RICERCA ITALIANA     

Books, libraries and culture by the regular orders in modern Italy

Università degli Studi Roma Tre

Abstract

The regular orders represented a key element in the religious and social history of modern Europe, especially in the countries that kept their allegiance to the Catholic Church: they were composed by monks, whose orders had been founded in the high middle ages (the different branches of the "Ordo sancti Benedicti"); by friars, whose origins coincided with the last medieval centuries (the various "families" of the so called mendicants); by the congregations of regular clerics, the new foundations by the early sixteenth century (to mention someones: Jesuits, Theatines, Oratorians, etc.); by the frequent reforms which occurred in convents and monasteries during the last part of that century. Recent historiography dealt with the subject of these orders with innovative views (see Caffiero-Motta-Pavone 2005; Feci 2005; Giannini 2005), while their role had been widely used as an argument by the confessional historiography defending traditional reconstructions.
Since the developing of the Renaissance, from the Italian humanists of the late fifteenth century to Erasmus' positions in the early sixteenth century, through the flaming polemics by the German and French Reformers to the critics by the father of the Council of Trent, large reasons motivated a critical attitude with respect to a low cultural level, when it was so, in the ranks of the male regular orders.
The actual availability of a monumental documentary source, that is the papers of an inquiry conducted by the Roman Congregation of the prohibited books in Italy, after the publication of the "Index librorum prohibitorum" by pope Clement VIII, gives a major chance to examine statements on the regular orders' culture with no ground, or with a very weak one, taking a new methodological approach.
The purpose of the investigation was quite clear in the minds of the cardinal of the Roman Congregation: they simply wanted to detect all the "prohibited" or "suspect" or "to be corrected" books owned by the regular orders. On this ground all the general superiors of every order were ordered to obtain the lists of all the books, either kept in libraries or by single friars and monks. The final result of this investigation allow scholars to verify the circulation and conservation of books inside that branch of the Catholic Church, relying on first hand documentation collected almost in the same time.
The Roman Congregation, and the general superiors following its orders, sent precise instructions concerning the compilation of the lists of the titles of the books, with the open intention to check how far widespread were editions to be censored. For this reason, the indication was given to put into those lists all the typographical element needed to clearly identify the effective edition of a book: the author, the title, the place of printing, the name of the printer, the year of the publication – and from time to time also the size of the book. There is no doubt that the number of people involved do not allow a real sharpness when their fulfilled their duty. Notwithstanding defects and mistakes, now the lists of the books owned by circa 9500 convents and monasteries, monks and friars is available to the scholars.
Relying on this huge amount of documentation, the program of this research will follow three main lines, to be followed by one of the involved units:
the ownership of books by the regular orders of the Catholic Church, and the influence of ecclesiastical legislation on censorship and inquisitorial activity on the circulation and conservation of books by them;
the connections between intellectual orientations and religious culture, as referred to scientific culture, historical narrative and travel literature;
the real organization and consistence of conventual and monastic libraries, and of the libraries of friars and monks, as a way of functioning of the ecclesiastical regular orders. <<<

