Overview

Carlo and Federico Borromeo achieved fame by turning Milan into the foremost laboratory of the Italian Counter-Reformation. This monograph interprets their programme of penitential discipline as a quest to reshape Lombard society by reaching into the souls of its inhabitants. This integration of the public and private spheres had vast implications- the transformation of the clergy into a professional body, a bureaucratic-juridical turn into sacramental practice, interventions into the ritual order (notably the introduction of the confessional), and new models of discipline and ""civilized"" behaviour. Catholic confessionalism thus conceived had decidedly mixed outcomes. While it transformed the religious landscape forever, its deepest ambitions foundered amidst political opposition, popular resistance, and a bureaucratic accommodation.

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9789004117488

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Reviews

2001 Winner of the Howard R. Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association. <br>' This handsome volume is the latest in a truly distinguished series, the list of whose authors reads like a Who's Who of early modern historians. Wietse de Boer's book is eminently worthy of inclusion in such a series. He has made a great contribution to early modern Italian religious history...This erudite study [] is required reading for students of European society in the age of the Reformation.'<br>William V. Hudon, American Historical Review, 2002.<br>' a challenging and valuable contribution to our understanding of the place of Borromeo and his successors in the development of the Counter-Reformation and a healthy corrective to recent scholarship about the privatization of the sacrament of confession.'<br>Thomas Deutscher, Renaissance Quarterly, 2002.<br>' an excellent institutional historya convincing analysis of a particulary important region.'<br>R. Emmet McLaughlin, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2002.<br>

Author Information

Wietse de Boer, Ph.D. (1995) in History, Erasmus University Rotterdam, is Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University, Indianapolis. His recent publications focus particularly on the cultural aspects of the Italian Counter-Reformation.

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