For the social-religious historian the parish would seem an obvious unit of social organisation, and a manageable category for an analysis of society in hierarchies. In a developed Christian society the parish might be expected to be the centre of social as well as strictly religious activity and organisation. In practice the situation in Italy during our period was variable in time and place. Generally the ‘parish’ became a more significant social unit through the period, particularly as and when Catholic reformers made an impact from the sixteenth century; and the parish church physically became more important in the lives of individuals – even if some social activities of a dubious religious nature were barred from the church interior.1
The parish, as we conceive of it now, was not necessarily in the fifteenth century a significant social unit, though it could surprisingly be so in mountainous areas of the Florentine state.2 Often monastic churches, confraternity oratories or local chapels associated with an icon image might have more significance. A shift of loyalty from these other places to the parish church was the concern of leading sixteenth-century church reformers from Gian Matteo Giberti or St Carlo Borromeo onwards, and the extent to which this happened has been of increasing interest to church historians.
Previously there was no unitary concept of the parish, but a number of parochial systems. The modern Catholic concept of the parish is of an ecclesiastical unit, a subdivision of a diocese, based on a church possessing a baptismal font, entrusted to a priest who exercised cure of souls. This system existed by the fifteenth–sixteenth century particularly in central Italy and the south, but was unrecognisable in other areas, notably in the north, and in Puglia. In the north, under Lombard influences, a collegiate system had developed under a larger baptismal district. Baptismal churches called plebes (Latin), pievi (Italian), were the centre of a network of lesser churches or chapels. Priests resided at the pieve mother church (where they preserved exclusive baptismal rights, and often burials rights), and went out from there to serve other churches for certain services and pastoral care, though the subordinate churches and chapels might also have curates. In the cities the Cathedral often retained the sole font, and thus technically was the only parish church, though this did not prevent most inhabitants from paying more attention to closer churches and chapels, with their vicars and curates. By the sixteenth century much of the pieve system had in practice been eroded, as lesser churches in north and central Italy claimed and exercised independence. Fonts or confessors were inconveniently placed in distant Cathedrals or baptismal churches. Relics and cult pictures might encourage loyalty and pride in the neighbourhood church.
In parts of southern Italy another collegiate system for Cathedral chapters and churches, called ricettizie prevailed. This is less well known than the pieve system.3 Likewise a college of clerics exercised the cure of souls collectively and had a common ownership of property but, unlike the pievi, the collegiate bodies were normally recruited from local people, with the bishop having very limited jurisdictional rights. In the later sixteenth century about a third of southern ‘parishes’ were part of the ricettizie system, as high as 70 per cent in Terra d’Otranto.
While Catholic reformers and Tridentine legislators succeeded in further eroding the pieve system, they were less successful with the chiese ricettizie in the light of greater jurisdictional problems. This lessened episcopal-led reform of the church in the south, with implications for the degree of social control over the laity, the diminution of ‘superstitious practices’ and the Christian and moral education of southerners.
The Council of Trent finally (1563) envisaged a uniform parochial system, with manageable-sized parishes with a resident parish priest exercising full cure of souls, who would know all his parishioners. The Tridentine legislation and episcopal supplementation from reformers placed the parish church at the centre of the lay person’s life from infancy to the grave, even if baptism was sometimes conducted elsewhere. The reformers tried to ensure that through parishes the flock should be properly led and controlled. Better-educated priests would be resident, offering public Mass every Sunday and major feast days, with a sermon, homily or improving reading. They would control marriage and funerals, organise religious education of children and the ignorant, enumerate the populace, investigate their moral and economic conditions, help provide assistance for the deserving poor and chastise the major sinners. In practice of course many impediments hampered these plans and ideals.4
Reformers failed to erode the pieve and ricettizie systems entirely, which could produce major jurisdictional problems and impede reform. In practice though, for weekly purposes, dependent churches often came close to being parochial, and we can from the late sixteenth century loosely talk of a parochial society through the peninsula. The ambition of having equal-sized parochial units, with a fairer distribution of funds, largely failed, though there were some successful rationalisations in Rome, Reggio Calabria and Lecce. Over-populated urban parishes could often cope by using a collegiate group of lesser priests and vicars. Under-sized and under-funded rural parishes and pieve were more of a problem, especially if the unit comprised several scattered hamlets through the Tuscan or Bolognese Apennines. Rich resources remained with monastic houses, large Chapters and secular patrons who appointed low-paid vicars, or sent out monks on cheap annual contracts. Some of the deficiencies in the parochial cure of souls were made good by the new Religious Orders – Jesuits, Barnabites, Theatines, Capuchins especially – as well as some old Benedictine, Dominican or Augustinian houses, and confraternities not dependent on the parish.
Despite the problems, the parochial clergy of whatever level came to have greater control of society from the late sixteenth century. The Council ordered parish priests to keep orderly records of baptisms and marriages. Such registers had been recommended by previous church councils, the Justinian Code and pre-Tridentine local reformers, and were sometimes produced. These records were deemed essential because the Church now claimed exclusive powers over the validation of marriages, and sought to control Christian baptism and the role of godparents. Subsequently the Papacy added requirements for the orderly registration of parishioners, and codified the norms in the Roman Ritual of 1614, adding the need for records of deaths, and of the status animarum (state of souls). The status animarum registers were primarily designed to list those old enough to receive communion, those who made the obligatory annual confession and communion (normally at Easter), those who contumaciously did not and those who were barred from receiving communion – because, for example, they were concubinous, or were unrepentant prostitutes. In practice the properly produced status animarum registers tried to record all the population of the parish, including young children. People were listed by households (which might be all in one room or hovel of course, as well as in a palazzo), with ages; a family name, where it existed, occupation and place of origin if not native to the city, might all be added to the Christian name of adults; widowhood, extended family relationship, status as servant or apprentice, or as prostitute, might also be appended. The responsible cleric was expected to provide summary statistics, to be handed on to the bishop or his vicar.5
The fact that these registers became normal by the seventeenth century indicates that the parish was a control centre for society. A sampling of Roman parish-based registers shows that where parish priests and their assistants were assiduous (and standards varied considerably) they could find out quite a lot about their parishioners, and be in a position to control, regulate or advise them. Some were more preoccupied than others about who were prostitutes and who were concubinous (which normally in this period meant a reasonably stable relationship, but not one recognised as a real marriage under Tridentine rules). Some death registers (for example for the Roman parishes of San Sebastiano in the 1560s and Santa Maria in Aquiro in the early 1600s) show that the priests were well aware of illnesses, poverty and misfortune. A register of marriages and baptisms for San Giovanni dei Fiorentini shows that in the 1570s a young priest called Cesare Baronio was assiduous in interrogating couples prior to marriage, testing their Christian knowledge and trying to ensure they would live up to the ideals of Christian marriage. Baronio went on to be a leading Oratorian, Cardinal (with great reluctance) and major church historian; arguably the best Catholic reforming Pope the Church nearly had – he was vetoed by pro-Spanish Cardinals when his historical writing challenged Spanish jurisdictional claims in Sicily.6
The role of the parish priest as registrar of the population, along with his position as the provider of a weekly Mass supposedly for all parishioners, led secular authorities to use the parish priest for various communicative and regulatory purposes; for the communication of edicts and declarations, or for the registering of the poor. This might thus contribute to wider social control.7
The control of marriage is the second major change after Trent that re-emphasised the centrality of the parish.8 Before the Council of Trent the processes of betrothal and marriage were variable: public cohabitation by common consent without benefit of lawyers or clergy; marriages through a notarial contract; or betrothals and marriages conducted in church, with nuptial masses and blessings. After heated debate, especially over clandestine marriages, the Council laid claim to regulate all marriages and to rule on their validity. The church in implementing the claim was producing a social revolution. Despite the allowance of some dispensations, it was reinforcing the central position of parish priest and parish church. All Italian states, in accepting the Trent decrees, accepted this changed position of marriage; though some added rules, such as the need for parental consent for a wedding to be valid in civil law in Piedmont. However, the church had a long battle to educate the populace about the new rules, and to enforce them.
