RICERCA ITALIANA     

The inquiries on Regular Clergy's patrimonies and revenues in the Italian States (XVIth-XIXth Centuries)

Università degli Studi di Bologna

Abstract

Reserch program (abstract)
The reserch program is structured in seven points:
1) the completion of the production of microfilms about the inquiries on Regular Clergy's patrimonies in 1649. We have 3.900 declarations (on microfilms) from Archivio Segreto Vaticano; we must add 2.000 statements about Orders that didn't put their documents in that archive.
2) the production of microfilms about Republic of Venice's inquiries, and about other Orders (XVI-XVII-XVIII centuries)
3) the perusal of the statistical data and the creation of a database with informations as the localization, the number of the religioners, the revenue, the debts and the credits of monasteries and convents.
4) the translation of this statistical data on regional maps with the Geographical Information System (GIS)
5) the insertion of these informations on the web, at the address of our international reserch group: www.regularclergyeconomichistory.it
6) the enlargement of this database by two ways: a) the insertion of statistical data of other inquiries, expecially about Republic of Venice, that refers to different periods and different institutional landscapes; b) discovering new informations by Innocenzo X's inquiry, as the amounting of the lands owned by the Orders, the kind of use of these lands, the agrarian production, the agricultural contracts, or the number of immovables, the statistics about loans, etc.
7) the discussion of the reserch results and its methodology during an International Congress in Bologna (2005), that will be a sort of pre-discussion to the XIV International Economic History Congress (Helsinki, 2006) where our reserch group will open a session. <<<

Principal Investigator

Fiorenzo LANDI Università degli Studi di BOLOGNA

Research Objectives

Objectives of the research programme

The research programme is proposed as the completion of a project already underway, which aims to determine, in global terms, the role and weight of the patrimony and revenue of the Italian religious orders within the Italian States from the beginning of the sixteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century. It is characterised by the nature of the sources that will be used. The large part of these are the findings of pontifical and regional state enquiries; in particular of the enquiry conducted in 1650 under Pope Innocent, spanning the entire Sicilian peninsula.
With regard to the latter, we have already succeeding in microfilming dossiers contained in the Vatican Secret Archives and the Jesuit headquarters, covering 3900 monasteries.
For each of these monasteries we have formed a database with certain key explanatory data: the exact location (city and province, state, diocese, ecclesiastical province) the volume of entries and exits, of debits and credits, and the number of monks. We are already in a position to represent the orders and congregations covered by the first screening. The data was prepared according to a Geographical Information system programme, that functions by means of the arrangement of each item on a database according to the order of their current nomenclature.
More than two thousand dossiers in the custody of the central archives of several orders are still lacking. Through collaboration with Professor Giancarlo Rocca, editor of the monumental ‘Dictionary of Perfecting Institutions', (the principal tool for the reconstruction of the history of the regular clergy at the national and international level), we have identified the archival sources and agreed a program of microfilming with the relevant persons.
Once the task is completed the statistics for the entire patrimony of the regular orders from the mid-1600s will be available, with the possibility of enriching the single monastery databases with an extraordinary quantity of information. This information will be able to be used in a flexible manner in accordance with particular enquiries, orientated on an individual basis to reveal:
The quantity and quality of rural and urban property held
The agrarian landscape
The social relations with labour
The nature and scale of estates held
Land use, types of production and productivity, etc.

On the basis of these premises, it will be possible to cover the map of the national territory with all the different types of most useful ideograms, to illustrate the desired phenomenon.

We have already gathered the cartographic material obtained manually in the past from the two centres that have made the most significant contribution in the field: La maison di Hautes Etudes en Science Sociale in Paris and the Centre of Cartographic Research at the University of Lublino. The semiological graphic applied to history in general and to religious history in particular, has made a contribution of great quality, which we will endeavour to use in the best possible way. This is owed to studies conducted by Fancois di Dainville, Jacques Bertin, Serge and Madeleine Bonin, and to the activities of the EHHSS laboratory that operated until the introduction of GIS technology for electronic research. It has also been made possible by collaboration with Francois Vergneault-Belmont, who has taken on the mantle of the EHHSS.

