounter other clues suggesting that sin and crime, long intertwined at least in the theory of canon law, were headed for divorce.

Confrontation and accommodation The evidence reviewed so far would suggest that while diocesan involvement with the local practices of penance was and remained intensive, the disciplinary effects of this centralized direction fell far short of its goals. In practice, much of the complex system of reservation and consultation was reduced to paperwork. One way or the other, most problematic cases of conscience were resolved locally, usually by the penitent’s own parish priest or confessor; even the role of the rural vicars appears to have been limited. The central authorities could impose conditions and would sometimes order that an occasion of sin be removed or a public penance performed, but the most they ordinarily asked for was a “grave” or “salutary” penance.64 That became the face-saving device to overcome a deadlock, a blockage in the penitential process, which was often embarassing for all parties involved. Why did it come to this? The general factors we have discussed — the need to absolve, the pressures of a massive practice, bureaucratization, the secrecy of confession, and resistance against public penance — were real enough but do not address the specific episcopal policies for which these procedures were used. Clearly, the effectiveness of a system of discipline cannot be divorced from its social objectives. It is most fully explained by the microanalysis of single cases, highlighting the interaction among the players of this game — in casu the episcopal 64 See, for a general instruction to this effect, ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 3, “Formula su[b]delegandi in specie casus reservatos”: “eidem iniuncta salutari paenitentia jeiunii, peregrinationis, orationis, et eleemosinae.” Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati,” demonstrates that this was in fact common practice: most cases studied by him are concerned with simple requests of parish priests to absolve from reserved cases; usually these requests were granted without further ado.

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curia, the local clergy (vicari foranei, parish priests, regular confessors), and the laity. What mattered was not only which tools of coercion were used, but what behavior they targeted, and how this behavior was embedded in social life. Ecclesiastical intervention could lead to accommodation or confrontation, depending on how far the norm deviated from practice and how committed all parties were to their positions. Here it is obviously impossible to generalize. Yet two case studies may illustrate the virtues of this analytical approach and shed light on the workings of diocesan discipline through the confessional. One concerns a rather obscure problem in the personal lives of Lombard women, which was particularly acute for the rural poor. The other is a major dispute about public mores, which involved the highest circles of Milanese society and came to oppose secular to religious authorities.

The case of infant suffocation “It happened in this village,” the priest Aluigi Carcano wrote to Milan in 1567, “that a woman while asleep suffocated an infant girl,” and he asked what to do about it: absolve the woman or send her to Milan? The answer, recorded in the margin of his letter, was: absolve her and give her a public penance.65 The case sums up what seems to have been a frequent episode. Infant mortality was, of course, a plague of early modern society. Historians have interpreted this particular variety (death attributed to overlaying) in various ways, either as intentional family reduction or as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The diocesan documentation studied here does not go into the question of causation, but simply assumes guilt based on sinful negligence on the part of the mother or wetnurse (sometimes father).66 Absolution appears to have been fairly automatic

65

BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 240r (letter of 5 November 1567): “E’ caschato in questa terra che dormendo una donna soffochò una putina. Vostra Signoria Reverenda mi scriva il modo ho tener [sic] per assolverla over di mandarla a Milano.” A marginal note contains the solution: “publice in chiesa con candela.” 66 For a recent study, and further bibliography, see Philip Gavitt, “Infant Death in Late Medieval Florence: The Smothering Hypothesis Reconsidered,” in Medieval Family Roles: A Book of Essays, ed. Cathy Jorgensen Itnyre (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 137-53.

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at the beginning of Borromeo’s regime.67 Soon, however, the Milanese authorities stepped up their action against this “serious and enormous crime” — a development that may reflect a broader trend toward government intervention in matters of infant mortality.68 The Fourth Provincial Council (1576) decreed a coercive measure: any woman who kept an infant less than one year old in her bed without such caution as the bishop deemed necessary, was ipso facto excommunicated. Absolution was only possible if the sinner accepted “a heavy and considerable penance, which may set an example to others.”69 Although the decree did not specify the kind of “caution” required, its course of punitive action was characteristically simple and stern. Yet Borromeo’s highminded principle and his legalistic approach were to clash with the complexities of social life, as Luigi Pocalodi soon discovered. On the opening day of the Sixth Provincial Council, 10 May 1582, the penitentiary wrote an urgent note to his rural vicars to inform them that, “considering the many difficulties and troubles that parish priests and confessors experience all the time,” he had

67 In Milan, the smothering of infants was probably considered a reserved case from the outset of Borromeo’s episcopate (see Carvajal’s list, Circa confessariorum examen, ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 94r). Another example is in BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 325r (letter of Dionisio Origo of Vimercate, 9 December 1567): “Lunedì notte che fu alli otto del presente accade una disgratia a una poveretta. Et fu che la detta si amazò sotto nel letto un figliuolo che havea a balia di età di duoi mesi, pur batezato. Il caso è publico; la detta che lo ha affogata [sic] si chiama Caterina, povera quanto sia posibile a essere, però la suplica quando le piaccia per l’amor di Dio a concedere licenza di potterla assolvere” (see on the same case BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 3r). In 1572, a certain Caterina de Filipettis of Olgiate testified that her confessor, Giuseppe Guenzate, provost of Segrate, had required a donation in return for absolution: “Fu un anno a questo settembre prossimo passato che io andai a confessarmi dal nostro prevosto di Segrate et perche io m’era soffocato sotto un putto la notte dicendoglielo io nella confessione, mi fece l’assolutione, ma volse che io li dessi quattro reali per spenderli come lui mi disse in fare il battisterio et io all’hora li detti 25 soldi poi li portai il resto, quali 25 soldi io li messi sul’altar per ordine suo” (ASDM, X, Segrate, 17, 9v-10r; see also fol. 7v). 68 Richard Trexler, “Infanticide in Florence,” in Id., Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence (Binghamton, New York: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994), 212-18. 69 Fourth Provincial Council (1576), AEM, 2:348. The decree is part of the section on baptism, but there is no evidence (neither here, nor in the penitentiary dossier studied in the following pages) to suggest that the reason for the episcopal actions was somehow related to the infants’ baptismal status.

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put the “simple provision” of 1576 again on the agenda of the new council.70 Urged by the archbishop himself, he asked for their feedback.71 A few of these responses, from the provosts of Besozzo, Varese, Gallarate, and Monza, have survived.72 They vividly sketch the precarious conditions under which child care often took place. The harsh winter climate of the mountainous regions of the diocese posed serious risks, and had in some instances even proved fatal, for weak and sickly infants deprived of their mother’s body heat. “Il caso ha dil grave,” the provost of Varese insisted: the situation was serious. Poverty accounted for a large part of the problem. Families often lacked sufficient bedspreads and clothes; they had only one bed to share, or none at all, in which case they slept on straw. Under the circumstances, Borromeo’s “simple provision” was especially hard to realize. How could a mother warm, comfort and nourish a crying, cold, or sick child if not by taking it into bed? (Some reported intestinal ruptures resulting from continuous crying.) Or should one require her to stay up, even though she had to work during the day? The reports also made clear what the prescribed “caution” was. Mothers were allowed to have their babies in bed provided they kept them in small wooden boxes (cassette or cunette). How feasible was this, however, when a small bed was shared by husband, wife, and the rest

70

ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 15, fol. [3r] (another, signed, copy on fol. [4r-v]): “Considerando alle molte difficultadi et molestie ch’a tutte l’hore patiscono li parochiani et confessori, et il gran pericolo che corrano molte anime per causa del decreto del 4.o concilio provinciale sotto il titolo Quae pertinent ad sacramentum baptismi nel fine, dove ordina che le donne non possino tener nel letto il primo anno li loro figliuoli sotto la pena dell’escommunicatione, nella quale cadano ipso facto non servando il modo et forma commandatali da parochiani d’ordine del suo vescovo, ho giudicato che sia molto ispediente proponer in questo Concilio provinciale sesto tutte le difficultadi che partorisce la simplice dispositione d’esso decreto.” 71 Pocalodi’s wording is indicative of Borromeo’s procedural caution and hierarchical approach: “... dil che ne ho anco fatto parola con Monsignor Illustrissimo mio Signor [Archbishop Borromeo] il cui parer et ordine in questo è che Vostra Signoria con alcuni altri signori prevosti di questa diocesi raccolgano tutti li dubii et difficultà che in questa materia li occorrano cosí però che ciascuno partatamente et quanto prima mandi li soi in mano mia acciò se ne possa haver qualche buona et certa risolutione dalla Congregatione di questi Reverendissimi Signori Vescovi della provinc[ia] et se sarà giudicato conveniente se ne possi formar et stabilir un decreto” (ibid.). 72 Ibid., q. 15, fols. [5r], [8r]-[9r]; q. 16, fols. [1r-v], [4r], respectively.

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of the family as well?73 What if babies got out of the cradle by themselves? Nursing an infant in a wooden box was impractical to say the least. It hurt women suffering from nipple or breast infections, was impossible for those who had little milk, and allowed the child to suck only from one breast — and here the descriptions almost turn into personal confessions: And they say they can’t move [the cunetta] to their other side both because of the danger of hurting the baby in the dark of night, and because of her husband and children, who are in the [same] bed. It follows that the baby suffers because when the one breast is empty they cannot switch to the other.74

Cradles outside the bed were not an option either, if people lacked blankets to cover the child, and if temperatures were so low that artificial heat was insufficient anyway. And what to do if a mother was too weak to get out of bed to feed her child, and could not afford a wetnurse? During the Council the issue came before a high-powered committee, which consisted of the vicars general of Milan, Cremona, Lodi, and Vercelli, as well as several prominent Milanese canonists and ecclesiastics.75 Faced with a long report of medical and personal difficulties, they followed the path proposed by Pocalodi, which was one of 73 Thus, for instance, the provost of Varese (ibid., q. 15, fol. [8r]): “Questi medemi spesse volte non hano comodità di puoter fare la cassetta datta nelle instruttioni, et tenerla nel letto, perche hano un solo letto, et in esso vi dorme tutta la fameglia di casa, il che sarà impedito dalla detta cassetta.” Trexler reports the use of a different device in sixteenth-century Florence: a little arch (arcuccio), “which fitted over a crib and prevented the covers from smothering the child” (Trexler, “Infanticide in Florence,” 220-21). 74 Ibid., q. 16, fol. [1r] (letter of the provost of Gallarate): “... et dicono non poterla movere et mettere dall’altro canto, sì per il pericolo che vi è di notte nell’oscuro di far qualche male alla creatura, sì anche per li figliuoli et marito che sono nel letto, sì che ne segue che la creatura patisse perché quando hanno vota la mamella non gli possono dare l’altra.” 75 Detailed notes on the deliberations, drafted by Luigi Pocalodi, are in ibid., q. 15, fols. [6r]-[7v], [10r]-[11v]. The participants were (ibid., fol. [10v]): Antonio Seneca, deacon of the Metropolitan chapter; Ottaviano Abbiate Forero and Griffidio Roberti, canons of the same Cathedral; Carlo Bascapè, a cleric regular of the Order of S. Barnaba; and the canonist Giovanni Battista Bartolini from Perugia. (“Griffidio Roberti,” who performed important duties in Borromeo’s curia, was probably an Englishman by the name of Griffith Roberts; on Forero, see p. 295 ff. below).

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moderation: “the impossible cannot be required, and the law needs to be possible.”76 At the end of the meeting, they left it to “experts” to collect the “cases which mostly and most urgently need provision,” and to determine those instances “in which women can be allowed to keep their children with them in bed.”77 The official decree of the Council provided the legal framework: it allowed bishops to grant dispensation in serious cases, or to delegate that right to their rural vicars or to whomever else they saw fit. The following year Borromeo enacted this decree in the Milanese diocese, authorizing his vicari foranei to dispense mothers under a limited and specified number of circumstances, especially poverty, ill health, or, on the contrary, the robust size and vigor of their eight- or nine-month-old infants.78 Thus the vicars also became medical inspectors. Meanwhile (to return once more to the Council of 1582), another problem was cause for deep concern. Pocalodi’s inquiry had revealed that both local priests and women themselves had raised doubts about the contents of the decree of 1576. Should it also apply if women were 76 “[C]um impossibilium nulla sit obligatio et lex possibilis esse debeat, huiusmodi mulierem non teneri” (ibid., fol. [11r]). This was the answer to Pocalodi’s first query: “In primis quid agendum cum pauperculis mulieribus, quae hyemali tempore pariunt neque illis adest copia lecti, vestium vel stragularum quibus infantium tenera membra tueantur a frigore?” (fol. [6r]). Implicitly or explicity, the same principle was applied in solving many of the subsequent problems. The general approach recommended by Pocalodi was the following: “Et ut proferam quid in huiuscemodi difficultatibus et animarum periculis tollendis et precavendis sentiam, mihi videtur remedium illud non incongruum fore se declaretur in primis quibus de causis mulieres poterunt filios penes se habere mitiori et faciliori adhibita cautione, puta si quoad infans infirmus fuerit, vel etiam mater infirma quoad convaluerit, collocetur in pulvinari vel lectulo superposito lecto matris interposito etiam ligno quo moneatur mulier dormiens filium penes se iace[re], et sic de aliis similibus” (fol. [7v]). 77 “Communis fuit opinio Congregationis primo quod decretum in suo robore proro[getur]. 2.o Casus colligantur qui maiori et promptiori provisione indigent ... quodam modo necessarii sunt arbitrio peritorum. 3.o deputentur persone arbitrio Episcopi quae perquunt et examinent diligenter quibus in ca[sibus] concedendum sit mulieribus ut filios secum in lecto tenere po[ssint] ac facultatem conced[ere] possint” (ibid., fol. [10v]). 78 Sixth Provincial Council (1582), AEM, 2:740. The list was drawn up during a meeting of the penitentiary committee of 2 August 1583; Pocalodi’s notes of that meeting, several copies of the list of dispensations, and Borromeo’s letter to the rural vicars (16 August) are in ASDM, 85, q. 16, fols. [2r]-[3v], and q. 13, fols. [9r]-[11r]. The Eleventh Diocesan Synod of 1584 further specified the shape of the sleeping box and elaborated on the procedure for excommunication (AEM, 2:1046).

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in bed during the day, if they were awake, or if they were just feeding their babies?79 Some women could “not be persuaded that they had sinned by holding their infant children in bed if this had not resulted in the death or suffocation of the infant.”80 Others, in Pocalodi’s account, “dare[d] assert that this decree does not bind or oblige them to anything since it is indiscriminate, entails great dangers for children and almost savors of impiety.”81 And this was not all. In the pieve of Besozzo, where heavy penances, both public and private, had been imposed for this sin, “few [women] now confess this crime or are ashamed of it.”82 In Monza, too, women stopped attending the confessional during the first year of their infant’s life — that is, as long as the decree applied.83 Finally, “what to do with those who when recounting this sin to their confessors laughed about it, as if it were a joke?”84 Here we are allowed the rare glimpse into the confessional that we usually have to do without. It shows how penitents, disturbed by a measure that baffled their sense of the reasonable and acceptable, responded with a mixture of pragmatism, irony, and defiance. In turn, such attitudes were far more upsetting for ecclesiastical authorities than any practical problem caused by the original decree. They 79 Thus the provosts of Varese and Gallarate (ASDM, XIV, 85, q. 15, fol. [9r], and q. 16, fol. [1v]). 80 Ibid., q. 15, fols. [5r-7v]: “7.o quid de illis que nolunt persuaderi se peccasse tenendo filios infantes in lecto quando inde non est sequta [sic] mors vel suffocatio infantis?” 81 Ibid.: “5.o Quid de illis mulieribus censendum quae temer[ari]e audent asserere non teneri vel obligari ex illo decreto cum sit indiscretum et tendat in mag[num] periculum filiorum et fere redolleat impietatem?” 82 Ibid., q. 15, fol. [3r]: “4.o le stesse madri mosse a compassione del pianto delli fanciulli non si possono contener che non le si tirino a presso, et perché le son state date gravi penitenze, o publiche, o private, adesso puoche confessano questo delitto, né si ne fanno conscien[za].” 83 Ibid., q. 16, fol. [4r]: “5.o Perché spesso occorrano li sudetti casi le donne se retirano dalla frequentia delle confessione, et alcune non si confessano tanto che li figlioli non hano compito l’anno, et altre facciono questo caso, et non se ne fano conscientia presuponendo che lo facino solo a tempo per necessità et non per disobedire.” A similar problem is noted by the penitentiary (ibid., q. 15, fol. [6v]): “6.o quid consilium capiendum est contra mulieres que ex[...] virtute huius decreti non confitentur, quae immo in excommunicatione existentes ass[umunt] sanctissimum Eucharistiae sacramentum.” 84 Ibid.: “11. Quid de illis quae ridendo vel per modum ludi exponunt confessariis huiusmodi peccatum?”

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enjoined that women “who confess without reverence and shame, be rejected,”85 and that those who denied having sinned be considered impenitent.86 But they reserved the harshest punishment for women who had raised doubts about the validity of the decree: Those rash women are not to be heard by confessors, but rejected and gravely reproached; and if they have said this in front of witnesses or in public they have to be reported to the Office of the Inquisition, interrogated about their opinions on the authority of the Church and the sacred Council [of Trent], and punished according to the sacred canons.

A similar treatment was to befall those who stopped confessing or those who continued to take the Eucharist while excommunicate.87 This was a telling response: the diocesan officials were willing to be flexible about the contents of the decree, and allow for exceptions and provisions — all to be worked out, in typically bureaucratic fashion, by special committees. Yet they strenuously opposed any questioning of church authority and procedure. If disciplinary instruments like confession and excommunication lost respect and effectiveness, the Church risked losing its grip on social problems over which it claimed jurisdiction. No evidence tells us how the women reacted to this; their respect for, or acquiescence to, ecclesiastical practices such as confession may well have returned once the new spirit of leniency and compromise had removed the sharpest edges of the original policy. But the limits to what this disciplinary system could accomplish had become all too clear. Not surprisingly, then, subsequent practice was characterized by a constant juggling of rule and exemption. Extenuating circumstances or “legitimate excuses” became the levers with which the local clergy sought to obtain from the diocesan curia the right to absolve the 85

Ibid., q. 15, fol. [9r]: “Ad xi.um, repellendae sunt mulieres quae absque reverentia et verecundia accedunt ad confessionem.” 86 Ibid.: “Ad 7.um responditur huiusmodi mulieres reic(i)endas tanquam impenitentes.” 87 Ibid.: “Ad 5.um responditur: temerarias illas mulieres a confessariis non audiendas et gravi reprehensione reiciendas, et ubi id coram testibus vel publice dixerint accusandas esse sancto Officio Inquisitionis et inter[r]ogandas quid sentiant de authoritate ecclesiastica et sacri Concilii ac puniend[as] iuxta dispositionem sacrorum Canonum. Ad 6.um responditur idem quod de 5. Ad 7.um responditur huiusmodi mulieres reic[i]endas tanquam impenitentes... Ad xi.um repellendae sunt mulieres quae absque reverentia et verecundia accedunt ad confessionem.”

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numerous women who refused to use the cunino.88 Existing policy allowed rural vicars to do so in many cases, but often this proved unsatisfactory. It meant, for instance (as one curate of Civate complained in 1588), that mothers of lively eight-month-olds had to go all the way to Lecco to see their vicar, with the result that “they get annoyed with the trip, especially if they want to go by boat over the lake, or if they do not find him at home, and then usually incur excommunication...”89 Many parish priests, therefore, requested the privileges normally reserved for the rural vicars. This was true in particular when Easter approached and with it the risk that a forced abstention from the sacraments would lead to “greater scandal.”90 Yet the curia responded with reluctance, generally granting the right of absolution only for specific, one-time requests, and otherwise maintaining the vicar’s authority. The curate of Civate thus saw his wish denied, because the curia thought it “unwise to be lenient, so that the penitents will know the importance of their offense.”91 In short, the hassles of bureaucratic procedure remained essential to inculcating a sense of guilt. This did not solve the problem, however, which kept troubling Milanese authorities throughout Federico Borromeo’s episcopate. Despite all orders and decrees, Vicar General Albergati wrote in 1604 to the parish priests, “infant murder” had become a daily occurrence. And so he piled rules on rules, demanding that the 1576 decree be read from parish pulpits during important feasts, providing further descriptions of the cunetta, and ordering priests to inspect the latter at the occasion of baptism. Yet eight years later, when Cardinal Federico felt obliged to repeat the very same rules once more, there were so many excommunicates that he could do no better than to offer absolution

88

Numerous examples from the years 1587-88 can be found in Bruno Maria Bosatra, “San Carlo difensore della vita. La tutela del neonato in un singolare ‘corpus’ custodito presso l’Archivio Storico Diocesano di Milano,” Terra Ambrosiano 29 (September-October 1988), 69-76. Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati” has shown that overlaying was in fact the reserved case most frequently discussed in the diocesan correspondence of this period. 89 Quoted in Pasquinelli, “Peccati riservati,” 715 (letter by Cesare Cattaneo, 28 February 1588). 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid. (for other examples, see ibid., 714).

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to all who were willing to accept the renewed decree for the future.92 Periodic amnesty had become part of the disciplinary system.93

Public mores and religious observance Much more spectacularly, the confessional proved its limitations as a tool of episcopal governance in the public forum of Milanese and, indeed, European politics. In 1579, longstanding tensions between Milan’s powerful archbishop and its secular authorities erupted into open confrontation, leading to formal protests and diplomatic missions to Rome and Madrid. The issue at hand was nothing less than Carlo Borromeo’s entire reform of public life, and much else besides. The case demonstrated that if Milan was a confessional state, which drew its strength and unity from the collaboration of state and Church, this partnership was far from close, if not outright contentious. Well known to scholars of Milanese history and, more broadly, of Church-state relations in early modern Italy, the crisis of 1579 is one of the most visible incidents in the recurrent jurisdictional struggles between ecclesiastical and secular powers.94 These came at a time, 92 See, respectively, ASDM, VI, 71, anno 1604 (letter by Antonio Albergati of 12 April 1604); and AEM, 4:428-30 (Twenty-Fourth Diocesan Synod, 20 April 1611; renewed on 16 February 1616 [ASDM, VI, 70, anno 1616]). Already in 1597 and 1604 the archbishop had confirmed the 1576 decree and the 1583 dispensations; in 1604 he had insisted on monthly publication by parish priests (ASDM, VI, 71, anno 1597; AEM, 4:317-18; and ASDM, XIV, 117, fol. 222r-v [containing a draft of the dispensations, possibly of 1604]). Cardinal Federico’s concern is also evident in his discourse “Delle madri, che soffocano i loro figliuoli,” Sacri ragionamenti, 3:217-20. 93 In following years the matter remained a subject of debate both at the central level (see the meetings of the vicari foranei, ASDM, VI, 70, anno 1616, and ibid., 71, anno 1617) and in local gatherings of the clergy, where infant suffocation was discussed in the form of cases of conscience (e.g., ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. 155r; for other such congregations, see pp. 287-88 below). 94 On the political crisis, see Paolo Prodi, “San Carlo Borromeo e le trattative tra Gregorio XIII e Filippo II sulla giurisdizione ecclesiastica,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 11 (1957): 195-240; Id., “Charles Borromée, Archevêque de Milan, et la Papauté,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 62 (1967): 379-411. More generally on stateChurch relations in Milan and other Spanish territories in Italy, Agostino Borromeo, “Archbishop Carlo Borromeo and the Ecclesiastical Policy of Philip II in the State of Milan,” in San Carlo Borromeo, 85-111; Id., “L’arcivescovo Carlo Borromeo, la corona spagnola e le controversie giurisdizionali a Milano,” in Carlo Borromeo e l’opera della “grande riforma,” 257-72; A.D. Wright, “Relations between Church and State: Catholic

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shortly after the Council of Trent, when church leaders asserted their authority with renewed vigor and confidence. In Milan, the bones of contention were various: the local adoption of the decrees of Trent, along with those of Borromeo’s own provincial council of 1565; the publication of the papal bull In Coena Domini (1568), which detailed ecclesiastical rights in territorial states with uncompromising clarity; the archbishop’s insistent claims over the management of lay confraternities such as the Umiliati, female convents, and other areas of aristocratic privilege within the Church; and the archbishop’s right to his own armed forces and prison. Yet the confrontation of 1579 arose primarily out of differences over public order. The regulation of religious functions, traditionally a common concern of civil and church authorities, often relegated specific institutional priorities to the background. That changed after Trent, when (as we have seen) a purist archbishop embarked on an aggressive campaign to strip the occasions, places, and times of worship of the thick incrustations of perceived worldliness. Scholars have thus singled out this battle, and its culmination in 1579, as a powerful expression of the Counter-Reformation attempt to redraw and clarify the lines of demarcation between the sacred and the profane in the prime arena of church life: religious ritual.95 Carlo Borromeo paid special attention to the numerous varieties of popular sociability deemed to interfere with religious functions. Thus the suppression of dances on Sundays and feast days, especially in or near sacred places, became a matter of intense curial concern. This concern was exacerbated as the stubborn nature of the problem became clear, for sacred places and times were at the center of all public life. Following a severe but apparently ineffective prohibition in 1565, the campaign picked up steam in the early 1570s. The Milanese diocese not only declared the dances a reserved case subject to ecclesiastical sanctions (up to excommunication), but required severe expiations of its practitioners. They had to undergo public penance to make up for the scandal caused by their sin and, even more remarkably, they could not marry for a two-year period. Clearly, the policy was meant to strike Developments in Spanish-ruled Italy of the Counter-Reformation,” History of European Ideas 9 (1988): 385-403; and Flavio Rurale, “Stato e Chiesa nell’Italia spagnola: un dibattito aperto,” Cheiron 9 (1992): 357-80. 95 Turchini, “Il governo della festa”; specifically on the Carnival issue, Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima”; and Laura Bellavite, “Il Carnevale a Milano nel Cinquecento,” Comunicazioni sociali 4 (1982): 3-40.

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this popular custom where it hurt most: in its function of courtship ritual. Thus an old principle, soon to be confirmed in the Avvertenze, found a new application: penances should be a correction ‘in kind’ of the sin committed. The Jesuits joined in this effort by going into the diocese and preaching against dancing and related ills, to return with proud stories of success. In one town, during Lent of 1575, two preachers “delivered so many sermons, morning and afternoon, that the peasants were too frightened to dance and dress up in costume, and so much regretted their numerous sins committed at that time that they began to call on them [the Jesuits] to confess their sins.”96 But on the whole, the episcopal policy proved far too confrontational. On the one hand, local priests overwhelmed the central curia with straightforward but urgent requests for permission to absolve from this case.97 On the other hand, the policy met with fierce resistance at the local level, as is testified by a furious letter of protest by Scipione Suarez di Canova, a member of the Milanese Senate. In his function of vicar of the rural contado of Martesana, Suarez complained that the local provost of Vimercate had not only threatened dancers with excommunication but announced from the pulpit “that marriageable girls who attend any party, or dance, cannot marry for two years.” For Suarez, these were “scandalous words, contrary to all reason.” It was a clear sign that Borromeo’s fight against balli was interpreted as disturbing the social order rather than repairing it. In 1579, when civic leaders complained about the matter to Pope Gregory XIII, the implications of interfering with this “most ancient custom of the country” became clear. Especially for the peasants, dances were the occasion from which “many marriages are born,” and since it was impossible “to get them to understand that they offend the divine Majesty by dancing, they do so in spite of the prohibition.” The only result, the Milanese authorities concluded, was the “loss of the souls of those poor people,” who

96

ARSI, Med. 76-I, fol. 20v (littera annua, 31 January 1576): “Tantum igitur concionibus matutinis et pomeridianis profecerunt ut non solum choreas ducere [et] personati incedere non auderent incolae, sed etiam permultos scelerum tunc temporis patratorum ita poenituerint, ut quibus peccata confiterentur, hinc inde evocare coeperint.” On the issue, see also Arcangeli, “L’opuscolo contro la danza.” 97 For example, absolutions from sins related to balli occupy the better part of volumes of correspondence for 1577 (ASDM, IX, 19), and 1578-84 (BAM, S.187 inf.).

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found themselves excommunicated and hence excluded from the ecclesiastical rites of salvation.98 By that time it was clear that Borromeo’s policies had overstrained his disciplinary machine, causing it to overheat and stall altogether. Of course, more was involved than country dances. Particularly since the plague, Borromeo had raised the tone of his campaign for religious observance. He had followed up on his edict for reverence in the church building (1574) by issuing stern rules about Carnival and Lent, fasting, and conduct at processions and other religious functions. A saturation point was reached on March 7, 1579, when the archbishop issued an edict attacking the customary Carnival entertainments in unusually sharp terms, and prohibiting all jousts, theatrical performances, tournaments, dances, and masquerades during the Sundays and feast days of the Lenten and pre-Lenten season. Organizers and participants were ipso facto excommunicated, while spectators and assistants automatically incurred the interdict.99 Though consistent with Borromeo’s earlier policies, the move proved the last straw for the Milanese civil authorities, divided the clergy, and caused an eruption of general discontent. The governor himself, Antonio de Guzman, Marquis of Ayamonte, persisted in organizing Sunday jousts and masquerades on Milan’s Corso di Porta Romana, attracting large crowds.100 Meanwhile, discontent began to take on menacing forms. Critics initially gravitated to the Lenten preacher Giulio Mazzarino, the most vocal but by no means only Jesuit to oppose Borromeo’s recent measures. But Mazzarino was removed from office and subjected to Inquisition trials in Milan and Rome.101 In May, the Decurioni, 98

Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” appendix, 71-72 (“... si leva l’antichissimo costume del paese, specialmente tra rustici, li quali facendosi con modestia et servendo a così buon fine, come molte volte serve, perché da questa occasione nascono molti matrimonii, non è indecente, nè si devria vietare ... tal prohibitione non serve ad altro che a perditione dell’anime di quelli poveretti, i quali non potendosi dare ad intendere che offendano la divina maestà ballando lo fanno anco non ostante la prohibitione”). 99 “Editto per la prohibitione di giostre...” (7 March 1579), AEM, 2:1115. The timing is important: 7 March was the eve of the first Sunday of Lent, on which day Carnival celebrations were customarily held. 100 BAM, F.55 inf., fol. 287 (letter by Borromeo, 12 March, 1579), quoted in Turchini, “Il governo della festa,” 517. 101 For a detailed reconstruction of the Mazzarino case, see Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 217-81. As for other critics, the Jesuit Manuel Sa (later author of the popular Aphorismi confessariorum) had been close to Borromeo in the early 1570s, but by the end

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one of Milan’s governing councils, took the unprecedented step of having their Roman agent Giacomo Riccardi submit a formal protest to Pope Gregory XIII. Later that year two other Milanese ambassadors, Count Pietro Antonio Lonato and Camillo Trotto, traveled to Rome to request papal intervention, forcing Borromeo himself to follow suit and personally plead his case with the Pope. Having secured substantial papal backing, after months of negotiations, the archbishop still had to spend considerable diplomatic energies in 1580 to appease the alarmed Spanish monarch, Philip II, and implore his indispensable support. What was at stake? Evidence from different sources indicates that, beyond harsh criticism of specific measures, Borromeo was facing a general backlash against a system of discipline stretched to the breaking point. Borromeo’s uses of the sacrament of penance, especially the reservation of cases of conscience, were at the heart of this storm. In the courtroom the Jesuit Mazzarino admitted, no doubt echoing what he had said from the pulpit, that reserved cases had their potential as incentives against sin, but should not serve to throw “penitents into desperation, confessors into confusion, and the city into scandal.”102 The remark summed up the protests presented by the Milanese civic authorities to the Pope. The Decurioni complained that penances were too severe, censures too readily issued, and reserved cases too many. They further charged that Borromeo’s zeal in combatting small transgressions as if they were the gravest of sins had a doubly negative impact. First, it was slanderous and insulting to Milan, “because this city, not having scandals or public sins greater than others, does not believe it deserves such a negative reputation among all the others.” The complaint that overly zealous religious ‘reform,’ pursued with the methods of public exposure, hurt the interests of the state, was of the decade he was looking for an excuse to leave town, a fact probably related to his criticism of Borromeo’s reserved cases. See Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 270-71, quoting ARSI, Ital. 156, fol. 2 and BAM, F.145 inf. (letter of 22 August 1578, criticizing Borromeo’s policy on reserved cases). 102 ARSI, Hist. Soc., 164, fol. 58v (Mazzarino’s later account of the court proceedings): “dissi, che è bene riservarsi casi, ne facilitas veniae incentivum praebeat delinquendi, ma però tali e tanti che non mettano i penitenti in disperatione, i confessori in confusione et la città in scandali...” (see also Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 270n.). Mazzarino proceeded by invoking the Tridentine insistence that reservation be used “in aedificationem et non in destructionem.”

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not unusual in this period. For the same reason, an equally inflexible institution like the Inquisition was faced, in Venice and elsewhere, with political resistance against its harsh procedures and the publicity of its exemplary executions. The latter created sympathy for the victims rather than shoring up ecclesiastical authority.103 In Milan, similar reactions called the entire system of church discipline into question. This was the second point made by the Decurioni: Borromeo’s policies only led to disobedience, and hence, considering the ecclesiastical sanctions, to religious disgrace and worse. Ever since Borromeo had reserved even the slightest forms of lechery at public devotions, “many abstain entirely from confessing, whether for shame or because of the impending danger.” They would still take the Eucharist, but clearly “with manifest ruin of their souls.” The risk was especially acute for women, who would rather suffer spiritual danger than risk the “hate, discord, and abuse of their [male] relatives,” as well as the “suspicions of the crowd.” Once more it proved socially unacceptable to take admissions of sexual indiscretion out of the confessional. More generally, the reservation of sins had clogged the penitential pipeline with reluctant sinners, for whom the “road of penance and salvation” had been made “more difficult than what human weakness can bear.”104 The Milanese clergy had earned themselves a poor reputation along the way. By word of their Roman agent, the Decurioni accused the vicari foranei of being so rigid and inconsiderate in enforcing their superior’s prohibitions that only the fear of secular justice kept their desperate victims from committing “the most serious excesses.”105 Reiterated later that year, the grievance prompted an investigation on the part of an alarmed Spanish government.106 Then there were the confessors, who, handpicked and strictly controlled by the archbishop, had gained the reputation of being his “confidenti.” Fearing excommunication themselves (so it was suspected), these priests were so rigid in interpreting the reservation policies and zealous in executing them as to endanger 103

Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 99-100, 168-69. The Decurioni’s letter of protest is published in Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 67-73. 105 Ibid. Thus also Bascapè, De vita et rebus gestis, 520. 106 Prodi, “San Carlo Borromeo e le trattative,” 216. In its instructions of 10 December 1579 to Lonato and Trotto the city voiced another complaint about abuses of power on the part of vicari foranei (text published in Formentini, La dominazione Spagnuola, 486-90, at 488). 104

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the seal of confession. That point was made even more emphatically the following year, when the ambassadors Lonato and Trotto explained to the Pope “that the reservation of so many cases is contrary to the secrecy of confession and, as a consequence, carries the risk of limiting its freedom and restricting the road to paradise.”107 And so, the usage of confession as a tool of public policy had undermined the sacrament’s basic purpose and condition sine qua non: the open and complete avowal of sin. In short, Borromeo’s efforts were self-defeating, “occasions of error and scandal rather than correction of perverse customs.”108 For his outraged opponents, the archbishop’s use of the confessional in fighting habits he considered scandalous had become disruptive of the social order, hence scandalous itself. The civic leaders went even farther, confronting their religious counterpart on a domain that was properly his own — theological argument. Justifying their position on the basis of the “sacred canons” and “holy doctors,” Lonato and Trotto rejected the severe correction of “actions that were not by their nature sinful, but can only be occasions of sin.” Clearly they referred to the policy outlined in the Avvertenze, by which the Milanese archbishop had required his confessors to wield the power of the keys not only against sins but against the social conditions in which these were most likely to thrive. It was, as we have seen, the hallmark of Borromeo’s social reforms. For the ambassadors, however, occasions of sin were to be removed not with sanctions but at most with exhortations, because “to prohibit things into which human weakness slips all too easily is equivalent to ensnaring and ruining souls and putting prelates in certain danger of disobedience.”109 “Human weakness” (la fragilità humana) was indeed the operational concept in this disagreement. For the archbishop, human weakness led the sinner from bad to worse, justifying decisive ecclesiastical intervention in the social realm. For his opponents, the same “almost irreparable” quality set precise limits to what could be expected of imperfect human beings “who, attracted by a little pleasure and 107

Memorial presented by Lonato and Trotto to the Pope on 20 February 1580 (published in Formentini, La dominazione Spagnuola, 495-96, at 496). 108 Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 67. 109 Formentini, La dominazione Spagnuola, 496, 492 (“... non vogliono che le attioni, le quali di sua natura non sono peccato, ma solo possono essere occasione di peccato, come sono i balli et le giostre, si emendino con altro che con le essortationi”).