Enforcing the social revolution proved difficult, and levels of success were very variable. Much depended on the quality and enthusiasm of bishops, and whether they secured the co-operation of the secular rulers, or even the Papacy. The quality of episcopal leadership in the 287-odd Italian dioceses was obviously very diverse. Even the best of post-Tridentine reforming bishops were impeded in their task of improving parish leadership by limitations on their appointments. Control over benefices was widely spread, sometimes fiercely contested. Bishops had to compete with continuing papal rights of presentation, with rights and precedents that allowed monastic houses, collegiate churches, military Orders, private families or even local communities to nominate to the parish.9 This last occurrence is best known in the Venetian parishes, where usually in sixty out of the seventy-two parishes householders elected the parish priest (called piovan(o) ). He did not operate alone but headed a parish chapter, with up to eight assistants (titolati) – who were themselves elected by the chapter, not the householders. Even with this supposedly democratic local electoral situation, other pressures operated. For example patrician women, without voting rights as such, ‘patronised’ many Venetian parishes. Community elections of priests can be found elsewhere, as in Pisa where householders (but also institutions) could chose candidates to be approved by the archbishop, in five parishes. The bishop had a right of veto, but could find it difficult to enforce, as in Venetian cases, when the community or patrons proved obstinate. A bishop might secure a proper competition or concorso to find a parish priest; but even when this was considered the norm, he could find himself frustrated by procedures and manoeuvres whereby the incumbent could engineer a chosen successor before resignation.10
The extent to which bishops could directly control parochial appointments (free collation) varied considerably from diocese to diocese, and the overall picture is unclear. By the time Grand Duke Peter Leopold sought to reform his Tuscan state and its church in the eighteenth century it was calculated that Tuscan bishops only had 37 per cent of parishes under free collation. In the Abruzzi diocese of Teramo in the 1590s, reforming bishop Montesanto could only freely appoint to 40 out of 140 benefices; others were under Curial patronage, or that of the feudal families such as the Acquaviva.11
There was no lack of secular clergy; the problem for reformers was securing the right kind in the right places, for the right reasons. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the proportion of clergy (priests or deacons) to the whole adult population increased through most of Italy. The presumed reasons were manifold, and throw interesting light on Italian society and economics. In 1592 Rome the ratio of secular priests per head of population was 1:81, in 1760 1:55; Venice had 1:277 in 1586, and 1:164 in 1642; the diocese of Milan 1:124 in 1766. From southern examples one can cite Reggio Calabria where the ratio was 1:250 in 1595, and 1:144 in 1636. In Naples there were about 1000 priests for about 200,000 people in 1574; by 1706 the figures were 3849 priests for 337,075 residents (1:88). Of course the very high proportion of clergy in Rome was uniquely conditioned by the needs of the clerical bureaucracy running the central institutions of the whole Catholic Church, and of the Papal State; and the palazzi of the Cardinals included a fair number of men in orders, hoping they were on a beneficial career path. Various studies suggest that in general the increase of those in both minor and major orders was most extensive in the south. Lombardy at times slowed its increase, partly because of the effects of war – both through male casualties, and the alternative careers in various armies.
Some increases can be taken as genuinely vocational as existing reformers stimulated others, and as seminaries or colleges run by Orders like the Jesuits offered educational opportunities to young boys, and then oriented some of them to the lay priesthood. Economic pressures also encouraged an increase. Economic stagnation or depression in town or country pushed some sons to seek careers in or through the church; patricians aimed at canonries and sees, while peasants sought a minor role as a mass priest. The clerical state offered fiscal advantages. As Alessandro Bicchi, bishop of Isola and papal nuncio in Naples, wrote to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1630 there were too many who ‘did not wish to be ordained, except for exemptions from tax burdens’.12 Family strategies – at all levels of society – to avoid the splintering of property (owned, leased or share-cropped) pushed males into the celibacy of the lay clerical state or the monastery, just as girls were encouraged or forced into nunneries.
The ratio of the lay clergy increased; but it meant not only more competition (possibly beneficial) for parish positions, but also many low-level clerics eking out meagre livings. What an increasingly Catholicised population wanted was more masses for departed souls and more splendid funerals; so they paid for clergy who would say those masses and accompany funerals. This was not necessarily beneficial for services for the living; nor for adequate incomes for those chaplains who failed to secure the more lucrative benefices. Some priests did prefer to be ‘mass priests’ because they could earn more than in poorly funded parishes. By the later sixteenth century in the Siena diocese it was not uncommon for testators, male and female, to require a 1000 masses to be said soon after their death. In some cases this involved elaborate sung masses on special days; and the clergy there did not offer discount rates for such a large order.13
Inadequate fixed parochial incomes could mean a reliance on parishioners’ goodwill – which might undermine the priest’s authority and discipline; or on strong-arm tactics to secure extra incomes, causing fear and opposition; or on the pursuit of more lucrative incomes from private masses. There was also a resort to outside jobs, whether accepted occupations like school-mastering, or other less compatible economic enterprises. In Pisa in the 1630s only ten out of forty-three parish priests lived off the parochial income or an allocated salary, and in only two cases was this substantial. The rest relied on incomes from other benefices without cure. Paduan Visitation records from 1560 to 1594 show incumbents cultivating the fields or acting as businessmen. In the 1570s the parish priest of San Pantalon in Venice worked as a merchant on the Rialto. In southern Italy there were complaints that priests acted as merchants, especially in the olive-oil trade, to the detriment of pastoral care. Some were licensed to earn by bishops and vicars general who recognised the inadequacy of the parochial incomes. One could of course argue that such priests might have a closer understanding of their parishioners’ daily needs; but generally the supposition is that this situation diminished services, religious and social, for the lay community.14 So by the eighteenth century Italian society had an over-abundance of proletarian clergy – of limited dedication and of dubious morality, seen by enlightened reformers as a major drain on the economy whether as unproductive labour or tax-dodgers.