In the Polish field a specific cartographic contribution in the area of the religious orders was made in the 1970s. This was the religious atlas, annotated in Polish and in Latin. The seven-volume work was published in Lublino in 1972 and later republished by G. Flaga in 1991. It provides an exceptional study tool for the presence of the clergy orders in Poland until the end of the decade of the nineteenth century. In addition, it serves as a reference model of the symbology best adapted to describe phenomena that are extremely complicated to represent cartographically because of the sheer volume of information available.
Step by step, as the databases are prepared for use in the cartographic version and as "a language for reflection", we will be able to make them available on our workgroup internet website, www.regularclergyeconomichistory.it, as we have already begun to do for the first 3900 monasteries, with the aim of allowing other researchers use of the source.
Furthermore we intend to prepare the website for use as a service instrument in the source and bibliographic sector, and as a means of promoting information about our activity. <<<

First Results

Concerning the first part of the research, we expected to finally integrate in unique data base immediately accessible information that contained in the inquiry of 1649: the names and the placement of all 6200 monasteries, with all relative information of their economic status (the heritage, the revenues, the debts and the credits), their institutional and organizational status (the real number of stuff members of monastery as well as their geographical origin) etc.

In this way millions of information will be unified and available.
The capitalization of the filed information inside of survey schema would be the same for all monasteries and convents. Because of own homogeneity, the result makes not just easy but very useful also any partial observation.

In this phase we expect to obtain mainly these results:

To select immediately any synthetic and simple information (name, place, income, expenses, debts, credits and number of religious).
To create or "photograph" the map of the territory that will show the concentration of personal religious and resources to identify the significant themes in depth.
To make available all basic information on web site to anyone who is interested.The second phase will be dedicated to comparison: we will compare regional situation as well as they appear from the data's of 1650.
For each area, like Venetian Republic, we will evaluate equivalent information coming from Inocennzo's report to those ones contained in other inquiries about Venetian state before and after 1650.

Identical comparison will be referred to each religious Order, as described in the Inocennzo's report of 1650., and the other information about same Orders having different origin.

In this way we will have at least two possibilities: to monitor the diachronic level of dynamic expansion, or contracting the religious Orders. This possibility will be usable point of extraordinary access of flexible data.
Because this is the most important phase with the most interesting results, me will organize many public events to show our researches.When we will have the first statistical data , we will compare the results with other national and european inquests : the english Valor ecclesiasticus, the spanish and polish inquires.... <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