Principal Investigator

Roberto Rusconi Università degli Studi ROMA TRE

Research Objectives

The first aim of this research is a clear evaluation of the real influence by the norms governing the intellectual formation of the regulars, the possession of a number of books and the actual organization of libraries: with a tight comparison between different orders, and the various parts of a single order, in the period which started with the religious confrontation at the beginning of the sixteenth century and ended with the application of the Tridentine reform and the counterreformation. The main core of the topic will obviously be the religious books, according to the number of its categories, from strict theology to devotional literature.
The second aim has the object to carefully look for the contact points of the culture of the regular orders, conceived as a special part of the ecclesiastical institutions, with the general evolution of the intellectual thought in the fields of literature, philosophy and historiography: in this way, it will be possible to detect the real amount of penetration of the new intellectual trends of the modern age into the monastic ranks and to what extent friars and monks contributed to their development.
The third aim will be to focus the peculiar role of the regular orders in the field of the production, the circulation and the conservation of books, and their attitudes in the utilization of printed editions. For this purpose, before any general consideration specific investigations on relevant cases will be conducted on the relationship between the compilation of the lists of the titles of the book and the effective consistency and organization of a library, and between the amount of books owned at the end of the sixteenth century and the actual ownership of a library.
At the end, in some cases the real existence of an edition of a book printed in the fifteenth and sixteenth century will be possibly ascertained, whose no copy has ever been traced. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The Roman Congregation of the Index of the Prohibited Books collected the lists of the titles of all the book which pertained to the regular orders, owned either by convents and monasteries and by friars and monks, but only for the Italian peninsula and the islands. The character of this documentation do not allow a reliable comparison with the scattered elements coming from different sources, as inquisitorial records and inventories post mortem, existing also in other European countries.
In the last ten year a growing interest in the field of historical research has been paid to the lists collected by the Congregation of the Index, contained in the manuscripts Vat. Lat. 11266-11326 (see their description in Lebreton – Fiorani 1985): the importance of this source coming from the regular orders had already been stressed (see De Maio 1973 and Dykmans 1986). In a former period, a certain number of scholar either published the lists without any special comment or tried to identify the printed editions corresponding to each title mentioned, with no major results (see Rusconi 2002). Since 2001 a collective project has been put on its way, promoted by the Associazione don Giuseppe De Luca, with the financial and scientific support by some regular orders and with resources coming from the MIUR and from some Italian universities involved in the project. The first result of this effort is represented by a data base on line, containing the product of the RICI (Ricerca sull'Inchiesta della Congregazione dell'Indice), where the scholars actually may look for the full transcription of all the manuscript lists of the title of books, and the references to the printed edition corresponding to them (when such an identification is possible and reliable). On this ground a cross research has been made available on an amount of 800.000/1.000.000 titles, matching authors, titles, editions and owners. The printed publication of these lists has been planned by the edition of the Vatican Library.
A fundamental starting point is represented by the creation the RICI electronic database representing an information tool of great interest, that will turn out to be a vast potential support for many itineraries of research (Granata 2004). RICI was constructed through the full transcription of the record lists contained by the Vatican Codices, with a field structure for the bibliographical elements identifying the recorded texts and the proper link sending to the description of the relating printed editions localized on both authoritative bibliographical repertories online (e.g. Edit16 e Opac SBN) and on traditional materials (typographic annals and library catalogues) and with the complex connection system combining works, texts, manuscripts and printed editions, authors, editors, proof-readers, editions, typographers and publishers, edition place and printing place, owners as convents, monasteries or singular fathers connected with residence structures, RICI stands as a indispensable instrument for further and diversified surveys made possible by the combination of the great number and variety of prearranged data.
The complete visualization of the documents as a whole, that is easier on the electronic version, allows a direct and synchronic reading of the book heritage and of the circulation and of the conservation of the books within the ecclesiastic circuits towards the end of the XVI century. That reading turns out to be very relevant for orders since long suppressed, as the Vatican Codices are the only available source to get information about their cultural tradition.