A key ambition at Trent and of later episcopal reformers like Carlo and Federico Borromeo (Lombardy), Gabriele Paleotti (Bologna) and Paolo Burali (Piacenza) was to ensure properly trained parish priests, who would subsequently be better watched and instructed, in order to lead and teach their flock. The ideal was to create priests dedicated to the cure of souls, to be pastors as well as administrators. It envisaged the institution of a seminary in every diocese (where there was no better institution such as a university or college training potential clergy), to train suitable ordinands. The seminary has been seen as one of the major achievements of the Council of Trent, but disappointments and limitations were soon evident. Lack of leadership, money and cooperation from richer diocesan institutions, and jurisdictional tussles, all impeded the establishment and maintenance of seminaries. By about 1630 and the end of the first wave of reform activity – and before war and economic setbacks increased the problems – only about a third of dioceses had established seminaries; the eighteenth century saw another spurt of foundations. Certain areas like Umbria, Lombardy, the archdioceses of Ravenna and Reggio Calabria were soon reasonably well served by seminaries – though that in Reggio was destroyed in the Turkish raid of 1594. Tuscany and the Roman provincial and suburbican dioceses were slow to provide seminaries. The situation in the south generally improved from the 1580s. The size and quality of the seminaries varied considerably – from the very elementary (for about 12 boys/youths starting at age 12) to those of university standard by the end of the course, as in Milan, Perugia or Santa Severina, where philosophy, classical rhetoric, Latin, Greek, music and law were added to higher-level theology courses. It should be noted that seminaries might take in fee-paying pupils using the institution for a secondary education, without intending becoming priests.15
The efficacy of such seminary training for those about to serve in ordinary parishes can be doubted.16 Seminarians reaching high educational levels might be far removed from their flock, adding to tensions between elite and popular culture. If a seminary functioned properly as recommended by the Theatine archbishop Burali, taking boys aged 12 into strictly disciplined monastic boarding schools, then the product might be hardly fitted to deal with the wider community of parishioners, family life and broad socio-religious attitudes. If they were not properly supervised the seminaries might contribute to troubles – as was argued by Archbishop D.G. Caracciolo in the early seventeenth century in complaining of his Bari clergy:
with little spirituality, badly disciplined and without letters, which instead of pursuing the path of virtue heads for that of vices; whence is maintained a seminary of persons, delinquent and totally contrary to the clerical profession, from which derives the unquiet and scandalous life of the city.
Faenza’s bishops argued that a record of good conduct and frequency at the sacraments were better preparations for parish service than formal education.17
We know too little about most clergy and their background. Most parish priests until the late eighteenth century at least were not seminarians, but trained by the local parish clergy, learning on the job through minor orders, receiving additional education from local grammar masters and canons giving theological teaching in Cathedral or collegiate churches and monasteries – as has been clearly shown for the Novara diocese. There were also the schools and colleges run by the Orders, notably by the Jesuits, and the universities – though these last were, in Italy, not particularly suitable for training parish priests or theologians as opposed to lawyers. The rigour – or otherwise – of testing suitability for the priesthood and a parish appointment, is little known. However, G. Pelliccia’s major study of Roman ordinations after Trent suggested that procedures were improved, and that the quality of ordinands rose, thanks to seminaries, colleges and the work of Jesuits generally.18
The background of priests is usually hazy. Most Venetian parish priests came from the city and the Veneto, and were of the middling sort likely to be in harmony with the effective electors from the parish, and not always to the liking of the Patriarch; especially when a parish insisted on electing (and re-electing after patriarchal veto) the son of the previous incumbent. Novara, though not subject to the same local electoral system, similarly recruited priests locally in the early seventeenth century: about 90 per cent were natives of the diocese, and from reasonably wealthy families. Elsewhere visitation and other records suggest that lesser clerics and priests moved about, and that cures were not filled by local men, unless they were the southern chiese ricettizie, or attached to richer collegiate churches, or when the patronage system for local influential families might operate, as in Pisa or parts of the diocese of Trent.
After Trent the parish priest was not left alone to carry the burden of educating his flock, or ensuring its spiritual and social well-being. Under all but the most negligent bishops and vicars general he was likely to be assaulted by instructions, recommendations and investigations – even if he could ignore some with impunity. Bishops and apostolic Visitors reminded the clergy to have and use copies of the Tridentine decrees, and a catechism to help them teach the basics of Christian belief and instruction. Reformers like Carlo Borromeo, Paleotti and Panigarola bombarded their clergy with instructions, commentaries, homilies and letters – some of which helped them deal with parishioners. The calling of a diocesan synod might lead parish priests to meet their bishop, vicars general and other priests, or at least would involve telling a vicar general about parochial problems, with a view to formulating new legislation and instructions.19
The parish was expected to establish a library of usable books. Bishops and apostolic Visitors were known to check on library resources. Our knowledge of actual libraries before the late eighteenth century is limited. In the Rimini diocese in the 1570s and 1580s more than half the urban parishes definitely had a collection of books – from 22 to 225 in number. Monastic and conventual libraries served rural priests. What was read and used may have been very different, but facilities and opportunities for wide reading and well-founded instruction existed. The post- Tridentine production of missals, breviaries, catechisms and calendars should have led to a better performance of church ceremonies and instruction of parishioners than before. The standard of literacy seems to have improved, and priests were under more pressure to perform properly.
The moral position of many clergy remained subject to criticism, and anti-clerical critics past and present have fun with the sexual sins of parish priests and curates. Bishops and vicars general lamented the defects of the clergy as they toured around on their Visitations, noting the absentees, the concubinous and the sodomitic. But it is worth reflecting on the problems of ‘the poor parish priest’, giving ‘poor’ its economic and its emotive meanings. Poverty could be found in rich cities, but the priest serving a remoter parish, or part of a pieve or collegiate system, was likely to have a much more difficult time economically and socially. Loneliness and isolation was the lot for many, made worse by any strict application of reforming zeal.