At the beginning of modern age (only referring the possession of the lands) the abbeys, the monasteries and the convents owned 40-50 millions of hectares in every region of Europe; moreover they also owned a lot of immovables, had large money at their disposal (used by loans to privates or institutions), and enjoyed, directly or indirectly, a series of feudal rights. The relative revenue made the Regular Clergy one of the absolute protagonist of the pre-industrial society, economically too.
Every land of Europe was characterized by this accumulating process, progressive and unstoppable, but was also characterized by the kind of dissolution of these patrimonies: the confiscation. All the biggest patrimonies were born by imperial donations or gifts, and ended by confiscations. There were four waves of confiscations: the first one with Luthero's Reform, the second one with the enlightened kings, the third one with the French Revolution, and the fourth one with the liberal governments during the XIX century.
The Regular Clergy's economic history is a unitary phenomenon, with similar features all over the Europe (in the beginning, in its development, in the decline), but - paradoxically - there isn't the same unity in the historiographical production, characterized by the lack of a synthesis on the European landscape. There are only two different attempts (both not relatives to all Europe) product in Spain and France. The first one, begun during the international congress in 1991, compare the spanish case to french and italian situations, the second one is more recent and analyses the dissolution of the clergy's patrimonies during the Napoleon age in France and in the other imperial territories (Belgium, Italy, Germany). But it's very heterogeneous, because the documentation about the french and belgian cases is very imponent (850 monographs used), while the italian case is treated more superficially (8 monographs used), and the german situation is examined only fleetingly.
In the middle of the 90's, a new international reserch group was created, to work on the argument "Accomulation and dissolution of large estates of the Regular Clergy in Europe and in the American continent", that I coordinate; the members of this group - in the past and at the present time - are: Katerina Aroni-Tsichli (Panteion University of Athens), Maximiliano Barrio Gozalo (Universidad Valladolid), Régis Bertrand (Université de Aix-en-Provence), Marcella Campanelli (Università di Napoli), Elena Catalàn Martinez (Univer-sidad del Paìs Vasco), Eduardo Cavieres (lnstituto de Historia, Universidad Catòlica de VaI-paraiso), Francesco Dandolo (Università di Napoli), Aurelio de Oliveira (Universidade do Oporto), Dominique Dinet (Université de Paris Sorbonne, Paris IV), Maria Angeles Faya Diaz (Universidad de Oviedo), Alfeo Giacomelli (Università di Bologna), Massimo Giannini (Uni-versità di Teramo), Daniel-Odon Hurel (Université de Rouen), Enrique Llopis Agelàn (Univer-sidad de Madrid), Germano Maifreda (Università di Verona), Antonio Luis Lòpez Martinez (Universidad de Sevilla), Alberto Marcos Martin (Universidad de Valladolid), Gérard Michaux (Université de Metz), Oronzo Mazzotta (Università di Lecce), Marco Moroni (Università di Ancona), Maurizio Pegrari (Università di Verona), Ofelia Rey Castelao (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela), Germàn Rueda (Universidad de Cantabria), José Rodriguez Molina (Universidad de Granada), Gaetano Sabatini (Università degli Studi dell'Aquila), Mario Spedicato (Universi-tà di Lecce), Alberto Tanturri (Università di Chieti), Carmen Triguero (Universidad de Madrid), Jorge Troisi Meleàn (Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata), Karl Otmar Von Aretin (Darmstadt Universitàt), Zbyszko Gorczak (Università di Poznan).
The work of this reserch group is to analyse the social and economical features of Regular Clergy history, in Europe and America, to establish a comparison between different but comparable societies; the purpose is to have an historiographical approach based on a synthesis, to overcome studies about a monastery, a covent, an Order, or - in the better of the cases - a Nation.
A synthesis of the results obtained in some years of reserch, also during the discussions in the International Economic History Congresses in Madrid (1998) and Buenos Aires (2002), was published in two collective books, with 40 original contributes (F. Landi (ed.), Accomulation and Dissolution of large estates of the Regular Clergy in early modern Europe, Rimini 1999, e ID, Confische e sviluppo capitalistico. I grandi patrimoni del clero regolare in età moderna in Europa e nel Continente americano, Milano 2004), and with a monograph (in course of print by Laterza) that examines the Regular Clergy's economic history in Europe from ‘500 to ‘800.
In the acts of the Buenos Aires Congress was introduced another differt prospective about the comparison between european case and american one; in the missions of the American continent a big initial donation, similar to the european imperial ones, were absent. So the confiscations made by liberal government during XIX century (in imitation of the european case) clamorously failed, as in Argentina, because there were a sovra-extimation of the local clergy patrimonies and also because the costs to support the religioners, translated to the State, were bigger than the gains done with the confiscation.