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curiosity, follow the crowd.”110 If this sounded like an admission of guilt, they also emphasized the good intentions of most people — specifically the participants in tournaments and jousts — and minimized the chances of their being led astray. On the contrary, public entertainment kept the participating nobility and their audience from committing “one knows how many disorders” and “infinite private scandals”: it was thus morally sound and socially useful. Mazzarino, questioned on the same issue, drew the political lesson: secular authorities were right to sponsor such events because they served the “conservation of the state.” The crowding of people, men and women, might give rise to some scandals, but “in government it is a matter of prudence to permit one evil to avoid a bigger one.”111 The Spanish crown assumed a detached but critical stance in this politico-theological debate. Borromeo’s faithful aide Carlo Bascapè, sent to Madrid to plead with Philip II, was allowed to see the king only briefly but discussed the entire crisis with the royal confessor, the Dominican Diego de Chaves. This choice of partner was apparently made on the supposition that the king regarded the issue as a matter “of conscience,” not “of state,” and hence kept his distance.112 The Dominican stalled and equivocated in good diplomatic fashion but nevertheless gave Bascapè the distinct impression that for him “it was no good to force a people to perfection, nor to prohibit things which are not evil by their nature.”113 It was a clear sign of royal displeasure; with hints both at Borromeo’s coercive tactics and his fight against occasions of sin, the king appeared to take the side of Borromeo’s opponents in criticizing the archbishop’s penitential policies and his use of the confessional in reforming public life. Chaves further commented that there were two kinds of Christian life, in public as well as in private: one was content with the bare necessities of salvation, the 110

Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 68. Quoted by Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 234-5 (from ARSI, Hist. Soc., 164, fols. 60v-64). 112 Thus Turchini, “Il governo della festa,” 528. 113 Thus Bascapè’s own account of his mission, written in the late fall of 1580 (Sala, 2:83-84). The remark was repeated in an anonymous summary (ibid., 85). Bascapè was to dwell extensively on his trip in his vita of Carlo Borromeo: Carlo Bascapè, Vita e opere di Carlo Arcivescovo di Milano Cardinale di S. Prassede (Milano: NED, 1983), 510-36. There he described the king’s response as asking “clearly (non obscure) for a certain moderation” (ibid., 532). 111

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other always in pursuit of higher goals of perfection. The majority of people were fit only for the former; they did not necessarily reject the latter, but always objected to its difficulty and to human weakness.114 Borromeo, of course, did not fail to reply. In a stern letter to Father Chaves, he stressed his episcopal responsibility to combat public immorality, and reiterated his known views about occasions of sin. The latter, he suggested in a revealing conclusion, “seem to be the very doors of heresy, and therefore it is necessary to close them with every diligence and guard them with due care.”115 Thus Borromeo, challenged as never before in the core of his life’s work, pulled out the ultimate argument in self-defense: the confessional society that failed to impose social discipline on its members opened the floodgates to heresy. The outcome of this trenchant confrontation is ambiguous and difficult to evaluate. Borromeo stood his ground in political terms, despite the massive opposition, because neither the Spanish King nor the Pope was willing to distance himself publicly from the archbishop. When the Milanese governor Ayamonte died in 1580, Philip II appointed as his successor Don Sancio di Guevara (1580-83), who was more favorably inclined towards Borromeo and backed up the latter’s precepts in matters of public order with ordinances of state.116 Pope Gregory XIII could not but take Borromeo’s side in his strenuous defense of ecclesiastical authority. Nonetheless, the Roman curia appears to have harbored deep reservations about Borromeo’s intransigent use of his juridical powers, and to have received the civic complaints with some sympathy (as the Milanese emissaries claimed themselves). Gregory XIII presumably admonished Borromeo behind the scenes not to overplay his cards and to exercise leniency in specific cases. A critical attitude was already evident in early 1579, when the Pope was said to disapprove of Borromeo’s Lenten edict. That displeasure had practical consequences the same year, when a group of 114

Thus Bascapè’s account, in Vita e opere, 532. Borromeo’s answer to Chaves, fall 1580 (published in Sala, 2:90-94, at 93). 116 Storia di Milano, 10:75; and Luigi Fumi, “L’Inquisizione Romana e lo Stato di Milano,” Archivio storico lombardo 38 (1911): 160-61 (summarizing relevant gride of 1583-86); in the fall of 1580, Diego de Chaves assured Bascapè that “iam delectum gubernatorem qui pietate ceterisque animi ornamentis gratus admodum ei [Borromeo] futurus esset” and that the archbishop could look forward to further support from Madrid (Bascapè, Vita e opere, 534). 115

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excommunicated dancers appealed to Rome and complained that the Milanese archbishop would readmit them only if they promised under the same penalty of excommunication not to repeat their error. In an unambiguous verdict, the Pope invoked the same argument for indulgence soon to be taken up by the Milanese Decurioni. Out of concern for “human frailty,” Borromeo was told to absolve the excommunicates “unconditionally”; the best he could hope and ask for was a “salutary penance.”117 Borromeo’s campaign against dances and other occasions of sin did not slacken during the last years of his episcopate, and his successors occasionally returned to sound the same drums. Yet there are signs that the implementation of official policy became more open to negotiation and compromise than in previous years. In 1583, for instance, the Archpriest of Monza pleaded on behalf of several marriageable girls guilty of dancing; they would rather pay a fine to the parish confraternity than go to Milan to receive absolution. According to the priest, this was not “against the archbishop’s intention,” and so he asked permission to pardon the offenders and set an amount “according to their possibilities.”118 Later that year, the priest of Vighizzolo (pieve Cantù) sketched the portrait of a street musician, 117 ASDM, IX, cart. 7, 17, no. 55 (letter of the Cardinal of S. Sisto to C. Borromeo, 25 March 1579): the petitioners requested absolution from the excommunication “senza esser astretti d’obligarsi sotto la medesima pena a non incorrere più in simile errore.” The answer: “Sua Santità che sa quanto sia grande la fragilità humana, sebene chiaramente conosce, che ella si muove dal molto zelo che ha della salute loro a tenerli cosi ligati, perché non trabocchino in maggior precipitio, ha voluto ch’io ne scriva a Vostra Signoria Illustrissima accioché l’assolva tutti senz’altra conditione ma però con quella penitentia salutare, che giudicarà convenirsi per benefitio loro...” According to Borromeo’s Roman agent Cesare Speciano, the Pope had disapproved of the 1579 Lenten edict, “... et ne allegò l’esempio di Bologna ove li spettaculi si fanno in piazza avanti S. Petronio ancora nelli dì di festa” (letter of 30 April 1579, BAM, F.55 inf., fol. 117, quoted by Prodi, “San Carlo Borromeo e le trattative,” 214, n. 63). In a sign of papal backing of ecclesiastical privilege, on 9 March 1580 Gregory XIII supported Borromeo in the conflict over the official beginning of Lent (see Bellavite, “Il Carnevale,” 9; and see p. 175 above). 118 ASDM, IX, cart. 77, folder of 1583, letter of the Archpriest of Monza to the vicar criminal (13 June 1583): “Son stato pregato a far officio per alcune figliole ... ch’hano ballato per esser da marito di non venire a Milano, pero volendo pagar qua al Santissimo Sacramento qualche pena come parerà a Vostra Signoria saria bene perdonarle et non essendo contro la mente di Monsignor Illustrissimo ne prego Vostra Signoria remettendossi a me circa quello che potrano pagare secondo le possibilità loro.”

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Gioan Marella, who had been interdicted for playing on feast days. Desirous to participate in the imminent Christmas festivities, Marella had shown his good will by promising to change his ways and by handing in his instrument to the rural vicar; yet he was too poor to pay the fine imposed by the curia in a first instance. This time the word from Milan was that the vicar of Cantù investigate “the poverty and quality of the person,” allowing him “to commute the pecuniary penance into another, salutary and public, penance at his discretion.”119

The limits of discipline Scattered and incomplete ecclesiastical records can only partially convey the results of an institutional effort undertaken with extraordinary vigor, the more so since we usually lack the perspective of the laity. All the more striking, then, is the abundant evidence of the serious limitations of the Borromean variety of social discipline. When applied in practice, the daunting system of penitential conversion outlined in the Avvertenze not only led to significant resistance but demonstrated its inherent weaknesses and contradictions. Legalistic correction was clearly not what the laity expected of their religion generally, and of the sacrament of penance particularly. When confronted with harsh directives from above, many dancing peasants, mothers berated for their infants’ deaths, and public sinners simply voted with their feet — by ignoring the rules, keeping silent about their sin, or avoiding the confessional altogether — even at the cost of facing dreaded spiritual and social consequences. For their part, Milan’s civic authorities reacted strongly against Borromeo’s policies on public conduct, sensing the deep socio-political implications of the matter. As the secular 119

Ibid., letter of Bonifacio Salvioni to the vicar general, 12 December 1583: “Alli giorni passati fu interdetto qua nella mia chiesa Gioan Marella per haver sonato in giorno di festa, unde essendone stato datto aviso a Sua Signoria, quella ordinò che dovesse dar sigurtà di non sonar più in giorno di festa, et consignar l’instrumento in mano del vicario foraneo, et pagar doi scuti alla scola del Santissimo Sacramento. Ha datto la sigurtà, a consignato l’instrumento, resta di pagare li danari per la sua povertà. Unde vorria pregar Sua Signoria esser servita temperar questa pena per la prima volta acciò costui sii assoluto per poter participar delli santi sacramenti questa solemnità della natività di nostro signore.” The answer was as follows: “Vicarius foraneus se informet paupertate et qualitate personae, et si est ut dicitur valeat commutare paenitentiam paecuniariam in aliam salutarem publicam arbitrio suo.”

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elite of a confessional state, they were as interested as the archbishop in religious guarantees for public order, but precisely for that reason they preferred episcopal policy to aim for a far lower common denominator than Borromeo had in mind. His intense drive to replace existing conventions of sociability by exacting standards of austerity was dangerous because it caused deep cracks in the facade of the state. This critique also had implications for the means of Borromean discipline: from the perspective of state officials, society needed the rituals of penance for reconciliation as much as for punishment, for closure as much as correction. Hence their most telling complaint: under the Borromean regime, “mercy is not joined with discipline, nor clemency with rigor.”120 The risks of disclosure of matters confessed in confidentiality only compounded the problem by posing another threat to decorum and consensus. Thus the cases examined in these pages expose the systemic problems and often unpredictable consequences of Borromean penitential discipline. A system that employed a private procedure for public discipline, used the settlement of spiritual accounts for purposes of social reform, linked the exterior forum to the interior, and forced interior change with public sanctions, saw itself forced to considerable moderation. Meanwhile, the unprecedented episcopal involvement in confession spawned an impressive bureaucratic culture, in which socio-religious problems became office files and in which clergymen at all levels staked out an uncertain course between official rules and personal cases, between obedience to the hierarchy and the need for closure, between the morally reprehensible and the socially acceptable, between discipline and mercy. Once Carlo Borromeo’s successors took over, armed with fewer powers and more sense of diplomacy, further accommodation, bureaucratization, and possibly neglect were the fate of the system. Perhaps we could go farther and see in the Milanese experience a vivid illustration that the internal and external fora were doomed to drift apart into two non-communicating worlds: one, the secret realm of sin and penance; the other, the public domain of crime and

120 Cattaneo, “Carnevale e Quaresima,” 73: “tutto ciò nasce perché la misericordia non è congionta con la disciplina, né la clemenza col rigore.”

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punishment.121 That lesson, however, took considerable time to sink in. Despite the deep tensions resulting from the attempt to combine both forms of discipline, especially during Carlo Borromeo’s time, his successor Federico kept this system in place while developing its underlying principles into a full-fledged political theory. At the same time, in apparent awareness of the limits of legal constraint, the later Borromeo came to propagate the clergy’s persuasive qualities over their punitive powers. By then, however, another, equally indirect method had come to occupy a central place in Milanese church discipline — the education the clergy.

121

Thus the suggestions of Paolo Prodi, “Il concilio di Trento e il diritto canonico,” in Il concilio di Trento nella prospettiva del terzo millennio, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Iginio Rogger (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997), 267-85; and Brambilla, “Giuristi, teologi e giustizia,” 183.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PRIESTLY EXERCISES: SCHOOLROOM AND CONFESSIONAL

“There is a man sent from God, whose name is Carlo Borromeo, the most illustrious and reverend cardinal and most worthy archbishop of the Ambrosian Church, who has come to rid the brains of priests of their ignorance.” With a thinly veiled allusion to the mission of John the Baptist, Hieronimo Di Basti opened a meeting of the priests of Lecco around 20 October 1574. And thus Di Basti, a curate in that pieve, not only voiced awe and appreciation for his bishop, but characterized the latter’s divine mission as focused on the education of the clergy. The speaker then cried out, “Oh, had it pleased the almighty God that he had come fifty years earlier! For now it is necessary for us elderly people to become students in our old age, which is impossible, since our memory fails us.”1 It is a remarkable self-reflection, in which this seventy-year-old servant of the Church echoed the established stereotype of priestly ignorance and described himself as its victim. As such, he realized, he belonged to a lost generation. Ten years into Carlo Borromeo’s episcopate, programs aimed at upgrading the knowledge and professional skills of the Lombard clergy were well underway. They rested on the awareness that any diocesan project of discipline depended heavily on the performance of the lower clergy, particularly in the practice of confession. Within the pyramidal structure of the Church, they were the closest to local religion and social life, and the farthest removed from episcopal authority. For that reason they were also the weakest link in the ecclesiastical chain of command. Hieronimo Di Basti was one of them, and he sensed that his shortcomings were irremediable. 1

For quotes and biographical information, see De Boer, “The Curate of Malgrate,” 189ff. Unlike the rest of his text, Di Basti delivered the first line in Latin: “est homo missus a Deo cuius nomen est Carolus Boromeus illustrissimus et reverendissimus cardinalis Ambrosianeque ecclesie archiepiscopus dignissimus qui venit ut a sacerdotum cerebro ignorantiam evellere.” The reference to John 1:6 is plain: “Fuit homo missus a Deo cui nomen erat Iohannes...”

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In a twist of historical irony, the sixteenth-century parish priest has tended to elude the historian as much as the bishop. Trapped in the rhetorical schemes of apology or anticlericalism, he has become either the virtuous and proud model of Counter-Reformation reform, in the way Borromeo’s hagiographer Giussano described him in 1610, or a symbol of Italy’s clericalization in the wake of Trent. Only recently scholars have begun to appreciate the parish priest in more detached ways, recognizing his pivotal, but by no means obvious, role in the evolution of Italian culture. The clergy was certainly the group most affected by the Counter-Reformation. The Catholic hierarchy might have comprehensive programs to convert and discipline society at large, but these (as we have seen) met with a problematic fate. During their jurisdictional struggles, Carlo Borromeo accused Milan’s secular government of trying to reduce him to a bishop “of the clergy only, not of the laity.” Whatever the merit of that statement, there was no denying that his powers made him most effective as a bishop of the clergy.2 The consequences were highly significant for a group considered by their bishop to be an extension of his own body and hence to be shaped in his image and likeness. This disciplining process took the form of a wide array of programs to educate, instruct, retool, and supervise the parish clergy. The records that were produced to monitor these programs shed light not only on their principles and applications, but also on the realities they encountered. One institution lends itself particularly well to such a study: the monthly meetings of the rural clergy of the diocese, such as the one addressed by Hieronimo Di Basti.3 A vital element in the bishop’s network of supervision and direction, these so-called congregations also provided a forum for discussion and consultation about practical problems, often pertaining to the sphere of the conscience. These cases reveal many of the concerns of these Counter-Reformation priests, caught in the middle of 2 Letter to Card. Tolomeo Gallio, secretary to Pope Gregory XIII, 28 October 1572, quoted in Borromeo, “L’arcivescovo Carlo Borromeo, la corona spagnola,” 266. 3 For the education of the Milanese clergy in general, see G. Carboni, “La cultura del clero al tempo di S. Carlo. Le biblioteche ecclesiastiche,” Humilitas. Miscellanea storica dei Seminari milanesi 1 (1928): 312-17, 354-59; Mario Scaduto, “Scuola e cultura a Milano nell’età Borromaica,” in San Carlo e il suo tempo, 963-94; Stampa, libri e letture, XXI-XXXIII (A. Turchini), 20-25 (E. Cattaneo), and passim.

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everyday exigencies and the demands of their superiors, and constantly negotiating a stance between their conventional place in the local community and new professional expectations.

A cultural problem The analysis of the Borromean instructions for confessors and the practical policies of the diocesan curia has so far demonstrated an emphasis on behavioral control through relatively straightforward psychological pressures and disciplinary methods. The quick recourse — whether recommended or real — to the refusal of absolution, ecclesiastical censures, or the threat thereof, has put the Milanese reform of confession in the crude and forbidding light of clerical rigorism. But to leave it at this would result in an oversimplification. At the heart of the Counter-Reformation project, in Milan as elsewhere, there was also a perception that the effectiveness of clerical action — including the administration of penance — was as much a cultural problem as one of power. It depended, as recent studies have stressed, on the transformation of a diverse and unruly mass of priests, often culturally indistinguishable from their lay neighbors, into a homogeneous and distinct professional body.4 As far as confession is concerned, we have seen how the perceived lack in competence, knowledge, and uniformity led the diocesan authorities to set up a system of referral and consultation for the most problematic cases of conscience — and the previous chapter has furnished some clues about the working of this system. Yet a more structural, and in the long run probably more effective, approach to the problem of priestly ‘ignorance’ was sought in education. A church reorganized along tightly hierarchical lines fostered education as the ideal tool for creating a clergy that was at once knowledgeable and dependable. New educational institutions, notably the seminary, not only provided an increasingly elaborate technical training, but were also to contribute to the growth of a professional identity and esprit de 4 Allegra, “Il parroco”; Adriano Prosperi, “Educare gli educatori: il prete come professione intellettuale nell’Italia tridentina,” in Problèmes d’histoire de l’éducation (Rome: Ecole française, 1988), 123-40; Greco, “Fra disciplina e sacerdozio”; and Angelo Turchini, “La nascita del sacerdozio come professione,” in Disciplina dell’anima, 225-56.

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corps.5 The Milanese seminary, founded in 1564 and entrusted to Jesuit leadership, received a highly influential rule, which proposed to form a reliable clergy through a seamless combination of piety, study, and discipline; it was meant to be, as has been said, a “total institution.”6 Much the same was true for the college which the Milanese Jesuits founded themselves.7 It is important to emphasize that these efforts did not stop at providing elementary training for young priests, but envisioned a constant re-education of the active clergy as well. In Milan this goal was evident, for instance, in the series of lectures and readings of cases of conscience which began to be held in the major churches of the city, with required attendance for all priests belonging to their precincts.8 Evidence about the effects of such programs is scant. Sometimes we find lecture schedules, like that of 1591, when lectures on such topics as censures, simony, and penance were held in the archiepiscopal chapel, the Jesuit Collegio Braidense, as well as S. Ambrogio, S. Nazaro, and other major churches in the city. Sometimes we find lists of clergymen fined for absenteeism.9 In addition, there is occasional legislation

5 Elena Brambilla, “Società ecclesiastica e società civile: aspetti della formazione del clero dal Cinquecento alla Restaurazione,” Società e storia 4 (1981): 299-366; Maurilio Guasco, “La formazione del clero: i seminari,” in La Chiesa e il potere politico, 640-58; Carlo Fantappiè, “Istituzioni ecclesiastiche e istruzione secondaria nell’Italia moderna: i seminari-collegi vescovili,” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 15 (1989): 189-240; Kathleen M. Comerford, “Italian Tridentine Diocesan Seminaries: A Historiographical Study,” Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 999-1022; for a broader perspective, see the special issue, edited by Dominique Julia, of Paedagogica historica 30/1 (1994). 6 Guasco, “La formazione del clero: i seminari,” 649-55. More detailed studies include F. Bertani and A. Bernareggi, “Le regole dei seminari milanesi,” Humilitas. Miscellanea storica dei Seminari milanesi 1 (1928): 101-11; A. Bernareggi, “La fondazione del Seminario di Milano,” Ibid., passim between 165-295; A. Rimoldi, “Le istituzioni di san Carlo Borromeo per il clero diocesano milanese,” La Scuola Cattolica 43 (1965): 427-58; and Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 65-87, 113-22. 7 Rurale, I gesuiti a Milano, 146-76. 8 For the legislation, see First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:52; Second Provincial Council (1569), decr. 30, ibid., 188-89; Third Provincial Council (1573), ibid., 252-53; Eleventh Diocesan Synod (1584), ibid., 1066-67. For lectures in the seminary, see Institutiones ad universi seminarii regimen pertinentes (after 1579), AEM, 3:97-101; in monasteries, Capita aliquot ad regulares et moniales pertinentia, ibid., 444-52. 9 For examples, see ASDM, XIV, 151, q. 1, fol. [1r] (lecture schedule, 1591); and ASDM, XIV, 78, docs. 6-8 (fines for absenteeism, 1582-1583).

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insisting that the clergy of parishes of a certain size meet twice a week in “special,” or private, study sessions; here, too, the results remain obscure.10 We are much better informed about an essential new tool of clerical training and surveillance: the monthly ‘congregations’ of priests.

A theater of priestly acts The idea that local clergy should regularly convene in a collegial setting went back to at least the Carolingian period. Institutionalized to a greater or lesser extent, such meetings offered opportunities for personal encounter, liturgical celebration, mutual consultation or correction, and — not least of all — conviviality. The institution is known to have flourished in the Veneto during the later Middle Ages.11 The Milanese diocese also had at least a few congregations, for instance at Corbetta and San Pietro all’Olmo around 1460, and at Incino in 1515.12 Whatever the extension, forms, and functions of this littleknown institution during the Middle Ages, it is clear that diocesan reformers of the sixteenth century took it up to serve their own purposes. When the Veronese Bishop Giberti discovered that regular clerical gatherings were habitual in some parts of his diocese, he was so impressed that he “vehemently” wished to introduce it in the rest of the diocese as well. To his mind, it could serve as a healthy antidote to 10

Second Provincial Council (1569), decr. 30, AEM, 2:189; Eleventh Diocesan Synod (1584), ibid., 1067. 11 P.-L. Péchenard, Étude historique sur les conférences ecclésiastiques (Paris, 1896); Id., “Conférences ecclésiastiques,” DTC, 3:816-28; Silbestro Calasso, De cleri collationibus... (Potentiae: ex typ. Marii Nucci, 1940); G. Römer, “Pastoralkonferenzen,” in Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche (Freiburg i.B.: Herder, 1957-67), 8:159-60. For the medieval period, see further Bianca Betto, Le nove congregazioni del clero di Venezia (sec. XI-XV). Ricerche storiche, matricole e documenti vari (Padova: Antenore, 1984); Antonio Rigon, “Le congregazioni del clero urbano in area veneta (XII-XV secolo),” in Le mouvement confraternel au Moyen Age. France, Italie, Suisse (Rome: Ecole Française, 1987); Id., “L’associazionismo del clero in una città medioevale. Origini e primi sviluppi della ‘fratalea cappellanorum’ di Padova (XII-XIII secolo),” in Pievi, parrocchie e clero nel Veneto dal X al XV secolo, ed. P. Sambin (Venezia: Deputazione Editrice, 1987), 95-180. 12 Storia di Milano, 9:540 (referring to a priestly association called “dei dodici Apostoli,” and one in Corbetta, 1460); Carlo Castiglioni, “Un pio consorzio sacerdotale del 1460,” Ambrosius (1936): 32-37 (congregation in San Pietro all’Olmo); the congregation of Incino is attested by its statutes of 1515 (ASDM, XIV, 50, q. 1).

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another establishment frequented by his clergy: the pub. The priests of all diocesan districts (each comprising several parishes) had to gather once every month in one of the parishes of their region; a rotation system was to make sure that every parish had its turn. The local lay community was invited to attend, and was apparently the focus of the proceedings. Through preaching, instruction and moral edification, the priests had to prove themselves “shining and burning lights on the candelabrum in the house of the Lord.” Meals, always suspected to be an occasion for sinful excess, were to be accompanied by devout lectures and spiritual conversation. Giberti’s innovation was enthusiastically espoused by his post-Tridentine colleagues; it is no doubt the germ of the Counter-Reformation congregations.13 Carlo Borromeo, for one, introduced such an institution in his diocese soon after his arrival. He grafted it onto the new territorial division of the diocese into vicariati foranei, and thus linked it to the activities of the vicari foranei, the new group of officials in the diocesan hierarchy. Their task of directing religious life in the rural areas outside the city was especially focused on supervision of the clergy. An essential forum for this were the clerical meetings, which the vicario had to convene and chair once a month, and which had to alternate among the parishes of the district. According to Borromeo’s earliest legislation, the agenda should include official announcements, perusal of normative texts (conciliar decrees, reserved cases, “something out of an approved Summa de casibus conscientiae”), and deliberation about problems in the care of souls. Most attention, however, went to the 13

Giberti, Constitutiones, cap. XXII-XXIII, 11-12. Giberti’s influence on the Borromean congregations was duly noted by Cattaneo, “Influenze veronesi,” 138. For the congregations of the Counter-Reformation, see (along with the studies quoted on p. 221 n. 23 above): Turchini, “Officiali ecclesiastici”; Pelagatti, “Gli inizi della riforma cattolica” (a case study on San Donato); and Claudio Rossi, Congregazioni del clero e formazione sacerdotale nel vicariato foraneo di Legnano tra Sei e Settecento, Tesi di laurea, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, 1987-88 (on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Legnano); and brief references in Montanari, Disciplinamento in terra veneta, 21; and Prodi, Il cardinale Gabriele Paleotti, 1:125, 169-70. On later French and German versions of the institution, see J.-M. Gouesse, “Assemblées et associations cléricales: synodes et conférences ecclesiastiques dans le diocèse de Coutances aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 1581-1790,” Annales de Normandie 24 (1974): 37-74; F.J. Huber, Die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung des Weltklerus in der Erzdiözes Freiburg (Freiburg, 1957), esp. 17-41, 64-79; Dominique Julia and D. McKee, “Les confrères de Jean Meslier. Culture et spiritualité du clergé champenois au XVIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de l’église de France 69 (1983): 61-86.

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investigation of the members’ conduct. The lens of collegial scrutiny was to focus on the priests’ lifestyle, professional accomplishments, obedience to episcopal directives, possession of prescribed books, the condition of their church building, and any other issue about which the bishop wished to be informed. To him the vicario was required to report any problems or irregularities.14 Business meetings of the local clergy, these congregations were at the same time solemn ritual events. Like councils and synods, they were cloaked in the garb of high religious ceremony. A first part of the meeting was emphatically public and directed at clergy and people alike. The priests celebrated High Mass, including the office of the dead (completed by a procession around the cemetery) or that of the Holy Spirit; and one of them delivered a sermon to the people. The clergy then withdrew behind closed doors and, before starting their deliberations, sat down for lunch. Carefully regulated, the meal was to be accompanied by a blessing of the food, thanksgiving, and the reading of a homily or other devotional text. Two essential moments show the symbiosis of religious ritual and discipline most clearly at work. The sermon, aside from providing moral edification to the people, was to serve the purposes of clerical instruction and supervision as well. The priests of the pieve had to take turns in delivering one, and submit a written copy of their text for episcopal inspection. In addition, all clergymen were required to confess their sins with specially approved confessors before participating in the congregation, and present written proof of this to the vicario foraneo. Clearly, the Borromean reform of confession was meant to start with the clergy (hence the confessors) themselves. The monthly congregations had to ensure an equally frequent attendance of the confessional among those formerly reputed to be lax and irregular at best. The didactic element of the congregations, relatively modest in the decrees of the First Provincial Council (1565), was soon to be strongly emphasized. Addressing the Second Diocesan Synod (1568), Carlo Borromeo complained about the lacunae in clerical training, and exhorted the indifferent to study Christian doctrine, the art of 14

This and the following two paragraphs are mostly based on the decrees of the First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:79-80, and Ordini per le congregationi foranee (1568), AEM, 2:1953-57. For a detailed reconstruction of the norms for congregations, see Turchini, “Officiali ecclesiastici,” esp. 177-87, 199-208.

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preaching, and cases of conscience. Soon afterwards, further instructions proposed “to introduce more frequent training and study in our rural clergy.”15 An extensive discussion of one or several cases of conscience took the place of a simple reading of a Summa; the questions were to be proposed in advance by the host of the meeting, and to be solved by all members present. The vicario had to submit the answers to the bishop for review, and record the proceedings of the meetings in a ledger of his own.16 The rules of the game were thus essentially established by the late 1560s. A ponderous and definitive set of Latin instructions, published towards the end of Carlo Borromeo’s tenure, brought hardly any changes and served mainly to supplement, formalize, and polish the existing norms.17 The text makes it clear that, in the eyes of the bishop, the congregation should go beyond its practical goals to become a professional body which, borrowing “several elements and uses of monastic discipline,” would put its virtues on display “as if in a theater of priestly acts.”18 In other words, the clerical estate itself was to create one of the new public environments — which lay people were expected to create in the family, school of Christian Doctrine, confraternity, and parish church — that would be exemplary and conducive to piety and good manners.

Clerical discipline at work Writing on 7 March 1568, Bartolomeo Bedra, vice-vicar of Val Levantina, complained that he had great difficulty in imposing “hierarchical discipline” on the priests of that Alpine valley because of the “unruliness that until recently reigned” among them. He proceeded, “If I 15 “Per introdurre piú frequenti essercitii de studii nel nostro clero foraneo,” Ordini per le congregationi foranee (1568-69), AEM, 2:1953. 16 Ordini per le congregationi foranee (1568 or 1569), AEM, 2:1953-57; Second Provincial Council (1569), decr. 30, AEM, 2:188. 17 Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum, AEM, 2:1601-26; the text is to be dated after 1582. 18 AEM, 2:1601: “non solum alius ab alio mutuum adjumentum sumere potest ... sed etiam, cum in quodam actionum sacerdotalium quasi theatro sit, ibi ... ab eo exemplum sumat licet ad illius virtutis imitationem”; “nos illis [conventibus] celebrandis leges in conciliis provincialibus nostris cum praescripserimus, non solum easdem in unum collectas, verum etiam alia nonnulla ex disciplinae conventualis rationibus usuque accepta ... hoc brevi libro complexi...”

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threaten to hit them with bolts of ecclesiastical censures, they reciprocate with blows around the ears...”19 The remark graphically captures an early experience of the freshly appointed rural vicars. Clearly, the attempt of the church hierarchy to break up the isolation of the local clergy did not remain unchallenged. The problem may have been particularly severe in Val Levantina and two other Swiss valleys which belonged to the Milanese diocese but were far removed from its epicenter, and subject to a different temporal power.20 Yet similar complaints were so ubiquitous at the time as to suggest that the problem was structural: along with the newly introduced control system came novel social relations in the church hierarchy, resulting in considerable strains, tensions, and readjustments. It is not without irony that clerical resistance against the new episcopal agent, and against the new code of conduct and performance he brought along, came to the fore in particular when that code was most expected to be on display: at the congregations of the clergy. At the most basic level, it proved highly problematic to ensure attendance.21 Chronic absences led to diocesan orders, first to send all negligent clergy to Milan, and later to impose mandatory fines for any unexcused absences.22 Moreover, those who actually showed up could turn the 19 Introducing his account of a congregation, Bedra wrote: “Per la pristina absoleta [sic] dissoluzione qual tenevano pocco tempo fa, in questa valle, quelli che agli’altri verbo et exemplo erano praeposti, trovo granda difficultà in deffender la hyrarchicha disciplina. Se minachio de vibrar fulmini de censurae ecclesiasticae, a me minachiano le bachette intorno all’or[e]chie...” (BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 87r). 20 Braghetta, Le ‘Tre Valli Svizzere,’ esp. 38ff. 21 See for instance BAM, S.184 inf., fol. 278r (serious problems of attendance and participation at Derfo); fols. 296r-97v (the vicar of Decimo, reporting the absence of several curates “con certe frivole escuse,” asks that Vicar General Castelli “mandassi una pena de doi scutti d’oro a chi mancha de venire salvo la causa del legitimo et probabile impedimento, e questo sia ad terrorem”); fol. 303r (according to the Provost of Corbetta, “ho trovati pronti [i curati] fuori quelli d’Abbiate”); fol. 352r (absence of the curate of Arcisate at the congregation of Varese, “per la qual disobedienza et per dar maestramento ad altri, Vostra Signoria Reverenda gli farà quella provisione gli parerà acciò imparano a vivere per ubedire”). All these examples are of 1567. 22 Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum (after 1582), AEM, 2:1605, 1624. That these rules were followed at least some of the time, becomes clear from the register of Arcisate, which records 29 clergymen ordered to pay fines between 1584 and 1588 (APAr, cart. 19, fasc. 3, fols. 156r-58v). However, a sudden and isolated crackdown (including the imposition of fines) on 18 absenteeist congregation members of Porta Ticinese suggests that discipline was normally far from strict (ASDM, XIV, 243, 1615, fols. [149r]-[150r]).

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proceedings into a battle of wills. That is evident, for instance, in a diocesan report presumably compiled by a church visitor in the 1570s, and illustrative both of his expectations and the forms of defiance he encountered. The inspector framed most of the charges against individuals in terms of disrespect vis-à-vis the vicar, the congregation, and clerical dignity. In his view, this disrespect had to be countered by a form of discipline that was of the body as much as the mind. Thus the meal shared by the participants in the congregation required table manners. The inspector severely scolded the many priests who started eating before the beginning of the spiritual readings; he condemned whispering during the meal as “unbefit[ting] priestly conduct”; and he reproached the curate of Novembrate, Agostino Carcano, for table manners worthy of “a lay person attending an intimate dinner party” rather than “a priest at a congregation.” Comportment was equally important during the ceremonial part of the meeting. The report is full of infractions of liturgical correctness: lay people entering the choir gates during Mass, priests confessing their sins during the office of the dead, the rural vicar visiting the Holy Sacrament during the litanies, and clergymen lacking the proper liturgical vestments. If the rural vicar did not avoid or forbid such abuses at the time of the congregation, the inspector feared, it was proof that they were routinely tolerated throughout the pieve.23 Finally, bodily conduct was relevant to the business proceedings as well, inasmuch as it reflected in particular the attitudes toward the chairman, the rural vicar. The diagnosis was grim. At Incino, some answered irreverently when questioned, “for they do not stand up from their seats nor do they bare their heads, and they reply almost in a laughing manner.”24 The curate of Carimate, Battista Rusca, received a scolding for preferring his doctoral gown over the garments of the parish priest. Rusca’s disdain was also evident in his manner: he answered questions with “one shin resting on the other, his hands folded over his knees, and watching the floor.”25 And then there was outright abuse: three priests of Cantù, for example, “address the reverend rural 23

ASDM, XIV, v. 65, q. 1; see especially the visitor’s remark on one infraction, “unde videtur esse abusus toleratus ubique in plebe cum vicarius foraneus non prohibuerit” (fol. [3]v). 24 Ibid., fol. [4r]: “Quidam interrogati irreverenter respondent, cum nec sedentes surgant nec caput aperiant, et quasi ridentes respondeant.” 25 Ibid., fol. [2r]): “Idem dum respondebat questionibus alteri tibia alteri superposita manus plicabat et genibus super ponebat, et terram intuens respondebat.”