The Church as part of an eleventh-century ‘renaissance’ or reform had insisted on clerical celibacy; an ideal that took, and in Rome still takes, little account of natural worldly instincts and temptations. Vows of poverty and chastity were and are an ideal that can bring their own satisfaction in this world as well as in contemplation of the hereafter. But many, male and female, took such vows, or put themselves on the path to such vows, at an early age, before puberty or full sexual awareness, and often before any full experience of the adult world and sexuality. Many males through the middle ages sought education, advancement, even survival, through a clerical career, without the prospect of marriage. For long after the official Roman call for celibacy, the injunction might be ignored. Well-established clergy might have liaisons, and bastards – including Cardinals who might become Pope like Alexander VI (1492–1503). Lower clergy might have house-keeper companions, mothering priest and children, with little local opposition, even with local acclaim, since an active heterosexual priest was more likely to understand the problems of lay families and female penitents – and less likely to molest either them or vulnerable male youths.
The imposition of reform measures in the sixteenth century created as many problems as it solved. The cost, human and social, of a better-educated clergy could be high. A new parish priest educated through seminaries or colleges run by the religious orders, was de-racinated, and educated beyond his station if sent back into a rural or poor urban parish. His removal from family life, and female society, at an early age was likely to affect his relations with lay families once given cure of souls. If well educated, even just literate, he might be placed well above the level of education of virtually all his parishioners and so intellectually isolated. Archbishops and vicars in the Bologna archdiocese recognised the physical and intellectual isolation of priests in remoter parishes, with some understanding.20 Pievanal priests, and collegiate clergy sent out from monasteries that controlled parishes, might have no roots in a parish (though some friendship through a central collegiate congregation). Confessors were peripatetic and lonely – and so subject to temptation, and vulnerable to the charge of ‘solicitation’. The only access to comforting female society might be through the confessional; and if that situation was the only opportunity for a frustrated spinster, or more likely an unhappily married woman, to discuss intimate matters (as confessional manuals suggested), there might be sinful encouragement for the priest from the other side.
There were dangers and temptations for the celibate priest. Encouraged to fear and avoid close relations with women, he might readily succumb to the temptations of boys whom he would more commonly encounter. Temptations would be there in the sacristy. A priest out in the world with a young boy as ‘page’ was a more likely sight than a priest with a female escort. Bologna records detail the lengthy investigation of Francesco Finetti, a priest originally from Milan, seemingly lonely, without an established abode, who was accused of ‘picking up’ a ten-year-old boy begging outside a college, taking him off to a rented room next to an inn, providing the boy, Antonio Grain (German in origin, but arriving as an orphan from Siena), with food and drink and of sodomising him numerous times over four to five days.21 A lonely priest, without domestic support, might be tempted to eat, drink and have company in a tavern or inn, even just to keep warm at others’ expense; there to be tempted by free women, or simply have the accusation of impropriety thrown against him, if other behaviour offended a neighbour. A priest seen visiting a woman after dark might readily find the sbirri banging at the door; it being dubious whether, as in the case of Juliano Ruggeri, because he was genuinely reported as lecherous, or because he was an innocent framed by nuns in contention with the widow he was helping.22 Whatever the protestations of innocence coming from Finetti and Ruggieri, it is tempting to assume they were guilty when we do not know the outcome. Even if, as Finetti repeated, sbirri were notoriously corrupt and malicious, the circumstances were compromising, and in the case of the accusing Antonio, the accuser held to his charges under torture. Priests were vulnerable to temptations, and open to false charges – as probably with the piovano of S.Simone, Venice in 1594, when a husband, jealous of his young bride’s confession sessions, made her denounce the priest to the Patriarch’s court for having repeated sexual relations with her. She later withdrew the charges (fearing her own seclusion as an adulteress in the Casa del Soccorso, a house for vulnerable women), and the priest was publicly exonerated, having had other parishioners testify to his goodness.23
A fully established and resident priest might laxly fit into local society. As pre- Trent, his parishioners might encourage him to have an accommodating housekeeper – not a sister or an elderly widow – and might not inform Visitors of the concubinous relationship. The diplomatic priest, with the tactful ‘housekeeper’, could provide mutually suitable – if ‘immoral’ – pastoral care. But as work on the Sienese diocese has shown, the situation was very vulnerable if the priest were too intent on family and household, or the compagna was too domineering and influential and flaunted her position.24 If, as happened in a Venetian urban parish, the friendly local (voting) householders, wanted the son of the parish priest to succeed, it might occasion the wrath of the Ordinary.25 Ordinaries did not want priests to be too close to parishioners; it would be bad for discipline and authority. But then the isolated moral priest might not understand family problems or command respect. This might not worry the godly elite or superior clergy, who could indulge their own social life in many different, moral and immoral, satisfying ways. Not only the morally weak were vulnerable; so was a highly dedicated parish priest, and licensed confessor. Intent on dealing with faithful laity, tertiaries and professed nuns, he might find himself enthralled by the sanctity of a woman, and then be accused of fostering her ‘false sanctity’, as those involved with Angela Mellini of Bologna found in the 1690s. This poor seamstress, who was able to write a diary, had ecstatic religious experiences with visions of Christ: ‘my Jesus exposed my breast and opened my ribs and took my heart and in place of it he put all the instruments of the sacred passion’. Eventually she was treated as a spiritual mother and confessor by one admiring priest – which was too much for higher authority, who charged her with ‘affected sanctity’. She was released after penances, and the most affected priest sent away from Bologna – for discussing problems of his own chastity with a woman.26
Some reformers showed compassion for loneliness and poverty of existence and opportunities. They sought to remedy the economic problems, to make serving the clergy and the flock easier, and ultimately (in this world at least), more beneficial for the laity as well. I have stressed the moral problems of the priest in a reforming Catholic society, as an often misunderstood and under-estimated aspect of relations between local society and the church.
The parish church, like other churches – collegiate, monastic, confraternal – served numerous social as well as religious purposes. It became busier and more important for narrower religious reasons, and less important for the fringe social purposes. A largish church (including porticoes, cloisters and frontal squares) had often the one available public space in a village: as neutral ground for business negotiations, for arranging betrothals and dowries, for secret trysts of lovers, for settling disputes and making peace, for entertainment. Some of the problems and tensions can be deduced from a surviving diary of a parish priest, Giorgio Franchi, at Berceto near Parma in the 1550s. It was a troublesome time. He reported the church and its sacristy in use for local representative assemblies, as a meeting place for soldiers and as an arena for legal and illegal disputes. Some remedies were sought, and he reported some brutal public punishments for those profaning the church, especially in cursing and swearing. But he revealed that he shared some varied superstitious beliefs with his parishioners.27 Once reformers acted in the sixteenth century there were pressures to eliminate or reduce the more secular uses of the church and sacred space, and instead to have the churches better used for sermons, religious instruction, more major Masses, funerals and weddings.28
By Tridentine norms and by more consistent practice – as judged by Visitation reports – on Sundays and major feasts there would be a parochial Mass, with a sermon, or at least a reading from an improving spiritual work. Increasingly parishioners were encouraged (by religious orders and confraternities, if not their parish priest) to confess and communicate more than the stipulated once a year – which meant more often making peace with the community and individuals, as well as with conscience, confessor and Maker.29 Baptisms and marriages were to be more a parish church event, with fewer extraneous ceremonies and celebrations.
