Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T19:26:31.959Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The first Jesuit confraternities and marginalized groups in sixteenth-century Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2009

Nicholas Terpstra
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

This article explores the ideological sources of Jesuit missionary activity by focusing on three of the first Jesuit confraternities founded in the 1540s in Rome. These confraternities administered houses for reformed prostitutes, daughters of prostitutes, and newly converted Jews and Muslims, and became the models for similar institutions throughout Italy. They illustrate a central feature of the Jesuit urban apostolate: to enlist elites in the reform of the most “public” sinners living on the margins of society. Focusing on these institutions also helps to recover women's roles in Catholic reform, to measure attitudes toward subcultures perceived as threatening, and to provide a clearer picture of the Jesuits and their relations with the laity generally.

Prostitutes, Jews, and Muslims stood out as symbols of the need for conversion because they were highly visible figures considered to be outside God's grace. By 1542, Ignatius Loyola established a new kind of institution, the Casa di Santa Marta, as a shelter where former prostitutes and battered women could stay before deciding whether to become a nun, to be reconciled with their husbands, or to get married; its administration was entrusted to a confraternity, the Compagnia della grazia. Almost simultaneously, a second confraternal shelter, the Conservatorio di Santa Caterina delle vergini miserabili, was established for the daughters of prostitutes and other young women who were thought to be in danger of turning to prostitution.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Politics of Ritual Kinship
Confraternities and Social Order in Early Modern Italy
, pp. 132 - 149
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×