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vicar without reverence, freely insult and provoke him, and disobey him altogether.”26 In this report, the emphasis on behavioral correctness is so strong that the educational purpose of the meetings seems relegated to the background. Of all conventional complaints, priestly ignorance remained outside the purview of this inspector. In fact, he appeared more intent on chastizing its opposite. Instead of praising a sermon by the curate of Novembrate, Agostino Carcano, for being “learned” (as he grudgingly acknowledged), he scolded it for being “fruitless,” “headstrong,” and at variance with the rules. This problem fitted in with a general pattern of behavior, for Carcano lacked “sacerdotal discipline,” piety, and devotion altogether. Doctor Battista Rusca, as we have seen, incurred blame precisely for showing off his intellectual stature rather than his clerical position. The report further noted fights, disagreements, and one-upmanship among the participants of congregations. The display of knowledge was acceptable only when subordinated to respectful comportment. While the inspector reserved most criticism for the lower clergy, he did not spare their new bosses, the rural vicars, either. His complaints reflect a strong awareness of the delicate position of these new intermediaries in the local power structure. For instance, in what appears to have been a highly conflicted situation in the pieve Cantù, he scolded the provost both for neglect and authoritarian zeal. In noting the provost’s lacking knowledge of the Ambrosian liturgy, he worried about the implications. What was bad in the lower clergy was deeply worrisome in their superior and instructor: the vicar “cannot give what he does not have, nor can he teach or rebuke the ignorant about what he does not know himself.” But the visitor was equally critical of the same prelate’s “imperious” manner, which could lead to major irritations.27 Accordingly, he had taken the vicar aside, telling him that 26 Ibid.: “Michael Mombellus curatus Canturii, Baptista Rusca curatus Carimati, Petrus Franciscus Merla curatus Monteorfani, qui omnes admodum inferiti sunt, Reverendo Domino vicario foraneo absque reverentia alloqu[u]ntur, et libenter insultant verbis et provocant, in nullo illi obediunt.” 27 Ibid., fol. [2]v: “Reverendus dominus vicarius foraneus officium recitat missaeque sacrum facit more Romano sicque Mediolanensis caerimonias atque ritus ignorat, et quod ipse non habet aliis dare non potest neque illas ignorantes docere aut corripere cum nec cognoscat. Ipse quoque sacerdotes satis imperiose alloquitur et ad iracundiam quodammodo incitat.”

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he should treat his subordinates with “paternal love and dignity,” and “want to be loved rather than feared.” He should solve disciplinary problems through hierarchical referral (to the archbishop or vicar general) instead of fighting them out in the congregation. Conversely, the inspector had admonished the priests of Cantù that they should “obey and venerate” their vicar, “and they promised they would do that.”28 The last remark adds another perspective on this elaborate power game. If superiors, whether rural vicars or curia officials, were wont to complain about those committed to their supervision, inferiors tended to play roles of submissiveness and flattery when confronting higherups. Provosts reporting on congregations went to great lengths to demonstrate their compliance with all rules. Ordinary parish priests could be similarly eager to please when participating in the meetings or jotting down their sermons for inspection. That eagerness explains at least in part Hieronimo Di Basti’s overawed admiration for his own bishop, and it certainly informs the rhetoric of modesty and trepidation with which Lazzaro Cattaneo opened a sermon to the congregation of Asso: When I realize that I am in the presence of these learned men, especially the very Reverend Monsignor Provost and Father Cosma, O.P., I am so totally confused that I don’t know what to say. But then I remember the friendliness, the learning, and the virtues of this sacred company, which encourages me to begin this crude argument of mine, humbly awaiting your Reverends’ chiding of my contradictions, barbarisms and syllogisms — for not being well versed nor good at this enterprise, but only to obey Signor Vicar who assigned me ... this task at the instance of his Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Lordship [the bishop].29 28 Ibid., fol. [3]v: “Monui eundem seorsum ab aliis ut cum paterna charitate cum gravitate coniuncta sacerdotes alloquatur, moneat, doceat, et adiuvet, cupiatque magis diligi, quam metui... Eo autem absente monui et corripui supra descriptos et alios item ut pareant et venerentur eundum vicarium foraneum. Qui polliciti sunt se facturos.” 29 APAs, fasc. 23, fol. 1: “Quando considero esser ala presentia di questi docti, principalmente dil molto Reverendo Monsignor preposito et dil padre predicator frate Cosma, resto totalmente sbigotito, che dir me debia non so. Ricordandomi puoi la amorevoleza, la scientia, finalmente le virtù che sono in questo sacro consorcio, me fano cressere lanimo di intrar in questo mio rudo ragionamento, aspettando humilmente la riprensione facta da le Reverentie vostre per le mie discordancie barbarismi silocismique per non esser praticho né buono a tal impresa, ma solo per hobedire al Signor Vicario qual a me imposto ... questo oficio per le ordinatione di sua Illustrissima et Reverendissima Signoria...”

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What surprise then that Lazzaro’s talk was “on obedience and disobedience”? Thus the congregations and their participants became caught up in the dynamics of hierarchy as soon as the institution was introduced; and soon this form of professional discipline became a fixture in the life of the priest, both in the city and the country. This is not to say that official rules were followed to the letter; the frequency of the meetings could vary significantly and absenteeism remained a problem. A winter break was soon allowed to interrupt the monthly rhythm; a summer break was often taken. Exceptional events, such as the plague or the death of the bishop, could throw the meetings entirely off schedule.30 This variability is confirmed by the surviving registers (see Table 1).31 Between 1591 and 1597 the priests of Vimercate (in the plains east of Milan) convened forty-five times, that is on average six to seven times a year. Around that time clerical discipline was stiffer at the other end of the diocese, in Arcisate, where the congregations reached an average of nine per year (54 congregations between 1587 and 1592). A quarter of a century later, however, Arcisate’s clergy enjoyed a more relaxed pace: an average year had four congregations between 1616 and 1628 (54 meetings). In 1629, they completely interrupted even this tenuous routine: “At the order of the Reverend Vicar General of the Archiepiscopal Curia in Milan the monthly meetings of the Reverend Parish Priests were suspended because of the imminent danger of the plague.”32 Only from 1632 onwards, congregations began to meet again in Arcisate, although their frequency remained minimal for years. The city district of Porta Ticinese, finally, achieved the greatest frequency and regularity with an average of almost ten per year between 1608 and 1620 (126 congregations). If the latter data are any indication, the success of the congregations was most conspicuous 30 On the winter break, Fourth Provincial Council (1576), AEM, 2:421; Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum (after 1582), ibid., 1608. A plea by bishop Visconti suggests a relaxation of discipline after Carlo Borromeo’s death (ibid., 4:116). 31 This table is based on APAr, cart. XIX, fasc. 3 (Arcisate, 1587-93 and 1615-29); APV, cart. 21, fasc. 2 (Vimercate, 1590-97); ASDM, VI, 185 and ibid., XIV, 243 (Porta Ticinese, 1607-21). The registers often begin and end in mid-year; the numbers of congregations and cases indicated for those years should therefore not be taken as the sum total. 32 APAr, Liber congregationum plebis Arcisati, 1615-1665, fol. 33v: “Ob pestis periculum imminens ex ordine Reverendissimi Domini Vicarii Generalis Curiae Archiepiscopalis Mediolani intermitti fuerunt conventus menstrui Reverendorum Parochorum.”

Table 1. Congregations held in Milanese church districts, with the numbers of cases discussed (1587-1631) 1587 1588 1589 1590 1591 1592 11 9 9 6 12 7 22 18 18 12 24 14

total 54 108

Vimercate congregations cases

1591 1592 1593 1594 1595 1596 1597 6 5 7 7 9 6 5 6 11 12 12 18 12 10

total 45 81

Porta Ticinese congregations cases

1607 1608 1609 1610 1611 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621 9 10 9 11 9 10 1 2 10 9 10 10 9 10 10 2 4 20 18 18 20 18 17 18 18 20 18 20 18 18

total 129 247

Arcisate congregations cases

1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621 1622 1623 1624 1625 1626 1627 1628 1629 1630 1631 total 0 56 4 5 4 7 3 4 4 2 7 5 4 1 4 2 0 0 79 8 8 8 10 6 6 4 1 6 6 4 2 6 4 0

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in urban areas; and that would hardly be surprising. Yet it could be argued that their advances in the countryside were nonetheless more significant: there the gap between curia expectations and social realities was likely to be greatest; and there episcopal supervision was altogether lacking before the Borromean period. These workshops of clerical discipline thus became a permanent, more or less regular, element in the life of the diocesan clergy. Their basic dynamics were determined by the effort to force the priest into the grid of a new hierarchical power structure — hence the insistence on obedience and the resulting choices between defiance and deference. But the battle went beyond mere obedience. Respect for superiors went hand in hand with adopting a particular group identity and code of conduct, expressed in proper table manners, forms of address, and ritual observance. Well before Federico Borromeo promoted his humanistic ideal of the “civilized” priest, the congregations were already the scene of a rough civilizing process. As in Federico’s model, this process was imposed from above and was meant to fashion a distinctly clerical persona. In this sense (as we have already noted) it differs from the courtly civility described by Elias, which was sociogenetic rather than the result of a political strategy, and which had universalist pretensions transcending its aristocratic origins. Behind the petty rebellions and excesses of submissiveness displayed by obscure country priests we can discern, dimly but unmistakably, a vast ecclesiastical apparatus in the process of consolidating its power.

Schoolroom and confessional This disciplinary drive also extended into the intellectual realm — into the area of preaching and, even more importantly, that of casuistry. Although the origin and development of this study method still lacks an adequate historical analysis, it is clear that its application in the diocesan congregations was by no means an isolated event. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, most institutions of clerical education, from the Jesuit college to the Tridentine seminary, turned it into the preferred form of pastoral training.33 More than ever before, the 33 On these developments, see esp. Angelozzi, “L’insegnamento dei casi di coscienza”; Theiner, Die Entwicklung der Moraltheologie, 116-45, 155-58; and O’Malley, The First

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activities of the parish clergy came to consist in the application of a specialized, technical body of knowledge, supplemented, updated, and controlled by a constant stream of episcopal directives. The usefulness of the casuistic method for purposes of clerical education may be summarized as follows. The method provided an elementary tool to bridge the enormous gap between the practical challenges of confession and a vast and daunting body of moralistic literature. It reduced the complexities of daily life to manageable questions, teaching the ordinary priest how to define and categorize behavior in the terms of Catholic moral theology. Ideally, the “case” summed up both the “sin(s)” committed, and the relevant “circumstances” under which this had happened; it thus provided exactly those elements that were necessary to determine its “solution,” that is a judgment on the nature and sinfulness of the action. In turn, these concrete, and relatively simple, moral dilemmas formed the playground on which to tackle the study of the often forbidding manualistic literature for confessors. The Middle Ages had left behind a highly learned and varied tradition, particularly in the form of summas and manuals of confession, that almost required a degree in canon law to master. Classics of the late medieval period, from St. Antoninus’s confessional to the Summa Sylvestrina, remained popular in the early modern period. In addition, a new generation of voluminous and ever more sophisticated handbooks, beginning with Azpilcueta’s monumental Enchiridion, came to rephrase, supplement, and revise the older traditions. This proliferation of opinion, and the absence of any single authoritative text, made the training of the confessor’s analytical skills ever more necessary. The casuistic method was a key instrument to make this possible.34 Jesuits, 144-47. Specifically on the methods, Theiner, Die Entwicklung, 192-213; and Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 148-70. More generally on casuistry, see E. Dublanchy, “Casuistique,” DTC, 2:1860ff.; Jean-Marie Aubert, “Morale et casuistique,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 68 (1980): 167-204; Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuses of Casuistry: A History of Moral Theology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); and Briggs, “The Sins of the People.” 34 Prosperi, “Di alcuni testi”; Allegra, “Il parroco,” 932-33; and Turrini, La coscienza e le leggi, 99-127. Turrini’s quantitative data (ibid., “Tabelle,” 501ff.) suggest a boom in casuistry literature around 1580 for vernacular editions (fig. 15), and between ca. 1590 and 1610 for Latin editions (fig. 14); see also her impressive “Censimento,” ibid., 315ff. For the Jesuit contribution, see Theiner, Die Entwicklung, 251-326. The contents and uses of one Lombard parish library are discussed in De Boer, “The Curate of Malgrate.”

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After going through surviving volumes of cases of conscience discussed at congregations in Counter-Reformation Bologna, Adriano Prosperi commented that “amidst these documents one generally breathes the stuffy air of the schoolroom, certainly not that of the human matter treated in confessions,” for the schoolroom deferred to “the doctrine of the theologian and the university halls where moral theology was developed.”35 The remark raises a crucial issue for any study of clerical debates: the nature of their subject matter. Before we can make sense of the Milanese documentation we have to ask: what sort of cases were to be discussed? who proposed them? and what was their relation to the social realities of the time? The original intent of the Milanese congregations appears to have been to deal precisely with the “human matter treated in confessions.” At each meeting, the vicario foraneo had to set the agenda for the following one. This involved indicating “not only the subject matter, but also the specific points to be treated and discussed.”36 However, the episcopal Ordini cautioned, “do not propose questions that are too subtle or too elevated, but only cases of conscience, or related things, that belong to the pastoral office.” Aside from cases proposed in advance, members could immediately bring up any “problematic case of conscience [that might occur] in the administration of confession or the other sacraments, or concerning the way and rite of officiating.”37 The same 35 Adriano Prosperi, “Intellettuali e Chiesa all’inizio dell’età moderna,” in Intellettuali e potere, 232-33; Prosperi quotes as an example the case, discussed in May 1663, about a “Titius opifex,” who as an employer of Protestant workers allows them to eat meat during Lent. In Bologna, the congregations were regulated by Bishop Paleotti in his Instruttione da osservarsi nelle congregationi de casi di coscienza of 1594. See also the collection of cases published under his direction: Luis de Beja Perestrelo, OSA, Responsiones casuum conscientiae, qui omnibus curatis, ac poenitentiariis singulis mensibus coram Illustriss. ac Reverendiss. Card. Paleoto Archiepiscopo Bonon. proponuntur... (Bononiae: apud Alexandrum Benatium, 1587), and later editions (see Turrini, “Censimento,” in Id., La coscienza e le leggi, 382-85). 36 AEM, 2:1957: “intimarete la convocatione dell’altra [congregatione] seguente, con ... proponere non solo la materia, ma anco li punti precisi, delli quali si haverà a ragionare et trattare.” 37 Ordini per le congregationi foranee (1568), AEM, 2:1957: “et non si proponghino però questioni sottili o troppo alte, ma solo di casi di conscienza o altre simil cose che si appartengano all’officio di chi ha cura d’anime...”; ibid., 1956: “Ciascuno d’essi sacerdoti, a chi occorresse qualche caso di conscienza dubitabile nell’amministrazione della confessione o degli altri sacramenti o del modo et rito dell’officiare, potrà medesimamente proponerlo...”

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emphasis returned with a more specific slant, two decades later, in the Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum: “The subject matter of the questions should be furnished by the mores of the people, and by the activities and sorts of business particular to the region where the congregations are held.” Accordingly, it was up to the priest hosting the (next) meeting to propose these questions. As for answering them, all “exercise of wit” or “hairsplitting” was to be avoided; everyone “should demonstrate his opinion with arguments derived from practice rather than the classroom.”38 Here is another indication that curia officials worried as much about intellectual prowess as about ignorance. They also showed a growing desire to control such discussions. Whereas supervision was initially entrusted entirely to the rural vicar, the 1580s saw the introduction of a new official: the definitor. A local expert in religious doctrine, usually a canon endowed with a theologian’s prebend, his task consisted especially of correcting, clarifying, and concluding the discussions. But he also had a role in choosing the questions. The host of every congregation had to submit his own suggestions to the definitor for inspection, after which further diocesan approval was necessary. The parish priest was further urged to confer with the definitor on “ordinary questions.” These questions were usually selected, or at least approved, by a specially appointed diocesan official.39 In short, an ambivalence crept into the legislation; the insistence that the topics be relevant to local realities was matched by the urge to control them and supplement them with “ordinary questions” suggested by superiors. The balance between the two remains unclear. What is beyond doubt, however, is that the religious authorities of Borromean Milan meant the cases to have practical usefulness. But did they? Given the nature of our sources, it is usually impossible to establish if there was a direct relation between the cases of conscience discussed during congregations and the social conditions of the time and the area. There is some evidence that the pressure from above took the 38

Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum (after 1582), AEM, 2:1621: “Ea sit quaestionum materia, quam hominum mores, et rerum, quae ea in regione ubi conventus habetur geruntur, actiones negotiationesve subministrabunt.” Ibid., 1620: everyone “opinionem ... suam argumentis non tam e schola quam ex usu rerum sumptis confirmet.” 39 Instructiones congregationum dioecesanarum (after 1582), AEM, 2:1621 (“Cujus sit quaestiones proponere”).

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form of bureaucratic controls. Thus we find Vicar General Castelli in 1571 rejecting three cases sent to him by the vicar of Busnago with the argument that the purpose of the congregations was “to discuss and clarify cases which tend to occur often in confessions — not cases such as yours.”40 How systematic these controls and corrections really were, remains unclear. But sometimes the evidence describes real-life problems as the basis for a clerical discussion. In early 1568, the traditional business of annual reconciliations was discussed at a congregation in Val Levantina, where “everyone presented problems and difficulties that had come up in the forum of conscience during Lent.” Consequently, “we arranged for a few disputes to be settled and reconciled.”41 A few years later, the priests of Agliate discussed a concrete case of adultery, and those of Settala, an episcopal prohibition of the fair of nearby Lodi.42 Again in 1568, the clergy of Incino “talked at length about baptism.” The reason was a recent case of infanticide, in which a mother had apparently baptized her new-born baby before strangling him or her. And so, the vicar reported, “we asked ourselves 40 BAM, X.317 inf., fol. 356r (25 March 1571): “Non mi piace che si proponghino simili casi poi che le congregationi suon state ordinate ne i vicariati a fine che si disputino et chiariscano i casi che possono occorrere spesso nelle confessioni et non tali come havete proposti. Però seguite a mandarmeli sempre prima che proporli...” 41 BAM, S.185 inf., fols. 87r-88r (7 March 1568): “... ogniuno ivi proferiva dubii e difficultà occorse in foro conscientiae nella quadragesima. Si fecino far qualche pace e concordiae.” The date of the letter raises questions: 7 March was the first day of Lent; according to the letter, the congregation had been held on a preceding Monday (feria 2.), in other words before the beginning of Lent. 42 ASDM, VI, 40, q. 16, fols. 158-61 (congregations of the pieve Agliate in 1574): “Et tractatum fuit: In nostra plebbe Allijati homo est quidam quamquam haberet uxorem, tamen altera mugliere abutebatur in re venerea, ac si esset propria uxor...” After the legitimate wife died, the man wanted to marry his mistress. Hence the question whether this is allowed: “Queritur modo utrum iste homo possit hanc habere coniugem necne.” The answer is affirmative, unless the man and his concubine made their promise while the (first) wife was still alive, and unless the man is suspected of having triggered his wife’s death. A heavy penance was required in any case: “Cum fortasse propriam uxorem mori coegerit, matrimonium illud, de quo lochuti sumus, posse contrahi dummodo non dederint vir ille et chonchubina sibi fidem adinvicem vivente legitima uxore, nec fuerit postea suspitio quod ille choegerit legitimam uxorem mori, sed tamen gravi penitentia iniuncta, et contracto prius matrimonio.” BAM, F.129 inf., fol. 81r: “In civitate Laudensi fiebat mercatum diebus festivis; episcopus illius civitatis excommunicavit specialiter omnes venientes ad illud mercatum; modo aliqui de aliena diocesi scientes hoc venere ad illud: querebatur an essent excommunicati vel non.”

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... whether he was baptized or not, assuming that she had observed the form.” The point was to ascertain whether the infant could be buried in sacred ground, and if so, whether that had been the woman’s intention in baptizing her child. The answer to the former question being affirmative, the vicar set out for the prison where the woman was kept to inquire about the latter, but, absent the podestà, he came back without an answer.43 While rare, such elaborate accounts highlight the confrontation of practical realities and academic knowledge; indirectly, they shed an unusually vivid light on the conduct of confessions. In the next chapter we will see how a local form of magical healing led the clergy of Sforzatica in 1598 to engage in a passionate debate about superstition. Here, discussions about the seal of confession are used to show the confessors’ perspective on their own limitations as agents of discipline.

The seal of confession The seal of confession, as we have seen, was the sine qua non of the sacrament’s social feasibility. Yet the very emphasis scholastic theology had placed on its necessity is an indication of the problematic nature of the requirement.44 Not surprisingly, misgivings and complaints were to surface during the Reformation period. Both the polished ironies of an Erasmus and the crude charges of unknown inquisition suspects or accusers of the clergy convey a sense that one’s personal secrets were not safe in the confessional and, for all the taboos surrounding revelation, might be divulged directly or indirectly by a priest suspected of 43 Letter of Francesco Giussano, vicario foraneo of Incino and Garlate to Vicar General Castelli (8 March 1568), BAM, S.Q.+.II.19, fol. 51r: “... et in questa pocha congregatione fu parlato assai de batismo et per essere achaschato uno caso al presente ivi, che una dona havea parturito una creatura et strangulato, se disse: se per caso costei havesse hauto tanto timore che havesse batezato detta creatura, se erra batizato overo non, havendo servata la forma. Fu risolto essere batizato et se dovesse intendere da lei se havea fatto tal offitio acciò tal creatura fusse sepulta al sacrato. Et andai dove costei erra impregionata per chiarirme di tal cossa et ritrovai essere absente el podestà, donde non li potte parlare ma lassai una mia al detto podestà che si chiarisse tal fatto et me ne daresse aviso non ad altro fine senon per fare sepelire la creatura al sacrato.” 44 See the discussion on p. 57 ff. above; Martin, “Confession et contrôle social,” 120 relates a late medieval exemplum illustrating the conflict between ecclesiastical pardon and social retaliation: the success of the first depends on the secrecy of confession.

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ulterior motives, or simply mistrusted.45 The Council of Trent did not deal with the issue except to reconfirm the seal of confession as a social necessity. The council fathers did so when discussing the Protestant charge that secret confession was not divinely instituted but the human invention of the Fourth Lateran Council — an issue which led to a long debate about the question of whether the act of confession should or could be public. Eventually it was concluded that Scripture neither forbade nor commanded it, but also that it would not “be very prudent to enjoin by human law that offenses, especially secret ones, should be divulged by a public confession.” Hence the need to insist on secrecy and to reject the Protestant criticism as “empty calumny.”46 Yet the problem did not go away. Within years after the end of the council, it re-emerged in Milan. Surveying the state of the sacrament, Giacomo Carvajal affirmed categorically that many confessors were unaware of “the great value of the seal and secrecy of confession” and easily slipped into “the gravest of errors.”47 Not surprisingly, the issue was hotly debated during Lombard congregations. According to some participants, the seal of confession was often not only an insufficient guarantee for the penitent but a problem for the confessor. In limiting his range of disciplinary action, the rule of confidentiality invited transgression. Bassiano Staurengo, meeting with his colleagues in the pieve Incino, vented his frustration with “those who are reluctant to confess (hano rispecto confessarsi), or fear disclosure, and who therefore many times suppress their sins, or part of them, to the greatest detriment of their soul, because the devil tells them to be cautious (haver rispecto), or because they fear that the priest will give them away, and do not know that woe will befall the confessor who reveals a confession, whether it be the smallest sin or the murder of his own father.”48 45 Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia, 169-70; Myers, “Poor, Sinning Folk,” 55-56; and the examples discussed on pp. 15 and 250-51 above. 46 Sess. XIV (1551), cap. 5, COD, 707; Canons and Decrees, 94; see for the discussions, Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils, 3:319, 325-26. 47 Carvajal, Circa confessariorum examen (1564 or 1565), ASDM, XIV, 186, q. 11, fol. 92v: “Item excellentiam sigilli et secreti confessionis multi ignorant, unde in gravissimos errores facile incidere possunt.” 48 ASDM, XIV, 52, q. 9: “Et che diremo de quelli che hano rispecto confessarsi, o hano timore che si palesi, i quali lassano volte assai volte assai [sic] gli peccati, o una parte, in grandissimo detrimento de sua anima, perché il demonio gli pone nel cuore haver rispecto, o perché dubitano che’l sacerdote lo manifesti; et non gli lassa sapere che guai a quello confessore che revelassi la confessione, etiam uno peccato minimo, se ben gli avesse colui o colei amazato suo patre.”

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The firmest of assurances was insufficient for people to give up their restraint in opening their hearts. Diligent priests like Staurengo were all the more adamant in defending the seal of confession: As for myself, even if the penitent were firmly committed to killing his own confessor or had assassinated my relatives, this would not allow me to accuse him, nor to use it as an excuse for anger, nor to show him any sign of this. The holy Mother Church wills all this, so that nobody will remain contaminated and all sinners will feel safe to confess...49

According to Staurengo’s colleagues of Vimercate, who discussed the matter in 1572, the seal was sacrosanct even after a penitent’s death.50 Apart from the theological argument that secrecy pertained to the sacramentality of confession, they adduced as a social justification that “people do not want their name to be denigrated even after their death; since the deceased hid his sin from others and died with that wish, we may conclude that the aforementioned revelation was always disagreeable to him.” There was also the additional risk that the living, “aware that their confession could be revealed after their death, would be discouraged to confess.”51 Again, secrecy was to be the guarantor of sincerity. However, in spite of this principled stance, the same priests saw some room for exceptions, albeit hesitantly. For them it might be “useful” to reveal a confession post mortem if this served a higher social interest. If, for example, the deceased “owed the restitution of unjustly acquired goods about which his heirs or others are uninformed, then 49 Ibid.: “Et io per me, se ben havesse santo animo di amazare lo medemo confessore, overo se alchuno mi havesse ucciso i mei parenti, non per questo mi sarebbe licito accusargli, né mai trarne uno motivo, né mostrargli segno de ira. Tutto questo vole la santa matre chiesia, aziò niuno resti contaminato, o vero per fare gli peccatori securi a confessarsi.” 50 ASDM, X, Vimercate, 15, q. 3, fol. [4r]: “An post mortem, possit sacerdos revelare confessionem... Postquam omnes quid sentirent rogati sunt, solutio fuit, quod non per protex [sic] qui indistincte prohibet revelare confessionem, etiam si noceat quod bresbyter [sic] tacet, vel si prodesset quod revelaret.” 51 Ibid.: “Plures sunt rationes. Prima, quia etiam post mortem homines nolunt suam famam denigrari, quia ex quo defunctus caelavit peccatum aliis et in ea voluntate mortuus est, presumitur sibi semper displicere revelatio predicta, ideo etc. Secunda ratio est quia confessio est celanda non solum propter confitentem ne sibi praeiudicat, sed etiam ex ipsius sacramentalitate ex vi sacramenti, et ex se confessio debet caelari. Accedit quod propter alios etiam viventes debet caelari quia scientes dum vivunt post mortem confess(iones) posse revelari retraherentur a confitendo.”

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perhaps that may be revealed in order that the heirs can satisfy for what they unjustly own.” They also allowed disclosure of information unrelated to the sins confessed, such as “debts, credits, or deposits, excepting everything in which a sin has been committed.”52 These remarks are not only suggestive of the detailed knowledge confessors could gain of their penitents’ material and financial circumstances (especially, one suspects, through deathbed confessions), but they also expose the temptation, even in theoretical discussions of clearly wellintentioned and dedicated priests, to use that knowledge. Evidently, the problem was not confined to the world of Lombard parish priests. The same discussion was held in the regular orders, especially the Jesuits. In a telling statement of 1594, the Jesuit general Aquaviva emphatically rejected any use “outside confession of information obtained in confession” (uti extra confessionem notitia per confessionem habita), in order to protect not only the seal of confession, but also “the freedom of subjects to open themselves and disclose their affairs to their confessor” (subditorum libertas ... in se ipsis rebusque suis confessario aperiendis). The discussion was particularly relevant in the monastic world, where the overlap between the office of confessor and administrative tasks, such as those of a superior, could easily lead to a blurring of “internal” and “external” government, if not, as was sometimes alleged, outright administration through the confessional. A decree of Pope Clement VIII, 26 May 1593, definitively prohibited this practice. In the course of the seventeenth century, Catholic moralists gradually extended this prohibition to secular superiors as well. Such concerns may explain why Carlo Borromeo apparently refused to hear the confessions of his subordinates; in fact, among the many duties and roles assumed by the Milanese bishop — perpetuated in later hagiographies and iconography — the function of confessor is conspicuously lacking.53

52 Ibid.: “Si tamen expediret aliquo casu animae defuncti quod reveletur confessio peccati sui, ut qui tenetur ad restitutionem male ablatorum de quibus haeredis sui, vel alii non haberent noticiam, tunc forte revelari posset pro tanto quod haeredes satisfacerent male possessa; sic quando id quod dicitur non est peccatum, nec circunstantia peccati illius quod confitetur quia tale quid non cadit sub sigillo: huc referuntur debita, credita vel deposita nisi quantum ad confessa in quibus peccatum commissum est.” 53 Honoré, Le secret, 81ff.; Aquaviva’s text on 84-85; on the secular clergy, 91-97. Pope Clement VIII’s decree of 26 May 1593 is in Denzinger, 440-41, no. 1989.

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Even without an overt conflict of pastoral and administrative functions, however, the possible uses of knowledge gained in the confessional posed perplexing problems. As ordinary confessors were under increasing pressure to force major lifestyle changes onto their penitents, or to refer problematic cases to their diocesan superiors, they faced the difficult choice between acting on their knowledge, to the likely detriment of the seal of confession, or resigning themselves to a limited influence, if not disobedience to episcopal orders. Consider, for example, the vexing problem discussed by the clergy of Lecco in 1569 and meticulously annotated by their secretary Francesco Rasparolo: an insufficiently contrite sinner informed his confessor about some future sin. Rasparolo gave a few examples: (1) A heretic comes to confess his sins, is repentant but still means to “corrupt” others; (2) a man and a woman who intend to get married reveal in confession that they have an impediment by affinity; (3) it is known through confession that a candidate for ordination has incurred a canonical impediment; (4) a prior in a monastery confesses to his abbot that he will not abstain from an occasion that may lead others to sin.54 Inevitably the question arose: was the confessor allowed to follow up outside the confessional on the information conveyed to him under the seal, by reporting the heretic, denying his consent to the marriage, preventing the ordination, and discharging the prior? Rasparolo’s answer was negative, even while he acknowledged a solution suggested by “some” (unidentified) experts: one could distinguish between 54

Rasparolo’s account is in ASDM, XIV, 51, q. 13. See in particular: “Contra ponatur quod aliquis iuret dicere verum super aliquo facto, et nullus potest nec debet mentiri, nec falsum iurare, nec periurare sive deictare propter aliquod scandalum evitandum, ergo magis debet manifestare quam falsum respondere. Item ponatur quod audiat hereticum in confessione qui volit poenitere sed alios corumpere, magis debet fidem christo servare sacerdos quam ipsi heretico, ergo magis debet confessionem illius detegere quam permittat eum gregem Domini corrumpere. Item ponatur quod sacerdos sciat per confessione inter duos contractam esse affinitatem per coitum fornicarium, et post eos velle contrahere in facie ecclesie, si sacerdos iungit istos, cum peccent mortaliter, consentit peccato eorum, ergo mortaliter peccat, ergo si non debet sceleris alieni fieri particeps debet hoc manifestare. Similis casus est in decano qui audivit confessionem habent[ium] irregularitatem, an debeat eos presentare ordinandos ab ep[isco]po, vel revelare confessionem. Item ponatur quod aliquis prio[r] de ordine monachorum confiteatur abbati, quod quamdiu est in prioratu, habet occasionem trahentem ad peccatum a qu[a] non vult desistere, si habet curam animae sue tenetur inde illum amovere, sed amovendo inotescit ipsum peccasse, ergo videtur quod confessio possit aliquo modo revelari.”

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repentant and non-repentant sinners; the seal of confession should fully protect the former, but not the latter. Thus, the confessor would be allowed to prevent the ill-meaning from causing further harm. Rasparolo allowed that this opinion was “probable,” but did not accept it. For him, the seal of confession implied an absolute prohibition of disclosure. His arguments were theological, psychological, and social: confessions were really directed to God; a confessor had no guarantee of their truthfulness; and, perhaps most crucially, he had “to avoid scandal, and to avoid that penitents w[ould] be drawn away from confession.”55 The confessor was consequently left with two options. First, he could try to influence and change the penitent’s determination in the confessional (the sinful prior, for instance, should be induced to a voluntary confession, and he should ask to be removed from office). Second (as in the case of the heretic), the confessor could warn the penitent’s superiors in general terms: “Guard over your sheep for there is a wolf in your flock.” If he believed that the sinner constituted a danger for his environment, he should furthermore find ways to provide for “the flock of the Lord” without revealing the confession. The confessor was excused for knowingly officiating in an illicit marriage or an irregular ordination, because “it is not he who does it, but the Church, and the Church judges according to what is exterior.” Still, it would be best to delegate his role in the marriage or ordination to a substitute, “both because of [his knowledge derived from] the secret confession, and because of the horror of the crime.”56

55

Ibid.: “R(esponde)n(do) ad hoc voluerunt aliqui distinguere quod dupliciter potest qu[is] sacerdoti confiteri: aut tanquam penitens, q(uia) volens a peccato absolvi, et tunc sigillum confessionis claudit omne quod dicit sine apertione; aut ita quod non vult a peccato desistere, ut si revelat propositum periurandi vel occidendi hominem vel aliquod tale, et tunc non tenetur sub sigillo confessionis claudere, sed tunc potest dicere ei qui potest prodesse et non obesse. Sed quamvis istud videtur dici probabiliter, tamen cum mandatum et institutio de omni culpa dicat generaliter et peniten[s] peccatum suum non tanquam homini sed tanquam Deo revele[t] et nesciat sacerdos utrum ille verum dicat an eum seducat nisi manifestatum fuerit per illam personam, non debet manifestare personam illam. Propter hoc sigillum confessionis diligentissime est custodiendum, propter scandalum, ne penitens retrahatur a confessione...” 56 Ibid.: “Ad illud ergo quod obiicitur de iuramento, dicendum quod secure dicere nescio nec periurat, quia iuramentum non obligat illum ad dicendum nisi illud quod novit ut homo, non ut Deus, quia supra Deum nullus est, unde pro nulluo [sic] precepto obedientie, pro nullo iuramento vel periculo debet illud dicere. Ad illud quod

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For Rasparolo, in short, confessors had to act on their knowledge, but they could do so mainly in the confessional. Writing in 1569, this dedicated parish priest saw no way of putting to judicial use information about heretical practices revealed in confession. That was to change only a few years later, as we have seen, when it became a matter of inquisitorial (and episcopal) policy that penitents report such information to the Inquisition before receiving sacramental absolution. More generally, Rasparolo did not contemplate the radical solution to his problem that was to become the key weapon of Borromean penitential politics in the following decade: the refusal of absolution to reluctant penitents.57 In this regard, however, Rasparolo’s instincts were perhaps sounder than Borromeo’s; as the previous chapter has made clear, the systematic uses of confession for purposes of discipline ultimately caused a backlash and complaints that confidentiality was unacceptably compromised. It is indicative of the lasting tensions between discipline and privacy that, until long after that crisis had passed, the priests at congregations kept asking questions about the seal of confession.58

Exercises in casuistry Such detailed reflections by confessors on the dilemmas of their trade remain relatively rare. Usually we must make do with cases of conscience described briefly and abstractly. They allow us nonetheless obiicit de heretico, dicendum quod debet tacere nec per illam cognitionem aliquid dicere; specialiter potest tamen sine revelatione confessionis superiori dicere: ‘Vigila super oves quia lupus est in grege.’ Si probabiliter videt illum qui confessus est verum dixisse, et periculum ovium imminere, potest etiam, et debet esse sollicitus sine revelatione confessionis quomodo sciat et gregi dominico provideat, et tunc domino suo, et etiam confitenti fidem quam debet servat. Ad illud quod obiicitur de presbitero, dicendum quod presbiter debet dissuadere ei qui est confessus, et similiter decanus clerico, et si ille petat debet differre, et nisi ille cogatur per superiorem vel per scandalum populi, non debet nec matrimonium tale benedicere, nec clericos presentare. Et tunc autem potest, quia non ipse facit, sed ecclesia, et ecclesia iudicat secundum ea quae exterius sunt. Consilium tamen est quod sacerdos et decanus faciant per vicarium, tam propter confessionem illorum occultam, tum etiam propter criminis horrorem.” 57 See pp. 60-63 above. 58 Along with eight discussions in the 1560s and 70s, I counted three in the 1590s, and six in the 1610s.