Baptism as a rite in the parish or pieve church was probably more standard than rites of matrimony or death before the Catholic reforms. Baptism was increasingly stressed as a prerequisite for salvation, which affected attitudes and procedures over dying or dead babies. As before, Trent allowed for an adult (usually the midwife) to baptise a baby whose life was in danger; but there were pressures to reduce abuses of such procedures, and discount claims (in northern Italy) of temporary ‘resurrection’ of a moribund baby while it was baptised. All abnormal, non-church, baptisms had to be registered with the parish priest as well. Limited studies of baptismal registers indicate that they were fairly uniformly kept; they often omitted the still-born, those dying soon after birth, and in some cases illegitimate births (as in Lucania [now Basilicata] until 1765) – though elsewhere the formula ‘ex damnato coitu’ is sometimes used for those obviously conceived out of wedlock. The number of registered god-parents was reduced after Trent. This had various social implications. Creating a network of god-parent relationships could be important as part of family strategies for political and social power, as has been noted for fifteenth-century Florentine patrician families. At lower social levels in remoter communities even a limited godparent system created spiritual affinities that then impeded the choice of marriage partners, unless dispensations were obtained.30
Betrothal and wedding were the major planned aspects of family life, hedged around with economic and socio-political considerations. In the early part of our period the church’s involvement could be negligible, but the Council of Trent sought to standardise procedures on betrothal and the marriage sacrament. This was an attempt at major social change that involved much campaigning and conflict. The issue of marriage appears to be the single most repeated topic in the post-Tridentine synodal legislation, pastoral letter writing and probably in homilies or sermons.
Before Trent, priests and the church might play little or no role in the marital process. In Perugia in 1487 a professor of civil law, Baldo Baldini, performed the words of marriage in a private house, for the much celebrated patrician wedding of Vincenzo Baldeschi and Richabella Arcipreti; it involved a horse-drawn carriage, lavishly decorated, followed by a feast in the square, with a wooded scene constructed, with nymphs, singing and recitations.31 Florentine diaries might stress a betrothal (promises de futuro) negotiated in church – a neutral public place – where relatives and lawyers negotiating dowries were more prominent than the affiancing couple; later, leading the bride to her new home and bedding her would be more noted than any marital promises (de presenti) or priestly blessings.
In Florence and other areas the ring-giving ceremony between the couple was often the key social ritual. Priests played little part in patrician marriages, though they may have been more used, as witnesses rather than blessers, for marriages of artisans and contadini. The Church’s main role might have been to grant dispensations to allow marriages within the normally prohibited bands of consanguinity and affinity. The path to a fully negotiated marriage might be multi-staged, lengthy and confused. As the 1517 Florence synod admitted: there were many ‘ignorant people who fail to understand the force of the words they speak; often thinking they are becoming engaged, they speak the words of marriage’. Marco Antonio Altieri (1450–1532), a Roman noble, in his Li Nuptiali (written c. 1506–13) outlined the procedures and customs supposedly practised by better-off contemporary Romans, or ones he wanted them to use in his campaign against social decadence and money-grubbing in Rome. The church was often a location for encounters and agreements, but not for elaborate ceremonial. The final stage – up to a year after betrothal and notarised agreement – was escorting the bride to church to meet the groom, hear Mass inside, be blessed by a priest – accompanied by much noise, jollity and irreligious ceremonies with bread, wine and water performed by the entourage; and the couple were then escorted to the marital home, and bedded. In other parts of Italy formal ceremonies were diverse. In Bologna up to the sixteenth century marriages were celebrated before witnesses, with or without a notary; only later was a church blessing sought, if at all. For many couples public cohabitation was deemed sufficient without a Mass or blessing. Though church-announced banns were required by the 1216 Lateran Council, and by local councils and synods (as in Florence in 1517), there is little evidence of their use before Trent.32
Trent sought exclusive control over the sacrament of marriage, laying down norms of procedure to create validity.33 Since matrimony was deemed to be a sacrament performed by the couple themselves, a couple freely making promises in the present (de presenti) could create a marriage valid in the eyes of God, and therefore preventing any other marriage while one of them lived. But if the Tridentine rules were not followed, the marriage was illegal in the eyes of the church; the couple were to be separated, and possibly punished, unless and until they completed church marriage procedures in due form. The Church wanted the marital sacrament publicly recognised and validated in church – normally the local parish church – and blessed by a priest. It also wanted solemnity within the church, and public jollity elsewhere – seemly and without excessive expense.
Priests repeat endlessly the rules about no clandestine marriages. Public banns were required as well as a church ceremony before at least two witnesses and the parish priest (though he need not consent or fully participate). Couples were not to cohabit before the final blessing – if, because of Advent or Lent, such a blessing had to be separated from the marital promises. Opposition, and the weight of local custom, was considerable. Guidance was very necessary and was provided by leading reformers. Bishop G. Paleotti of Bologna in 1577 provided an oft-printed guide for use by his parish priests. He stressed the desirability of parental consent (though not its necessity under church law), that the couple should at least know the Our Father, the Ave Maria and the Ten Commandments. The wedding was to consist of the Mass, the blessing of the ring, a sermon and the linking of the couple under a veil. This might be followed by the final blessing on the marriage before leaving the church; or it could be a separate ceremony; or not be given at all for a second marriage. Paleotti provided 24 sermons of various lengths and styles to be used by the priest as appropriate. Unlike Carlo Borromeo, for example, Paleotti was less inclined to treat marriage as an inferior state to celibacy, and there was less emphasis on marriage being a remedy against sin and fornication. Paleotti also provided an exhortation to be delivered to the bride and female attendants for seemly and unostentatious dressing, with warnings against dance music being played to and from the church, against ‘ridiculous spectacles’ in the streets and against excessive feasting – though he did not wish to prohibit nuptial hilarity. Borromeo stressed the importance of a good Christian marriage for the moral upbringing of children and preventing social disorder.34
The parish priest’s presence was required when promises were made, but not his consent. The Congregation of the Council (the arbiter for the Pope of queries about Tridentine rules) in 1581 ruled that a marriage was still valid even if the priest was under some compulsion to be present, provided there were two other witnesses. Events in Alessandro Manzoni’s great nineteenth-century historical novel The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi) about seventeenth-century Lombardy are triggered by a loving couple’s attempt (unsuccessful) to trick the very unwilling parish priest to hear them make promises before two witnesses. Don Abbondio threw a tablecloth over Lucia before she completed saying ‘and this is my husband’. This novel, based on historical records, provides valuable insights into many aspects of seventeenth-century Lombard society, including under plague conditions, and into the pressures of ‘feudal’ society. Baronial threats, including using bravi, against the priest and the couple’s marital hopes in the novel were probably realistic. In the eighteenth century Pope Benedict XIV indicated that ploys to evade priestly opposition to marriages were a serious menace.35
