Confraternities were - and are - religious brotherhoods for lay people to promote their religious life in common. Though designed to prepare for the afterlife, they were fully involved in the social, political and cultural life of the community and could affect all men and women, as members or as the recipients of charity. Confraternities organised a great range of devotional, cultural and indeed artistic activities in addition to other functions such as the provision of dowries and the escort of condemned men to the scaffold. Other works have studied the local activities of specific confraternities, but this is the first to attempt a broad survey of such organisations across the breadth of early modern Italy. Christopher Black demonstrates clearly the extent, diversity and influence of confraternal behaviour, and shows how such brotherhoods adapted to the religious and social crises of the sixteenth century - thus illuminating current debates about Catholic Reform, the Counter-Reformation, poverty, philanthropy and social control.

This interdisciplinary volume gathers essays by leading international scholars in the fields of Italian Renaissance literature, music, history and history of art to address the fertile question of the relationship between religious change and shifting cultural forms in sixteenth-century Italy. Each contribution examines the effects of the profound religious changes that took place in the period on cultural forms, seeking to establish an 'aesthetics of reform' for the sixteenth century.

Scholars have long recognized the significant role that confraternities, or lay brotherhoods, played in the religious life of medieval and early modern Catholicism. Taking a broad chronological and geographical approach, this collection of essays addresses the varied and fluid nature of confraternities and their relationship to wider society.

Twelve contributions discuss early relatives of St. Vincent DePaul and the Knights of Columbus during the Catholic and Counter-Reformation (1500 to 1650). Topics include confraternities in the context of Italian Catholic Reform; Italian youth confraternities; Jesuits and their promotion of communion; public charity; lay religiosity in Mantua; and confraternities as a venue for female activism. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Reforms of Christian Life presents a new narrative of the role of the Barnabites and Angelics, the Ursulines and the Somascans (founded in Northern Italy in the 1530s by Battista da Crema, Angela Merici, and Girolamo Miani) within sixteenth-century Italian reform movements. While historiography has considered these companies under the category of ‘Catholic Reformation,’ this book argues that they promoted an ‘unconventional’ view of perfection and of the Church that was alternative to both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and through which they wanted to reform society, rather than the ecclesiastical institution. By highlighting the complex articulation of perceptions of ‘Christian life,’ and by exploring neglected connections among devout milieus, Mazzonis considers the sodalities in continuity with a fifteenth-century ascetic-mystical current and in relation to contemporary institutes such as the Jesuits and the Oratorians, irenic reforming circles like that of Juan de Valdés, and post-Tridentine ecclesiastical reformers including Charles Borromeo. This volume shows that reforming trends were more varied and fluid than previously thought and contributes to cultural and gender analyses of the religious mentality of the period. Reforms of Christian Life is a useful tool for students and scholars of medieval and early modern religious and cultural history.

A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities presents confraternities as fundamentally important venues for the acquisition of spiritual riches, material wealth, and social capital in early modern Europe and Post-Conquest America.

Around the mid-sixteenth century, one of the largest Italian heterodox communities developed in Modena: the community of 'Brothers'. At the beginning of the century, a flourishing humanistic tradition had inspired protests against the authority of the Church and had led many of the city's prominent figures to sympathize with Luther and the Reformation. Over the following decades, such positions became more extreme: most of the 'Brothers' held radical convictions, ranging from belief in predestination to contestation of the Antichrist pope. In some cases, the 'Brothers' even went so far as to deny the value of baptism. This heterodox community in Modena created a hidden network for the free expression of its reformed faith. Within twenty years, however, the election of Pope Pius V (1566-1572) and the consolidation of the Holy Office led to a harsh campaign to disperse dissenters in the city. Despite the protection of illustrious members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the bishops of Modena, and the dukes of Ferrara, the Holy Office succeeded in repressing the community. The history of the 'Brothers' of Modena therefore provides a case study for understanding how the Inquisition influenced the balance of religious Italy, changing the face of the Peninsula forever.