Il ministro Bovara e la riforma di conventi,monasteri e seminari

The essay considers two aspects of the ecclesiastical policy of Giovanni Bovara, minister of religion of the Republic and then of the Kingdom of Italy between 1802 and 1814, the suppression of convents and monasteries and the reform of seminaries. Within some years between1802 and 1810, nearly 600 of the over 1350 existing male and female religious homes were suppressed altogether and over 750 maintained. In detail, as many as 370 female religious homes had survived including the 60 of tertiaries and Capuchin nuns for whom any possible merger had been postponed to a later date, since they were committed to education. Then the decree of April 25th 1810, suppressing all convents and monasteries still open in the Kingdom, concluded the long path of the secularization of ecclesiastic institutions, pointing out the problem of education but also that of the training of clerics, also laid on the clergy in certain cases, and of the entrance to episcopal seminaries: by applying the French pattern between1810 and 1811, the minister tried to carry out a clear division of the lay students from the future clerics, turning the episcopal seminaries from public schools such as they had been over the centuries to exclusive education colleges for clerics.