The most intimate involvement between parishioner and parish priest or curate should have been through confession. The elites might have their own specialist confessors, and richer urban parishes employed special licensed confessors, but the majority probably confessed to the local priest. In the fifteenth century Archbishop Antonino of Florence, Fra Savonarola and some lay fraternities advocated that the laity confess more frequently than the obligatory annual Easter confession. In the Catholic reform period enthusiastic bishops like Agostino Valier of Verona, religious Orders like the Jesuits, lay confraternities and writers like Buonsignore Cacciaguerra added their advocacy. Pressures built up to make confession more searching and private; though the introduction of partitions and then the confessional box into churches (especially advocated by Carlo Borromeo to give a degree of anonymity for the penitent, and physical protection for women) seems to have been a rather slow process. Priests were provided with ever more sophisticated manuals for effective confession, designed to produce a more moral and socially aware society. Borromeo was anxious that the examination should be rigorous; though Bartolomeo Fumo in his Summa (1554) had argued that the confessor should not interrogate, but encourage the penitent to confess voluntarily; also (possibly aware of disharmonious social consequences) that confessors should not seek specific details when the penitent’s sins concerned others. The Roman Ritual of 1614 and archbishops of Naples warned against inciting people to sin through excessively detailed quizzing. Resentment did surface in Italy against inquisitive confession sessions, as from some Venetian Arsenal workers in 1562 (possibly being quizzed about heterodox views), who argued that confession should only be to God. Known complaints against priests, and general episcopal warnings, suggest that intimacy was a worry and danger in other senses – especially in the fondling of young women by confessors.36
Under reform campaigns the parochial communal Mass was meant to become more important, and the Eucharist better venerated. A main Mass on Sunday and major feast days, with a sermon and with the Host well displayed, was intended to be central to the life of the community. Reformers sought to ensure that churches were better kept and furnished, and that space was cleared (by removing intrusive tombs, screens or altars) for a major congregation to hear sermons within the church, and see the celebration of the Mass at the high altar. However, certain factors impeded the regular masses from become a significant religious-social event. No dramatic liturgical reform produced active congregational participation, through singing or vocal prayer. Seating was limited. Many services must have been badly performed, little comprehended by an inattentive audience which wandered about making social contacts. Attempts were made – and carried out with varying enthusiasm according to visitation reports – to segregate men and women to avoid distractions, and to remove intrusive beggars seeking alms.37
However, the Italian Tridentine church succeeded in emphasising the Eucharist, and providing some dramatic Masses for special occasions. Increasing numbers of Sacrament and other confraternities assisted the priest in ensuring better respect for the Eucharist, protecting the sacramental bread and having the Host on display in chapels lit by oil lamps and candles. They accompanied the priest when taking the Host and holy oil to the sick. Church architecture, furnishings and decoration added to the sense of display. The Host as symbol and magic had widespread appeal – to be used and abused in the community for healing purposes. Celebrations of the Mass were impressive and commanded attention when conducted in well-run Cathedrals and Chapters, in Jesuit churches, in some parish churches and confraternities’ oratories. This was particularly so for major feast days, notably for Easter and Corpus Christi, and local patronal feast days; churches were elaborately decorated with hangings, with branches and flowers. Spectacular parades wound through the streets and around the whole church, with confraternity members dressed in their special robes, carrying painted banners or movable altar-paintings and torches, sometimes with musical instruments to accompany singing.
Also notable from the later sixteenth century onwards, were the Forty-Hour (Quarantore) celebrations, when the Host was on display either continuously for forty hours including through the night, or for successive periods of daylight and early evening. Elaborate instructive scenic effects behind and around the altar emphasised the importance of Christ’s sacrifice and the symbol of the Host. Further effects were created by numerous candles and reflective mirrors. Confraternities and members of religious Orders organised successive processions of parishioners (usually segregating male and female) to parade into the church and special chapel, to pray, hear a short sermon, admire and depart. Though infrequent, such occasions had social significance for the organisers – especially lay confraternity members – and beneficially reinforced through the sense of spectacle some church teachings.38
Religious and social life could be enlivened by various kinds of very elaborate festival celebrations, especially in the large cities. These ranged from the scurrilous and lewd Carnival celebrations in the lead-up to Lent, to performances of religious plays, processions with carts carrying scenic tableaux, elaborate processions of relics involving numerous confraternities, Orders, musical groups and refreshments of wine and food. While attempts were made to curb the secular excesses of Carnival in the mid sixteenth century, from the mid seventeenth century onwards Rome and Venice in particular were notable for Carnival activities to attract touring foreigners as well as locals. Religious plays and tableaux were well known in Tuscany and Umbria up to the sixteenth century, most famously in Florence – with Epiphany plays put on by the fraternal Company of the Magi in which members of the Medici family played roles. Rome had its Mysteries of the Passion with elaborate scenery and machinery on Good Friday in the Colosseum. Puritanical reforming authorities sought to ban or discourage religious play-acting – with some effect. But elaborate processions with costly scenery, costumed (if silent) human representations of biblical characters and saints, huge statues of saints, etc. took place intermittently through our period, as with the Holy Thursday Carro di Battaglino procession in Naples.39
Social excesses, in the eyes and minds of purists, were a natural accompaniment of ‘religious’ festivals great and small. Authorities tried to restrict churches themselves to proper religious practices, eliminating feasting, drinking, dancing, trading and the like as far as possible. They also, as the Bishop of Tropea warned Rome in 1620, had to curb the use of churches as refuges and sanctuary for bandits and other criminals. The struggle against church feasting and dancing was long running; through the seventeenth century Piedmontese bishops complained of the Youth Abbeys that continued to organise such celebrations; and the Bologna synod of 1698 was still condemning dancing in the churches. Eating and drinking as part of Vigils were regularly frowned upon or banned (theoretically), along with the excessive noises made to drive away evil spirits, especially early in the morning through Holy Week, and during the very vulnerable hours of Holy Saturday. The celebration of John the Baptist’s day – and the vigil before (23–24 June) – had long been recognised as a popular festival, welcomed or feared for its licentiousness: involving the collection and study of special herbs for therapeutic and prognostic purposes (for love and future spouses), bell-ringing through the night and ritual bathing for purification and renewal. Southern Italy had similar activities at Christmas as well. Such activities persisted through to the eighteenth century and beyond, with apparently some pale reflections in the present.40
