In opposition to the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic hierarchies, already before, but, above all, after Trento, appropriated the positive values recognized as present in the confraternal tradition and readapted them to new functions, thus making room for them in the system of Catholic piety. Particular emphasis was given to the educational goals of the confraternities, with an eye towards establishing a Christianity that needed to take root in the heart of conscience in order to affect the behavior and the practical life of individuals, embracing both the global human experience and the entirety of social relations, starting from family networks and from breaking down society into classes and corpi or social groups. The fortune of the Catholic confraternal model must be seen as linked to this deep symbiosis with a socio political universe premised upon the supremacy of difference and upon the autonomous management of corporative alliances that shared the juridical-moral government of the social reality. By accepting the principle of corporative involvement as an area of protection that expressed itself, in the first instance, as an exchange of favors among men made basically “equal”, in the horizontal sense, the upper echelons of the Counter-Reformation tried to extend their patronage over the universe of confraternal associations of laymen. At the same time, they adjusted its risks of closure, submitting it to more stringent controls and by establishing a hierarchy of priority in favor of the unifying amalgam represented by the parochial, Eucharistic confraternities. The advancement of this strategy of “re-use”, however, has to be linked to the viscosity of an organization of the sacred that is hard to reshape in all of its institutional and mind-set implications.

Zardin, D., Riscrivere la tradizione. Il mondo delle confraternite nella cornice del rinnovamento cattolico cinque-seicentesco, in Gazzini, M. (ed.), Studi confraternali. Orientamenti, problemi, testimonianze, Firenze University Press, Firenze 2009: <<Reti medievali e-book, 12>>, 340- 370 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/1765]

Riscrivere la tradizione. Il mondo delle confraternite nella cornice del rinnovamento cattolico cinque-seicentesco

Zardin, Danilo
2009

Abstract

In opposition to the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic hierarchies, already before, but, above all, after Trento, appropriated the positive values recognized as present in the confraternal tradition and readapted them to new functions, thus making room for them in the system of Catholic piety. Particular emphasis was given to the educational goals of the confraternities, with an eye towards establishing a Christianity that needed to take root in the heart of conscience in order to affect the behavior and the practical life of individuals, embracing both the global human experience and the entirety of social relations, starting from family networks and from breaking down society into classes and corpi or social groups. The fortune of the Catholic confraternal model must be seen as linked to this deep symbiosis with a socio political universe premised upon the supremacy of difference and upon the autonomous management of corporative alliances that shared the juridical-moral government of the social reality. By accepting the principle of corporative involvement as an area of protection that expressed itself, in the first instance, as an exchange of favors among men made basically “equal”, in the horizontal sense, the upper echelons of the Counter-Reformation tried to extend their patronage over the universe of confraternal associations of laymen. At the same time, they adjusted its risks of closure, submitting it to more stringent controls and by establishing a hierarchy of priority in favor of the unifying amalgam represented by the parochial, Eucharistic confraternities. The advancement of this strategy of “re-use”, however, has to be linked to the viscosity of an organization of the sacred that is hard to reshape in all of its institutional and mind-set implications.
2009
Italiano
Studi confraternali. Orientamenti, problemi, testimonianze
978-88-8453-937-3
on line all’indirizzo http://fermi.univr.it/rm/e-book/titoli/Gazzini_2.htm
Zardin, D., Riscrivere la tradizione. Il mondo delle confraternite nella cornice del rinnovamento cattolico cinque-seicentesco, in Gazzini, M. (ed.), Studi confraternali. Orientamenti, problemi, testimonianze, Firenze University Press, Firenze 2009: <<Reti medievali e-book, 12>>, 340- 370 [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/1765]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10807/1765
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