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to draw two important conclusions: first, that the discussions became increasingly technical; and second, that their subject matter, while at times reflecting episcopal policies, retained an undisputably social slant. The Milanese congregations for which documentation is available are most easily analyzed by distinguishing three periods: the late 1560s and early 1570s (the earliest congregations, that is before the instructions of 1584), the late 1580s and 1590s, and the first three decades of seventeenth century. They thus span the entire Borromean era. During this time, the discussions underwent precise formal changes. Reports of the 1560s suggest that they started out by being extremely general; in 1568, for instance, the priests of Mariano spoke generally and at length about such basic topics as baptism, marriage, and especially penance.59 Soon, however, it became customary to propose a few — usually two — short and specific questions for each meeting; almost invariably the questions were formulated in Latin. Cases such as the following, discussed in Settala in 1574, were and remained fairly typical for the first and second periods: Whether someone who is willing to make restitution for stolen goods always has to return them to their owner... Whether a husband who requires the marital debt from his wife during menstruation commits a mortal sin.60

By the early seventeenth century, however, most questions had grown significantly more complex, and their form had developed accordingly. Not unlike modern arithmetical problems for children, cases of conscience came to be introduced by a narrative, detailing the imaginary circumstances of the case, followed by a simple moral dilemma. Here is an example: The fuller Sempronius accepts all kinds of silk from many merchants to dye, at the customary price per pound. This price, however, barely equals the cost of dying the silk. To avoid a loss, Sempronius sets aside for himself enough silk to make up for the cost of dying. The question is if Sempronius is required to make restitution, or if he can keep the silk with a safe 59

BAM, S.185 inf., fol. 168r ff. BAM, F.129 inf., fols. 80v, 81v: “An volens restituere aliena semper teneatur restituere ipsi domino vel non... An maritus exigens debitum ab uxore menstrui tempore peccet mortaliter.” 60

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conscience, since it is likely that the merchants who have given him the silk to dye will be aware of his action.61

It is obvious that the growing complexity of these cases of conscience, along with the elaboration of their form, were not autonomous phenomena. They clearly reflected the general trends in casuistry noted earlier. A glance at some of the literature written for that purpose establishes the similarity with the Milanese cases beyond any doubt.62 Furthermore, it comes as no surprise that by late-century these methods were beginning to seep through even in the remoter districts of rural Lombardy, for by that time the first generations of seminarytrained clergy were active throughout the diocese. When it comes to studying the questions discussed by the Lombard clergy, we have to acknowledge that these materials are not only rich, but also rather intractable. The cases reveal a wide interest, ranging over the liturgy, the working of confession and the other sacraments, and varied social and moral problems. Moreover, they resist easy and distinct classification. First, there is the question of whether to adopt modern or contemporary categories. Second, in some cases moraltheological categories are mentioned explicitly in the question; in some cases they are only implied. Third, regardless of the classification we choose, categories are often fleeting, open-ended, and overlapping — a trend which is only reinforced as the cases, and their circumstances, 61 Ibid., fol. [18r] (30 May 1608): “Sempronius fullo a multis mercatoribus varia genera serici ad tingendum sumit, consueto in singulas libras pretio, quod tamen pretium minime aequipollet sumptui, qui fit in serico tingendo; itaque ne detrimento afficiatur, tantum ipse sibi serici seponit, quanto sumptus in tingendo factus resarciri possit. Queritur num Sempronius teneatur restituere ipsum sericum an illud possit tuta conscientia retinere, cum probabile sit id non ignorari a mercatoribus, qui sericum dederant tingendum.” 62 Early, and highly successful, collections of cases of conscience, which may in fact have provided some materials for our congregations, include Serafino Razzi, Cento casi di coscienza... (Firenze: appresso Bartolommeo Sermartelli, 1579), and many reprints (see Turrini, “Censimento,” in La coscienza e le leggi, 463-65); Perestrelo, Responsiones casuum, 1587, and later editions (see Turrini, ibid., 382-85). One example must suffice to demonstrate the formal similarity with the cases discussed during the later Milanese congregations: “Paulus et Antonia contraxerunt sponsalia per verba de futuro, deinde Antonia mutato proposito significat Paulo se velle cum alio matrimonium contrahere. Paulus indignatus minatur ille graviter, si tale quid faciat. Antonia, ut se ab eo liberet a quo metuebat, dat illi aureos viginti. Quaeritur an Paulus tuta conscientia possit hos aureos retinere” (Perestrelo, Responsiones, ed. Brixiae: apud Societatem Brixiensem, 1587, 1).

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grow more complex over time. Finally, the documentation is too scattered and uneven to support overly definite interpretations of the numerical data; most sixteenth-century cases (to mention but one of numerous variables), are from rural congregations, most seventeenth-century questions, from the urban district of Porta Ticinese. Pragmatically used, a database like this can nevertheless serve as a useful heuristic instrument. The following survey of the Milanese materials is based on the categories used in the questions, but grouped under large umbrellas like economic sins, juridical sins, etc. Furthermore, it allows for any case to fall under several categories; the resulting figures should therefore be taken as indicators of relative importance rather than exact proportionality. During the episcopate of Carlo Borromeo, the diocesan congregations devoted most of their attention to the basic working of the sacraments and their other liturgical duties. Among these, not surprisingly, confession was foremost; out of a total of 230 cases, 31% directly touched the mechanics of the sacrament. But baptism was important too (11%); and so were the Eucharist, the Mass and the canonical hours (8%), as well as issues related to marriage (12%). In addition to the technical aspects of the sacraments, the contents of confession were also under discussion: usury and related economic sins (7%), theft (2%), questions about inheritance and legacies (1%), false testimony and related juridical sins (1%). But the focus was clearly on elementary sacramental training of the rural priest. All this had changed significantly by the 1580s. During the episcopate of Gaspare Visconti and the early years of Federico Borromeo, technical discussions about confession, though still important, were far less frequent than before (18% of 212 cases); even more strikingly, baptism almost disappeared from the agenda (1%). Pastoral problems, on the other hand, gained considerably: economic sins jumped to 19%, juridical issues to 6%, and inheritance problems to 4%. At the same time, marital problems remained important (9%). These trends were only reinforced in the later years of Federico Borromeo. Cases explicitly touching the technicalities of confession went up a bit (22% of 321 cases), and were supplemented by questions about reserved cases (4%). But the other trends came out strengthened as well: 20% of the cases were about usury and related problems, 5% about theft, 9% on juridical issues, and 6% dealt with inheritance and legacy; cases on marriage and sex went up to 15%. The range of discussions was also

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widened by the inclusion of cases on rape and incest, magic, blasphemy, and heresy. In short, the registers of cases of conscience attest to a significant evolution in the congregations. Initially used mainly for the basic instruction of parish priest and confessor, they gradually came to focus on the moral discussion of specific social situations. How should we interpret this development? First, it was probably a result of the growing control exercised by theological experts, both within the congregations (definitores) and outside (the diocesan curia). Second, and in relation with this, the more sophisticated casuistry probably followed the lead of the newly developed methods for the study of practical moral theology. Third, it may reflect the changing intellectual skills of a more rigorously and technically educated clergy. To what extent institutional discipline also affected the choice of subject matter is harder to say. Proposed through the mediation of a church superior, whether a rural vicar, definitor, or curia official, it is not surprising that discussion topics often betrayed the priorities of episcopal policy. In 1608, for example, Carlo Borromeo’s enduring influence is strikingly evident as his diagnosis of female responsibilities in creating public ‘occasions of sin’ showed up in the following case of conscience: Catherine visits the seven churches for reasons of devotion. While she is on her way she notices that a man is following her and watching her lasciviously. The question is if she is required under penalty of mortal sin to give up her visit and go back home in order to take away this occasion of sin.63

Similarly, the accidental overlaying of infants — the sin of neglect subjected to strict legislation by the first Borromeo and still a cause of grave concern for his cousin Federico — came up during an urban congregation the year after having been discussed at a diocesan meeting of rural vicars (1616):

63

ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [15v] (Porta Ticinese, 30 April 1608): “Catherina ex devotione visitat septem ecclesias, et dum est in via animadvertit se a quodam qui illam insequitur videri ad concupiscentiam malam. Queritur an sub poena peccati mortalis teneatur recedere a dicta visitatione, et domum redire, ut isti hanc peccandi occasionem auferat.” See Carlo Borromeo’s views, discussed on pp. 110-15 above; on his legislative efforts to control public morality during the Lenten period, see pp. 230-31 and 248 above).

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Whether confessors have to warn women excommunicated for not observing the [required] caution with their babies, to stay out of the church until they are absolved; or if they can admit them in good faith.64

Likewise, episcopal campaigns against blasphemy, superstition, and magic — particularly intense during Federico Borromeo’s episcopate — frequently found their way into clerical discussions. Questions about these issues tended to address, or derive from, disciplinary or judicial steps taken by the bishop; blasphemy is a good example. Explicitly listed as a reserved case by Bishop Visconti, it soon led to the following question in an urban congregation of the late 1580s: Peter committed blasphemy in September. The bishop reserves the case at the beginning of Advent. Peter confesses the sin as a penitent on Christmas of that year. The confessor, approved to hear confessions but lacking the license for this sin, absolves him knowingly. The question is, first, if the absolution is valid; second, if not, whether the confessor incurs any censure for absolving from cases reserved to the bishop.65

In the early 1600s, Federico Borromeo turned up the pressure on blasphemy; concurrently, the inquisitor of Milan made it a Christian duty to report to his office all instances of blasphemy that might have heretical implications.66 This policy raised difficult questions for ordinary confessors, such as the following: 64

ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [9v] (Porta Ticinese, 5 May 1517): “An illae mulieres quae in excommunicatione ob non servatam cautelam erga pueros inciderunt, admonendae sint a confessariis ut ab ingressu ecclesiae abstineant donec absolvantur, an vero relinquendae in bona fide.” Just the previous year, on 16 February 1616, Archbishop Borromeo had confirmed the conditional right of absolution from this sin by ordinary curates during a central meeting of vicari foranei (text in ASDM, VI, 70, anno 1616; the decision repeated one of 1611: see AEM, 4:430). The vicar of Porta Ticinese had read this decree to his district clergy on February 25, 1616 (ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [155r]. The problem of infant suffocation was also discussed in Arcisate in 1628 (APAr, cart. 19, fasc. 3, fol. 31v): “An sub sancione tenentes in lecto comprehendantur illi, qui pueros quidem tenent in lecto secum absque cautione, sed apud eos non dormiunt.” On the issue, see earlier pp. 237-45. 65 ASDM, XIV, 84, fol. 90r (urban congregation, end 1580s): “Petrus blasphemavit Deum mense Septembris. Casus blasphemiae reservatus episcopo ineunte adventu Domini. Paenitens confitetur peccatum in die Natale Salvationis eiusdem anni. Confessarius approbatus ad audiendas confessiones non habens facultatem de hoc scienter eum absolvit. Queritur primo an absolutio sit valida; 2.o si non, an confessarius absolvens a reservatis episcopo sine facultate incidat in aliquam censuram.” 66 See for instance Federico Borromeo’s warnings during a meeting of vicari foranei of 17 February 1604 (AEM, 4:317). As we have seen, Borromeo soon widened his

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Out of fear the servant Titius does not report his master, although he knows that the latter has committed serious blasphemy and said other heretical things as well. The question is whether he is excused from his obligation to report.67

To get some sense of the relative importance of these reflections of diocesan policy, we may turn to the cases involving excommunication and reserved cases, for these were the hallmark of episcopal discipline. Excommunication was a minor though fairly constant theme throughout the Borromean era (6% of cases in the first period, 3% in the second, and 5% in the third), whereas the reservation of cases became increasingly important (from 0.4%, to 1%, to 4%). These figures suggest that such juridical issues played a constant, though never predominant role. In the large majority of cases, however, a direct relation with the priorities of diocesan policy cannot be established. For these we can make the case that, however academic their formulation and probable solution, they stood fairly close to social realities and had considerable bearing on what happened in the confessional. A decentralized organization combined with diocesan rules and controls pushed the discussions toward practical and local relevance; as we have seen, some welldocumented examples support this contention. The bulk of the registered cases of conscience seems to point in the same direction. Not only do they hardly strike one as being overly construed or abstruse — admittedly a judgment that is hard to verify — but they refer on occasion to conditions that are peculiar to the Milanese area. The discussions in the urban quarter of Porta Ticinese, for instance, repeatedly campaign to include indecent speech (see pp. 148-54 above). The obligation to report cases of blasphemy to the Inquisition was first formulated by the Milanese inquisitor Deodato Gentile in 1599 (ASDM, IV, circolari, 20 March 1599). 67 ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [45v] (Porta Ticinese, 13 December 1619): “Titius famulus ob metum non denunciat dominum suum, quem novit saeppius [sic] graviter blasphemare, et alia quaedam haereticalia proferre. Queritur an a tale denunciatione excusetur.” Other questions about the same issue include: “Antonius et Franciscus qui est coecus ambo simul multoties audierunt Petrum familiarem blasphemantem. Antonius denunciavit inquisitori. Franciscus vero sciens hoc non denunciavit. Queritur an Franciscus sit immunis a denunciatione” (Porta Ticinese, 27 November 1617, ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [15v]), and: “Cuidam confessori concessa est facultas a nostro ordinario absolvendi a crimine blasphemiae poenitentes dummodo ea non sit haereticalis. Queritur quid vigore huius facultatis ille possit, quidve non possit” (Porta Ticinese, 23 November 1618, ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [30v]).

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dwelled on the silk business, which was a central pillar of the Milanese economy — the case cited above is an example. Situations describing aspects of the production process, such as women’s roles in dying silk or spinning goldthread, are too specific to be imagined.68

Spiritual jurisdiction and community life In sum, most of these thorny moral problems discussed during clerical congregations were neither the sole inspiration of curia officials or academic theologians, nor a direct representation of what happened in the confessional. After all, they had to be problematic and urgent to become worthy topics of conversation. Exactly how, and by whom, this judgment was made is usually hard to reconstruct, although we may surmise that it generally resulted from an interaction involving penitents, confessors, parish priests, and supervising religious officials. Despite their uncertain position between normative pressure and social reality, the records of these discussions reveal a critical, hitherto ignored, aspect of the general evolution of confession, and allow us to draw two related conclusions. The first is legal-historical: the evidence testifies to the continuation, if not strengthening, of the Church’s jurisdictional claims and practical involvement in key areas of community life. This institutional tenacity is remarkable considering the tensions and cracks that we have seen appear in the same system of spiritual jurisdiction — resistance against the church’s conciliatory functions, against public penance, against the Borromean agenda of church discipline. The second conclusion is socio-historical: the evidence of clerical congregations allows us to reassess John Bossy’s elegant thesis of 68 Aside from the case quoted above on p. 284, see ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [17v] (“Titius Caio triginta libras serici furatus, cuidam textori vendidit...,” 30 April 1608); ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [23r] (“Berta, quae traditis cuidam eius amantissimae nonnullis sericeis ad tingendum...,” 25 May 1618); fol. [33v] (“Cum Sempronius mercator tantum decem asses, exempli gratia, in singulis libris serici solvat Caio operaio asserenti illud pretium nullo modo sibi sufficere...,” 18 January 1619); fol. [47v] (“An mulieres aurum nentes illud parum quod loco terrae et decrescenti ipsis conceditur a mercatoribus possint retinere...,” 31 January 1620). On the Milanese silk industry see Domenico Sella, L’economia lombarda durante la dominazione spagnola (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982), 45-47; Stefano D’Amico, Le contrade e la città. Sistema produttivo e spazio urbano a Milano fra Cinque e Seicento (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1994), esp. 23-46, 101-10, 129-34 (with special attention to female labor).

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the decline of confession as a ‘social’ rite. We may thus expand on the discovery, in an earlier chapter, that established routines of community reconciliation retained their vitality well into the early modern period next to new, individualized procedures of interior discipline. A simple test may be clarifying here: we can hold the Milanese cases of conscience against the criteria used by Bossy to suggest a fundamental shift in confession. Social themes, in Bossy’s interpretation, include sins that disturb the community — “adultery, murder, fornication, theft, robbery, usury, slander, etc.” — as well as instruments to restore the peace: restitution and satisfaction. A “psychological” turn, on the other hand, can be discerned in an emphasis on sins “without overt consequences” — that is secret sins such as sexual stirrings, or sins of thought — an interest in intention rather than material action, and the development of the penitent’s examination of conscience.69 Applied to the Lombard congregation materials, this litmus test yields a fairly straightforward result: the “social” themes outnumber the “psychological” by far. On the one hand, questions about usury, theft, false testimony, and inheritance are predominant, and only increase in frequency during the Borromean period. The same is true for restitution, specially noted by Bossy as a corollary of the traditional conflict resolution: Is a servant who has committed theft on behalf of his master obliged to pay restitution? Does a usurer or gambler have to return his gains? Is the fear of losing one’s good name an excuse for not fulfilling such an obligation? In turn, is harming somebody’s reputation punishable with restitution? What if this bad reputation was deserved? Should the adultery of both husband and wife be punished with public penance?70 Questions such as these come 69

Bossy, “The Social History,” esp. 25-27; and Id., Christianity in the West, 45-48, 134-36. Bossy has rightly challenged the common assumption that individual sexuality became a matter of predominant concern (“The Social History,” 35-38). 70 Arsago, 1571 (ASDM, X, Arsago, 14, q. 8): “Utrum servus, cui a domino iussum fuit furari, tenetur restitutioni.” Casorate, 1571 (BAM, X.273 inf., letter of 27 October 1571): “Numquis usurarius teneatur restituere illa quae lucratus est de peccunia feneratitia.” Arcisate, 1619 (APAr, cart. 19, fasc. 3): “[A]n qui lucratus in ludo etiam licito a filiis familias, teneatur ad restitutionem.” Treviglio, 1574 (ASDM, VI, 40, q. 20): “Utrum timens amittere famam excusetur a restitutione.” Arcisate, 1587 (APAr, cart. 19, fasc. 3, fol. 126r): “An manifestans infamiam hominis vere infamis sed non cogniti teneatur ad restitutionem fame.” Porta Ticinese, 1615 (ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [151v]): “Utrumque coniugem notorie adulterantem vult parochus publica poenitentia mulctare. Uxor eam acceptat sub conditione, si etiam maritus eandem

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up and return in infinite variations. On the other hand, cases of conscience farthest removed from the field of social interaction — sins of thought, desire and intention, rather than action — are rarely brought up. Most of them are extremely general: Is it sinful to worry excessively about temporal things? To be saddened by adversity? Or not to resist evil thoughts? Is ignorance an excuse for sin? Is it a sin to crave worldly riches?71 At other times, an interest in the intentionality of sin concerns distinctly “social” offenses, such as theft, homicide, and false testimony.72 In only four instances do the cases betray the one preoccupation most commonly associated with a “psychological” turn of confession: the varieties of sexual desire. Is it sinful for an adolescent to look at women passing by in the market-place and derive pleasure from the sight? Or for a man engaged to be wedded to fantasize about intercourse with his future wife?73 Does it make any difference if the exequatur; maritus vero eam acceptare recusat, asserens in viro eam culpam non esse pariter puniendam: Queritur quid faciat parochus?” 71 BAM, F.129 inf., fol. 121r-v (Arcisate, 1574): “Utrum nimia sollicitudo temporalium sit peccatum”; ASDM, VI, 185, fol. [37r] (Porta Ticinese, 1619): “Antonius nobilis et dives coram judice promovit litem contra dotem Bertae viduae, quae hac de causa adeo in Antonium sic exarsit ut non cesset quotidie varias calamitates et miserias illi optare. Queritur an vidua ex odio tot mala optando peccet; qualiter peccet?”; ibid.: “Utrum sit peccatum quando quis nimium tristatur de infortuniis”; ASDM, XIV, 51, q. 10 (Lecco, 1572): “Utrum homo divitias et temporalia bona possit apetere sine peccato” (the identical question is asked in Asso in 1576: APAs, fasc. 23); ASDM, VI, 40, q. 19, fol. 191r ff. (Bellano, 1574): “An sola spes lucri faciat usurarium”; ASDM, X, Lecco, 34, q. 2 , fol. 559r (Lecco, 1571): “Utrum ignorantia excuset a peccato”; APAr, cart. XIX, fasc. 3, fol. 130r (Arcisate, 1587): “An negligens repellere cogitationes malas peccet mortaliter.” 72 Porta Ticinese, 1611 (ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [80r]: “Paulus pluribus diebus cogitavit decem homines occidere totidemque dierum spatio in animo habuit decem hominum bona furari: Queritur an pari utrobique peccatorum numero distinctus sit et si non, cur ita?” Porta Ticinese, 1620 (ASDM, VI, 185, fols. [52v] and [59v]): “Ex consuetudinaria inadvertentia consuevit quis indiscriminatim iurare verum et falsum. Dubitatur primo utrum consuetudinarius ille sit in statu peccati mortalis; 2.o An concomitante simili inadvertentia aeque sit loethale peccatum iurare verum ac falsum”; “Titius venator per loca deserta venando occidit clericum inimicum putans invi(n)cibiliter feram in nemore absconditam; in ipsoque actu homicidii recordatus inimici, de novo proposuit occidere; post complacuit de homicidio. Queritur utrum sit excommunicatus et ad restitutionem damnorum teneatur.” It is perhaps not a coincidence that these problems of intentionality seem far more artificial and construed than most others. 73 ASDM, VI, 185 (Porta Ticinese, 1619), fol. [45v]: “Adolescens in foro observat omnes mulieres transeuntes, quarum visu plurimum delectatur. Queritur an peccet,

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subject of similar fantasies is someone bound by a vow of chastity, a victim of rape, a blood relative, someone else’s wife, or a nun?74 Does a man whose sexual dreams revolve around his servant have to dismiss her?75 It is important to note, moreover, that these last questions are all derived from one source — the register of the urban area of Porta Ticinese — and a relatively late period — the 1610s. Whatever may be the significance of their appearance, these cases are too few and far apart to document a trend. In short, the priests studied in these pages worried mostly about the traditional socio-juridical functions of confession, along with the complications caused by some new episcopal policies. Of course, this does not mean that such issues were predominant in all, or even most, confessions. The more often a person confessed, one suspects, the less they mattered. The devotees of spiritual directors, the pious members of confraternities, and the students of Christian doctrine probably engaged in different confidentialities and spiritual exchanges with their confessors. Prominent among them were no doubt the women of a parish, whose concerns are clearly under-represented in the clerical congregations (even the sins of thought discussed above mostly reflect a male perspective). What this evidence does attest to is the persistence of a basic form of community discipline, revolving especially around the Easter rites, and intent on removing any disruptions of Christian unity. But from now on it was firmly tied to the hierarchical structures of the post-Tridentine Church. Clerical education, constant instruction, and institutional surveillance made sure that urgent items of episcopal policy trickled down fairly reliably into the parishes, and et qualiter”; ibid., fol. [38v]: “Caius sponsalia cum Berta contraxit; dum vero quae ad matrimonium legitime celebrandum convenientia parantur, maritali de congressu aliquando delectatur, perinde ac si cum ipsa Berta rem haberet. Queritur an mortalem culpam contrahat huiusmodi delectatio.” 74 ASDM, XIV, 243, fol. [120r] (Porta Ticinese, 1613): “Obligatus quis voto castitatis peccavit saepius delectatione morosa cum rapta, cum consanguinea, etiam cum uxore alterius, et cum virgine dicata Deo, at in confessione hoc unum tantum accusat quod delectatus sit luxuriose de fornicatione cogitans, nec dicit cum qua muliere nec se vovisse castitatem. Queritur de integritate huius confessionis.” 75 Ibid. (Porta Ticinese, 1614): “Petrus cursu sex mensium quinquies vel sexies desideravit Bertam ancillam, quam quidem desideravit non ex eo quod ipsius amore captus sit, sed quia dum pravis turpibus cogitationibus exagitatur dictae Bertae recordatur. Queritur utrum confessarius dictum Petrum absolvere possit absque quod illum obliget ad mulierem illam domo eiiciendam, an teneatur illum obligare.”

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probably reinforced an inclination to apply the abstract, often highly technical, rules of church law rather than following established local conventions. Even so, the ground troops of Borromean reform were caught between two fires, and had to stake out a modus vivendi for themselves and their charges. As we will see in the last chapter, the results were far from predictable.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DEFINING THE SINFUL: THE CASE OF SUPERSTITION

On Holy Saturday, March 21, 1598, Pietro Muzio, the curate of Sforzatica — a small town in eastern Lombardy — wrote a letter to his immediate superior, Ottaviano Abbiate Forero. The latter held the prominent position of archpriest in the Milanese Duomo, but was also the diocesan church visitor responsible for the region to which Sforzatica belonged. To this official Muzio reported that he had refused absolution to one of his Easter penitents, the peasant Bartolomeo Locatello, and threatened him with the interdict. The reason was that Locatello exercised a form of ritual healing which the curate considered superstitious. He used to bandage wounds while pronouncing several Paternosters and another formula that raised the curate’s suspicions. The healer himself, however, denied any superstition and refused (according to the priest) to give up the practice. Muzio’s denunciation set the central apparatus of the diocese to work and led to two official inquiries. Two Jesuits examined Locatello in Milan and concluded that his activities were harmless and fully acceptable. Then, Archpriest Abbiate Forero, evidently not satisfied with this outcome, went personally to Sforzatica to look into the matter. This time, the result was a strict prohibition of Locatello’s cure.1 The Locatello affair was not an isolated episode. Recent research (in Naples, Modena, the Veneto, and elsewhere) has established with overwhelming evidence that the Italian Counter-Reformation Church turned its attention increasingly to the vast range of practices 1

ASDM, X, Verdello, 3, qq. 8-9. The two quires contain letters by Muzio to Forero (March 21, and April 25, 1598), and by the Jesuit Giovanni de Lorini (April 2), the transcript of Forero’s interrogations (April 7 and 13), and the report of a congregation of priests, held on April 13 (enclosed with Muzio’s letter of April 25). Like many highly placed diocesan officials, Forero was a member of an association of priests who vowed special allegiance to Carlo Borromeo; at the same time, he was archpriest of the Duomo, a function which he was to keep until the end of his life (Ettore Fustella, “Biografie dei sacerdoti che si fecero oblati al tempo di San Carlo [1578-84],” MSDM 12 [1965]: 105-06).

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considered ‘superstitious’ as soon as the major ‘heretical’ challenges of the earlier Reformation period had been quelled.2 Thus, from the end of the sixteenth century, Inquisition records reveal a remarkable and steady increase in cases labeled “magic” and “superstition.”3 Stamping out such practices was not reserved for inquisitors alone. Depending on local political priorities and power relations, bishops and their clergy often included the fight against superstitions among their ‘pastoral’ concerns. This was certainly the case in Milan, where Carlo Borromeo had initiated a tradition of active competition with other ecclesiastical organizations. Since those days, as this chapter shows, ordinary clergymen, in particular confessors, often found themselves on the frontlines of the battle against superstition.4 Yet this crucial role was also highly problematic, due to a pervasive uncertainty as to what constituted an offense in this matter. If that uncertainty generated growing caseloads in inquisitorial offices, as has been suggested, it was all the more troubling at the lower levels of the clergy, the weakest chain in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Early in the seventeenth century, as anti-magical sentiment increased, the Milanese authorities drew the inevitable conclusion by requiring all superstitions to be reported to the curia or the Inquisition, thus effectively taking them out of the confessional. 2

Peter Burke, “Rituals of Healing in Early Modern Italy,” in Id., The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication (Cambridge, 1987), 207-20; David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: the System of the Sacred in EarlyModern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester-New York: Manchester University Press, 1992), 128-61, esp. 138-41; Id., Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester-New York: Manchester University Press, 1998); Mary O’Neil, Discerning Superstition: Popular Errors and Orthodox Response in Late Sixteenth Century Italy (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1981), esp. 48-113; Ead., “Sacerdote ovvero strione: Ecclesiastical and Superstitious Remedies in 16th Century Italy,” Understanding Popular Culture. Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers, 1984), 53-83; Ead., “Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late-Sixteenth-century Modena,” in Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe, ed. Stephen Haliczer (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1987), 88-114; and Giovanni Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe nell’Italia della Controriforma (Firenze: Sansoni Editore, 1990), esp. 201-46. 3 See the statistics of inquisitorial prosecutions in Monter and Tedeschi, “Towards a Statistical Profile,” esp. 144-47. 4 On the importance of the lower clergy, see Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch, 140; Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti, e streghe, 253-54; O’Neil, “Magical Healing,” 92; Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 371-72.

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Positioned squarely between these two phases in the battle against superstition, the Locatello affair illuminates both. With vivid glimpses into the confessional, it suggests that the interaction between priests and penitents served to establish a common ground between what healers did and what church authorities demanded. This negotiation involved the mind as much as the will: particularly striking about Locatello is his theological sophistication. The process was further helped along by the fact that superstition, like many moral-theological categories, is a flexible concept.5 Defining the term, then, was far from an idle or theoretical exercise: it was decisive for the outcome of the Church’s campaign against magic. Hence the curia’s response to the Locatello case: faced with an evident weakness of confession as a system of detection and discipline — a weakness based on the solidarity and cultural affinity between the local clergy and laity — it attempted to ‘re-educate’ the former in matters of superstition. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the Locatello affair thus highlights some enduring elements of Counter-Reformation church discipline — confession, hierarchy, education. But it also exposes the profound ambiguities of the enterprise. If priests enforced discipline based on their privileged knowledge of the sacred, that knowledge was not a given: from the episcopal standpoint, it was always subject to scrutiny, correction, and official stamps of approval. The issue was not (as official rhetoric had it) to replace “ignorance” with “knowledge,” but to adjust the effectively applied knowledge in light of ecclesiastical policies and priorities. In an area as vital as the distinction between true and false religion, this required modifying the conceptual framework with which priests questioned their penitents, interpreted their behavior, and indoctrinated their minds. In the wake of Foucault’s linguistic turn, historians have come to recognize the disciplinary powers inherent in such categorizations: deeply embedded in religious, scientific, and legal bodies of ‘knowledge’ 5 The remarks on the subject by Keith Thomas and Natalie Zemon Davis are still valid: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1971; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978), 48-49; Natalie Z. Davis, “Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion,” in The Pursuit of Holiness, 307-10. See also O’Neil, “Magical Healing,” 88-89. On the uncertainty among inquisitors about the malevolence of behaviors not easily categorized under conventional rubrics like heresy and apostasy, see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza, 391-92.

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were institutional power claims. The early modern discipline of casuistry, developing out of medieval scholastic theology, provided one of the most formidable systems to name, order, and judge human actions. That this system was full of tensions, inconsistencies, and disagreements at the theoretical level is fairly well known; much less studied are the vagaries and effects of its application. The Locatello case allows us to reflect on that obscure side of social discipline, and on the intimate links between knowledge and power in the conquest of the early modern soul.

The eradication of magic The accusation that started the Locatello affair was simple enough. According to Curate Muzio, Bartolomeo Locatello used to treat wounds by applying bandages to them while pronouncing several Paternosters and the following words: “Christ was born, Christ died, Christ was resurrected; and if it is true and the truth that Christ was born of virginity, let this wound be healed.”6 Later, Locatello essentially confirmed what his curate had alleged, although he contested two significant details of the report. Historians of early modern Europe will not detect anything extraordinary in Locatello’s activities.7 It was very common, especially in rural areas like Sforzatica, for people to seek assistance for their diseases outside the established medical profession, resorting to a wide array of unofficial healers whose therapies often involved ritual, devotional, or otherwise religious elements. Similar practices can be documented also for Lombardy. When, in 1565, Archbishop Carlo Borromeo declared it to be his (and his suffragan bishops’) task to prosecute practitioners of magic, poisoning, and divination, he included magical healers: “those who are convinced that they can ... drive out illnesses ... with bandages, knots, characters or occult words.”8 The extent of the 6

ASDM, X, Verdello, 3, q. 9, fol. 1r. In the original Italian: “Christo è nato, Christo è morto, Christo è resuscitato, et se è vera verità che Christo è nato de virginatà [sic] guarisca questa infirmità.” Note the rhythm and rhyme. 7 See for example the case studies presented in Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch, 131-37 and passim; Id., Healers and Healing, 156-76; Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti, e streghe, 204-44; and O’Neil, “Magical Healing.” 8 First Provincial Council (1565), AEM, 2:54.

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phenomenon became apparent when, some time between 1567 and 1573, the bishop’s first generation of rural vicars compiled an impressive list of such superstitions.9 Apart from simple ways to avert dangers or to influence the weather, cures for humans or animals proved predominant and omnipresent. For instance, in Desio “a peasant has recently been found to heal sciatica with the Cross and superstitious words.” In Derfo, fevers were treated “by writing the words Christus resurrexit alleluia on a piece of bread and giving it to eat to the fasting patient on three successive mornings, every morning adding one alleluia.” In Gorgonzola, those afflicted by fevers had to stand in the sun at dawn and say three Paternosters and three Avemaria’s; toothaches were cured in a ritual involving “a knife and the tooth of a deceased person.” And so on.10 Carlo Borromeo put the eradication of magical and superstitious practices high on his agenda, considerably widening the scope of the relevant Tridentine decrees, and pursuing strategies of prosecution that went well beyond the policies of colleagues and inquisitors elsewhere. He did so in manifest competition with the Milanese and sometimes also the Roman Inquisition, as became evident in a notorious case of 1569-70, in which the Roman Holy Office stopped the execution of a group of witches sentenced to death at the archbishop’s 9

ASDM, XIV, 67, qq. 3-4. Ottavio Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde (e leventinesi) del tempo di San Carlo Borromeo,” Vox romanica 27 (1968): 229-49, offers a commentary and edition, which is not always reliable (e.g., “prete” for “Messer” [233 and 234], “dolore de donne” for “dolore de denti” [240], “pruvato” (sic) for “procurato” [241], “Monsignore” for “Milano” [241], etc.). Lurati has unconvincingly dated the document between 1576 and 1579 (“Superstizioni lombarde,” 230). Like the “index of blasphemers,” part of the same ms. (q. 5), the survey of superstitions should probably be dated between 1567 and 1574 (see earlier, p. 223). The document was compiled not by parish priests (as Lurati suggests), but rural vicars, as internal evidence indicates (e.g. fol. 1r [Lurati, 238]: “quelli che ricadono in queste superstizioni nel suo vicariato che li curati li mandono da lui”; ibid. [Lurati, 239]: “Ha dato ordine per il suo vicariato alli curati che li portassero nota di tutte le superstitioni...”; fol. 4r [Lurati, 233]: “il vicario foraneo li presta qualche fede...”). For another comment, see Attilio Agnoletto, “Un ‘Indice di superstizioni’ della Lombardia borromaica,” Quaderni milanesi. Studi e fonti di storia lombarda 4 (1984): 77-94. 10 See, respectively, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 233, 243, 239-40. A remarkable collection of “vain and almost superstitious” spells by women from Lecco can be found in ASDM, X, Lecco, 11, published in Natale Perego, Stregherie e malefici. Paure, superstizioni, fatti miracolosi a Lecco e nella Brianza nel Cinquecento e Seicento (Lecco: Periplo Edizioni, 1990), 163-84.