Feast days, as condemned by puritanical reformers, sound an enjoyable relief for many city and rural dwellers from drudgery and meagre living. But there were economic disadvantages as well, if feast days were multiplied. The increase in days of obligation, requiring church attendance, also meant abstinence from work. Those working for a landlord might find that most working days were committed to his farm, leaving no time legally to work for themselves. The number of days involved varied considerably from place to place, depending on the relevant calendar of saints, and the extent of episcopal insistence on abstinence. In rural Castel del Piano in Sienese territory for very nearly a third of the year peasants were not supposed to work. In nearby Santa Fiora, a more artisan area, there were meant to be ninety days of rest; here the threat of trouble might have encouraged church authorities to licence work on certain lesser feast days. Much depended on the extent of supervision and enforcement, but clearly the excess of feasts occasioned protests against priests and landlords – as shown in the 1560s in certain Venetian heresy trials. So some bishops periodically pruned the calendar of days of obligation, and/or granted licences for individuals to work on their own holdings on the lesser feast days without punishment.41
Sixteenth-century reformers wanted more parochial control over the dying and dead. While Trent wanted a priest involved in the burial process – and abolished funerals conducted by laymen only (as had been common in Tuscany and Piedmont) – the officiating priest was by no means necessarily the parish priest, or the chief organiser. He was in competition with both religious Orders and confraternities. The ideal of a funeral involving all three contingents in a large processional display risked unseemly rivalries over precedence and overall control. It helped if confraternities were based in the parish church, and/or if the parish priest was the normal priest for confraternities involved in accompanying the dead to burial, whether confraternity members or parishioners. A common task of the active parish priest was taking the sacrament to the sick and dying, accompanied in many cases by members of confraternities carrying candles and crosses to provide a seemly procession.42
Funerals and memorialisation probably became more elaborate and costly for the wealthier families through our period. They were aided and abetted by confraternities, whether based in the parish church or in separate chapels and churches; whether part of the general remit of a Sacrament fraternity or the prime speciality of a Company of Death (Della Morte). For the more famous deceased, churches and chapels might be festooned with black drapes, with elaborate catafalques, with scenic displays commissioned from good artists. Lengthy processions involved priests, members of Orders and confraternities, with the poor paid to swell the ranks to render respect and assist the powers of prayer for the departed soul. The funeral of a leading citizen or cleric became a major social occasion. From the sixteenth century certain fraternities were also ready to ensure that the known poor and even abandoned bodies lying in streets and fields should receive a decent burial.
All the major rites of passage had been accompanied by unorthodox rituals and abuses that church leaders eventually sought to curb through episcopal legislation. It is impossible to know the extent of the practices condemned. Constant reiteration suggests an inability to eradicate abuse (though some bishops just copied attacks from their predecessors). Nineteenth-century anthropological studies confirmed some practices. Inquisition records also help confirm the abuse of sacraments and sacramentals as part of magical practices, the appropriation of blessed wafers and oil and the use of baptismally blessed umbilical cords, talismans, magical writings and playing cards (for gambling luck). Efforts were made to prevent the consummation of a marriage between betrothal and a final church wedding, or delaying it too long after for superstitious reasons; ‘on the pretext of avoiding witchcraft which will impede copulation’, as the synod of Rimini said in 1624. Death rituals also were difficult to control, such as eating and drinking in the presence of the dead, or excessive wailing and groaning in mourning (especially if this involved paid performers), and the particularly southern custom of wives and mothers cutting off their hair and placing it in the grave.
For priests and bishops it was difficult getting the balance right between strict religious dedication and customary lax behaviour, between perceived religious requirements for the salvation of souls and the economic requirements of the body (not to mention the temptations of the flesh). Many seem to have ignored the stricter dictates of the rule books, compromising in order to secure some church attendance and observance from the average parishioners. Godly archbishops like Carlo Borromeo or Burali might fulminate against old ‘pagan’ practices and demand instant results, but tactful education to create a more godly society was the safer path for the parish priests and curates.
The early modern period witnessed an expansion in the religious and social instruction offered to the average parishioner, especially in urban areas, and in the north and central zones of Italy. The instruction came from more regular sermons and homilies, from schools of Christian Doctrine, from schools run by the Orders, or from secular masters who were increasingly subject to some kind of clerical supervision and pressurised to include religious and moral education even if they were specialists in the classics or the abacus. The expansion and cheapening of printing in the sixteenth century assisted the instructional campaigns of religious reformers.43
Instruction from the pulpit was supposed to be more regular, and probably was. Up to the sixteenth century, sermons from parish priests or even bishops were infrequent. Irregular, but possibly spectacular, sermons were preached by specialist preachers from the Orders, with sermon series in Lent, and sometimes Advent, often organised and paid for by civic authorities and held before huge crowds in the main squares. In the fifteenth century, star preachers like San Bernardino of Siena, Savonarola or Bernardino da Feltre had a wide impact as they attacked the social ills of usury, greed, pornography and sodomy. The two Bernardinos also attacked Jewish money-lenders and stimulated anti-semitism. Bernardino da Feltre’s onslaught, however, helped launch Christian pawn-broking institutions, the Monti di Pietà, to assist the poor. Such dramatic preaching continued through the next centuries, with the Jesuits and the Capuchins becoming the star performers, conducting major missions to Christianise remoter rural areas (the Indies of Italy), or the slum parishes of great cities like Naples or Genoa. The Capuchins were leading practitioners of dramatic and scenographic preaching, armed with large crucifixes, images of the Madonna and other props. Sermon cycles remained ecclesiastical highlights of the year.44
From the mid sixteenth century there was more mundane preaching and instruction on Sundays and major feast days as enjoined by Trent. Priests risked losing their benefices if they did not preach regularly. If incapable of composing their own they could read from sermon collections, or read out from improving books sanctioned by the local bishop, such as Landolfo’s Life of Christ in the Cesena diocese. Carlo Borromeo’s Milan seminary paid special attention to training pupils how to preach, and Federico Borromeo continued this emphasis. Archbishop S. Gesualdo at the Conza synod of 1597 stressed that preachers should teach clearly, offer nothing disapproved of by the Church, not narrate from the Apocryphal biblical writings or miracles not approved by recognised church writers, and not tell inappropriate, ridiculous, useless, fruitless tales. The parish priests were also required to read out instructions and homilies from bishops and vicars general and to reiterate major Tridentine rules – as about marriage or paying tithes; they might also be message-bearers for local civilian authorities.45
Religious education increased through various kinds of catechism or Christian Doctrine schools, with some knock-on effects on general literacy and education. The idea developed that on Sundays and major feast days children – and later sometimes adults found to be defective in basic Christian knowledge when they proposed to get married – should be taught the rudiments of the faith and morals. From 1417 some Bologna churches had such feast-day schools, and from 1433 there was a confraternity to develop such teaching. From the 1530s Castellino da Castello and others launched a similar movement in Milan, leading to the creation of the Company of Christian Doctrine, which soon had offshoots in other cities. This partly influenced the 1563 Tridentine decree that parish priests should organise the teaching of Christian doctrine to children on Sundays and other feast days. Some priests operated alone; others were assisted by lay men and women, who created confraternities both as organising units and to help their own religious life, or by members of Orders.
