220173 Roman catholic church in Early Modern Age. Reading recent research (S) (WiSe 2018/2019)

The course will focus on the analysis of the different "crisis" that crossed over to Christianity in the course of the Early Modern Age. In particular, we will try to highlight as Rome tried to respond to the many instances of reform coming from the same body within the Catholic Church and to the new social, political and religious phenomena that marked Europe in the course of the Centuries. Recent research, in fact, have re-read the solid historiography which allowed Rome the power, and the "capacity" to govern the Universal Church, in a authoritarian perspective (L. von Ranke, L. von Pastor, H. Jedin, G. Alberigo, P., Prodi, to mention the most known), emphasizing the dialectic elements, and tension that marked the attempt of the Roman Catholic Church to discipline the faithful in a global dimension. The course provides, therefore, a first phase of analysis of new research conducted on this matter in a comparative perspective with the thesis supported by traditional historiography. A second section will be dedicated to the new perspectives of historiography (Carlo Ginzburg, Lucio Biasiori (eds.), A Historical Approach to Casuistry. Norms and Exceptions in a Comparative Perspective, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018 – in press) also in the light of archival sources now at the disposal of scholars.

Bibliography

- Prodi, Paolo, The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls. The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987 [Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1982].

- Po-Chia Hsia, Ronnie, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005 (2nd ed.).

- Wallace, Peter G., The Long European Reformation: Rligion, Political Conflict and the Search of Confirmity, 1350-1750, European History in Perspective Series, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

- Fosi, Irene, Papal Justice: Subjects and Courts in the Papal State, 1500-1750, Washington DC, The Catholic University of America Press, 2011 [La giustizia del papa. Sudditi e tribunali nello Stato Pontificio in età moderna, Roma, Laterza, 2007].

- Ditchfield, Simon, Tridentine Catholicism, in Bamji A., Janssen G. H., Laven M. (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, Ashgate, Farnham-Surrey, 2013, pp.15-33.

- Aron-Beller, Katherine – Black, Christopher (eds.), The Roman Inquisition. Centre versus Peripheries, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2018.