Missioni in terra di frontiera. La Controriforma nelle Valli del Pinerolese. Secoli XVI-XVIII (review)

The first comprehensive study of the Jesuit and Capuchin missions to the Waldensian valleys of Piedmont between 1560 and 1768, this doctoral thesis (University of Turin) will interest scholars working on missions or on French or Italian church history during the Old Regime. It is carefully documented and relies on sources from a wide variety of archives. Still, more thorough revision (tighter organization and more focused arguments) could have resulted in a book with even broader appeal. The introduction mentions a variety of themes raised in other studies of early modern missions and religious culture; yet the author's own historiographic position is difficult to identify. The book's first part introduces the geographic and political context of the missions, characterizing the valleys above Pinerolo (Val Chisone, Val Pellice, Valle Angrogna, and Val Germanasca) as a frontier region—the book's publication was subsidized with funds from an Italian border studies project. More attention to the concrete economic and social context of this Alpine region would have permitted the author to link this part more clearly to the following ones. Part two outlines the key religious and political events in the valleys during the period under study between the reigns of Emanuel Filibert of Savoy (1553-1580) and Charles Emanuel III (1730-1773). Following the arrival of the first Jesuit missionary, Antonio Possevino, and a brief war (1560-61) aimed at converting the valley inhabitants by force, Emanuel Filibert decided to grant religious toleration to the valleys' inhabitants, creating a "ghetto Alpino" that was also a mission field for the next two centuries. The first Capuchin missionaries arrived in the late 1590's, and in 1630 Pinerolo and half of the area was acquired by the French crown. Missionary activity increased as the French began to subsidize conversions and replace Piedmontese clergy with French. They also established a Jesuit mission at Fenestrelle and a Jesuit college at Pinerolo. Pro-French Savoyard rulers launched new military campaigns in the valleys under their control in 1655 and 1684, without success. Not long after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Victor Amadeus II renounced the French alliance, extending his 1694 edict of toleration to the entire area, which was reacquired by him in 1713. During the early eighteenth century, missionary policy shifted, focusing on educating and providing assistance for new converts, increasingly through the work of state-supported secular clergy. The diocese of Pinerolo was created in 1748, eight years after the establishment of a catechumen house there to serve new converts. The book's final part discusses different methods used by the missionaries: preaching and processions, religious instruction, religious controversies and printed accounts of debates, and other strategies of conversion. Povero's work confirms the thesis that by the early eighteenth century the missionaries were so successful in involving secular clergy in their activities that the position of the regular clergy themselves was eventually undermined. She also concludes that state support was a fundamental element for the success of the missions, while admitting that such success was limited (as indicated by the continued presence of Reformed communities in the valleys). Unfortunately, this book refrains from a detailed examination of the concrete local Alpine context. Constant migration between valleys and the plains, ongoing commercial transit, the configuration of bi-confessional communities, and local politics: these issues are occasionally mentioned in passing, but their relation to missionary activities and the process of conversion is not closely studied. We learn that almost all Catholic converts came from the Val Chisone. Why there? Greater attention to the lives of valley inhabitants themselves could provide some clues.