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insistence.11 In this as in other cases, the archbishop adamantly defended his episcopal prerogatives. Superstition was a fixed item, along with blasphemy, sacrilege, and heresy, on the list of abuses to be reported to the diocesan authorities during visitations, synods, or other meetings of local clergy with their superiors.12 The curia was most interested in especially harmful or unorthodox practices, such as those involving the invocation of the devil, cases in which the Eucharist was abused or in which poisons were applied to influence fertility, and practices of witchcraft based on “bad intentions,” or verging on heresy. In a sign of deep concern about the matter, Borromeo took some of these cases out of the hands of ordinary confessors by reserving them to himself.13 At the same time, there was a whole range of lesser superstitions that remained entrusted to confessors and their immediate superiors, the rural vicars. As the Fourth Provincial Council of 1576 put it, confessors had to “investigate if their penitents apply some kind of remedy for their health or [against their] wounds that does not derive from the medical art and knowledge, but from superstition...” If they found any such penitents, they had to “gravely rebuke them and try to deter and avert them from such empty notions and errors.”14 We can get 11

For the Milanese legislation, see the provincial councils of 1565 and 1576, and the diocesan synod of 1584: AEM, 2:38-39, 309, 1039. The Tridentine decrees can be found in COD, 737 (sess. XII, on the Mass), and 775-76 (sess. XXV, on saints and sacred images). On Carlo Borromeo and superstition, see Romeo, Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, 201-04; Giuseppe Farinelli and Ermanno Paccagnini, Processo per stregoneria a Caterina de Medici (1616-1617) (Milano: Rusconi, 1989); Paolo Portone, “Un processo di stregoneria nella Milano di Carlo Borromeo (1569),” in Stregoneria e streghe nell’Europa moderna, ed. Giovanna Bosco and Patrizia Castelli (Pisa-Roma: Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, etc., 1996), 317-30. 12 See, along with the decree mentioned in n. 8 above, Fourth Provincial Council (1576), AEM, 2:439, 452; the instructions De visitatoribus, ibid., 1671. 13 See the case reserved during the First Provincial Council (1565) and the Second Diocesan Synod (1568), decr. 18: “Qui ad magicas artes, veneficia, superstitiones et alia hujus generis, Eucharistia sacrisve rebus abutuntur” (AEM, 2:54, 820-21; see the “Tabula censurarum et casuum reservatorum” [1584], AEM, 3:430-31, no. 75); and the one concerning the use of magical means to prevent the consummation of a marriage (ibid., no. 87; see the Fifth Provincial Council (1579), AEM, 2:702-03). 14 Fourth Provincial Council (1576), AEM, 2:309: “Confessarii ... investigent..., num poenitentes aliquod remedium valetudini aut vulneribus adhibeant, quod non a medica arte et cognitione, sed a superstitione proficiscatur ... et quos ea in re peccare noverint, graviter objurgent, et ab ejusmodi vano sensu atque errore deterrere et avertere conentur.”

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some idea of how the local clergy went about this from the rural vicars’ report just quoted. The refusal of absolution was the most common weapon. In Arsago, for instance, practitioners of superstition would once be given the benefit of the doubt, and receive absolution; but if they returned to their sin, they had to enter the local confraternity of the Corpus Domini and confess several times a year, “with the curate, not with others”; if they kept relapsing, they had to see the rural vicar. In Melegnano, habitual offenders were sent straight to the vicar, without receiving absolution from their confessor, “and in this way,” the document asserts with confidence, “most [superstitions] have been eradicated.”15 Yet this optimistic conclusion was certainly premature. To make confession into an instrument for the detection of superstitious practices — or, for that matter, of any other sins — two conditions had to be met: first, that penitents be willing to talk about these issues; and second, that confessors be convinced of their sinfulness, and prepared to investigate and pursue them. The same vicars’ report demonstrates that these conditions were not always fulfilled. On the one hand, as the vicar of Sforzatica suspected, “many people do not confess this kind of superstition, and especially the curing of wounds, for fear of some penance or reprimand.”16 On the other hand, confessors themselves often thought little of these offenses or did not consider them to be such. For instance, some priests in Monza excused and defended the existing superstitions “by saying that they are true, useful, and executed with devotion and good words.”17 Certain friars of Bollate were said to give absolution for all kinds of superstitions, while elsewhere, clergymen were alleged to engage in these activities themselves.18 The 15

Ibid., fol. 1r (Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 238-39). In Segrate, the rural vicar “[h]a procurato levarle [i.e., superstitions] in mostrarsi difficile in assolverli et pigliarne licenza a Milano di poterlo fare” (fol. 2v, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 211). 16 Ibid., fol. 13v (Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 249): “Si dubita che molti non confessono queste sorte de superstitioni et massimamente di segnar mali per paura di qualche penitentia o vero riprensione.” 17 Ibid., fol. 12v (Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 247): “... molti le [i.e., these superstitions] scusano, e diffendono con dir che sono vere, utili et fatte con divotione e parole bone.” 18 Ibid., fol. 3r (Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 232), after a list of persons who practice superstitions: “Dicono che li frati li assolvino et per ciò è duro a levarle.” The priests of Appiano shared in the custom of drinking to the honor of St. Stephen, “concluding that what they drink turns into blood” (fol. 3v, Lurati, “Superstizioni

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vicar of Derfo, however, while allowing for the harmlessness of several forms of superstition he reported, recognized that there was a shadow-side to them: “Although some of these things seem entirely licit, nonetheless it has to be said that, if they produce the desired effect, they cause disbelief in the true devotions, and many people will respect them more than the sacraments, and other things of the Holy Church.”19 This remarkable document thus highlights a fundamental uncertainty: where was the dividing line between devotion and superstition, between the licit and the illicit manipulation of the supernatural? The question was also to dominate Locatello’s case, twenty-five years later.

Locatello investigated After receiving Muzio’s complaint, Archpriest Abbiate Forero ordered two Milanese Jesuits to look into the matter. On April 2, one of them, Giovanni de Lorini, wrote back to say that he and his colleague had questioned Locatello and heard his sacramental confession. It was a striking overlap of investigative techniques, but (as we have seen) not an uncommon one at a time when confessors and judges frequently rubbed shoulders. Both techniques had yielded the same result: according to the Jesuits, there was nothing bad or superstitious to Locatello’s activities (for reasons to which we will return shortly). lombarde,” 232: “concludendo che ciò che bevono va in sangue”). In Seveso, people used to wet priests and friars to provoke rainfall (fol. 4v, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 234). To influence the weather, priests of Arsago pronounced exorcisms (fols. 6r-v, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 237), while colleagues of Val Levantina “made a circle” in the cemetery and “used the words of Our Lord” (fol. 10r, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 245: “Usavono alcuni preti coniurar il maltempo sul cimiterio con far circolo et usar le parole di Nostro Signore”). Finally, “[a] certain priest Ambrosio Marchelli goes into the mountains to exorcise the devil or a mysterious snake which causes great harm to the cattle ... using herbs to this effect” (fol. 10r-v, Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 245: “Un prete Ambrosio Marchelli va su le alpi congiurando il demonio o un serpente che non sano che sia, il qual fa grande danno nelle bestie ... usando herbe a questo effetto”). 19 Ibid., fol. 8v (Lurati, “Superstizioni lombarde,” 243-44, misreads the sentence): “Alcune di queste cose, benché paressero in tutto licite, nondimeno è d’avvertir che, succedendo poi l’effetto, sono causa che non si creda alle divotioni vere, et molti l’hanno più in divotione che i sacramenti, et altre cose della santa chiesa.”

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Therefore Locatello was granted absolution on condition that he abstain from his healing practice as long as the investigation was not formally concluded.20 So far the procedure followed its normal course: referred to central authorities, the case was examined, absolution was given at that level, and the penitent was about to regain regular status in his local parish. But things turned out differently: Archpriest Forero was not satisfied with the Jesuits’ expert judgment. Five days later, we find him in Sforzatica, personally interrogating Locatello in the parish church of S. Andrea. The investigation continued in the presbytery of nearby Boltiero, six days later, and this time involved two more persons: Locatello’s son Giacomo, and a certain Giovan Battista De Bognis from Arcene, a nearby village. Both practiced the same, or a very similar, form of magical healing as did the main suspect.21 Thus, Bartolomeo Locatello was not alone. Over the course of the investigation, we see some further social contours of his practices emerge. The cure was, and had been, spread through a network of local contacts. Bartolomeo Locatello, a 58-year-old farm laborer and carpenter, had “learnt this way of healing some thirteen or fourteen years previously from a certain Gasparo de Roveri, [an inhabitant] of the same town of Sforzatica, a man of about fifty...”22 Bartolomeo, in turn, had since taught it to his wife Maddalena and his 25-year-old son Giacomo, so that “when I am needed [elsewhere] and unavailable, or when I do not want to come, they can stand in.”23 Giacomo had explained to one of his own patients how to heal himself. Finally, Giovan Battista De Bognis, about 36 years of age, had learnt the cure eleven years before; his teacher had been a miller from Morengo (east of Treviglio, in the diocese of Bergamo) whose name he forgot. He, too, had spread the news; he had shared his knowledge with four or five Capuchins and given them the text of the benediction in written form. 20

Lorini’s letter can be found in ASDM, X, Verdello, 3, q. 8, fol. 1. For the text of the investigation, see ibid., fols. 2r-8r. 22 Ibid., fol. 3v: “Interrogatus respondit: Il modo di medicare in questa maniera io lo imparai già da tredeci in quatordeci anni fa d’un Gasparo de Roveri, di questo istesso loco di Sforzatica, huomo di età d’anni circa 50...” 23 Ibid.: “Interrogatus respondit: Io ho poi insegnato a Madalena mia moglie, et a Iacomo mio figliolo a medicare in questo modo suddetto; i quali, quando io sono ricercato et che non posso, o non voglio andarci, essi possono supplire.” 21

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Let us return to the detection of the Locatello cure. It was in the confessional that Locatello and Muzio had discussed the practice, and that Muzio had concluded it could not pass muster. Afterwards, confessor and penitent were to offer their own versions of their encounter and disagreement. Muzio’s account (reported in his letter to Forero) went as follows. The parish priest had told Locatello that the cure was superstitious. The latter had denied this, pointing out that it was sometimes the only way to staunch a flow of blood. Muzio had rebutted that, even if this were a certain and effective remedy, it is suspect and has to be abandoned for being neither a natural nor a proper means, and for not being instituted by divine or ecclesiastical authority, and lacking the means that may make those operations effective. But even if [the treatment] were accompanied by other natural means — which is not the case — the fixed number of bandages and of Paternosters has to be given up, and the Creed has to replace those words [i.e., the formula used by Locatello].24

Personally, Muzio added cautiously in his letter, he had two objections against this formula: As far as I am concerned, but always speaking in fide ecclesiae, I cannot accept the ‘if ’ at this place [i.e., in the phrase, ‘if it is true and the truth that Christ is born...’]. Moreover, I consider it to be erroneous to use the abstract term ‘virginity’ instead of the concrete ‘the Virgin Mary,’ prescribed by the orthodox truth.25

Locatello’s version of what had happened in the confessional was shorter: “the curate,” he said, “after keeping me for a while in confession, sent me away without absolution, because he told me that it was the devil who healed those infirmities, whereas I said that the benedictions did it.”26 24 Ibid., q. 9, fol. 1r: “Io gli sogiungo, che seben questo fusse rimedio certo et efficace, è però da lasciare come sospetto, per non essere mezzo naturale, né proportionato et non essere instituito con authorità divina o ecclesiastica, né aggiunto a mezzi che puossano quelle operationi effettuare, et quando ancho fosse accompagnato con altri mezzi naturali (cosa che non è) sarebbe da lasciare il numero prefisso delle pezze et delli Pater Nostri, et dir il credo, institutione santa et apostolica, piutosto che quelle parole.” 25 Ibid.: “Et quanto a me (parlando sempre in fide ecclesiae), in questo luogo non puosso sentir quel ‘se.’ Oltre a cio reputo errore a lasciar il termine concreto ‘Maria Virgine,’ prescritto dalla orthodoxa verità, et in vece sua usar l’astratto ‘verginità.’” 26 Ibid., q. 8, fol. 3v: “... il curato doppo haverme tenuto un pezzo in confessione mi licentiò senza assolvermi, perché diceva che il diavolo era quello che guariva questa infirmità, et io diceva che erano le benedette parolle.”

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Even in these few remarks we glimpse the outlines of a conflict that the later installments of the same affair clarify: could a lay cure that was intentionally Christian and therefore availed itself of the elements of Catholic ritual and belief be acceptable to the Church? Locatello saw his activities as a pious practice that remained well within the boundaries of orthodoxy; Muzio considered them diabolical despite their devout and conventional appearance.

The traits of superstition The Jesuit Giovanni de Lorini and his colleague agreed with Locatello. “In conclusion,” they said in their report, “we cannot find anything bad or superstitious, since neither a devil’s pact or invocation, nor unknown names, falsities, idle words about things sacred, nor hope attached to the specific words play any role.” These, Lorini continued, were in fact the criteria by which St. Thomas Aquinas distinguished superstition. The Jesuit thus measured Locatello’s therapy with the theological yardstick of the one seminal authority on the subject. He went on to emphasize Locatello’s flexibility and spirit of obedience: “[H]e is prepared to say any other prayer instead of the Paternoster, etc. In short, he is ready to do anything he will be told, even if this means giving up [the cure].”27 Archpriest Forero evidently found the Jesuits’ conclusion unconvincing and took Muzio’s objections all the more seriously. When it was his turn to interrogate Locatello and his fellow suspects, he concentrated precisely on the issues raised by the parish priest: the purpose of the bandages, the importance of their number, the word “if ” in the formula, and the use of the term “virginity.” It is not difficult to see why he should insist on these points. The exact wording of the formula was obviously important, because it could reveal impermissible “falsities” 27 Ibid., q. 8, fol. 1r: “In conclusione non troviamo cosa mala o superstitiosa, poiché non interviene né patto o invocatione del demonio, né nomi incogniti, né falsità veruna, né parole vane co’le sacre, né speranza nelle parole determinate le quali cose causeriano superstitione, secondo la dottrina di S. Thomaso 2-2 q. 96 a. 4. Anzi è apparecchiato di dir qualsivogl’altra oratione in luogo del Pater Noster, etc. Et in somma è pronto a far tutto ciò che gli sarà ordinato, ancor che dovesse lasciare di farlo...” The reference is to Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 96, art. 4, in Id., Opera omnia, 9:334-35.

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or unwarranted “hope attached to the specific words” (in the terms of Aquinas’s definition quoted above). Undue emphasis on the external and formalistic performance of the cure’s devotional elements, or any expectation attached to their number, order, or timing, could also be an indication of superstition — hence the relevance of the number of bandages.28 Locatello was aware that he was treading on dangerous ground. In his reply, he insisted that the number of bandages he used depended on the gravity of the wound, but did not really matter otherwise. The bandages “are applied to clean the wounds, nor does the power [of the cure] reside in these pieces, for at times I was forced by necessity to use one single bandage.” So how was the efficacy of the treatment to be explained? Bartolomeo: “The power resides in the benedictions that are said during the act of healing.”29 In this way, the attention was shifted to the verbal part of the procedure. Forero urged Locatello to “report clearly every single word,” and to explain “with what intention they are pronounced to heal these wounds.”30 Bartolomeo dutifully complied by describing the whole ritual: I say the following words — but first, if there is any holy image in the room where the patients are, I kneel and, with folded hands, I ask God for his grace: that he allow me to heal that wound. Then I rise to my feet, and make the sign of the cross, saying ‘In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.’ And then, kneeling again, I say a Paternoster, and an Ave Maria. And then I say, still on my knees, and with my eyes looking upwards to heaven, or to the holy image, and with my mind directed to God: ‘Jesus Christ was born, Jesus Christ died, Jesus Christ was resurrected; it is true and the truth that Christ was born of the virgin Mary: let this wound heal without getting purulent, in honor and reverence of the blessed and holy Trinity.’ And again I make the sign of the cross over the wound, and repeat a Paternoster and an Ave Maria.31

28

P. Séjourné, “Superstition,” DTC, 14:2784-85. ASDM, X, Verdello, 3, q. 8, fol. 2r-v: “... il male non guarisce per il numero delle pezze, ma segli applicano per nettare le piaghe, né la virtù consiste nelle pezze, poiché mi è occorso a mettere anco per necessità un sol fazzoletto. Interrogatus respondit: La virtù consiste nelle benedette parolle che se dicono nell’atto del medicare.” 30 Ibid.: “Interrogatus ut referat distincte singula verba et qua intentione quae profert in huiusmodi infirmitatibus medendis...” 31 Ibid., q. 8, fols. 2v-3r: “Respondit: “Io dico queste parolle formate, cioè — prima essendo nel loco dove sono gl’infermi qualche imagine sacra m’inchionoccio et con le 29

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This description, containing neither the dangerous conditional “if,” nor the objectionable “virginity,” defied the two major allegations of Curate Muzio and did not otherwise reveal grossly heterodox elements. It clearly left the interrogator puzzled, for he sternly admonished Locatello “to tell the truth in the interest of his soul.” But the healer stuck to his story, patiently providing some more details.32 With equal confidence, articulateness, and a sense of professional pride, Locatello countered Forero’s attempts to probe further into his reliance on any specific formula or prayer. “I believe that the sick would in any event get healed if I recited the Creed instead of the words I use now.” And, “It is my opinion that the Salve regina, which is a good prayer, would be just as helpful as the Paternoster. But I have never tried it.”33 Another potentially ritualistic, and therefore incriminating, aspect of the cure was its timing, but Locatello avoided this trap as well: “For the sake of devotion I normally go out to heal in the morning on an empty stomach, but if by chance someone is hurt after breakfast, I will not refuse to heal him, and the effect will still be the same.”34 These answers must have cast some doubt on Muzio’s credibility, and Forero asked Locatello for his opinion. “I couldn’t easily say whether one should believe my curate or not,” Bartolomeo declared, mani gionte dimando gratia a Iddio che mi conceda di poter risanare quella infirmità, poi levatomi in piedi faccio il segno della croce con la mano destra dicendo ‘In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti, Amen,’ et poi dico un Pater Noster et un Ave Maria inchionocciato, et di poi dico, stando pure ingionoccioni con gli occhi al cielo, overo alla sacra imagine, et con la mente a dio, dico ‘Jesu Christo è nato, Jesu Christo è morto, Jesu Christo è rescuscitato, alle vero e la veritate che Giesu Christo è nato de Maria vergine: questo male guarisca e non marcissca a honore e riverenza della benedetta et santissima Trinità, segnando di novo con il segno della santa croce il male, et replicando un Pater Nostro et un’Ave Maria.” 32 Ibid., q. 8, fol. 3r: “Et monitus a Monsignor Reverendo ut veritatem dicat pro salute suae animae, respondit: Io dico la verità, che quando medico alcuno che habbia gran male, et che senta gran dolore, replico da quatro in cinque volte l’istesse parolle et segni di croce che ho detto di sopra...” 33 Ibid., fol. 4r: “Interrogatus respondit: Credo che ad ogni modo gl’infermi guarirebbono se in cambio delle parolle ch’io dico, recitassi il credo... Interrogatus respondit: io stimo che chi dicesse la Salve Regina in cambio del Pater Noster, che come oratione bona giovarebbe come a dire il Pater Noster, ma io non lo ho mai provato.” 34 Ibid., fol. 4r: “Interrogatus respondit: io vado a medicare per ordinario la mattina a digiuno per maggior divotione, ma quando venesse il caso che alcuno fosse ferito doppo pranso io non resto per questo di medicare, et ne segue il medesimo effeto.” On the uses of fasting, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 31-47.

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“for I wonder if he told the truth when writing about me to Milan.”35 The people of Sforzatica, he continued, considered their priest to be “a capricious man.” This same Lent, for instance, he had condemned an old man who had broken the fast to a humiliating public penance. In two words, the suspect sketched a portrait of his accuser as an overly zealous disciplinarian — a model priest of the Borromean school. If this was Muzio’s reputation, the interrogator wanted to know “if [Locatello used] the formula of which his curate has written that he applied it to heal, etc. — i.e. ‘Christ is born, Christ died, Christ is resurrected, and if it is true and the truth that Christ is born of virginity, let this wound be healed.’” Locatello answered resolutely: “I have neither used it, nor ever told the curate that I did, and I would rather abandon healing than use such a formula.” But Forero insisted, asking “why he would not do this, and how he [knew], being an uneducated man [idiota], that these words contain an error?” Locatello’s reply was almost solemn: “I have no doubt, nay, I firmly believe that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, and that when you say ‘if it is true,’ it seems that you have doubts about it, and for me that is a mortal sin.”36 Evidently, then, Locatello had a very precise idea of the boundary between the sinful and the licit; he adroitly avoided all theological pitfalls and traps. His answers undermined his parish priest’s three specific objections. More in general, he denied any relation between the formal observance of the ritual, and its success: for him, it was the devotional quality that counted. Moreover, he was fully prepared to change any part of his cure, as orthodoxy might require, or even to abandon it altogether. As for himself, the healer seemed to think of it as a normal Christian practice, an opinion evidently shared by his son and Giovan Battista De Bognis, the two other suspects. 35 Ibid.: “Interrogatus respondit: Io non so così rispondere se si può credere al mio curato o no, perché dubito che nel scrivere di me sopra questo fatto a Milano non habbia detto la verità. Et da tutto questo popolo è tenuto per huomo capricioso...” 36 Ibid.: “Interrogatus an si uteretur hac forma verborum quam eius curatus scripsit se adhibuisse, in medendis etc., scilicet ‘Christo è nato, Christo è morto, Christo è rescuscitato [sic], et se è vera verità che Christo è nato di virginatà guarisca questa infirmità,’ respondit: Questo né ho usato, né ho mai detto al curato d’haver osservato; e più tosto lasciarei di medicare che usare simil forma di parolle. Interrogatus quare hoc non fecisset, et cum ipse sit idiota, unde habet quod haec verba contineant in se errorem, respondit: io non ho dubio anci credo fermamente che Christo è nato di M(aria) V(ergine), et dicendo ‘se è vero’ pare che si metta dubio, et per me lo ho per peccato mortale.”

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The local clergy The archpriest, however, judged otherwise: he issued an ordinance prohibiting the practice.37 We do not know how he reached this conclusion. Unless he believed that Locatello (and the two other witnesses) lied, their statements must have made it obvious to him that of Muzio’s original objections the three specific ones were unfounded. What remained was the priest’s general concern that the cure was “neither a natural nor a proper means,” and had not been “instituted by divine or ecclesiastical authority.” During his interview with the archpriest, Locatello had left no doubt that he attributed the cure’s effectiveness to his formula and prayers; and he evidently believed that with these acts of devotion he could invoke God’s intervention. It is this instrumental use of Christian ritual, most probably, that the archpriest rejected. In any case, Muzio’s problem had been solved in his favor, and the case seemed to be closed. But it was not that simple. The practices that Forero had encountered derived from beliefs and perceptions that were apparently widely shared in the area — most importantly, for the archpriest’s purposes, by a great many local clergymen. During the investigation, all three suspects affirmed that they had openly discussed their medical activities with their confessors, and had even volunteered to consult higher ecclesiastical authorities. Bartolomeo thus recounted his experience: Soon after learning these words I went to confess with the Carmelites of Bergamo, then with the preacher who at the time preached in the church of S. Maria in the same city. They concluded that I could do this [cure] as long as I did not ask to be paid for it... When I lived in Treviolo, in the diocese of Bergamo, I had some doubts whether it was allowed to practice this ritual, and I went to monsignor the bishop and his vicar in Bergamo: once well informed about the whole issue, they gave me permission to heal in the way and with the form as above.38

37

This becomes clear from Muzio’s subsequent letter (to be discussed further on): “Il molto Illustre et molto Reverendo Monsignore Ottaviano Abbiate Forero Arciprete della Archiepiscopale di Milano et visitator nostro regionario, havendo colla sua vigilanza scoperto nella sua nuova visita del vicariato di Sporzatica alcuni segni..., ha prohibito con una ordinatione così fatti segni...” (ibid., q. 9, fol. 2v). 38 Ibid., fols. 3v-4r and 4v-5r: “Interrogatus respondit: Quando imparai queste parolle da lì a puoco mi comfessai [sic] al Carmine di Bergomo, et dal predicatore

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Likewise, during previous Easter confessions Locatello had never been reticent about his activities in front of Curate Muzio, who had always admitted him to the sacrament of the altar. Only this year the priest had raised objections and denied absolution.39 On this point, Locatello unwittingly contradicted Muzio, for the latter claimed in his initial denunciation that he had warned his obstinate parishioner for years, telling him to give up his superstitious practice. Yet credibility may be more on Locatello’s side than Muzio’s. Not only was Locatello’s version confirmed by his son, but he gave a clue as to what could explain his priest’s change of conduct: six months earlier, there had been a conflict between the two which had been serious enough to force Locatello to leave the local confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.40 It is safe to assume that Muzio had never seriously pursued the contentious issue before Easter 1598. In other words, precisely those priests responsible for executing the diocesan campaign against “superstitions,” begun over thirty years previously under Carlo Borromeo’s aegis, had condoned practices which the archpriest took to be superstitious. Intermediaries between the top of the diocesan hierarchy and local lay religion, the local confessors shared their penitents’ attitudes on this issue, and thus confirmed their reputation as the weakest link in the diocesan chain of command. How could it be strengthened?

che all’hora predicava in Santa Maria di detta città: li quali conclusero ch’io lo poteva fare mentre non havessi chiamato mercede... Subdens ex se: Quando io habitava a Treviolo nella diocese de Bergomo hebbi così da me sospetto se questo segno si poteva lecitamente fare et andai da Monsignore Vescovo et suo Vicario a Bergomo, i quali inteso bene il tutto mi permissero, ch’io potessi medicare nel modo et forma sudetta.” 39 Ibid., fol. 4v: “Interrogatus respondit: questo anno solo il curato mi ha prohibito di usare questo medicamento et segno, ma da qui indietro se ben lo comfessato [sic] egli sempre me ha admesso alli santissimi sacramenti della comfessione et communione.” Bartolomeo’s son made a similar statement (fol. 6r-v). 40 Ibid., fol. 3r-v: “... Et sono scritto in questa Compagnia dil Santissimo Sacramento dalla quale mi sono fatto levare dalli sindici per un disgusto nato tra monsignore mio curato et me, per causa d’un gatto, di sei mesi in qua, ma subito andai a farme scrivere nella Compagnia dil Santissimo Rosario.” Giovanni de Lorini, in his letter quoted earlier, also alluded to the existence of “qualche scontentezza” between Muzio and Locatello. The nature of the conflict, and the mysterious reference to “a cat,” remain unclarified.

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Archpriest Forero opted for an institutional instrument that was (as we have already seen) specifically designed for this purpose. On April 13, the last day of his interrogations, he convened a congregation of the clergy of the district in Boltiero to discuss the practice he had investigated. There the Locatello matter was reduced to an abstract but easily recognizable case of conscience: Whether it was allowed or suspect to practice a certain ritual, in which certain pieces of linen are applied to wounds, with a certain number of Paternosters, finally to add “Christ was born, Christ died, Christ was resurrected, and it is true and the truth that Christ was born of virginity”...41

The discussion was certainly not meant to contribute to or clarify the archpriest’s resolution; for Abbiate Forero the answer was clear from the beginning. Instead, he intended to bring the problem to his subordinates’ attention and to make them find the correct way to argue what was already a decided case. Within two weeks after the meeting, on April 25, the same Pietro Muzio who had first notified his superior about the healing practice, sent a lengthy report to Abbiate Forero. He had made his account this elaborate, he explained, not so much to inform the visitor, who was too learned to need it, and probably too busy to read it, but rather “to give it to read and understand ... to many persons in this area, who, believing in such rituals, are surprised and displeased about their prohibition.” He only hoped, he said in concluding, that his solution of the case of conscience satisfied his superior’s expectations; if not, that was due to his ignorance, not to a lack of subservience.42

41 Ibid., fol. 2v: “... havendo [i.e., the archpriest] prima proposto nella congregatione foranea di Boltiero a 13 di questo mese d’Aprile 1598: Se era lecito o sospetto un certo segno nel quale applicatesi alle piaghe certe pezze di lino, con certo numerto de Pater Nostri, nel fine s’agiugne: ‘Christo è nato, Christo è morto, Christo è risuscitato, et è vero et verità che Christo è nato di virginità,’ et dove non sia piaga, come nell’herisipille, tumorosità et posteme, lasciate le pezze, si segna colle parole sopradette.” Note that the clergymen considered the term “virginity” to be part of the formula, despite Bartolomeo’s statements to the contrary. The reason may be that it did occur in the version quoted by his son Giacomo. On the other hand, none of the suspects had admitted to using the “if ”-formula. The issue, however, did return later in the discussion. 42 Ibid., q. 9, fol. 2r: “Tiene a Vostra Signoria molto Illustre la risolutione del caso, che fu proposto da lei nella congregatione di Boltiero. Io l’ho disteso con più lunghe

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The discussion And so we are informed through Muzio’s report about the discussion held, and the conclusions reached by the clerical meeting. Muzio had expected that “the solution of [the question concerning] this ritual should pass without difficulty or contradiction.” Yet it was not quite that simple: his account shows many clergymen of the area coming out in favor of the therapy. These backers cited the stiff opposition of countless people, for whom the cure meant being protected from pain and spared the expense, the inconvenience, and the time involved in seeking regular medical assistance — “the art of healing canonically.”And they invoked “the authority of some bishops, inquisitors, and penitentiaries” who permitted the practice, and saw this conviction confirmed when the Jesuits’ letter to the visitor (along with a similar statement to the vicar general) was read out loud to the congregation.43 In addition, the supporters of Locatello’s cure had advanced several theological arguments. In his report, Muzio did not indicate any authorities on which they based themselves, except in two cases. The backers quoted passages from St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John to demonstrate that God had given “this faculty ... to cure without

parole di quello conveniva alla lettura di Vostra Signoria persona scientiata et occupatissima, per darla da leggere, et renderne capaci ancho molti in questi nostri contorni, i quali, credendo in cotali segni, si meravigliano et si dogliono della prohibition delli segni. Se non serà il discorso quale Vostra Signoria aspettava da me, et se vi troverà qualche mancamento che l’offenda, ne dia la colpa alla mia ignoranza, non al desiderio che ho di servirla, il quale di gran lunga supera le forze.” This report suggests that the archpriest did not personally attend the clerical discussion. 43 Ibid., fols. 2v-3r: “La risolutione di questo segno, sebene doveva passare senza difficultà o contradittione, pare a prima faccia parve [sic] il segno ad alcuni lecito et permissibile...” And Muzio referred to the protests of “numero senza fine di persone, le quali coll’aiutto del segno si preservavano da dolori, et ovviavano alle molte spese de medici et medicine, a molti incommodi, tanto più nelle ville, et alle perdita del lungo tempo che porta l’arte del medicare canonicamente...”; to the “autorità d’alcuni vescovi, inquisitori et penitentieri, i quali non prohibiscono cotali segni”; and the Jesuits’ letters, in which “si conteneva che essi padri havevano diligentemente essaminato Bertholomeo Locatello da Sporzatica publico professore del segno, né haver scoperto alcuna superstitione né causa perché ad esso Bertholomeo dovesse essere stata negata l’assolutione sacramentale dal suo curato per non voler lasciar quel segno.”

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natural medicines.”44 And they referred to Cajetan’s Summula to support their opinion that the cure might have been revealed in times past to some saint who had then handed it down to later generations. In the same vein, they adduced the example of unspecified saints (as well as ordinary people) to prove that prayers, the sign of the cross, relics, the invocation of God’s name and the like could “obtain special graces, and realize things that were outside the natural order, and miraculous.” Would God have allowed these rituals to be effective if they were “bad and illicit”?45 Another argument was probably an implicit reference to the Thomist text we have already examined: like the Jesuits, the backers claimed that Locatello’s formula “did not contain either superstitious words or falsities.” On the contrary, they added, it was used with a good intention, its power and effectiveness were believed to derive from God, and it was applied “for human benefit.”46 In short, they supported Locatello’s argument of orthodoxy. Muzio represented the other, victorious, side of the discussion. Since Locatello’s testimony during the investigation had essentially undermined Muzio’s original, specific criticisms, it is not surprising that the curate now relegated these to the background; only at the end of his 44 Ibid.: “Alcuni ancho affermavano essere stata lasciata questa facultà nella chiesa di curare senza medicine naturali da nostro Signore in S. Matteo al x capo [Matt. 10:1 and 10:8], in S. Marco al iii [Mark 3:15], et specificatamente in S. Giovanni al xiii [sic: John 14:12] quando disse: ‘Qui credit in me, opera quae ego facio et ipse faciet, et maiora horum faciet.’” 45 Ibid.: “Et agiugnevano che Dio puotrebbe facilmente ne tempi a dietro haver rivelato a beneficio humano cotali secreti a qualche santo, il quale gli havesse dapoi communicati a posteri, come pare che il Gaetano nella somma, verbo superstitio, accenni essere possibile. Altri anchora adducevano l’essempio di molti santi, i quali coll’orationi, col segno della croce santa, colle reliquie sante, coll’invocatione del nome di Dio, et altre opere pie hanno ottenuto gratie singolari, et operato cose fuori del corso naturale, et miracolose, et l’essempio anchora di persone non sante, ch’hanno fatto il somigliante. Et di più agiugnevano che se questi segni fossero mali et illeciti, Dio non permetterebbe che apportassero la sanità al cui fine sono adoperati.” See De Vio, Summula peccatorum, s.v. “superstitio.” The commonplace presumption that the examples set by the saints could be followed literally as steps in a ‘career’ leading to holiness was coming under increasing ecclesiastical scrutiny in the post-Tridentine period; see Gabriella Zarri, “‘Vera’ santità, ‘simulata’ santità: ipotesi e riscontri,” in Finzione e santità, 9-31; and Gentilcore, Healers and Healing, esp. 156-58. 46 Ibid.: “... presupponevano che il segno non havesse parole superstitiose né continenti alcuna falsità; fosse accompagnato da buona intentione; la virtù et effetto del segno s’aspettasse da Dio in virtù del segno; et che fosse a beneficio humano.”

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report did Muzio voice faint objections against the term “virginity” and the “if ”-formula which, he claimed, was used by some.47 But he reiterated the general argument he had made in his denunciation, stating that “these rituals are suspect and illicit for not having natural force, nor relation to the effects for which they are used and applied...” And he explained further: God’s power — the prime cause — works through natural forces — the second causes. All effects that go beyond the natural terms are “the work of none but a diabolical hand ... if they are not instituted by God or the Church.” Here we touch the bottomline of Muzio’s argument: Locatello’s cure was simply diabolical.48 An obvious objection could be raised against this line of thought: at all evidence, magical healers like Locatello meant to invoke, and to all appearances did invoke, the help of God, not that of the devil. Muzio, however, rejected this argument: Nor is it a valid objection that the practitioner of the ritual did not join personally and explicitly in this pact with the devil, or that he is not further informed about the pact made for others: it is sufficient that the devil has one single time made a pact with someone, and has obliged himself to realize, in virtue of this ritual and regardless of who the practitioner is, the effects for which it was instituted.49

The ritual was inherently diabolical, regardless of the person, or the intention of the person, executing it: the ritual worked, in other words, ex opere operato. For this reason, Muzio added, it could be compared to a sacrament like baptism, “which produces its effect, even if the baptizer 47

Ibid., fol. 4r-v. Ibid., fols. 3v-4r: “A prima fronte come s’è detto parve questo segno essere lecito et da non vietare ma essendosi poi provato ... che cotali segni sono sospetti et illeciti per non haver forza naturale, né proportione ad effettuare quegli effetti per i quali sono adoperati et applicati, et perciò da non sopportare ne riti de fedeli, i quali hanno da sperare la sanità dal mero arbitrio di Dio — prima causa infusa et operante nelle secunde cause naturali — et credere che gli effetti eccedenti i termini naturali siano per diabolica et non per altra mano operati ... se non hanno institutione divina o ecclesiastica: ma gli effetti di questi segni non essendo né da cause naturali né ex opere divinitus operato, per non haver autorità divina né ecclesiastica, segue necessariamente che siano ex pactu cum daemone et ex opere diabolicamente operato.” 49 Ibid.: “né osta che il professor del segno non sia egli stesso esplicitamente intravenuto nel patto col demonio, né sia informato più oltra del patto fatto per altri, ma basta che’l demonio habbia una volta pattuito con qualcuno, et in virtù di quel segno, per qualsivoglia mano segnato, si sia obligato ad essequir gli effetti per i quali il segno fu instituito...” 48

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does not know, or even believe in, the sacrament, and instead considers it to be a joke and a trick, provided that this baptizer means to baptize like the others.”50 The difference between baptism and Locatello’s cure was, evidently, that the former had the stamp of ecclesiastical approval, the latter did not. In the rest of his report, Muzio tried to refute the arguments of his opponents in the debate. His points can be summarized as follows. (1) The healers’ good intentions did not help, because “intention is never an excuse for a sin.” (2) Nor could the sinful means justify a beneficial end (i.e. the healing of a sick person). (3) The effectiveness of the cure was no proof of its value, for “every day God tolerates many criminals, sinners and [nefarious] things.” (4) Past “revelation” of the cure was impossible to prove; the only imperative was submission to church norms and doctrines. The “revelation” argument could also be said to apply to less benign kinds of superstition. (5) Miracles did exist: in the days of the early Church they served as testimony to the true faith, “but it [i]s not believed that, here in the bosom of the Holy Church, in a time and circumstances that do not require similar testimony, God ha[s] endowed these rituals with miraculous power.” This did not prevent God in his omnipotence from doing miracles even now, but no human could perform these of his own will, let alone teach the art of doing miracles.51 Muzio’s argument was of course not original, nor was it supposed to be. Since the later Middle Ages, in particular, many theologians had rejected ‘superstitious’ practices (as distinct from the more serious forms of demonic magic) out of concern that they appealed to more than natural powers, and hence might be inherently demonic.52 Muzio himself appealed to a long line of authorities to buttress his 50

Ibid.: “... sicome vediamo succedere appunto nel battesimo nel quale, anchorché il battezante non sapesse, anzi non credesse nel sacramento et lo riputasse una burla et inganno non restarebbe però il battesimo senza il suo effetto, purché esso battezante intendesse battezare come gli altri ... perché ivi l’effetto non pende solo dall’instromento della battezante mano, né dal credere o non credere del ministro, ma ex opere operato da Dio institutore del sacramento.” 51 Ibid., fols. 4v-6r. 52 Dieter Harmening, Superstitio. Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchung zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters von Augustinus bis Thomas von Aquin (Berlin, 1979); Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 184-87.

