In Trust in the Catholic Reformation, Thérèse Peeters shows how trust and distrust affected reform attempts in the post-Tridentine Church, while offering a multifaceted account of day-to-day religiosity in seventeenth-century Genoa, a city that has largely been overlooked in Anglophone scholarship. The book addresses diverse aspects of early modern Catholicism among lay people and members of the clergy. The author replaces the traditional view of the Catholic Reformation as a top-down process with one that considers individual agency, highlighting how strategies for gaining and maintaining trust – as well as the processes by which trust could be lost or denied – determined the success or failure of various efforts at reforming the Church.
Thérèse Peeters, Ph.D. (2020, Leiden University) is an Italianist and historian specialised in early modern Catholicism. She has published several articles on this subject and collaborated on a digital catalogue and edition of related archival sources from the Vatican Archives.
Acknowledgements Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Trust in the Catholic Reformation
2 Main Question
3 Catholic Reformation, Counter-Reformation or Early Modern Catholicism?
4 The Italian Debate
5 Identity, Negotiation and Persuasion
6 Trust and Distrust
7 What Is Trust?
8 Approach and Sources
9 Overview of the Book
1 Setting the Scene: The Republic of Genoa in the Seventeenth Century
1 La Serenissima
2 Stefano Durazzo
3 Genoa’s Religious Landscape
4 The Lay Perspective
5 Conclusion
2 Trust Management: Three Post-Tridentine Reform Initiatives
1 Reforming the Secular Clergy
2 The Lazarists’ Missionary Efforts
3 The Jesuits and Their Genoese Allies
4 Conclusion
3 Beyond Appearance? Trusting and Distrusting the Secular Clergy
1 Historiography
2 Sources
3 Appearance and Trust
4 Problems of Trust
5 Essence and Appearance
6 Conclusion
4 When Distrust Thrives: The Magistrato delle Monache and the Female Convents
1 Sources
2 Distrust
3 Views on the Convent
4 An Approach of Distrust
5 Agency and Trust
6 Conclusion
5 To Overcome Distrust: Three Religious Initiatives by Genoese Women
1 The Turchine
2 The Medee
3 The Brignoline
4 Savona’s Medee and the Importance of Freedom
5 Conclusion
6 Whom to Trust? The Establishment of the Lazarists in Genoa
1 The Lazarists and Their Mission
2 How to Win Trust?
3 Whom to Trust?
4 Conclusion
7 Between Trust and Obedience: Jesuit indipetae from Genoa and Corsica
1 Trust ‘From Below’
2 Trust ‘From Above’: “I Hope to Obtain from V.P. the Patent for Heaven”
3 Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
All interested in early modern Catholicism, Church reforms, urban history, seventeenth-century Genoa, and the role of trust in early modern societies. The book is suited for specialists and post-graduate students. Keywords: Italy, Genoa, Catholic Reformation, seventeenth century, trust, Church reform, Counter-reformation, early modern Catholicism, Jesuits, Durazzo, Vincentians, urban history.