The results of a new approach to the topic have been presented in different publications, referred to a single regular orders, as the Regular Tertiaries of St. Francis (Zanot 2004), the Congregation of the Celestine monks (Rusconi 2004c), the Order of the Servites (Rusconi 2004d), the Order of the Observant Franciscans (Rusconi 2005), the Order of the Capuchins (Barbieri 2002, Granata 2003); the books owned by nuns, which entered by chance in the documentation (Compare); the problem of the ownership of prohibited books (Fasanella 2002, Laudadio 2005).
On the contrary, some scholars continued publishing the plain lists of the title of books in the possession of the regular orders in Italy, either with reference to some portions of them (Criscuolo 2003; Pantarotto 2003; Ricciardi 2003; see Sbordone 2001-2003) or to some Italian region (Camozzi 2004).
The action of the Congregation of the Index and the relationships with the Congregation of the Inquisition (S. Officio) had been treated at length in recent research, innovating the perspectives of the research, as a result of the open access to the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith recently given to the scholars: in this way new light has been shed on the complex procedures to get a clear definition of "prohibited book" and to put into practice the ecclesiastical censure of printed editions (see especially the contributions by Fragnito and Frajese). The starting point has especially been the documents related to ecclesiastical censorship, and the procedures of the cultural and religious repression operated by the Roman Church have been largely highlighted.
The lists of the titles of the books owned in Italy by the regular orders, which will be the main source used in the realization of the research, give the opportunity to check the real perception of the politics of ecclesiastical censorship in the wide world of the friars and monks, even before the final publication of the «Index librorum prohibitorum» by pope Clement VII in 1596. The first researches on this source already pointed some major problems, to be deeper investigated: the volumes of Desiderius Erasmus continued to be circulated and owned, notwithstanding formal prohibitions (see Rosa 1990) – at a first glance, the ownership and circulation of prohibited books in the institutions of the regulars orders seems to be quite restricted, and in some cases it seems also that there was no real perception of their character. The main core of the problem is a correct evaluation of a sort of self-censorship operated in the convents and the monasteries during the second half of the sixteenth century, and for this reason a deeper investigation is needed in order to understand how the ecclesiastical prohibitions on the reading of books wad perceived, mostly in the field of the translations of biblical texts (see Fragnito 1997).
The access given recently to scholars to the archives of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith (formerly S. Ufficio) opened the way to the consultation also of the archives of the Congregation of the Index (see Seidel Menchi 2000; Beretta 2001), and especially of the acquisition of the lists of the titles of the books owned by the regular orders in Italy, requested from their general superiors after the publication of the «Index librorum prohibitorum» in 1596, that is between 1598 and 1603. Even if the ecclesiastical censorship operated by the Roman Church heavily influenced the production, circulation and possession of books since the mid sixteenth century (see especially the contributions by Fragnito and Frajese), the documentary sources have to be employed non only to reconstruct the performances of the inquisition, since they can open broader critical approaches.
In the general field of culture and books produced since the introduction of printing to the end of the sixteenth century, the religious books covered a wide field, with their peculiar articulation (Rozzo 1993; Rozzo 1994; Rozzo-Gorian 2002; Barbieri-Zardin 2002). The members of the regular orders played a great role, even not exclusive, but deeply influential, in the process of producing, circulating and conserving books.
Last but not least, in recent years the Italian and international scholars are paying more and more attention to the action of the regular orders in early modern world, Europe and Americas, with the result of opening perspectives much wider than traditional ecclesiastical erudition (see Rusconi 1995; Feci 2005; Meyer-Viallet 2005; Giannini 2005; Caffiero-Motta-Pavone 2005).
Since the XI century came out the primary role that the monks and, later, the religious orders and secular clergy played in writing universal chronicles. Such an interest was strictly related to a providential-eschatological view of the human progress: the universal church history was, therefore, mixed together with the municipal and political history. All these works were written in Latin according the traditional annalistic structure. Nevertheless, since the first half of the fifteenth century the mendicant orders, while were pursuing the strict Observance, continued writing universal chronicles where the municipal history became more and more important like the Antonino Pierozzi's «Summa Historialis». The history of the mendicant orders itself and the lives of their saints were deeply involved with the city states politics, especially in central and northern Italy. After the religious crisis of the first half of the sixteenth century, a great number of new religious orders and new male and female congregations took place in the catholic Europe; since that time they devoted a lot of energy to write down the history of their own origins as a proof of major authority.
The scientific knowledge of the regular and secular clergy was early cultivated: beside the traditional approaches to Aristotelian - Thomistic works, an innovative interest for medicine, optics an botanic was attested. Just at the end of XVI century the calendar reform of pope Gregorio XIII seemed to be a good opportunity for improving something of this old and new scientific background. <<<