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opinion. They included the church father St. Augustine, the scholastic St. Thomas Aquinas, several late-medieval summae, and contemporary experts like the noted Spanish canonist Martin Azpilcueta and the Neapolitan penitentiary Giacomo Graffi.53 This does not necessarily mean that the congregation had examined all these authors in the original; the older texts, especially Aquinas, were constantly quoted in the more recent ones. This Thomist tradition explained the concept that was most crucial to Muzio’s argument — the tacit invocation of the devil — in fairly uniform terms. Giacomo Graffi, for instance, who had published his Decisiones aureae only a few years before the Locatello affair, defined the concept as follows: Tacit invocation of the devil occurs whenever someone attempts to do something through causes which cannot achieve this, neither by natural power nor through divine or ecclesiastical disposition.54

This was almost literally identical to the formulation adopted by the late medieval summae quoted by Muzio — the Angelica, the Sylvestrina, and the Summa Armilla. And it went straight back to Aquinas’s discussion of superstition in the Summa theologiae. 53

More precisely, Muzio referred (ibid., fol. 3v) to St. Augustin, De Civitate Dei, lib. 10, cap. 9 and 11 (ed. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. 47 [Turnholti: Brepols, 1955], 281-83 and 284-86); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 96, art. 1-3, in Id., Opera omnia, t. IX, 330-34; Sylvester Prierias, Summa Sylvestrina, “superstitio,” quaestio 10, § 2 (ed. Venetiis: apud Petrum Mariam Bertanum, 1606), c. 343r; Angelo Carletti de Clavasio, Summa Angelica de casibus conscientiae, “Superstitio,” § 2 (ed. Hagenaw: Henricus Gran, 1509), cc. CCXCIv-CCXCIIr); Bartolomeo Fumi, Summa Armilla, “superstitio,” n. 4, “incantatio,” n. 2 (ed. Venetiis: apud Aldi filios, 1554), cc. 435v-436r, and 251r; De Vio, Summula peccatorum, s.v. “divinatio,” § 2; Martinus ab Azpilcueta (Doctor Navarrus), Enchiridion sive manuale confessariorum et poenitentium, cap. 11, §§ 22 and 31 (ed. Antverpiae: ex officina Christophori Plantini, 1575), 145, 148; Bartolomé de Medina, Breve instrvttione de’ confessori, come si debba amministrare il Sacramento della Penitentia divisa in dve libri (orig. Spanish ed., Çaragoça: I. Soler, 1579, here quoted from the Ital. ed., Venetia: Appresso Domenico Nicolini, 1582), lib. I, cap. 14, § ii, regula 4 (c. 63b); and Giacomo Graffi (Iacobus de Graffiis), Decisiones aureae casuum conscientiae, lib. 2, “De superstitiosis observationibus,” cap. 5, §§ 1 and 10 (ed. Venetiis: ex officina Damiani Zenari, 1593), cc. 84v-85v. 54 Graffi, Decisiones aureae, lib. 2, cap. 5, § 10, c. 85v: “At tacita daemonis invocatio toties fit, quoties aliquis enititur efficere aliquid per causas quae nec virtute sua naturali, neque ex divina, aut ecclesiastica dispositione possunt illud efficere.” For this definition, Graffi referred to Cajetan’s commentary to Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 95, art. 3, in Id., Opera omnia, 9:315-17; and to Cajetan’s Summula peccatorum, s.v. “incantatio.”

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Not that classic definitions like this made the application of the principle always very simple: did it apply to the particular characteristics of Locatello’s therapy? Even within the texts cited by Muzio we encounter some ambivalence. Bartolomeo Fumi quoted Cajetan as saying that a cure accompanied by sacred words or objects “is not to be condemned, but can be tolerated” provided that the healer “does this out of mere devotion ... and expects its result only from God”; Fumi added, however, that he personally disagreed with this position.55 Giacomo Graffi generally appeared to take Fumi’s harsh stance against healing practices, but was willing to accept amulets under certain circumstances, implying that they could function as devotional devices.56 Most strikingly for our purposes, Locatello’s own cure was justified (by the Jesuits) as well as rejected (by Muzio) on the basis of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of superstition. It is not our task to establish in any detail where the positions assumed by the two sides in the Locatello affair fitted in a centuriesold learned debate. Nor do I mean to suggest that the dispute on the ground was in any way new. In 1405, to cite but one striking precedent, the German Augustinian Werner of Friedberg was asked by an episcopal judge at Speyer to account for his opinions about magic. The friar recited a superstitious blessing remarkably similar to Locatello’s: “Christ was born, Christ was lost, Christ was found again; may he bless these wounds, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He also declared that he had tried it himself, found it effective, and allowed his penitents to use it as long as it was not accompanied by demonic invocations.57 Almost two centuries later, the Lombard clergy appear to have taken a similar position. They evidently tolerated Locatello’s cure, believed they could make a case for it 55 Fumi, Summa Armilla, s.v. “superstitio,” cc. 435v-436r: “... superstitio observationum est in verbis, aut rebus sacris portandis, dicendis, adiunctis aliquibus conditionibus non malis, quarum ratio nescitur... Si tamen quis hoc faciat ex mera devotione (secundum Caietanum supra) et non expectet effectum nisi a Deo ... non est damnabile, sed potest tolerari.” 56 Graffi, Decisiones aureae, c. 85r: “Porro si cum debitis hoc [i.e., wearing an amulet] fieret circunstantiis, non iudicaretur illicitum. Harum prima est, si in illa pagina, quae collo, aut manibus ligata circumfertur, non nisi sacra et cognita nomina sint descripta...” 57 The case is analyzed in Robert E. Lerner, “Werner di Friedberg intrappolato dalla legge,” in La parola all’accusato, ed. Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Palermo: Sellerio, 1991), 268-81, at 274.

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theologically, and felt supported by many superiors. Muzio, too, realized that there was a thorny problem here: what about the Jesuits and all the other authorities who had approved of the cure? His response is revealing: [I]t could be that [these authorities] were not well informed about the abuse, and that the aforesaid Locatello and other superstitious persons, when appearing in front of them, had deceitfully lied and, fearing punishment or prohibition, with diabolical intention concealed the superstition.58

The documentation we have examined makes this accusation very hard to believe; the judgment of the Jesuits was clearly based on the same version of the ritual later described by Locatello to the archpriest. Moreover, Muzio’s allegation is not consistent with his own argument that Locatello’s cure was implicitly and unbeknownst to the healer himself diabolical: here, Muzio seems to suggest instead that Locatello had intentionally concealed diabolical or otherwise superstitious aspects of the cure. This twist in Muzio’s argument exposes an intrinsic difficulty in his position: faced with the discrepancy of the judgment of other ecclesiastical authorities, the priest found it hard to accept and acknowledge that not Locatello, but he (with the backing of the archpriest) had changed his position. Within the religious universe of rural Lombardy, Muzio had been the agent of an effective widening of the definition of superstition. Hence the final verdict: In the end, the meeting concluded that the cure proposed [to be discussed] was superstitious, abominable, and diabolical. The more it is appreciated and practiced by peasants, the more effective and powerful remedies are needed to eliminate it. For this is an abuse that can induce the people to turn their spirit and their devotion away from the true reverence and fear of God to this kind of apparent and popular rituals, and, believing in them, [to trust that they] derive benefit and good health from them: as the Egyptians, forgetful of the powerful hand of God, once said with their mouths full: “These are your gods.”59 58 ASDM, X, Verdello, 3, q. 9, fol. 6r: “All’autorità della lettera delli Reverendi padri di San Fidele, et alle loro attestationi; alla toleranza d’alcuni Reverendissimi vescovi, inquisitori, et penitentieri, fu risposto puoter essere che eglino non siano stati ben informati dell’abuso, et quando il Locatello detto di sopra et gli altri superstitiosi gli sono stati inanzi dolosamente habbino mentito et, pel timor del castigo o di essere prohibiti, con diabolica intentione celata la superstitione...” 59 Ibid., q. 9, fol. 6r-v: “Et finalmente nella congregatione fu conchiuso che il segno proposto era superstitioso, abhominevole et diabolico segno [sic], et quanto più fosse

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Confession and superstition The case of Bartolomeo Locatello sheds a revealing light on the uses and usefulness of confession as a means of social discipline. From the episcopal viewpoint, the tool proved frustrating, if not utterly unreliable. What Locatello and his partners-in-healing had been doing for more than a decade — and what numerous predecessors had no doubt been doing for much longer — always passed the yearly muster of Easter confessions because local priests were reluctant to prohibit these activities. A system of discipline that could not rely on its enforcers could hardly be reliable itself. What function did this leave for confession? As a priest of Sforzatica had pointed out a generation earlier, Carlo Borromeo’s legalistic approach produced penitents who would rather omit their superstitious activities from their confessions than face harsh reprimands and penalties. In contrast, all suspects in the Locatello affair admitted to freely discussing their medical activities in the confessional, and they did the same in this judicial inquiry. Evidently, they expected no major roadblocks. But it is quite certain that the confessions affected Locatello’s attitudes in important ways. During the interrogation, Locatello was not asked, nor did he volunteer, his ideas about what constituted superstition. Yet he had a very precise notion of the term’s meaning, as well as the perils attached to it; hence his care in avoiding the wrong words in formulae which he meant to be orthodox.60 He also tried to downplay the ritual aspects of what he did: the cure derived its effectiveness not from the performance of formalistic rules, but from the healer’s devotion and good intentions. Locatello presented his activities as a mix of medicine and devotion rather than a magical practice, and made them look as fra contadini aggradito et essercitato con tanto più efficaci et potenti rimedi doversi vietare et levare come abuso che può indurre i popoli a piegare l’animo et la divotione dal vero culto et timor di Dio a così fatti apparenti segni et popolari, et credendo poi in questi, et da questi ricever beneficio et salute a guisa degli Egittii scordati della potente man di Dio una volta direbbero a bocca piena, ‘Hi sunt dii tui.’ Tutto sia detto in fide ecclesiae.” The biblical quotation is from Exod. 32:4 (where, however, it is said of the Israelites). 60 See O’Neil, Discerning Superstition, 77-84, for an exceptional case, in which a suspect put on trial in 1595 by the Modenese Inquisition was asked about his beliefs in this matter. Antonio de Correggi answered: “By superstitious things, I mean doing harm to one’s neighbor, taking another person’s goods and so forth.”

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innocuous and orthodox as possible. If Locatello had discussed the matter extensively with his confessors, as he claimed, this defensive strategy was certainly, at least in part, the outcome of those contacts. Confessors had not only absolved Locatello year after year, but actively helped to shape an acceptable discourse about their penitents’ healing practice, if not the practice itself. Of course, what was acceptable for the local clergy might be less so for the hierarchy. In 1598, Archpriest Forero’s action marked a break with an established convention. However, the success of his policy depended again on the confessors. Implicit in Forero’s successive behavior is an awareness that their compliance was not simply obtained by a stern prohibition: hence his focus on an educational follow-up. Here lies the true novelty of Counter-Reformation discipline: Archpriest Forero could rely on a new institutional structure — particularly the congregations of the clergy — to inculcate what for practical purposes was a new norm in the minds of those who had to apply it in the confessional. Almost four decades into the Milanese Counter-Reformation, the Locatello affair thus sums up and highlights some of the main themes of this study: the possibilities and limitations of Borromean discipline, the interaction of norm and reality, the tensions between institutions and society, and the complex interplay of knowledge and power. But we can further specify the historical significance of the case. Why did it occur at this particular moment? As so often, the explanation lies in a combination of the trivial and the profound. Muzio’s denunciation followed shortly after a serious, if unclear, episode of personal strife with Locatello. In previous years, the priest may have objected against his parishioner’s healing practice, but never seriously enough to act on Locatello’s refusal to change his ways. The deteriorated relations between the two men may well have triggered Muzio’s decision to do so this time. But accident alone does not account for the whole course of events. This is proven by the very success of Muzio’s action: Archpriest Forero went along with him, ignoring the judgment of his Jesuit advisers. His reasons for doing so remain unclear. We are thus presented with a case in which, for once, we know less about the motivations of an authority than those of his subjects. Nevertheless, as we have noted, Forero’s renewed zeal coincided with a general intensification of the campaign against superstitions around the turn of the seventeenth century. Among ecclesiastical authorities, an apparent ambivalence about how to deal with such cases gave way to a tendency to restrict most

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if not all organized manipulation of the supernatural to the ecclesiastical specialist.61 Locatello’s case shows how, after initial hesitations, this development was accompanied and justified by the propagation of a definition of superstition that encompassed practically all metaphysically inspired intervention in the natural realm on the part of lay people. The definition provided a tool of repression, to be applied either in the capillary activity of pastoral dissuasion by confessors, or for the purposes of judicial prosecution by inquisitors or bishops. In reality, the initiative appears to have passed from the confessors to the judges; in this sense, too, the Locatello case marked a watershed. Only a few years later, the Milanese church leadership dramatically intensified its campaign against superstitions. Evidently dissatisfied with the work of his local priests, Archbishop Federico Borromeo decided that it was the turn of higher authorities. In 1604, he ordered that magical and superstitious offenses — even the minor ones previously left to the lower clergy — be reported to himself, his vicars, or the inquisitor. In a long list of candidates, he included “whoever is in the habit of curing any kind of ailment with superstitious words, and especially the women who go around publicly to cure fevers, illnesses, hands, and legs without a natural medication.”62 Nevertheless, the confusion about what constituted superstition lived on. In an edict of 1605 (and reprinted with minor changes throughout the rest of his episcopate), Cardinal Federico exulted that “countless sorts of superstitions” had been reported since the previous year, but he still felt a pressing need to list, “for the sake of clarity,” all types of offenders, including those who used “any tacit or explicit invocation or conjuration of demons or defunct people.”63 If that were not enough, from 61

For an illustration of this development, see Romeo’s analysis of the growing role of exorcism, in Id., Inquisitori, esorcisti e streghe, esp. 145-68. 62 AEM, 4:314: “Duodecimo. Chi fosse solito sanare qualunque o alcuna infermità con parole superstitiose, et massime le donne, che vanno publicamente, essendo condotte a segnare febri, malatie, mani, gambe senza medicamento naturale.” 63 Editto per la santa Inquisitione (1605), AEM, 4:568-69 (on subsequent versions, see the note on 563-64). After referring to the edict of 1604, art. 12 (“... che tra gli altri si denuntiassero anche quelli, ch’erano soliti sanare alcune infirmità con parole superstitiose...”), Federico continued: “perché intendiamo, che molti vanno dubitando quello, che de sudetti segni superstitiosi, et di altre superstitioni, siano obligati denuntiare ... [h]ora per levare tutti li scrupoli, et per maggior chiarezza dichiariamo, che per il sopradetto capo duodecimo, tutti quelli che vedranno, o sapranno che alcuno usi, o insegni, o faccia segni, o superstitione, nelle quali intervengano abuso de sacramenti,

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1620 onwards, the edict further expanded the list with “the abuse of prayers, or the invocation of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, Angels, and Saints.”64 Clearly, even when removed from the hands of confessors, cases of superstition still needed to be detected at the local level, and thus the quest for terminological clarification continued unabated. Unmistakable in this official legislation are the ongoing frustrations with a target that kept eluding its pursuers. Indeed, when we survey the prolonged battle against superstition, begun under Carlo Borromeo and intensified by his cousin, there can be little doubt about the enormity of the phenomenon it tried to tackle, and the mixed results of even the most refined disciplinary methods of confession, education, and indoctrination. No less than in the arena of popular sociability, public decorum, and proper speech, a concerted effort to redesign the vital landscape of spiritual and physical health encountered the tenacity of deeply entrenched customs. Under the circumstances, the local agents of episcopal reform attempted to stake out a middling ground between purist policies and social needs and expectations. Their more demanding superiors saw little alternative but to take this category of sins out of their hands and turn them into prosecutable offenses. In doing so, they followed what was by then an established practice of diocesan administration. The outcome, in this case, remains hidden from our view.

o de sacramentali, nomi, parole, overo caratteri incogniti, overo qualche invocatione tacita, o espressa, o coniuratione de demoni, overo de morti, overo de morti, overo de suoi angeli, et Santi ad malum finem, overo altro abuso del lor santo nome, sono obligati denuntiarlo nel termine di quindici giorni...” 64 Ibid., n. 13: “abuso di orationi, invocatione di Nostro Signore, della Beata Vergine, d’Angeli, de Santi.”

CONCLUSION

The modern soul, “unlike the soul represented by Christian theology, is not born in sin and subject to punishment, but is born rather out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint.”1 Foucault’s stark historical vision of a self ‘constructed’ through repression may underestimate the human capacities not only to resist but to recede from encroachments on the inner sphere; and, depending on one’s conception of human nature, it may ultimately be undemonstrable. Undeniable, however, is the pervasive influence that disciplinary methods have come to exercise on conduct, discourse, and hence consciousness itself. For many of these methods, the early modern period was a formative phase. Yet their development never followed straight or clearcut paths: it was determined at each juncture by the interplay of complex historical forces. Therefore we would do well to resist the suggestions of unilinearity or inevitability inherent in most modernization theories. This book has examined a form of discipline that affected the soul in the most direct manner: the practices of confession and penance. It has singled out a particularly prominent episode in their history — the Milanese Counter-Reformation — to reconstruct the shapes these ancient practices took on as a result of the normative pressures and the social forces to which they were subjected. The Borromean project of pressing the sacrament of penance into service for a spiritual conquest of society can best be understood, we have suggested, as a powerful reflex of a confessionalizing Church. In Lombardy as in other parts of Italy, this Church developed strategies that were at once defensive and offensive, aiming both to ward off the human and nonhuman enemies of the faith and to conquer the spiritual territories left unoccupied after the heretical crisis had passed. Three institutions pursued this goal, in varying degrees of collaboration and competition: dioceses, the offices of the Inquisition, and the regular orders. The Borromean program led the way among the first, the bishoprics.

1

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (1975), trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 29.

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Vindicated in a well-established historiography as the loci of “Catholic reform,” bishoprics were certainly the best placed to take on comprehensive projects of social discipline: in this respect, their territorial structure and their broad religious authority gave them the edge over both the Inquisition and the regulars. The Council of Trent had reinforced their powers to the point of turning the bishops and their parish clergy into the privileged executors of the Tridentine reforms. Multiple elements of these reforms were enshrined in canon law — the parish as the unit of local religion and social control, the legal powers of bishops, the hierarchical organization of the clergy — but had rarely been implemented in a consistent and effective way. The religious crisis of the sixteenth century was the spur for reintroducing them in a model of church governance that combined a devotional offensive with a meticulously organized system of church discipline. In the practice of penance both aspects were seamlessly connected. Borromean penitentialism aimed at a wholesale conversion of the Milanese faithful, a rejection of their former state of worldliness, and the adoption of a radically new life. The ideal of penance was of course ingrained in late medieval and sixteenth-century spirituality; in fact, it can be said to be at the heart of the Reformation itself. But in the hands of Milan’s first Counter-Reformation archbishop, it acquired three distinctive features: a heavy emphasis on matters of public order, the generalization among the entire laity of devotional techniques and goals previously reserved for select groups, and constant bureaucratic surveillance. Borromeo thus marked the passage from pre-Tridentine evangelism to post-Tridentine confessionalism, from experimental movement to established institution. Hence the characteristic combination of urgent pleas for inner conversion and stern disciplinary enforcement: it was, as Michel de Certeau has put it, a wedding of rhetoric and management, of spirituality and politics.2 For the sacrament of penance this meant that an instrument designed primarily for the redemption of the individual soul became also a tool of public policy, and that the bishop came to loom large in the confessional. The public sphere thus encroached on the private in unprecedented ways. Here lies the peculiarity of the diocesan model of confession, and the explanation of its possibilities, its development, 2 De Certeau, “Carlo Borromeo, santo,” DBI, 20:265. For a similar characterization, see Prosperi, “Chierici e laici,” 254-55.

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and its limitations. Here lies also a conspicuous blind spot in much of the existing historiography. Scholars of early modern confession — mostly basing themselves on forms of spirituality propagated by the Jesuits — have tended to emphasize its contribution to a ‘privatization’ of religious life. The Borromean (and Tridentine) model shows that there was also a strong pull in the other direction. In the present study we have examined this form of social discipline on the distinct levels of norms and practice. Underlying the avalanche of rules, controls, and constraints was the dark vision of a society rooted in sin, along with a strident ambition to reverse this condition and create a holy community. In practice, this effort regularly clashed with the laity’s (or the clergy’s) different views of religion and society, endangered the secrecy of confession, and had various other unintended side-effects as well. The result was a system of social discipline made of continual, never predictable, accommodations — between Church and state, between the clergy and the laity, within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and among competing church organs. In his quest to redefine the social order, the Milanese archbishop put himself up as a competitor in an area of government previously left mostly to the civil authorities. While the two sides agreed on the need to maintain public order, in compliance with basic notions of honor and decorum, Borromeo’s socio-religious outlooks and his power claims often resulted in tensions, if not open conflict, with the governors and institutions of state. While an age-old jurisdictional and ideological struggle between Church and state was thus revived, it proved particularly damaging in an era when religious unity was a vital political interest. Borromeo displayed not only a moral vision of a markedly social orientation, but one which drew sharp lines of demarcation between the secular and the sacred spheres. In his view, sin was to be feared particularly for its contagious qualities, which turned ordinary settings of social life — the military and the judiciary, the theater and the pub, business practices and dance — into permanent ‘occasions’ of moral transgression. The removal of such occasions became a cornerstone of episcopal government, along with its ideal counterweight, the promotion of publicly visible, hence exemplary, virtuous behaviors. The battle against Carnival was merely the most notorious example of a ritual offensive aimed at replacing worldly forms of sociability with devout alternatives — on display at public festivals, or in confraternities, schools of Christian Doctrine, and the

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family — and, ultimately, sanctifying everyday life. But the religious domain as Borromeo found it was not a safe haven itself: in his view that, too, had decayed beneath thick incrustations of worldliness. In the church building, secular actitivies had long coexisted with the sacred, the laity intermingled freely with the clergy, and women interacted with men, including the ordained. In the eyes of the archbishop, such contacts created as many occasions of sin — most notoriously, solicitation during confession — and were reason to regulate conduct in all spaces and at all times of public worship. Hence the stubborn pursuit of separations both physical and social — between the secular and the sacred, and between men and women. The church building itself emerged profoundly altered. Gates, screens, windows, doors, and confessionals steered the bodies and the eyes of the faithful — admitting, excluding, dividing, forbidding. The goal was simple: to contain temptation, to display virtue, and to sanctify the sanctuary. Integrating this project with the traditional practice of penance was perhaps the ultimate use of ecclesiastical discipline, because it meant turning infractions of the Borromean social order into matters of conscience, subject to the judgment of the confessor, the refusal of absolution, and further ecclesiastical censures. However, an intrinsic feature of confession complicated the effort: the confessor’s unique access to the personal sphere was protected by the seal of confession. Borromeo’s direction of the practice thus required setting up a complex system of indirect supervision involving all levels of the hierarchy. Monitoring compliance with the Easter precept, handling reserved cases and church censures, resolving disputed issues, surveillance of the clergy — these and other tasks spawned an enormous bureaucracy. Much of this diocesan business, especially in rural areas, was conducted through written communication. The Borromean politics of penance and conversion came to rely heavily on the efficacy of printed or handwritten instructions, edicts, announcements, licenses, registers, certificates, reports, inquiries, and correspondences. The potential consequences were far-reaching, for the system was designed to break the isolation of local religious practice, back up the lower clergy with the power of higher authorities, and reach into the privacy of the confessional. Centrally coordinated, confessors across the diocese were to weave a vast net of control. They were, as Carlo Borromeo’s successor Cardinal Federico expressed the ideal, “the fibers, arteries, and sinews of the body of the Holy Church.”

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However, a considerable distance separated this ideal from its implementation. The effects of the Borromean project were most immediate, dramatic, and lasting for the parish clergy: first, because the curia spent much of its energies on transforming this indispensable group into loyal collaborators, and using them as such; and second, because the bishop wielded far greater legal powers over them than over the laity. The odds were nevertheless formidable. The legions of priests active in the hearing of confessions had formerly operated in almost complete independence from episcopal control and were often protected by special exemptions. Borromeo’s challenge was not merely to subject them to his authority, but to alter their socio-cultural profile. In the mid-sixteenth century, the lower clergy could be said to partake of the culture of their communities rather than that of their superiors, and often did not measure up to the latter’s standards and expectations. Worse yet, at a time when the clerical estate was itself the subject of deep controversy, church authorities often shared prevailing stereotypes of the sacerdotal class as immoral, inept, and unreliable. Clergymen entrusted with the care of souls therefore became a target of discipline as much as their charges: their effectiveness as diocesan officers depended on their full integration into the church hierarchy. A new institution, the monthly congregations of local clergy, was meant to foster a new group identity, made of loyalty, collegiality, professionalism, and expertise. In the early seventeenth century, Cardinal Federico spelled out the implications: for him, the model priest was a distinct figure in the local community, who associated with his colleagues rather than his social peers, and whose relations with the laity were regulated by a mixture of good manners, diplomacy, and diffidence. However, reality lagged considerably behind the promptings of church superiors. The clerical congregations became not so much the intended “theater of priestly actions” as a contested ground where pride, independence, and indifference existed side by side with obedience and good behavior. Nevertheless, as is clear from this range of responses, the new power structure forced diocesan priests to redefine their public persona, whether in defiant, obedient, or more ambiguous ways. Hierarchical intervention thus profoundly altered the social dynamics within the clergy, and, inevitably, those between the clergy and the laity. In fact, parish priests and confessors became mediators between the curia and the faithful not merely in the sense of imposing the policies of the former and reporting the problems of the latter, but by being

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forced to negotiate a course between the demands of their superiors and the pressures of their parishioners. Sometimes we find them as zealous interpreters of Borromean intransigence, antagonizing their community; at other times, they would plead the case of their parishioners, asking for extensions, exemptions, and leniency. Unmistakable, in both cases, was the need to carve out an acceptable and liveable niche for themselves within the community and within the Church. The clearcut choices demanded by their archbishop proved less simple on the ground. The rise of a bureaucratic culture, one of the great unintended consequences of social discipline, further complicated the relations between the church leadership and the lower clergy. The reams of required paperwork not only placed heavy burdens of accountability on clergymen’s shoulders, but provided them with a powerful tool to achieve their goals and please their superiors. With their pens, priests from across the diocese justified their actions, asked for support, presented the cases of their parishioners in ways they saw fit, and usually obtained permission to handle them locally. The vision of centralized control was thus further diminished. The consequences of Borromean discipline for lay religion were at once more limited and of a different nature than recent scholarship has assumed. There is little evidence to suggest that the priests ministering to the post-Tridentine parishes effectively converted the communal traditions of intermittent sacramental practice into intensive regimes of spiritual direction; nor that they abandoned an established emphasis on the sins of social disruption — functional in a procedure for conflict resolution — in favor of the spiritual edification of the single believer. While Carlo Borromeo advocated frequent confession as part of his program of lay devotion, it is unclear if the practice took off in any significant and lasting way beyond limited circles of the devout and beyond (or even in) the colleges and confraternities in which they were institutionalized. Simple personnel shortages make that unlikely: even the Easter confession, spread out over the Lenten season, led to annual problems of mass management, brief confessions, and quick absolutions. In addition, much of the attention of the bishop and his curia remained focused on Lent. More than ever, parish priests could expect diocesan pressures and support to accomplish traditional functions of social ‘reconciliation,’ whether it be to make penitents put an end to feuds, give up marital discord or extramarital relations, or pay satisfaction for mischief committed. Occasionally, there is evidence

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that the increased efficiency of the business of reconciliation provoked irritation among the penitents. Lay resistance, however, took on far greater dimensions where the less conventional disciplinary uses of penance were concerned. Public penance, reinforced central control through reserved cases or church censures, the resulting dishonor and disruption of church attendance, the inquisitorial uses of confession, and the severity of specific policies — all these elements placed stresses on the administration of the sacraments, and inspired either pleas for pardon, compromise, and commutation or protests, refusals to confess, and other forms of rejection. Discontent coagulated into open opposition as a result of Carlo Borromeo’s prolonged campaign for public morality. Critics targeted the archbishop’s uses of the confessional, his legal instruments of enforcement, the zeal of the clergy, and the archbishop’s own rigorism. The crisis, while exceptional and temporary, highlights some systemic limitations of Borromean discipline with particular clarity. First, there was a limit to how long absolution could be postponed: an established church, which counted all inhabitants of its territory among its members, could not afford to exclude any considerable number from the community for very long, or else it would undermine its own credibility and threaten the very unity it sought. Pardon and reconciliation (as one official protest put it) were a necessity not only for the few willing to meet the archbishop’s personal standards but for the majority who preferred to live by the minimum requirements. Second, going beyond that lowest common denominator carried the risk of alienating the secular authorities, the essential partner in the process of confessionalization. From their perspective, the archbishop’s purist crusade became noxious to the integrity and the good name of the state where it led to controversy and upset established devotional routines. The rift between Church and state was therefore about much more than the well-known jurisdictional conflicts: it also derived from fundamental differences over the social role of religion. Milanese confessionalism was built on a precarious and often tense accord. Third, any large-scale attempt to draw confession out of the private sphere by means of reserved cases, public penance and church censures endangered its confidentiality and was likely to backfire. Clearly, the bishop had to use his extensive powers with restraint and could not stray too far from what was socially acceptable. Even more significantly, the crisis suggested the problematic nature of a system of discipline that

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systematically linked the internal forum to the exterior, the conscience to the law, the confessor to the judge, the private sphere to the public. The spiritual offensive unleashed by the first Borromeo was thus stalled by unrealistic ambitions, intrinsic contradictions, social opposition, and unavoidable accommodations. Yet it was never undone: we might say that it left the Lombard territories under long-term occupation by new or renewed institutions of discipline and devotion. Under the long shadow of San Carlo’s sanctity, his successors continued to employ his system of discipline to pursue a broad socio-religious agenda, ranging from peace-making to sexual morals, from usury to infant care, from magic to civilized speech. As before, rules were piled on rules, and official frustrations with their inadequate execution on the ground became almost structural. Church authorities continued to use reserved cases and threaten with censures and public penances. Occasionally, as in the matter of superstition, the curia took cases out of the hands of the confessors altogether, and handed them over to the judges. On the whole, however, the diocesan leadership abandoned the interventionism characteristic of the first Borromeo. More often conflicts were settled with subtler means of compromise and persuasion, and central organs were content with the routine performance of correct procedure. As a consequence, more came to depend on the performance of the lower clergy. In the long run, therefore, Borromean discipline was to have its deepest impact not through any direct control it assumed over local religion, but indirectly through the mediated efforts of a newly professionalized, but nevertheless elusive group. Their limited range of action became evident even in a change of official expectations: Carlo Borromeo’s combative agent of conversion gave way to Federico’s discreet, tactful, and well-spoken cleric. While rhetoric had been part of Borromean discipline from the start, its importance increased as the limits of coercion became apparent. Federico Borromeo provided eloquent proof of this fact with his Sacri Ragionamenti, arguing the case for introspection, spiritual discipline, civilized conduct, and peace. Unfortunately for the historian, the influence of his rhetoric (and that of his numerous collaborators) did not register on diocesan or other monitoring screens. Yet, however many ears were reached, the most likely to be affected were those already favorably disposed. Toward the end of his life, Cardinal Federico realized that the generalization of his lessons in society at large remained a distant goal.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Principal Manuscript Sources Archivio Storico Diocesano, Milan (ASDM) Section IV Section VI Section VII Section IX Section X

Section XII Section XIII Section XIV

Formolari (printed edicts, letters, and notifications) Atti sinodali (ms. records of councils and synods) Sacri riti e ceremonie (mss. concerning liturgy and ceremonies) Carteggio ufficiale (episcopal and curia correspondence) Visite pastorali (pastoral visitations and related documentation; organized by pieve or urban district; cf. the Palestra inventories listed below) Ordini religiosi e congregazioni (male and female religious orders) Ospedali, collegi, confraternite, enti vari (hospitals, colleges, confraternities) Miscellanea (wide range of administrative, judicial, and pastoral mss.)

Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (BAM) Correspondences of Carlo and Federico Borromeo, in particular the F. inf., G. inf., S. inf., S.Q.+, and X.inf. series. Archivio Prepositurale, Arcisate (APAr) Cart. 19, fasc. 3 (clerical congregations, 1587-93); and Liber congregationum plebis Arcisati, 1615-1665. Archivio Parrocchiale, Vimercate (APV) Cart. 21, fasc. 2, Liber congregationum cleri plebis Vicimercati (1590-97). Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome (ARSI) Records concerning the Lombard province, in particular litterae annuae, correspondence, and ordinances contained in the series Med., vols. 20, 22, 47, 74-76, and 79. Archivio Generalizio dei Barnabiti, Rome (AGBR) Lettere da o a Carlo Borromeo (letters to and minutes of letters by Borromeo), 5 vols.

