L'orazione proibita. Censura ecclesiastica e letteratura devozionale nella prima eta moderna (review)

This welcome new study, based upon the author's tesi di laurea directed by Paolo Simoncelli at the Sapienza of Rome, "delineates the attempt, carried out by the Congregations of the Inquisition and the Index during the sixteenth century and the early decades of the following century, to purge various devotional texts in the Italian vernacular, of heterodox elements and of superstitious incrustations, while imposing a rigid uniformity in liturgical and devotional practices" (p. vii). In conducting his research, Caravale undertook a careful examination of the archival records of the two Roman dicasteri in question as well as a close reading of the many of suspect devotional texts themselves.The result is a detailed description and illuminating analysis of the Church's attempt (spanning, in Caravale's book, approximately one hundred years) to rid Catholic devotional literature of Protestantism and superstition.

In the earliest phase of the period under examination Rome's anxious activity focused above all on infiltration of Protestant ideas in vernacular treatises on prayer meant for mass consumption. Here the "poison" to be eradicated was, above all, the teaching of "interior" or "mental" private prayer, as opposed to the collective, public, and somewhat impersonal prayer of the formal liturgies of the Church. In the years immediately following the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, even the hint of encouragement of such prayer to their readers was enough to earn authors (especially those writing in the widely-represented genre of "Expositions of the Our Father") trouble from Rome. In fact, as Cara-vale points out, interior/mental prayer had long existed in the orthodox Roman tradition and thus, not surprisingly, later in the sixteenth century once the Church's anxiety over Protestant expansion (at least in Italy, that is) had subsided, we find bona-fide, loyal men of the Church promoting the virtues of interior prayer, with full ecclesiastical approbation. At the same time, as anxiety over interior prayer waned, the Church could turn its attention more forcefully on another major problem affecting works of popular devotion, superstition, especially surrounding the intercession and thaumaturgic powers of the saints and the efficacy of certain prayers or forms of recitation.

In the last chapters of his work, Caravale discusses the ultimate, seventeenth-century destiny of this anti-superstition campaign and it is about this (and only this) final section of Orazione proibita that I must express some reservations. Tobegin with, as the title of the section declares, Caravale sees the anti-superstition campaign ending in "failure" (fallimento), due, as he notes (pp. 211-212), to the lack of sufficient resources to tackle such a huge task. However, another explanation given, with much greater emphasis, for the continued presence of superstitious content in popular devotional texts is what Caravale describes as the Church's conscious decision, "deliberate strategy" (pp. ix and 207) to exploit the appeal of such superstition, so beloved by the masses, in order to further win their support and loyalty. If the Inquisition's "laxity" and "indifference" are part of a deliberate "strategy," then the terms "failure," "surrender" (p. 195), and "lost battle" (p. 212) are contradictory and inappropriate.

Furthermore, Caravale offers no direct, explicit documentation that the Inquisition or anyone in Rome had indeed formulated such a new premeditated policy; he rather bases his conclusion on proof of an indirect nature, namely, the continuing presence of superstition in Catholic texts and such equally indirect "evidence" as the ten-year delay in response by the Inquisition to a request for judgment on a book of litanies (pp. 212-216). Archival documents offer no explanation for the aforementioned delay; Caravale simply concludes that it was "indifference" and "laxity." Given what we know about the Roman church in general in the seventeenth century, such a conclusion is not unreasonable at all, but it behooves the author to temper his interpretation with such qualifiers as "probably...