Such schooling basically involved learning – and ideally understanding – the Creed, Ten Commandments, Our Father and Hail Mary and learning about the sacraments and basic Christian tenets. Teachers were expected to rely on the major catechisms, notably the Roman Catechism. Jesuits treated these catechism schools as also elementary schools for wider learning. Confraternities of Christian Doctrine in their schools in key areas such as Rome, Venice, Turin, Milan, Como and other Lombard places taught reading; a few also taught writing. Those in Rome and Bologna, where different levels of classes were organised in certain parts of the cities, organised disputations and competitions. Prizes were awarded for good conduct, as in Rimini. Various manuals stressed that the schools should be enlivened with singing, processions and competitions. Such were the carrots, to offset the sticks and whips that in some places like Bologna were used to ensure that recalcitrant children attended and behaved while undergoing instruction.
Instruction in Christian Doctrine schools thus could embrace basic Christian doctrinal teachings, and elementary literary skills, but also social and moral teaching, good neighbourliness and the practice of good works. The schooling probably encouraged social conformity and reduced juvenile secular playfulness on feast-days, and benefited general literacy, at least in north-central cities. In such areas also, especially in Rome, schools involved girls equally with boys. This broadened the educational opportunities for females, and took them out of the household into a wider community – which was sometimes resented and feared by more elite families.
The extent of the Christian Doctrine schooling is hard to gauge. Bologna, the archdiocese of Milan and Rome were probably the major success areas; in the 1580s Bologna had about forty different schools with about 600 adults teaching 4000 children; Milan in 1599 claimed to have 20,504 children enrolled in Christian Doctrine schools in the city and neighbouring areas; Rome in 1611–12 claimed seventy-eight schools with 5800 boys and 5090 girls being taught by 529 confraternity brothers and 519 sisters. This, however, may have been near the peak, with a decline in enthusiasm and activity coming from the 1630s, though by the end of the century a whole range of district (rionali) elementary schools – free public or private – catered for girls as well as boys. Rome had benefited from the size and efficiency of the Archconfraternity of Christian Doctrine, backed by the illustrious Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino and his various catechisms. A study of the arch-confraternity archives, however, warns that even in Rome there were considerable problems in maintaining the schools. Many, especially for the girls, changed locations frequently. Children going to the schools might be molested and endangered by the irreligious and immoral. Considerable tensions could exist between the arch-confraternity and local parish priests.46
Religious reform motives enhanced broader education in other ways, and added religious-moral dimensions to secular education. After Trent, attempts were made to ensure that all those who taught in any kind of public schooling should be checked for religious competence and conformity. The survival of records of attestation has allowed Paul Grendler (1989) to provide an invaluable snapshot of the range of schooling and teachers in Venice in 1587. About 4625 pupils were enrolled in formal schools, under 258 teachers, in independent or church schools, whether teaching grammar and the classics, vernacular literature or the abbaco (mathematics, business concerns, etc.). Additionally there were the Venetian catechism schools. The extent to which bishops and vicars throughout Italy did check on the religious and moral dimensions in formal schooling, and accredited teachers is hard to gauge.47
New religious Orders expanded the educational horizons at all levels. In Naples the Jesuits had opened their first school in 1552, and by 1558 claimed to be teaching 300 boys Italian literature, Greek and Latin, with Christian Doctrine on Fridays and Saturdays. The boys were exhorted to confess and communicate regularly – still a dangerous novelty. From 1586 the Oratorians organised public instruction in poorer districts of Naples (the Mercato, Lavinaro and Borgo dei Vergini). In 1626 the Scolopians opened their first Naples school in the Duchessa district, notorious for its prostitutes – and so their offspring. According to José Calasanz (or Calasanzio) they lacked the resources to answer many requests for more such schools. Earlier, Calasanzio and his Scolopians had made their mark in Rome by launching a school for 100 pupils in the poor parish of S.Dorotea in Trastevere, for elementary education and the catechism. When they soon moved to the more central area of S.Andrea della Valle they claimed to have about a 1000 pupils.48
While it is argued that Protestantism fostered literacy more than Catholicism did, current knowledge suggests that in Italy for at least the major cities, and some other parts of north-central dioceses, lay learning and literacy was significantly encouraged. Though the whole Bible was not readily available in Italian (after an adventurous period of publication and dissemination in the first half of the sixteenth century), religious vernacular literature at all levels was plentiful for those who could read at all: catechisms, lives of Christ, the Virgin and Saints, and manuals for religious devotion. A personal approach to religion, rather than just through the parish priest or spiritual adviser, was encouraged by some church leaders. Even the highly dictatorial Carlo Borromeo was not averse to family prayers, and the Barnabites among others encouraged a family domestic approach to religious life. Some confraternities, especially of the Sacrament, the Rosary and Christian Doctrine acted primarily as agents of the parish priest, and might be seen as perpetrators of a narrow authoritarian, unthinking mentality. But other confraternities encouraged a lay independence, vitality and debate.49
This chapter has focused on parochial society, primarily looking at attempts to create a fuller and more uniform parochial society through Catholic Reform. More Italians became better informed about Christian beliefs and values. Bishops attacked and probably curtailed pagan and dubious popular practices attached to Christian rituals. The parish unit was better defined, the parish church a more recognised centre. The parish priest or his vicar was more dominant and effective, as an agent of social control through the parish, or as a facilitator of social amelioration. Where the parochial systems worked well, literacy and educational standards rose, affecting both Christian orthodoxy and more sceptical criticism, as well as the wider uses of secular literacy. Visitation reports suggest that from the later sixteenth century the physical conditions of churches and chapels, and their accoutrements, improved, and the churches were more fit places for worship. This was probably best when parish clergy and confraternities worked in some harmony; but there could be plenty of tension between them as well.50 Many tensions and failures have already been indicated, when the laity resisted limitations on some past practices. Stricter moral, sexual codes were resisted both by clergy and parishioners, and in many parishes a blind eye was turned to clerical and lay concubinage. The difficult and ambiguous position of the celibate clergy in early modern society has been highlighted as an under-discussed and misunderstood topic of significance for social harmony in villages or urban parishes. The Inquisition might take a harsher line on certain moral as well as theological matters, often alerted through denunciations by both disgruntled neighbours and worried priests. Some such adverse and beneficial aspects of changing parochial relationships are further explored in the next chapter.