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II. Printed primary sources Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis tribus partibus distincta, quibus concilia provincialia, conciones synodales, synodi dioecesanae, instructiones, litterae pastorales, edicta, regulae confrateriarum, formulae, et alia denique continentur, quae Carolus S.R.E. Cardinalis tit. S. Praxedis, Archiepiscopus egit. [Ed. Pietro Galesino]. 2 vols. Mediolani: apud Pacificum Pontium, 1582. Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ... Federici Borromei Archiepiscopi Mediolani iussu undique diligentius collecta et edita. Mediolani: ex officina typographica quon. Pacifici Pontii impressoris archiepiscopalis, 1599. Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis. Ed. Achille Ratti. Vols. 2-4. Mediolani: Pontificia Sancti Ioseph, 1890-96. Acta et decreta Synodi Neapolitanae. Neapoli: apud Antonium Baccolum, 1568. Annali della Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano. Vol. 4. Milano, 1881. Antoninus of Florence. Confessionale “Defecerunt”. Ed. Venetiis: per P.Io. de Quarengis, 1499. ———. Summa maior et aurea. Lugduni: per Johannem Cleyn, [1516]. ———. Sancti Antonini Summa Theologica. Ed. Veronae: apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740. Repr. Graz: Akad. Druck- U. Verlagsanstalt, 1959. Alostanus, Arnaldus. De poenitentia publica et solemni. Antverpiae, 1564. Azpilcueta, Martin de (Doctor Navarrus). Manual de confessores & penitentes. Coimbra: por Ioam de Barreyra, 1560. ———. Enchiridion sive manuale confessariorum et poenitentium. Ed. Antverpiae: ex officina Christophori Plantini, 1575. Bandello, Matteo. Tutte le opere. Ed. Francesco Flora. Milano: Mondadori, 1952. Bascapé, Carlo. De vita et rebus gestis Caroli S.R.E. Cardinalis ... Libri Septem. Ingolstadt, 1592. Republished as Vita e opere di Carlo Arcivescovo di Milano Cardinale di S. Prassede. Milano: NED, 1983. Battista da Crema. Aperta verità [...] da lui corretta et emendata. Venezia: Nicolò Bascarini, 1544. Bollani, Domenico. Constitutiones Reverendissimi Domini Dominici Bollani Brixiae Episcopi. Brixiae: apud Ludovicum Sabiensem, 1564. ———. Ordini delle visite, et congregationi Sacerdotali della Diocese di Brescia. In Brescia: appresso Vincenzo di Sabbio, 1566. ———. Atti della visita pastorale del vescovo Domenico Bollani alla diocesi di Brescia (1565-1567). Ed. Paolo Guerrini. Vol. 1. Brescia, 1915. Borromeo, Carlo. Arte sacra (De fabrica ecclesiae). Trans. and notes by Carlo Castiglioni and Carlo Marcora. Milano: n.e., 1952. ———. Avvertenze per chi havera d’amministrare il sacramento della penitenza in questa citta, et diocesi di Milano. [Milano, between 1565 and 1569]. [Copy at BCMi, 2G-4-4/17]. ———. Avvertenze a ciascun curato per fare i libri del stato delle sue anime. Milano, appresso Pacifico Pontio, 1574. ———. Avvertenze di monsignore illustriss. cardinale Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano, a i confessori della città et diocese sua. Milano: per Paolo Gottardo Pontio, 1574. Later editions include: Milano: per Francesco et gl’heredi di Simon Tini, 1588; Milano: per l’herede del quondam Pacifico Pontio, et Gio. Battista Piccaglia, 1612; Milano: per l’herede di Pacifico Pontio, et Gio. Battista Piccaglia, 1623.

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333

———. Avvertenze di monsignore illustriss. cardinale Borromeo, arcivescovo di Milano ai Curati della città, et diocese sua per amministrare il santissimo sacramento dell’Eucharestia in chiesa. Milano: per Valerio et Hieronimo fratelli da Meda, 1574. ———. Avvertimenti da osservarsi dal clero nostro. Accio che possiamo havere continua notitia del stato loro. Milano: appresso Pacifico Pontio, 1573. ———. Avvertimenti per la celebratione di feste, officii et essequie funerali che per l’anno si fanno in varie chiese et luoghi della città. Milano: per Pacifico Pontio, 1573. ———. Instructionum fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae libri II .... Mediolani: apud Pacificum Pontium, 1577. ———. Memoriale ai Milanesi. Ed. Giacomo Pozzi Bellini. Milano: Giordano Editore, 1965. ———. Pastorum concionatorumque instructiones ... ex ecclesiae Mediolanensis actorum libro excerptae opera ... Joannis Francisci [Bonhomii]. Coloniae: apud M. Cholinum, 1587. ———. Pastorum instructiones ... ab ill.mo ... D. Carolo Borromaeo ... editae, nunc autem ex Ecclesiae Mediolanensis actorum libro excerptae opera Silvestri Pardonis. Antverpiae: ex officina C. Plantini, 1586. ———. San Carlo Borromeo ed il card. Agostino Valier (carteggio). Ed. Lorenzo Tacchella. Verona: Istituto per gli studi storici Veronesi, 1972. ———. S. Caroli Borromei S.R.E. Cardinalis Archiepiscopi Mediolani Homiliae... Ed. Josephus Antonius Saxius. 5 vols. Mediolani: apud Marellum, 1747-48. ———. Terza raccolta di lettere inedite del glorioso S. Carlo Borromeo Arcivescovo di Milano. Lugano: Gli Agnelli, 1763. ———. See also Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, Decreta edita ... in synodo dioecesana prima Mediolanensi, Documenti circa la vita e le gesta. Borromeo, Federico. Instruttioni, ordini, et avvisi dati ... con l’occasione della pestilenza dell’anno 1630... Milano: nella Stamperia Archiepiscopale, [1631]. ———. I sacri ragionamenti. 10 tomes in 4 vols. Milano: Gariboldi, 1632-1646. ———. De pestilentia (La peste di Milano del 1630). Ed. Giancarlo Mazzoli. Pavia: Almo Collegio Borromeo, 1964. It. trans. by Armando Torno: La peste di Milano. Milano: Rusconi, 1987. Botero, Giovanni. Della ragion di Stato. Delle cause della grandezza delle città. Ed. C. Morandi. Bologna: Cappelli, 1930. Trans. by P.J. and D.P. Waley: The Reason of State & The Greatness of Cities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. English translation by H.J. Schroeder. 2nd edition. Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, 1978. Carletti, Angelo. Summa Angelica de casibus conscientiae. Ed. Hagenaw: Henricus Gran, 1509. Catechismus ex decreto concilii Tridentini ad Parochos Pii V Pont. Max. iussu editus. Roma: Manutius, 1566. (Also quoted from the ed. Lovanii: apud Ioannem Bogardum, 1567). Cavalca, Domenico. Pungi lingua. Il libro molto utile al fidele christiano... Vinegia: Comin de Trino di Monferrato, 1547. ———. Libro devotissimo et spirituale de’ frutti della lingua. In Venetia: nella Contrada di Santa Maria Formosa, al segno della Speranza, 1563. Collectio maxima omnium conciliorum Hispaniae et novae Orbis. Ed. Josephus Saenz De Aguirre. 4 vols. Romae: J.J. Komarek, 1693. Concilia Germaniae. Ed. J.F. Schannat. 11 vols. Coloniae Augustae Agrippinensium, 1759-90.

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Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. Ed. Ioannes Dominicus Mansi. Parisiis: H. Welter, 1901-1927. Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta. Ed. G. Alberigo et al. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1991 (first ed. 1962). Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum nova collectio. Published by the Societas Goerresiana. Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1901 — . Constitutiones dominii Mediolani, quibus ordines, declarationes et decreta multa... addita fuerunt. Mediolani: apud Antonium Antonianum, 1574. Constitutioni sinodali per la Città, et Diocesi di Forli, con una breve instruttione in fine per i Curati semplici. Bologna: per Alessandro Benaccio, 1565. Decreta edita et promulgata in Synodo Dioecesana Albensi. Astae: apud Virgilium de Zangrandis, 1594. Decreta edita ... in synodo dioecesana prima Mediolanensi. Mediolani: appresso Pacifico Pontio, 1573. De Vio, Thomas (Cardinal Cajetan). Summula peccatorum R.D.D. Thome de Vio Caietani... S.l., 1526 [but 1525; copy in British Library]. (Where indicated, also quoted from the ed. Venetiis: Nicolini, 1572.) Documenti circa la vita e le gesta di S. Carlo Borromeo. Ed. Aristide Sala. 3 vols. Milano: Z. Brasca, 1857-1861. Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. Ed. Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer. 16th edition. Friburgi Brisgoviae: Herder, 1976. Ferretti, Gian Pietro. Constitutiones, et edicta observanda in Sancta Brixiensi ecclesia, et eius tota Dioecesi noviter per ... D. Ioan. Petrum Ferrettum ... promulgata. Brixiae: Damianus Turlinus, 1545. Fumi, Bartolommeo. Summa Armilla. Venetiis: apud Aldi filios, 1554. Galerio, Niccolò. Evangeliorum per universum annum explicandorum ratio... Item, ad libri calcem, de ratione docendi catechismi et audiendarum confessionum (1588). Brixiae: apud Petrum Mariam Marchettum, 1589. Giberti, Gian Matteo. Constitutiones editae per reverendiss. in Christo patrem D. Io. Matthaeum Gibertum.... Verona: apud Antonium Putelletum, 1542. ———. Jo. Matthaei Giberti episcopi Veronensis... Opera. Hostiliae: apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740. ———. Riforma pretridentina della diocesi di Verona. Visite pastorali del vescovo G.M. Giberti 1525-1542. Ed. Antonio Fasani. Fonti e studi di storia Veneta, n. 13. 3 vols. Vicenza: Istituto per le ricerche di storia sociale e di storia religiosa, 1989. Giussano, Gio. Pietro. Vita di S. Carlo Borromeo, prete Cardinale del titolo di Santa Prassede arcivescovo di Milano. Roma: Stamperia della Camera Apostolica, 1610. Latin edition, De vita et rebus gestis S. Caroli Borromei Cardinale Archiepiscopi Mediolani libri VII. Mediolani, 1751. Gonzaga, Ercole. Breve ricordo di Monsignor illustrissimo et Reverendissimo Monsignor Hercole Gonzaga Cardinale di Mantova delle cose spettanti alla vita de Chierici, al governo delle chiese, et alla cura delle anime di questo suo Vescovato di Mantova. Mantova, per Giacomo Roffinello, 1561. Gonzaga, Marco. Cause et rimedii della peste, et di qualsivoglia altra infermità... Macerata: appresso Sebastiano Martellini, 1576. Graffi, Giacomo. Decisiones aureae casuum conscientiae. Ed. Venetiis: ex officina Damiani Zenari, 1593.

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Granada, Luis de. Trattato ... in materia della gravezza dello scandalo, e dell’utile che da quello si può cavare, insieme con una breve, et necessaria instruttione per Christianamente vivere. Trans. from the Spanish by Gioan Domenico Florentio. Roma: nella stamperia di Tito & Paolo Diani, 1589. ———. Prattica del viver christiano nella quale familiarmente s’ammaestra nelle virtù della nostra fede, così i Padri e Madri di famiglia, come gli loro figliuoli. Venetia, 1594. Guido de Monte Rocherii. Manipulus curatorum... Venetiis: in aedibus Francisci Bindoni et Maphei Pasini, 1538. Interrogatorio della dottrina christiana... Cremona: per Barucino Zanni, 1593. Laínez, Diego. Jacobi Lainez ... disputationes Tridentinae. Ed. H. Grisar. 2 vols. Oeniponte [Innsbruck], 1886. Libro del debito del sacerdote di S. Thomaso d’Aquino per la Chiesa et Diocese di Mantova. In Mantova: per Giacomo Roffinello, 1560. Medina, Bartolomé de. Breve instruttione de’ confessori, come si debba amministrare il sacramento della penitentia. Venetia: appresso Bernardo Basa, 1584. Memoriale et precetto in genere di quanto si debba osservare per tutta la Diocesi Fesulana, in esecutione della Synodo Diocesana.... S.l.n.a. Methodus confessionis, hoc est: Ars, sive ratio, et brevis quaedam via confitendi... Venetiis, s.a. [sec. XVI]. Ordinationi publicate nella sinodo diocesana di Bologna sotto il di 16 d’Ottobre MDLXVI... Bologna: per Giovanni Rossi, 1567. Ormaneto, Niccolò. Avvertimenti ai predicatori et confessori della città et diocese de Padoa. Con i casi riservati, et canoni poenitentiali. Padova: per Lorenzo Pasquati, 1574. (Copies at Rome, Biblioteca Universitaria Alessandrina, and Padua, Biblioteca Universitaria). Paleotti, Gabriele. Instruttione da osservarsi nelle congregationi de casi di coscienza. Bologna, 1594. Perestrelo, Luis de Beja. Responsiones casuum conscientiae, qui omnibus curatis, ac poenitentiariis singulis mensibus coram Illustriss. ac Reverendiss. Card. Paleoto Archiepiscopo Bonon. proponuntur... Bononiae: apud Alexandrum Benatium, 1587; also Brixiae: apud Societatem Brixiensem, 1587. Peréz de Ayala, Martin. De divinis, apostolicis atque ecclesiasticis traditionibus ... authore R.P. Domino Martino Peresio Aiala. Coloniae: Iaspar Gennepaeus, 1549. Polanco, Juan Alonso. Breve directorium ad confessarii ac confitentis munus rite obeundum. Coloniae: apud Maternum Cholinum, 1560. Possevino, Antonio. Biblioteca selecta qua agitur de ratione studiorum in historia, in disciplinis, in salute omnium procuranda. 2 vols. Romae: ex Typographia Apostolica Vaticana, 1593. Prierias, Sylvester. Summa Sylvestrina. Venetiis: apud Petrum Mariam Bertanum, 1606. Razzi, Serafino. Cento casi di coscienza... Firenze: appresso Bartolommeo Sermartelli, 1579. Rituale Romanum Pauli V Pont. Max. iussu editum. Romae: ex typographia Reverendae Camerae Apostolicae, 1614. Sacramentale Ambrosianum... (Mediolani, ex officina typographica Pacifici Pontii, 1589). Sanchez, Thomas. Disputationum de sancto matrimonii sacramento ... libri decem. Venetiis, 1606-1607. Santoro, Giulio Antonio. Rituale sacramentorum romanum Gregorii papae XIII. Pont. Max. iussu editum. Romae, 1584.

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Sarpi, Paolo. Istoria del concilio Tridentino. 2 vols. Torino: Einaudi, 1974. Sauli, Alessandro. See Savonarola, Girolamo. Sauli, Filippo. Opus noviter editum pro sacerdotibus animarum curam habentibus. Mediolani: apud Augustinum Vicomercatum, 1521. Savonarola, Girolamo. Confessionale... denuo impressum, mendisque quibus passim scatebat expurgatum; additis... quibusdam compendiosis interrogationibus pro his, qui ad ecclesiasticos ordines promovendi, quique ad audiendas confessiones et ad curam animarum sunt admittendi... per Reverendum D. Alexandrum Saulium Theologum, collectis et revisis. Papiae: Apud Hieronymum Bartholum, 1571. Saxius [Sassi], Josephus Antonius. See Borromeo, Carlo. S. Caroli Borromei ... Homiliae; and below, under Secondary sources. Statuta Concilii Florentini. Florentiae: per haeredes Philippi Iuntae, 1518. Synodales constitutiones Syracusanensis ecclesiae ... plena synodo promulgatae, die octavo mensis Septembris 1553. Panhormi, 1555. Thomas Aquinas. Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII p.m. edita. Romae, 1882–. Thomasius, Michael. Disputationes quaedam ecclesiasticae. Roma: ex domo propria, 1565. Trevisan, Giovanni. Constitutiones et decreta sub reverendissimo D. Ioanne Trivisano patriarcha Venetiarum ... promulgata. Veronae: apud Sebastianum et Ioannem Fratres a Donnis, 1581. Valier, Agostino. Degli occulti benefici di Dio libri tre... Con l’aggiunta di molte lettere inedite del Cardinale arciv. di Milano S. Carlo Borromeo. Verona: per l’erede di Agostino Carattoni, 1770. ———. See also, Borromeo, Carlo. San Carlo Borromeo ed il card. Agostino Valier (carteggio). Vittori, Mariano. De sacramento confessionis, seu paenitentiae, historia... De antiquis poenitentiis utilis libellus... Romae: apud Paulum Manutium, 1562; repr. 1566 and 1621. Zini, Pietro Francesco. Boni Pastoris Exemplum. Ed. in Jo. Matthaei Giberti episcopi Veronensis... Opera. Hostiliae: apud Augustinum Carattonium, 1740, 253-96.

III. Secondary Works Alberigo, Giuseppe. “Carlo Borromeo come modello di vescovo nella chiesa posttridentina.” Rivista storica italiana 79 (1967): 1031-52. Alessi, Giorgia. “Discipline. I nuovi orizzonti del disciplinamento sociale.” Storica 2, no. 4 (1996): 7-37. Allegra, Luciano. “Il parroco: un mediatore tra alta e bassa cultura.” In Intellettuali e potere. Ed. Corrado Vivanti. Storia d’Italia, Annali 4. Torino: Einaudi, 1981, 895-947. Andrighettoni, Luisa. I vicariati foranei della Valle Canonica nelle visite pastorali dal Concilio di Trento ad oggi. Brescia, 1976. Angelozzi, Giancarlo. “L’insegnamento dei casi di coscienza nella pratica educativa della Compagnia di Gesù.” In La ‘Ratio studiorum,’ 121-62. ———. “Interpretazioni della penitenza sacramentale in età moderna.” Religioni e società 1 (1986): 73-87. Arcangeli, Alessandro. “L’opusculo contro la danza attribuito a Carlo Borromeo,” Quadrivium, n.s., 1 (1990): 35-76.

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INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Abbiate Forero, Ottaviano (archpriest and curia official), 240, 295, 302-09, 311, 320-21 Adamolo, Giovanni Giacomo (curate), 226 Albergati, Antonio (vicar general), 244-45 Alberti, Leon Battista, 89 Aldobrandina, Maria (princess), 121 Ambrose (saint and bishop of Milan), 136, 142 Angelo da Cremona, Fra (inquisitor), 14 Antoniano, Silvio, 127, 144 Antonino, M. (vicar general), 154 Antoninus of Florence (archbishop and saint), 19, 35-36, 71, 102, 104, 112, 114-15, 273 Aquaviva, Claudio (Jesuit general), 280 Archinto, Filippo (archbishop of Milan), 21 Arcimboldi, Giovanangelo (archbishop of Milan), 21, 70, 219 Audoeno, Ludovico (vicar general), xiii Augustine (saint), 316 Ayamonte. See Guzman, Antonio de Azpilcueta, Martin de (canonist), 19, 273, 316 Baij, Battista (public sinner), 201, 205 Bandello, Matteo (novelist), 16-17, 117 Barbaro, Daniele, 117 Barelli, Francesco (hagiographer), 120 Baronio, Cesare, 127, 134 Bartolini, Giovanni Battista (canonist), 240 Bascapè, Carlo (Barnabite, curia official, biographer of C. Borromeo, bishop of Novara), 114, 116, 240, 250-53 Battista da Crema, Fra, 50-52 Bedra, Bartolomeo (vicario foraneo), 265-66 Bellarmino, Roberto, 6 Benedetto da Mantova, 14 Bernard of Clairvaux (saint), 113-14 Bernardino of Siena, Fra (saint), 49, 109, 113 Bireley, Robert, 127, 136 Bollani, Domenico (bishop of Brescia), 30, 94, 96, 194, 222

Borromeo, Carlo (archbishop and saint), ix, 4, 272 Avvertenze ai confessori, 36-39, 45, 52, 131 biography, xiv canonization, 5, 128-29 on Carnival and Lent, 71, 76, 175-76, 248 and church architecture, 85, 87-90, 106, 108-09, 116, 120 and civil authorities, 255-56, 259, 325 and clerical discipline, xiii, 5-6, 11, 18, 27, 327 on conduct in church, 108-10, 119 and confession, 11, 12, 35-36, 43, 52-56, 60-61, 133-34, 189, 196, 212-13, 250, 280, 283, 326 and confessional, 95, 121-22 and confessionalism, 324 and congregations of clergy, 263-65, 286 crisis of authority, 249-53 on decorum, 117-19 and frequent confession, 78, 177, 179-80, 328 on heresy, xiii, 62, 253 influence and fame, xiv, xv, 6, 125, 126, 129, 258, 287 Instructiones fabricae ... ecclesiasticae, 87-90 and occasions of sin, 71, 75, 114, 251-52 and ‘occasions of virtue,’ 75, 116 and papacy, 249, 253-54 and peace-making, 198, 202-03, 206, 209 and penance, 48, 52, 83, 175-76 and Philip II, 252-53 and plague, 80-82, 156 and public order, 69-70, 77, 120, 166, 245-46, 329 and public penance, 63, 67, 234 and reserved cases, 217-19, 229-32, 248-49 ritual offensive by, 75-76 and social discipline, 79 social thought of, 72, 112, 114, 325 and superstition, 296, 298-300, 310, 319, 322

350

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

on sense of vision, 113-15 and women, 102, 150 Borromeo, Federico (archbishop), ix, 4, 126 Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis, 129 Avvertenze ai confessori, 130 biography, xv and Botero, 135 on civility, 127, 143-44, 146, 151, 154, 330 and class, 141, 145, 152, 156 on confession, 131-32, 138-39, 146-48, 156, 212 and confessionalism, 138 discipline, 147-48, 154 and Filippo Neri, 127 on (im)proper speech, 149-54, 157-58, 165 on occasions of sin, 147 optimism, 128, 136 and peacemaking, 202, 210 personality of, 126, 161 and plague, 155-60 political thought of, 134-38 on priests, 5, 140-46, 257, 327, 330 on reason of state, 135-36 Sacri Ragionamenti, 131 and social discipline, 127-28, 139 and superstition, 159, 321-22 Bossy, John, 49, 86-87, 103, 180-81, 198, 201, 209-10, 290-91 Botero, Giovanni, 134-37, 178 Burke, Peter, 76 Butinoni, Bernardino (curate), 194 Caimi, Giovanni Paolo (church visitor), 234 Cajetan, Cardinal. See De Vio, Tommaso Calvin, Jean, 113, 133-34 Campeggi, Alessandro (bishop of Bologna), 39- 40 Campeggi, Card. Lorenzo, 65, 95 Cano, Melchior (theologian), 51 Caracciolo, Fra Roberto (preacher), 49, 113 Carafa, Card. Gian Pietro, 53, 149 See also Paul IV Carcano, Agostino (curate), 267-68 Carvajal, Giacomo or Diego (Jesuit), 12 and examinations, 12, 34 on censures, 20 on confession, 13, 18-20, 24-27, 31, 33, 35 on licensing of confessors, 34 on reserved cases, 217-18, 238 on the seal of confession, 278

treatise on confession, 12 on uniformity, 214 Casale, Giambattista (diarist), 84, 109 Castelli, Gian Battista (vicar general), xiii, 97, 196, 204, 223, 226, 232, 234, 266, 276-77 Castiglione, Baldassare, 144 Castiglioni, Carlo, 120, 158 Cataneo, Pietro (architect), 89 Cattaneo, Lazzaro (curate), 269-70 Cavalca, Fra Domenico, 149 Châtellier, Louis, 181 Chaves, Diego de (Spanish royal confessor), 252-53 Chrysostom, John, 71, 89 Citerico, Antonio (inconfesso), 185, 199 Clement VIII (Pope), 121, 280 Colpano, Giovanni Antonio (inconfesso), 199 Crivelli, Battista (Barnabite general), 120-21 Crivelli, Giovanni Battista (nobleman), 190, 202 Cyprian (saint), 111 Dagan, Francesco (provost), 196 Dalla Barba, Bartolomeo (Veronese heretic), 15 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 133, 297 De Abbiate, Bartolommeo (curate), 24 De Albertis, Eliseo (chaplain), 198 De Bognis, Giovan Battista (healer), 303, 308 De Correggi, Antonio (Inquisition suspect), 319 De Filipettis, Caterina (penitent), 238 De Lorini, Giovanni de (Jesuit), 295, 302-03, 305, 310 De Miramondi, Giovan Angelo (inconfesso), 205 De Negronis, Donato, 24 De Negronis, Pier Antonio (penitent), 24 De Quarterone, Cesare (inconfesso), 200 De Rossi, Ippolito (bishop of Pavia), 35 De Roveri, Gasparo (healer), 303 De Vio, Tommaso, Card. Cajetan, 19, 35-36, 56, 58, 63, 72, 92, 101, 233, 313, 316-17 Della Porta, Giovanni Pietro (curate), 204 Delumeau, Jean, 47 Desio, Fra Giuliano, 97 Di Basti, Hieronimo (curate), 64, 186, 258-59, 269 Di Luciani, Geronimo (curate), 31 Di Mazza, Domenico (inconfesso), 206-09 Di Re, Guidono (inconfesso), 200

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

351

Di Simplicio, Oscar, 173 Dinah, biblical tale of, 111, 113-15 Donato di Falchi, Fra, 29, 31 Dupront, Alphonse, 127-28 Durandus (liturgist), 107 D’Adda (family), 22 D’Avalos, Alfonso, Marquis Del Vasto (governor of Milan), 27 D’Este, Ippolito I (archbishop of Milan), 21 D’Este, Ippolito II (archbishop of Milan), 21

Granada, Luis de (theologian), 63-64, 78 Gregory the Great (Pope), 113 Gregory VII (Pope), 7 Gregory XIII (Pope), 77, 96, 99, 120, 191-92, 234, 247, 249, 253-54, 259 Gregory XV (Pope), 98 Griffi, Francesco (vicario foraneo), 229 Gropper, Johannes (theologian), 66 Guenzate, Giuseppe (provost), 32, 238 Guevara, Sancio di (governor of Milan), 253 Guzman, Antonio de (governor of Milan), 248, 253

Eck, Johann, 132 Elias, Norbert, 111, 143-45, 148, 272 Eliseo da Milano, Fra, 195 Erasmus, Desiderius, 51, 144, 277

Innocent III (Pope), 46

Fabiano, Fra Tommaso, 15 Fantoni, Andrea (woodworker), 123-25 Fazzalaro, Francis J., 93 Fedeli, Germanico (canon), 103 Fontana, Giuseppe (curate), 206-08 Forcellini, Egidio, 117-18 Forero. See Abbiate Forero Foucault, Michel, 57, 102, 139, 297, 323 Friedberg, Werner of (friar), 317 Fumi, Bartolomeo (canonist), 317 Gaetano da Thiene, 28 Galerio, Niccolò (vicar general of Milan and Padua), 24, 130 Galesino, Pietro (diocesan official), 38, 54, 88-89, 129, 218-19 Gallio, Card. Tolomeo, 259 Gentile, Deodato (inquisitor), 288 Ghislieri, Card. Michele, 53-54, 57 See also Pius V Giberti, Gian Matteo (bishop of Verona), 11, 13-14, 33, 109 on clergy, 16, 37 on confession, 13, 33, 190 and confessional, 93-94, 97, 104 and congregations of clergy, 262-63 influence of, 11-12, 37, 94, 263 on confessors, 13-14, 16 and public penance, 65 and solicitation, 97, 104 Ginzburg, Carlo, 115 Giussano, Giovanni Pietro (biographer of C. Borromeo), 5-6, 102, 110-11, 140, 259 Gonzaga, Ercole (bishop of Mantua), 78, 176 Gonzaga, Marco (bishop of Mantua), 81 Graffi, Giacomo (Neapolitan penitentiary), 316-17

Jedin, Hubert, 8-9 Jeremiah, 114, 176 Jerome (saint), 113 Jones, Pamela, 128 Knox, Dilwyn, 144-45 Laínez, Diego (Jesuit), 19, 72-73 Lampergo, Battista (inconfesso), 199 Landriani, Tommaso (curate), 205 Lea, Henry Charles, 46, 48, 64, 67-68 Leonardo da Vinci, 112 Lippomano, Luigi (Veronese curia official), 34 Lipsius, Justus, 133 Locatello, Bartolomeo (healer), 295, 297-98, 302-21 Locatello, Giacomo (healer), 303, 308-11 Locatello, Maddalena (healer), 303 Lonato, Count Pietro Antonio (ambassador), 249-51 Longo, Martino (provost), 193 Lorini. See De Lorini, 295 Lupi, Vincenzo (curate), 199 Lurati, Ottavio, 223, 299 Luther, Martin, 14, 16, 50-51, 79, 113, 132, 134 Luzio, Orazio (priest), 196, 197 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 134 Maggiorago, Antonio (humanist), 27 Manzoni, Alessandro, xv Manzoni, Giacomo (curate), 26 Marchelli, Ambrosio (curate), 301 Marcora, Carlo, 120 Marella, Gioan (street musician), 255 Mary Magdalen, 124 Mazzarino, Giulio (Jesuit), 227-28, 248-49, 252 McGinness, Frederick, 158

352

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Medici, Gian Angelo. See Pius IV Mercuriano, Everardo (Jesuit general), 96 Merla, Pietro Francesco (curate), 268 Mombello, Michele (curate), 268 Moneta, Ludovico (curia official), 88-89, 91, 102 Mora, Giacomo, 156 Morales, Sebastiano (Jesuit), 183 Morone, Card. Giovanni (bishop of Modena), 66 Müller, Jakob (liturgist), 103 Muzio, Pietro (curate), 295, 298, 302, 304-05, 307-18, 320 Myers, W. David, 183 Navarro, Doctor. See Azpilcueta, Martin de Neri, Filippo (saint), 103, 127 Oestreich, Gerhard, 133, 143, 172-73 Oldoni, Giovan Battista (episcopal secretary), 39 Olicii, Fra Amadeo, 195 Origo, Dionisio (curate), 238 Ormaneto, Niccolò (vicar general), xiii, 11, 18, 34, 69-70, 214 bishop of Padua, 37 nuntius in Spain, 99-100, 116 Veronese background, 11, 37, 94 O’Malley, John W., 9 Paleotti, Card. Gabriele (bishop of Bologna), 73, 78, 274 Panciroli, Guido (law professor), 15 Pasquinelli, Ottavio, 226, 236, 244 Paul IV (Pope), 53 Perachiono, Giovanni Pietro (priest), 39 Peréz y Ayala, Martin (bishop of Guadix), 71 Philip II (King), xii, 68, 249, 252-53 Piacentino, Alessandro (weaver), 14 Piacentino, Niccolò (inconfesso), 200 Piazza, Guglielmo (untore), 156 Pius IV (Pope), xiv, 11, 98 Pius V (Pope), 54, 99, 189-90, 232-33 Plato, 138 Pocalodi, Luigi (penitentiary), 221, 225, 232, 235, 238-42 Polanco, Juan Alfonso de (Jesuit), 101 Possevino, Antonio (Jesuit), 130 Prodi, Paolo, 126, 172 Prosperi, Adriano, 44, 53, 274 Pythagoras, 138 Rabbia, Hieronimo (penitentiary), 220 Ragazzoni, Gerolamo (bishop of Nazianze, apostolic visitor), 66-67, 84, 95

Rasparolo, Francesco (curate), 281-83 Regamunte, Filippo (curate), 200-01, 205 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 172-73 Ressa, Alessandro, 15 Riccardi, Giacomo (ambassador), 249 Richard of St. Victor, 113 Riva (family), 22, 200 Riva, Giovanni Giacomo, 200 Riva, Vittor, 22 Roberti, Griffidio (Griffith Roberts, curia official), 240 Roberts, Griffith. See Roberti, Griffidio Rodriguez, Cristoforo (Jesuit), 54 Romeo, Giovanni, 44, 181, 321 Rossi, Giacomo (curate), 202 Rusca, Battista (curate), 267-68 Sa, Manuel (Jesuit), 248 Sabba da Castiglione, Fra, 26 Salvioni, Bonifacio (vicario foraneo), 255 Sambusita, Antonio (Jesuit), 178, 182 Sanchez, Thomas (canonist), 217 Sano di Pietro, 109 Santoro, Card. Giulio Antonio (archbishop of S. Severina), 78, 96 Sarpi, Paolo (historian), 56, 66 Sauli, Alessandro (Barnabite provost), 35 Sauli, Filippo (bishop of Brugnone), 37 Savonarola, Fra Girolamo, 35, 49, 109 Schilling, Heinz, 43-44, 173, 181 Segneri, Paolo (Jesuit preacher), 117 Seneca, Antonio (curia official), 240 Settala, Girolamo (penitentiary), 151, 153 Settala, Ludovico (philosopher), 135 Sicardus (liturgist), 107 Sixtus IV (Pope), 28 Socrates, 138 Solomon, 146 Soto, Pedro de (Dominican theologian), 113, 115 Speciano, Cesare (curia official), 254 Staurengo, Bassiano (curate), 278-79 Suarez di Canova, Scipione (senator, vicar of Martesana), 247 Tapper, Ruard (theologian), 56-57 Taurini, Rizzardo and Giovanni (woodworkers), 121-22 Taxaquet. See Thomasius, Michael Tentler, Thomas N., 47-49, 91, 102 Tertullian, 111 Theodosius (emperor), 136, 142 Thomas Aquinas (saint), 58, 63, 305-06, 316-17 Thomasius, Michael (canonist), 218

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Tibaldi, Pellegrino (architect), 89 Torriano, Giovanni Ambrogio (patrician), 32 Trotto, Camillo (ambassador), 249, 251 Turrini, Miriam, 19, 56, 113, 273 Valier, Agostino (bishop of Verona), 38, 95, 127, 129 Vida, Girolamo (bishop of Alba), 18, 29 Vignola, Giacomo (architect), 89 Viret, Pierre (Lyon Calvinist), 133, 137 Visconti, Gaspare (archbishop), ix, xiv-xv, 128 and confession, 190 and congregations of clergy, 270, 286, 288

353

and peace-making, 210 and public penance, 235 and reserved cases, 218-19 Visconti, Giovanni Paolo Sforza, Marquis of Caravaggio, 121 Visino, Battista (curate), 179 Visponto, Antonio Maria (provost), 204 Vitruvius, 89, 117 Vittori, Mariano (theologian and bishop), 66-67 Weber, Max, 40-41, 143 Zardin, Danilo, 182

INDEX OF PLACE NAMES

Aachen (archdiocese), 16 Abbiategrasso (pieve), 266 Agliate (pieve), 276 Airuno (parish), 193 Alba (diocese), 18, 29, 95 Amelia (diocese), 68 Annone (parish), 194 Antwerp, 129 Appiano (pieve), 29, 301 Apulia, 54 Aragon, Jesuit province of, 96 Arcene (village), 303 Arcisate (pieve), 193, 200, 266, 270, 288, 291-92 Arlate (parish), 193 Arsago (pieve), 223, 291, 301 Asso (pieve), 206-07, 269, 292 Austria, travelers to, 192 Averara (town), 14-15 Barco (parish), 194 Barzago (parish), 97 Bavaria, confessionals in, 124 Bedero (pieve), 118 Benevento (archdiocese), 95 Bergamo churches of, 123 city, x, 309 diocese, 303, 309 Duomo, 123 Besozzo (pieve), 232, 239, 242 Bohemia, travelers to, 192 Bolladello (parish), 226 Bollate (pieve), 191-92 Bologna (diocese), 37, 39, 94, 221, 254, 274 Boltiero (parish), 303, 311 Brescia (diocese), 30, 94, 96, 189, 194, 221-22 Brivio (pieve), 193, 196 Brugnone (diocese), 37 Buscate (parish), 204 Busnago (vicariato foraneo), 276 Calabria, 54, 151 Camerino (diocese), 98 Cantù (pieve), 254-55, 267-69 Carimate (parish), 267-68 Carugo (parish), 194

Casorate (pieve), 219, 291 Castagna (parish), 194 Catania (diocese), 221 Cernusco Lombardone (parish), 193 Chiari (town), 30, 96 Civate (parish), 190, 244 Cologne, 129 Como diocese, x, 151 Inquisitor of, 192 Corbetta (pieve), 262, 266 Cosenza (archdiocese), 95 Cremnago (parish), 185, 199 Cremona (diocese), 240 Dairago (pieve), 204-05 Derfo (vicariato foraneo), 266, 302 Dervio (pieve), 226, 299 Desio (pieve), 196, 299 Ello (parish), 24, 200 Erba (parish), 207 Fiesole (diocese), 94 Flanders, confessionals in, 124 Florence city, 50 archdiocese, 16, 240 Jesuits in, 12 Forlì (diocese), 97, 178 France, xii, 191 Frassineto (pieve), 169, 202, 234 Gagliano (pieve), 23, 31 Galbiate (parish), 22, 200 Gallarate (pieve), 226, 239-40, 242 Garlate (pieve), 22, 204, 277 Genoa (archdiocese), 95, 178 Germany, 67, 191 Giubiano (parish), 193, 196 Gorgonzola (pieve), 18, 30, 186, 188, 231, 299 Graubünden (region), 191-92 Guenzate (town), 106 Imola, Inquisitor of, 15 Incino (pieve), 191-92, 262, 276-78 La Spezia, travelers to, 191