In this international landscape, with more or less developped studies, Spain, United Kingdom, Poland and - with some limits - France are the main interested states by this kind of reserch; Italy is in a particular position, expecially for two reasons: because it's politically divided in five o six regional states, and because it's directly controlled by the Pope. The political and institutional divisions of Italy is the cause of a series of studies that examinate a regional case; moreover, only since 70's, near the group of scholars belonging different Orders, a new group of lay scholars has been started. So a laic historiography was born, with the intention to study the Clergy properties with the same categories used in the reserches on patrimonies and revenues of other owners. The syntheses of Mario Rosa (1986, 1992), Enrico Stumpo (1986), Gigliola Fragnito (1992), Roberto Rusconi (1992), Fiorenzo Landi (1996), Gabriella Zarri (2000), which are the most recent studies on this argument, contributed to underline some features of the italian case. In Europe, one of the most used sources is the series of general inquiries on the clergy ownerships, done in different periods expecially to understand the amounting of richness to elaborate a legislative act to limit or confisc the clergy properties. One of the first acts was the english Valor ecclesiasticus, decided by Henry VIII to seize the lands, the immovables and the cash to abbeys, convents and monasteries on the British Islands; but there are also some spanish inquiries (during XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries), a french census in 1766 (by an expecial commission), and some inquiries in austro-hungarian empire and polish reign. In this way, the Regular Clergy property was extimated under the particular interest of a confiscation, because the Orders were important economical institutions in the pre-industrial society.
Italy, unstead the capillary diffusion of the Regular Clergy, has not many general inquiries. The only global census was made by Innocenzo X in 1649: about 6.200 abbeys, convents and monasteries of the italian states. There are also some inquiries on single Orders. But Innocenzo X's census and the other regional or local inquiries were not completely exploited, and were not compared to obtain statatistical elements to use for historical valutations.
Because of its extraordinary potential, there have been various attempts to come up with a systematic procedure for using the source we are working on, Maurice Aymard and Aldo de Maddalenaís mid-1970ís attempt being the most significant. They coordinated a work group that prepared a worksheet, to be compiled by hand, which included, in 10 pages, practically all of the statistical information that could be used from the inquest: architectural information, economic information, monetary information, social information, religious information etc.
The idea of 6,000 hand-compiled folders ended up being the obstacle that caused this attempt to fail. We must remember that the project was undertaken at a time when, as the first personal computers were becoming available, it was possible to imagine a future when work of this sort would be done with more efficient instruments.
It ís important to add that in order to use the economic data of the inquest in a systematic statistic manner it would have been necessary, first of all, to make a critical analysis of the nature of the sources of Innocent X's inquest.
The declarations were filled out by the book-keepers of the individual monasteries using ledgers but following a completely different accounting logic. This makes it necessary to have both preliminary knowledge of the accounting techniques used by the regular clergy in their ordinary accounting, and an understanding of what the promotors of the inquest wanted to know, before working with the inquest.
The preliminary studies we have dedicated to these issues (Landi, 1989, 1996) could make it possible to avoid serious distorsions like those which can be found in the latest contributions to the discussion (see, for example, G.Poidomani, Conventi e monasteri alla metà del XVII secolo Società e storia, n.89, a.2000, which treats the data from the declaration pertaining to income and expenses, credits and debits and comsumption and income as if the figures came from a modern-day accounting system).
In the University of Naples, under the direction of prof. Giuseppe Galasso, another attempt to publish integrally the statements of the regular clergy began. But, in twenty years, only three books have been published, relatively to Teatini , Somaschi and Agostiniani scalzi. In fact, in this way, the trial is possible only with a much engagement and, obviously, a lot of economic resources.
Instead, the choice of our reserch group was different. We have product the microfilms of about 4.000 statements in the Archivio Sergreto Vaticano, than we have analysed each denunciation, discovering the exact geographical position of the convent or of the monastery. Successively, we have put a large mass of statistical data (names of convets, incomes, expenditures, credits, number of religioners, etc.) on a database, that we are transferring at the internet address www.regularclergyeconomichistory.it . With an agreement with a specialist of GIS (Geographical Information System), now we can translate these statistics in a series of cartographical maps, so to have a vision of the geo-distribution about convents and its human and economic resources.
After this first step, we can enlarge the database with other informations as, for example, the extentions of the fields owned by the monasteries, the kind of social relationships between convents and relatives workers, the agricultural productions of the souls of the convents, and many other statistical data. In this way, we can modified our research strategy to connect it to the results of the most recently studies, and to make comparisons to other regional or national historical analyses. Our database, available in www.regularclergyeconomichistory.it, is an instrument to verify the results of our studies, and it is also a source for other scholars. <<<