Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction The Politics of Ritual Kinship
- 1 The development of confraternity studies over the past thirty years
- 2 Homosociality and civic (dis)order in late medieval Italian confraternities
- 3 Confraternities and lay female religiosity in late medieval and Renaissance Umbria
- 4 The bounds of community: commune, parish, confraternity, and charity at the dawn of a new era in Cortona
- 5 Men and women in Roman confraternities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: roles, functions, expectations
- 6 The Medici and the youth Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin, 1434–1506
- 7 In loco parentis: confraternities and abandoned children in Florence and Bologna
- 8 The first Jesuit confraternities and marginalized groups in sixteenth-century Rome
- 9 Jewish confraternal piety in sixteenth-century Ferrara: continuity and change
- 10 The scuole piccole of Venice: formations and transformations
- 11 Relaunching confraternities in the Tridentine era: shaping conscience and Christianizing society in Milan and Lombardy
- 12 The development of Jesuit confraternity activity in the Kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
- 13 Corpus Domini: ritual metamorphoses and social changes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Genoa
- 14 Faith's boundaries: ritual and territory in rural Piedmont in the early modern period
- 15 The suppression of confraternities in Enlightenment Florence
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ITALIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
12 - The development of Jesuit confraternity activity in the Kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction The Politics of Ritual Kinship
- 1 The development of confraternity studies over the past thirty years
- 2 Homosociality and civic (dis)order in late medieval Italian confraternities
- 3 Confraternities and lay female religiosity in late medieval and Renaissance Umbria
- 4 The bounds of community: commune, parish, confraternity, and charity at the dawn of a new era in Cortona
- 5 Men and women in Roman confraternities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: roles, functions, expectations
- 6 The Medici and the youth Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin, 1434–1506
- 7 In loco parentis: confraternities and abandoned children in Florence and Bologna
- 8 The first Jesuit confraternities and marginalized groups in sixteenth-century Rome
- 9 Jewish confraternal piety in sixteenth-century Ferrara: continuity and change
- 10 The scuole piccole of Venice: formations and transformations
- 11 Relaunching confraternities in the Tridentine era: shaping conscience and Christianizing society in Milan and Lombardy
- 12 The development of Jesuit confraternity activity in the Kingdom of Naples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
- 13 Corpus Domini: ritual metamorphoses and social changes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Genoa
- 14 Faith's boundaries: ritual and territory in rural Piedmont in the early modern period
- 15 The suppression of confraternities in Enlightenment Florence
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN ITALIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
Summary
INTRODUCTION
“Spies … are for sovereigns, not for religious bodies … Therefore you ought to rid yourself of your spies [among the companies].” The image of a vast network of tightly controlled and highly disciplined cadres infiltrating every level of society under the direction of Jesuits has been a popular myth since at least the eighteenth century. Political intrigues, blood oaths, and secret surveillance on the part of Jesuit-sponsored confraternities have been some of the elements which make up these grand conspiracy theories. While considerable ink has been spilt in proving and disproving these conspiracies, much of the early data on Jesuit–lay collaboration has only recently begun to receive critical examination. Perhaps some kernels of truth emerge to support the dark interpretations of universal Jesuit control; nevertheless, the efforts of the Society of Jesus appear to have remained much more modest.
Historians of early modern Catholicism have often interpreted the advent of the educational systems and their related institutions as a response to the crisis of the Protestant Reformation. For conspiracy theorists, Jesuit control of education was a means to control society, and Jesuit sponsored companies extended that control even further. Increasingly, however, emphasis is being placed on these schools as essentially part of the Catholic formula for reform. In the first years of the Jesuit enterprise, their schools sought to strengthen and adapt many existing Catholic practices, among them lay confraternities. These organizations, in turn, provided support and helped to propagate new Jesuit schools.
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- The Politics of Ritual KinshipConfraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy, pp. 210 - 227Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999