INDEX OF PLACE NAMES

Lago Maggiore, x Lecco (pieve), 113, 186, 193-94, 210, 233-34, 244, 258, 281, 292, 299 Leno (parish), 194 Lérida (diocese), 218 Ligurno (parish), 193, 200 Limido (commune), 31 Liscate (parish), 232 Lodi city, 276 diocese, 240 Lombardy, x, 126, 151 Franciscans in, 35 Jesuits in, 79, 151, 177, 183 Lucca (diocese), 221 Madrid, royal court at, 252 Malgrate (parish), 65, 186 Mandello (parish), 233 Mantua (diocese), 37, 79, 101-02, 104 Mariano (pieve), 185, 190-91, 194, 199, 284 Marsi (diocese), 221 Martesana (contado), 247 Melegnano (pieve), 301 Melzo (parish), 199 Merate (parish), 193 Merato (parish), 196 Mezzate (pieve), 234 Milan archdiocese, ix, xiv, 11, 84-85, 126, 128 churches of, 12, 23, 29, 118, 157-58, 183, 219 city, x-xii, xiv, 23, 53, 69-71, 75-83, 119-20, 135, 145, 151-52, 158-60, 166, 178, 184, 190-91, 195, 221, 249 civil authorities, 234, 247-49, 253, 255, 259 clergy, 250, 259 Collegio Braidense, 261 curia, 223, 226, 231, 238, 240, 244, 246, 254-55, 270, 275, 296, 321 Decurioni, 234, 254 diocese, x, xiii, xiv, 5-6, 11-12, 14, 16, 21, 28, 33, 46, 63, 65, 68, 70-71, 75, 82, 84, 86, 89, 91, 94, 105-06, 111, 120, 128, 130-31, 136, 165-66, 170, 172, 192-93, 216-17, 219-20, 262, 266 Duomo, 84, 107-09, 118, 202, 219, 221, 295 economy, x-xii, 68, 290 Franciscans in, 202 governors, 27, 253 Inquisition, 38, 199, 227, 248, 288, 299

355

Jesuits in, 12, 28, 34, 75, 177, 182-83, 217, 261, 302 jubilee in, 82, 109 plague in, 80, 155-56 Porta Cumana, 195 Porta Orientale, 81 Porta Romana, 248 Porta Ticinese, 266, 270, 286-89, 291-93 public life, 212, 245 S. Ambrogio, 161, 261 S. Anna, 195 S. Barnaba, 161 S. Celso, 230 S. Eustorgio, 188 S. Maria della Passione, 195, 231 S. Nazaro, 261 S. Pietro Celestino, 230 seminary, 261 Senate, 247 State of, xii, 23, 120, 135, 245 Mileto, 15 Modena diocese, 67 Inquisition, 295, 319 Mondonico (parish), 193 Montorfano commune, 23, 26 parish, 26, 31, 268 Monza (pieve), 191-92, 196, 233, 239, 242, 254, 301 Morengo (village), 303 Morterone (parish), 179 Naples archdiocese, 94-95 Inquisition, 295 Netherlands, The, xii Nosiggia (parish), 23 Novara (diocese), 114, 221 Novembrate (parish), 267-68 Nuremberg, Milanese merchants in, 191-92 Oggiono (pieve), 190, 200, 202, 206, 233 Olgiate (parish), 238 Padua (diocese), 37, 130 Pagnona (parish), 226 Parabiago (parish), 106, 228 Pavia (diocese), 35 Pessano (parish), 231 Piedmont, travelers to, 190 Pontirolo (parish), 29 Porchera (parish), 193

356

INDEX OF PLACE NAMES

Rieti (diocese), 221 Rimini (diocese), 221, 223 Rome Inquisition, 248 jubilee in, 82, 176 papal court, xiv, 99, 134, 166, 245, 249, 254 Roman Empire, 136 Roman Republic, 138 Rosate (pieve), 178 Rudiano (parish), 194

Taleggio (parish), 226 Ticino (river), x Trani-Salpense (archdiocese), 95 Tre Valli (region), 186, 192 Trent (archdiocese), 95 Treviglio (vicariato foraneo), 29, 191-92, 194, 291, 303 Treviolo (parish), 309 Treviso (diocese), 221 Trezzo (town), 23 Uppsala (archdiocese), 98

S. Severina (archdiocese), 79, 95-96 Salerno (archdiocese), 95 Saluzzo (diocese), 98 San Donato (pieve), 226, 234 San Giuliano (pieve), 234 San Pietro all’Olmo (parish), 262 Saronno (pieve), 26, 224 Segrate (pieve), 32, 238, 301 Settala (pieve), 75, 191-92, 232, 276, 284 Seveso (pieve), 301 Sforzatica parish, 295, 303, 308, 312, 319 vicariato foraneo, 185, 277, 301, 309 Siena (archdiocese), 95 Solaro (parish), 224 Somma (pieve), 199 Sorrento (archdiocese), 95 Spain confessionals in, 96, 98-100 royal court, 166 Speyer (diocese), 317 Switzerland, 192 confederacy, x parts of Milanese diocese, x, 82 Syracuse (archdiocese), 94

Val Bregaglia, 191-92 Val Levantina (vicariato foraneo), 265-66, 276, 301 Valle Capriasca, 186 Valtellina (region), 155 Valtravaglia (parish), 233 Varese Lake of, 232 pieve, 191-93, 196, 198-99, 205, 228-29, 234, 239-40, 242, 266 Veneto, 262 Inquisition, 295 Venice archdiocese, 95, 98, 178 Inquisition, 250 Republic of, x Vercelli (diocese), 240 Verona churches of, 96 diocese, 11, 37, 93-94, 189, 262 Duomo, 109 heresy in, 15 Vicenza (diocese), 221 Vimercate (pieve), 238, 247, 270, 279 Volate (parish), 193-94

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

absolution, 19, 21, 33, 35, 57 conditions for, 51, 63, 224-26, 232, 238, 254, 283, 303 delegation of, 228-29, 244 from censures, 216 laxity in granting, 53, 189, 301 penance before, 233 power of. See power of the keys refusal of, 60-64, 119, 147, 154, 199, 224-28, 260, 283, 295, 301, 304, 310, 326, 329 reservation. See reserved cases ritual of, 103 validity of, 17, 288 See also confession, sacramental, impediments adultery, 148, 178, 180, 276, 291 Advent, 76, 288 anticlericalism, 4, 9, 14, 16, 26-27, 30, 32, 140, 259 architecture, church, 4, 87, 89, 165 instructions for, 87-90 See also confessional and screens, dividing church attrition, 51 Ave Maria, 62, 199, 299, 306 balli. See dancing baptism, sacrament of, 32, 108, 158, 225, 238, 244, 276-77, 284, 286, 314-15 Barnabites, 28, 35, 120, 240 benefice system, 22-23, 25, 29, 33-34 blasphemy, 44, 69, 70, 72, 149, 190, 205, 212, 219, 223, 287-89, 300 Carnival, 174 fight against, 76-77, 81, 120, 147, 175, 248, 325 last day of, 76, 175 cases of conscience consultation about, 260 formal characteristics of, 284-85, 287 reflection of social problems, 276 study of, 261, 265, 274-75, 283, 287, 289, 291-92, 311 Catholic Reformation, terminology, 8-9 children absolution of, 228-29, 231

and indecent speech, 154 education of, 144 inappropriate questions for, 227 pious, 197 See also infant overlaying Christian Doctrine, schools of, 75, 111, 120, 179, 223, 265, 293, 325 Christmas, 176, 255, 288. See also Advent civility, 4, 128, 144-46, 152, 154, 161, 210, 330 and language, 148, 150-51 in priests, 140, 143, 145-46, 210, 272 language and, 161 civilization and Christianization, 127, 151-54 and plague, 155, 158 civilizing process, 145, 153, 272 theory of, 111, 143, 148 communion, sacrament of, 38, 64, 76-77, 110, 154, 156, 174, 177, 179, 180, 183, 186-88, 190-93, 196, 200, 207, 242-43, 250, 286, 300, 310 concubinage, 5, 26, 72, 178, 184, 193, 200, 202-03, 216, 228, 276 confession, judicial, 57 confession, sacramental absolution. See absolution abuses in, 18-20, 29, 31, 42, 95, 97 annual (or Easter), 15, 36, 166, 170, 174, 185, 187-88, 192-93, 195, 197-98, 310, 319, 328. See also Easter obligation anonymity of, 86 certificates of (fedi or bollettini), 166, 187-90, 192, 203, 326 by confessors, 5, 264 criticism or avoidance of, 14-15, 50, 53, 199, 223, 227, 255 deathbed, 24, 176, 280 and detection of heresy, 19, 20, 44, 62, 227, 281-83 disciplinary powers of, 45-46, 48-49, 54-55, 68, 138-39, 146, 297, 322 disciplinary uses of, 148, 166, 212, 227-28, 237, 243, 251, 324, 329 discussed in congregations, 286, 288, 290, 293, 320 episcopal control of, 36, 165-66, 169, 212, 215

358

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

financial compensation for, 24, 32, 196 general. See general confession history of, 66 impediments, 21, 62, 147, 198-99, 203-04, 206, 215-16, 224, 266 inconfessi. See inconfessi and ‘interiorization,’ 85-86, 325 interrogation, 60, 197 Jesuits and, 44 judicial act, 55-57, 59, 60 manuals, 19, 35-36, 47-49, 65, 71-72, 78, 88, 92, 101, 112, 149, 165, 263, 265, 273, 316 occasion of sin, 100 of the sick, 31-32, 156, 189 of women, 30, 32, 75, 85, 93, 95-100, 124, 183, 242 part of ritual offensive, 76-77, 156 part of sacrament of penance, 35, 48, 51, 65 physical conduct during, 85, 91, 102, 104, 110 political view of, 131-32, 134, 136-38 privacy of, 86, 96, 105, 170, 180-81, 292 publicity of, 95-97, 99, 105, 123-24 and regular orders, 28-29, 187 ritual of, 75, 91 scholarship on, x, 46-47, 67-68, 173-74, 324-25 and seal of confession, 20, 32, 57-58, 123, 251, 277-83, 326 secrecy of. See confession, sacramental, seal of sexual discourse in, 102 and social discipline, 42-43, 68, 126, 132-33, 137, 139 and superstition, 301-02, 304, 310, 319 uniformity in, 212, 215 See also penance, sacrament of confessional (furniture), 4, 75, 84, 103, 165, 326 and church building, 106 design of, 90-91, 95-96, 103, 105, 107-08, 140 effects of, 103 evolution of, 91, 93-94, 96, 99, 120-25 function of, 85, 87, 96-97, 99, 100, 105, 110, 115-16, 121 in Duomo of Bergamo, 123 in S. Fedele, 121 interpretation, 86-87 placement, 95, 110 terminology, 84, 94 See also confessorium

confessionalism, ix, 3, 43, 79, 127, 138, 144, 165, 172-73, 191, 213, 235, 253, 324, 329 confessionalization, 41, 45, 111, 132, 145, 329 confessorium, 93 confessors admission of, 17, 33-34, 38, 196-97 as agents of discipline, ix, 44-45, 59, 62-63, 137, 193, 226, 237, 250-51, 260, 277-78, 280, 326 and women, 30, 85 as authority figures, 139, 147 as directors of conscience, 77, 148, 177, 181, 293 as doctors, 55, 82-83, 140 as episcopal agents, 38, 52 as friends, 138 as God’s representatives, 14, 58 as inquisitorial agents, 44 as judges, 10, 55-57, 59, 329 as peacemakers, 169, 180-81, 198, 201-02, 204, 206-09 and clerical congregations, 264 collaboration with other church officials, 61, 166, 215, 221 and conduct during confession, 85, 91, 93, 95, 104-06, 121-23 confession by, 5, 264 confidentiality. See confession, sacramental, seal of credentials of, 187, 188 dangers for, 100-103 education of, 36, 273, 287 episcopal control of, 6, 18, 33, 36, 165, 187-89, 212, 215-16 errors and abuses of, 13, 19-21, 26, 29-30, 52, 140 examination of, 12-13, 34-35 eye contact with. See vision, sense of financial compensation of, 24, 32, 196 granted absolution rights, 228-29, 231 ignoring reserved cases, 229-30 impose proper speech, 153-54 instructions for, 4, 11-12, 36-38, 45, 68 Jesuit, 12, 183 limited jurisdiction of, 215-16, 288, 300, 330 and occasions of sin, 69-72 office of, 43, 48, 126, 132 personal qualities, 10, 13-17 prudence in, 19, 101, 127, 138, 140 regular, 27-29, 33-34, 187-88 self-discipline, 146 shortages of, 196 and solicitation. See solicitation, in confession

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

and sumptuary law, 68, 69 and superstition, 296, 300, 310, 320-22 tools of discipline of, 53-55, 60-62, 146, 233, 235 tools of investigation of, 59-60 unnecessary for confession, 15 workload of, 195, 197, 227-28 confirmation, sacrament of, 38, 225 confraternities, xiii, 49, 75, 111, 179, 181-82, 185, 223, 246, 254, 265, 293, 301, 310, 325, 328 congregations, clerical, xv, 38, 245, 259, 262-64 attendance at, 266 cases of conscience discussed at, 270, 272, 274-78, 283-88, 290-93, 311-12, 316, 319 and discipline of clergy, 267-70, 272, 327 and education of the clergy, 320 frequency of, 270 general rules for, 264-65 contrition, 15, 35, 48-49, 51, 54, 61, 136 Council of Trent (1545-63), ix, xiv, 3, 10, 243 C. Borromeo and, 11 and church discipline, 52, 67, 127 and diocesan penitentiaries, 219 and diocesan reform, 37, 246, 324 on penance, 16-17, 33, 43-44, 51, 55 on public penance, 63, 64, 66-67, 234 on reserved cases, 216 on seal of confession, 278 and solicitation in confession, 31, 97 councils, Milanese provincial, xiii, xiv, 70, 129-30, 172 First Provincial Council (1565), 34, 38, 67, 94, 177, 189-90, 216, 220, 222, 234, 246, 261, 264, 298, 300 Second Provincial Council (1569), 261-62, 265 Third Provincial Council (1573), 38, 67, 87, 111, 234, 261 Fourth Provincial Council (1576), 90, 190, 216, 238, 270, 300 Fifth Provincial Council (1579), 83, 176, 184-85, 195, 216, 300 Sixth Provincial Council (1582), 111, 176, 216, 238, 241 Seventh Provincial Council (1609), 140, 210, 216, 229 councils, other church, 93 Council of Cosenza (1579), 97 Council of Florence (1573), 97 Council of Ravenna (1568), 95 Council of Siena (1599), 105

359

Council of Sorrento (1584), 105 Council of Valencia (1565), 99 Fourth Lateran Council, 67, 171, 174, 185, 187, 190, 278 Counter-Reformation phases of the, 126-28, 141, 154 terminology, 7-9 Creed, 26, 62, 199, 304, 307 dancing, 27, 69-70, 72, 74, 82, 100, 106, 114, 116, 166, 205, 212, 219, 246-48, 254-55, 325 decorum, 27, 68, 90, 115, 117-19, 121, 149, 322, 325 Decurioni (Milanese government council), 120, 234, 248-50, 254 demography, Milanese, xii discipline behavioral, 110-11, 118, 124, 144, 165, 267 Christian, 132-33, 137, 217 of clergy, xiii, 7, 20, 40, 42, 145, 258, 264-65, 267-68, 270, 272, 327 community, 44, 181, 293 concept of, 4, 40 effectiveness of, 46, 148, 215, 235-37, 243, 249-50, 256, 260, 283, 320, 327, 329, 330 inner, 138-39, 147-48, 170, 181, 291, 330 of laity, 3, 7, 10, 20-21, 33, 41-44, 52-55, 61-62, 66-67, 146, 233, 237, 259, 328 monastic, 265 of the senses, 105 understood as self-discipline, 133. See also self-discipline social, 40, 42-44, 68, 79, 85, 111, 127-28, 131, 133, 139, 143, 146, 165-67, 170, 172-73, 212-13, 253, 255, 298, 319, 324-25, 328 system of, ix-x, 3-4, 42, 165, 185, 210, 212, 236, 249, 319-20, 323-24 Dominicans, 49, 50, 187, 252 Donatism, 13 Easter obligation, 14, 61, 170, 185, 190-91, 193-94, 203, 207 economy, Milanese, x-xii, 68, 290 Eucharist. See communion, sacrament of examination of confessors, 12, 33-35, 196 of conscience, 59, 77-78, 86, 179, 180, 291 excommunication, 19, 21, 35, 62, 136, 216, 218-19, 233, 238, 241, 243-44, 246-48, 250, 254, 288-89, 292

360

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

external forum, 53, 55, 256, 329 false testimony, 70, 205, 286, 291-92 family and deathbed confession, 24 and ecclesiastical careers, 22, 25 and sexual scandal, 232 and social conflict, 200, 202 as center of devotion, x, 62, 75, 81, 111, 153, 179-80, 265, 326 forum. See external forum and internal forum Franciscans, 16, 35, 187, 202 free will, 72-74, 115, 147-48 frequent confession, 77, 81, 86, 166, 170, 176-85, 328 history of, 78 Jesuits, 78, 177, 183 gambling, 291 general confession, 77, 177 governor(s) of Milan, xii, 12, 27, 76, 119, 248, 253, 325 heresy, xiii, 297, 300 and blasphemy, 149, 288-89 in cases of conscience, 287 detection by vicari foranei, 223 detection during confession, 19, 20, 44, 62, 227, 281-83 and doctrine of penance, 14-15, 20-21, 43, 51, 223 and episcopal authority, 44, 212, 224, 300 and inconfessi, 190, 199 in itinerants, 184, 190-92 and plague, 81 and public order, 66, 134, 253 and superstition, 300, 323 Holy Week, 77, 195, 198, 201 homicide, 82, 148, 150, 180, 201, 228-29, 291-92 inconfessi, 15, 184, 187, 190, 193-94, 199-206, 210-11, 223, 234-35 infant overlaying, 237-45, 255, 287-88 infanticide, 237, 276-77 Inquisition, xiii, 9, 53, 65, 250, 323-24 and blasphemy, 149, 288-89 and confession, 44, 53-55, 61-62, 212, 227, 283, 329 and critics of confession, 14-16, 199, 211 and itinerants, 192 and solicitation in confession, 98-100 and superstition, 296, 299, 312, 318, 320-21

Mazzarino trials, 248 inquisitor of Milan as examiner of confessors, 34 member of diocesan penitentiary, 221 interdict, 21, 62, 199-201, 203, 206-08, 210, 216, 219, 234-35, 248, 255, 295 internal forum, 53, 55, 59, 131, 216, 221, 256, 330 Jesuits and confession, 43-44, 177, 325 and confessional, 96, 121-22 and education, 111, 261, 272 and missions, 151 and the seal of confession, 280 as confessors, 44, 54, 74, 78, 101, 177-78, 182-83, 247 as diocesan collaborators, 295, 302-03, 305, 312-13, 317-18, 320 as peacemakers, 202, 210 church of S. Fedele, Milan, 121, 183 collaboration with C. Borromeo, 12, 34, 78, 247 criticizing C. Borromeo, 227-28, 248-49 historical significance, 9, 43-44 in Milan, 12, 28, 78 innovations in confession, 78, 177 Jews, 184-85 jurisdictional conflicts, 135, 245, 259, 325, 329 keys. See power of the keys language. See speech Lent and battle against Carnival, 76-77, 175, 248, 253 and penance, 48, 67, 71, 76, 81, 170, 174-75, 219, 227-30 as time of reconciliations, 184, 193, 198, 209-10, 276, 328 beginning of, 175 confessions at, 195, 198, 228-30, 328 rites of, 174-76 magic, 44, 159-61, 212, 216, 219, 287-88, 296-300, 315, 317, 319-21, 330 manuals of confession. See confession, sacramental, manuals of marriage. See matrimony, sacrament of matrimony, sacrament of, 202, 216, 219, 224-25, 232-33, 247-48, 254, 276, 281-82, 284-86, 292, 300 non-residence. See residence, clerical

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

occasion of sin, 68, 70-71, 76-77, 114, 147, 150, 154, 184-85, 226, 229, 236, 251-54, 281, 287, 325-26 definition of, 70-73, 251 episcopal jurisdiction of, 71 and free will, 72-73 in church, 116 moral discourse about, 3, 74-75, 116 and plague, 82-83 and solicitation in confession, 97, 99, 100, 102 ‘occasion of virtue,’ 74, 75, 116, 124 optimism, Christian, 127-28, 136 parish economics, 22 Milanese parishes, xiii, 28 Pater Noster, 62, 199, 295, 298-99, 304-07, 311 penance (as satisfaction for sin), 24, 48, 51, 54-55, 57, 59-60, 66, 82, 136, 153, 156-57, 176, 178, 223, 226, 247, 301 canonical, 61, 65-66, 71. See also penitential canons forms of, 79, 185, 232-34, 236, 238, 242, 249, 254-55, 276 refusal of, 205, 233 secret or private penance, 64-65, 233-35 See also penitential canons and public penance penance (general notion), x, 3, 4, 48, 77-79, 81, 126, 161, 250, 256, 324 as ascetic regime, xiv, 52, 79 as conversion, 48, 50-52, 79 collective, 80 Reformation controversy about, 50 spirit of, 49, 124, 146-47 penance, sacrament of, 4-5, 216 as community ritual, 86, 180 as devotional regime, 86 Catholic concerns about, 12-13, 16, 20, 24, 27, 30-31, 33, 52, 85 and confessionalism, 43 and contrition, 51 Council of Trent on, 16-17, 33, 39, 55 and guilt, 49-50 heretical notions of, 15 history of, 46, 48, 56-58 instructions for clergy, 36, 38, 261, 284 and Lent, 48, 174-75 metaphoric representations of, 16, 55-56, 82, 140, 147, 178 and parish life, 187 parts of, 48, 51, 65

361

Reformation controversy about, 10, 43, 50 and regular orders, 28-29, 187 ritual of, 103, 136 and social discipline, 42-46, 52, 126, 131-32, 139, 212, 249, 255-56, 260, 323-24, 326, 329 solicitation in. See solicitation, in confession spiritual jurisdiction, 10, 35, 53, 124 penitential canons, 54, 147 penitentiary, diocesan, 62, 219-21, 223-26, 230-31 penitents, conduct during confession, 92-93, 95, 121-23 pieve, xiii, 171, 264, 267 plague, xii, xiv, 4, 79-83, 88, 155-61, 176-77, 228, 248, 270 population registration, 41, 170, 185, 190 power of the keys, 10, 17, 33, 46, 61, 67, 146, 226, 251. See also absolution preaching and church screens, 109 and confession, 12, 46, 49, 53, 82, 147, 175, 247, 309 and the Mazzarino affair, 227, 248 skills of parish clergy, 26, 33, 64, 197, 263-64, 268-69, 272 prudence, 19, 101, 112, 127, 138, 140, 147, 156, 210, 217, 252 public penance, 61, 63-68, 80, 147, 190, 201, 213, 233-37, 246, 290-91, 308, 329-30 Quinquagesima, 76-77, 175 rape, 32, 113-14, 219, 226, 231-33, 287, 293 reason of state, 134-36 reconciliation, 53, 60, 65-67, 166, 170, 180, 198-99, 201, 206, 209-10, 213, 231, 256, 276, 291, 328-29 Reformation and anticlericalism, 10, 20 and penance, 43, 45, 49, 79, 86, 126, 132, 277, 324 terminology, 7-9 See also Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation reserved cases, 19, 35-36, 62, 149, 197, 216, 218-19, 222, 224, 228-31, 236, 238, 244, 246, 248, 326, 329-30 criticism of, 248-49 discussed in congregations, 263, 286, 288-89 residence, clerical, 5

362

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

of (arch)bishops, xiii, xiv, 11, 21 of parish clergy, xiii, 22-23 restitution, 24, 60, 64, 178, 202, 207, 214, 279-80, 284, 291-92 rural vicars. See vicari foranei satisfaction (part of sacrament of penance), 35, 46, 48, 51, 56-57, 60-61, 229, 291, 328. See also penance, sacrament of screen, dividing church, 107-09, 115-16, 120 self-discipline, 148 Senate, Milanese, xii, xiii, 247 Septuagesima, 76, 81, 175 Sexagesima, 175 sin economic, 286 juridical, 286, 289 See also occasion of solicitation, in confession, 30, 64, 140, 326 and confessional, 116 inquisitorial prosecution of, 98-100, 123, 140 speech indecent, 149-52, 288 proper, 4, 142, 151, 165, 322, 330 sins of tongue, 149, 153-54 theory of, 152-53 state and control of public order, 27, 41 in ancient Rome, 138 modernizing, 40, 143, 172 State of Milan, xii, 23 state-Church relations, x, 120, 134-36, 173, 213, 245-46, 249, 252-53, 256, 325, 329 suffocation. See infant overlaying summa. See confession, sacramental, manuals of sumptuary competition, 68, 117 sumptuary regulation, 59, 68-69, 75, 118-19, 150 superstition, 167, 185, 205, 224, 277, 288, 295-302, 305-06, 310, 312, 315-22, 330 synodal reports, 166, 192, 224 synods, Milanese diocesan, xiii-xv, 70, 130, 149, 172, 218 First Diocesan Synod (1564), 34, 54, 67, 220 Second Diocesan Synod (1568), 217-18, 264, 300 Fourth Diocesan Synod (1574), 109, 116, 176 Eleventh Diocesan Synod (1584), 111, 241, 261-62, 300

Seventeenth Diocesan Synod (1593), 190 Twenty-Fourth Diocesan Synod (1611), 147, 235, 245 synods, other diocesan, 36, 66, 78 Synod of Alba (1594), 95 Synod of Fiesole (1564), 94 Synod of Florence (1517), 16 Synod of Forlì (1564), 97 Synod of Naples (1565), 94 Synod of Syracuse (1553), 94 Synod of Trent (1593), 95 Ten Commandments, 25, 54, 60, 62 theft, 70, 178, 180, 205, 286, 291-92 Trent. See Council of usury, 70, 72, 157, 166, 180, 184, 193, 202, 212, 214, 216, 224, 286, 291-92, 330 veil, 110-11, 115-16, 119, 219 vicar general, office of, 171-72, 220-21, 269 vicari foranei, 172, 186, 193 accusations against, 250, 268 and clerical congregations, 266-69, 275, 287 and discipline of clergy, 266-69 and education of the clergy, 265, 274 function of, 171, 203, 219, 221-24, 226, 236-38, 263-64, 269 and inconfessi, 203 instructions for, 62, 76, 109, 222 meetings with bishop, 38, 130, 147, 172, 188-89, 223, 229, 235, 245, 288 and right of absolution, 228, 231, 241-44 and superstition, 299-301 vicars, rural. See vicari foranei vision, sense of, 104, 112-15 women 27, 154, 178, 197, 230, 293 absolution of, 228-29 and confessors, 30-32, 72, 75, 85, 95, 97-98, 100, 121-23, 183 and infant overlaying, 237-38, 240-44, 288 and solicitation. See solicitation, in confession and sumptuary law, 59, 72-73 as magical healers, 299, 321 confessing sexual sins, 101, 231-32, 250 creating occasions of sin, 113-14, 287 fear of, 102-04, 110

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

glancing at, 104, 110, 113, 116, 292 need to wear veil, 110-11, 115-16, 119, 219 religious, 29, 108, 246 segregated from men, 4, 85, 108-10, 113, 119, 155, 252, 326

363

separated from confessor, 93, 95, 103 sumptuary law, 72, 118-19 use of confessional, 97

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION THOUGHT EDITED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 35.

DOUGLASS, E. J. D. Justification in Late Medieval Preaching. 2nd ed. 1989 WILLIS, E. D. Calvin’s Catholic Christology. 1966 out of print POST, R. R. The Modern Devotion. 1968 out of print STEINMETZ, D. C. Misericordia Dei. The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz. 1968 out of print O’MALLEY, J. W. Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform. 1968 out of print OZMENT, S. E. Homo Spiritualis. The Anthropology of Tauler, Gerson and Luther. 1969 PASCOE, L. B. Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform. 1973 out of print HENDRIX, S. H. Ecclesia in Via. Medieval Psalms Exegesis and the Dictata super Psalterium (1513-1515) of Martin Luther. 1974 TREXLER, R. C. The Spiritual Power. Republican Florence under Interdict. 1974 TRINKAUS, Ch. with OBERMAN, H. A. (eds.). The Pursuit of Holiness. 1974 out of print SIDER, R. J. Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. 1974 HAGEN, K. A Theology of Testament in the Young Luther. 1974 MOORE, Jr., W. L. Annotatiunculae D. Iohanne Eckio Praelectore. 1976 OBERMAN, H. A. with BRADY, Jr., Th. A. (eds.). Itinerarium Italicum. Dedicated to Paul Oskar Kristeller. 1975 KEMPFF, D. A Bibliography of Calviniana. 1959-1974. 1975 out of print WINDHORST, C. Täuferisches Taufverständnis. 1976 KITTELSON, J. M. Wolfgang Capito. 1975 DONNELLY, J. P. Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace. 1976 LAMPING, A. J. Ulrichus Velenus (Oldrˇich Velensky´) and his Treatise against the Papacy. 1976 BAYLOR, M. G. Action and Person. Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther. 1977 COURTENAY, W. J. Adam Wodeham. 1978 BRADY, Jr., Th. A. Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555. 1978 KLAASSEN, W. Michael Gaismair. 1978 BERNSTEIN, A. E. Pierre d’Ailly and the Blanchard Affair. 1978 BUCER, Martin. Correspondance. Tome I (Jusqu’en 1524). Publié par J. Rott. 1979 POSTHUMUS MEYJES, G. H. M. Jean Gerson et l’Assemblée de Vincennes (1329). 1978 VIVES, Juan Luis. In Pseudodialecticos. Ed. by Ch. Fantazzi. 1979 BORNERT, R. La Réforme Protestante du Culte à Strasbourg au XVIe siècle (15231598). 1981 SEBASTIAN CASTELLIO. De Arte Dubitandi. Ed. by E. Feist Hirsch. 1981 BUCER, Martin. Opera Latina. Vol I. Publié par C. Augustijn, P. Fraenkel, M. Lienhard. 1982 BÜSSER, F. Wurzeln der Reformation in Zürich. 1985 out of print FARGE, J. K. Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France. 1985 34. BUCER, Martin. Etudes sur les relations de Bucer avec les Pays-Bas. I. Etudes; II. Documents. Par J. V. Pollet. 1985 HELLER, H. The Conquest of Poverty. The Calvinist Revolt in Sixteenth Century France. 1986

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MEERHOFF, K. Rhétorique et poétique au XVIe siècle en France. 1986 GERRITS, G. H. Inter timorem et spem. Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen. 1986 ANGELO POLIZIANO. Lamia. Ed. by A. Wesseling. 1986 BRAW, C. Bücher im Staube. Die Theologie Johann Arndts in ihrem Verhältnis zur Mystik. 1986 BUCER, Martin. Opera Latina. Vol. II. Enarratio in Evangelion Iohannis (1528, 1530, 1536). Publié par I. Backus. 1988 BUCER, Martin. Opera Latina. Vol. III. Martin Bucer and Matthew Parker: Florilegium Patristicum. Edition critique. Publié par P. Fraenkel. 1988 BUCER, Martin. Opera Latina. Vol. IV. Consilium Theologicum Privatim Conscriptum. Publié par P. Fraenkel. 1988 BUCER, Martin. Correspondance. Tome II (1524-1526). Publié par J. Rott. 1989 RASMUSSEN, T. Inimici Ecclesiae. Das ekklesiologische Feindbild in Luthers “Dictata super Psalterium” (1513-1515) im Horizont der theologischen Tradition. 1989 POLLET, J. Julius Pflug et la crise religieuse dans l’Allemagne du XVIe siècle. Essai de synthèse biographique et théologique. 1990 BUBENHEIMER, U. Thomas Müntzer. Herkunft und Bildung. 1989 BAUMAN, C. The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck. Interpretation and Translation of Key Texts. 1991 OBERMAN, H. A. and JAMES, F. A., III (eds.). in cooperation with SAAK, E. L. Via Augustini. Augustine in the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Damasus Trapp. 1991 out of print SEIDEL MENCHI, S. Erasmus als Ketzer. Reformation und Inquisition im Italien des 16. Jahrhunderts. 1993 SCHILLING, H. Religion, Political Culture, and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Essays in German and Dutch History. 1992 DYKEMA, P. A. and OBERMAN, H. A. (eds.). Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. 2nd ed. 1994 53. KRIEGER, Chr. and LIENHARD, M. (eds.). Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe. Actes du colloque de Strasbourg (28-31 août 1991). 1993 SCREECH, M. A. Clément Marot: A Renaissance Poet discovers the World. Lutheranism, Fabrism and Calvinism in the Royal Courts of France and of Navarre and in the Ducal Court of Ferrara. 1994 GOW, A. C. The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200-1600. 1995 BUCER, Martin. Correspondance. Tome III (1527-1529). Publié par Chr. Krieger et J. Rott. 1989 SPIJKER, W. VAN ’T. The Ecclesiastical Offices in the Thought of Martin Bucer. Translated by J. Vriend (text) and L.D. Bierma (notes). 1996 GRAHAM, M.F. The Uses of Reform. ‘Godly Discipline’ and Popular Behavior in Scotland and Beyond, 1560-1610. 1996 AUGUSTIJN, C. Erasmus. Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer. 1996 MCCOOG S J, T. M. The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England 1541-1588. ‘Our Way of Proceeding?’ 1996 FISCHER, N. und KOBELT-GROCH, M. (Hrsg.). Außenseiter zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Festschrift für Hans-Jürgen Goertz zum 60. Geburtstag. 1997 NIEDEN, M. Organum Deitatis. Die Christologie des Thomas de Vio Cajetan. 1997 BAST, R.J. Honor Your Fathers. Catechisms and the Emergence of a Patriarchal Ideology in Germany, 1400-1600. 1997 ROBBINS, K.C. City on the Ocean Sea: La Rochelle, 1530-1650. Urban Society, Religion, and Politics on the French Atlantic Frontier. 1997 BLICKLE, P. From the Communal Reformation to the Revolution of the Common Man. 1998 FELMBERG, B. A. R. Die Ablaßtheorie Kardinal Cajetans (1469-1534). 1998

67. CUNEO, P. F. Art and Politics in Early Modern Germany. Jörg Breu the Elder and the Fashioning of Political Identity, ca. 1475-1536. 1998 68. BRADY, Jr., Th. A. Communities, Politics, and Reformation in Early Modern Europe. 1998 69. McKEE, E. A. The Writings of Katharina Schütz Zell. 1. The Life and Thought of a Sixteenth-Century Reformer. 2. A Critical Edition. 1998 70. BOSTICK, C. V. The Antichrist and the Lollards. Apocalyticism in Late Medieval and Reformation England. 1998 71. BOYLE, M. O’ROURKE. Senses of Touch. Human Dignity and Deformity from Michelangelo to Calvin. 1998 72. TYLER, J.J. Lord of the Sacred City. The Episcopus Exclusus in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. 1999 74. WITT, R.G. ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’. The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni. 2000 77. TAYLOR, L.J. Heresy and Orthodoxy in Sixteenth-Century Paris. François le Picart and the Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation. 1999 78. BUCER, Martin. Briefwechsel/Correspondance. Band IV (Januar-September 1530). Herausgegeben und bearbeitet von R. Friedrich, B. Hamm und A. Puchta. 2000 79. MANETSCH, S.M. Theodore Beza and the Quest for Peace in France, 1572-1598. 2000 80. GODMAN, P. The Saint as Censor. Robert Bellarmine between Inquisition and Index. 2000 81. SCRIBNER, R.W. Religion and Culture in Germany (1400-1800). Ed. L. Roper. 2001 82. KOOI, C. Liberty and Religion. Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572-1620. 2000 83. BUCER, Martin. Opera Latina. Vol. V. Defensio adversus axioma catholicum id est criminationem R.P. Roberti Episcopi Abrincensis (1534). Ed. W.I.P. Hazlett. 2000 84. BOER, W. de. The Conquest of the Soul. Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan. 2001

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