This thesis studies the role of trust in the Catholic Reformation in seventeenth-century Genoa. It explores the way in which many reform-minded Catholics consciously tried to find an answer to the... Show moreThis thesis studies the role of trust in the Catholic Reformation in seventeenth-century Genoa. It explores the way in which many reform-minded Catholics consciously tried to find an answer to the crisis of trust that dominated post-Reformation Europe by means of reforms and new initiatives. In particular, this dissertation examines how the effectiveness of these reforms and initiatives was impacted by practices of trust and distrust, as well as the reformers’ own perception of their strategies. Several features of the Catholic Reformation are analysed: the attempt to reform the secular clergy; new female religious initiatives; the effort to reform female cloistered life; and the establishment of new religious congregations. The trust approach used in this thesis constitutes an antidote to the current Italian paradigm in which the focus on power and discipline tends to obscure the plurality of the Italian Church in the seventeenth century. The concept moreover provides a key to explain several contradictions with which the current historiography confronts us such as the juxtaposition of instances of freedom and compulsion in the realm of female religiosity and the paradoxical coexistence of very ineffective and very successful attempts to reform. Show less
Considering that early modern scholars often referred to the Middle Ages as an uncouth period of darkness and ignorance, it is surprising that humanist historians by no means neglected the era. The... Show moreConsidering that early modern scholars often referred to the Middle Ages as an uncouth period of darkness and ignorance, it is surprising that humanist historians by no means neglected the era. The central hypothesis of this book is that the ways in which historians such as Reynier Snoy, Adrianus Barlandus, Petrus Divaeus, and Janus Dousa Sr described the medieval past can be explained by the political context from which their writings originated and in which they were often directly involved. This context was marked by upheavals caused by factors such as the Habsburg centralization policy, the Reformation, and the Dutch Revolt. This book brings forward key characteristics of early modern medievalism, showing how concepts of the medieval were used as rhetorical tools, how medieval forms and ideals were appropriated, and how the classical heritage was involved in the representation of the medieval. This analysis is informed by an approach to historical writing that differs from what is common in the study of sixteenth-century historiography. Historiography is regarded not as a means to uncover the historical truth, but as narrative rhetoric. It deploys narrative techniques and intertextual allusions and plays with genre expectations in order to convey its message. Show less
