L'orazione proibita: Censura ecclesiastica e letteratura devozionale nella prima età moderna (review)

While the Counter Reformation is often associated with the repression of Protestantism, the movement also concerned itself with the elimination of questionable practices in the liturgical and devotional practices of Catholicism itself. Both of these aims become the scope of Giorgio Caravale's book. Focusing on Italy, Caravale's study examines the efforts of the Congregation of the Inquisition in the course of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries to purge vernacular devotional texts from both heterodox beliefs and superstitious elements in an effort to impose a rigid uniformity in the liturgical and devotional practices of the age.

Utilizing prayer as the underlying theme of his work, Caravale examines a variety of religious works, some theological, others liturgical in nature, which were meant to assist both the laity and the clergy in their devotional life. The author's focus on prayer allows the reader to glimpse the religious climate in Italy on two levels: first, the themes that dominated the spiritual writings of the day and their impact on the life of piety; second, the development of a strategy on the part of the Church to censure and purge those works which contained unorthodox ideas.

Caravale makes clear throughout his work that only after the Church, with its publication of the Index of 1559, satisfactorily stemmed the infiltration of Lutheran ideas into Italy, did it concern itself with purifying the various superstitious practices which had made their way into the prayer and liturgical life of the faithful over the course of several centuries. While the author acknowledges that the concern over the latter was a genuine response on the part of ecclesiastical officials to initiate a vast reform program within the Church, he sees another motivating factor at work. The author contends that the primary objective of the Church's actions in purging superstitious practices was not simply the renewal of the spiritual life of the faithful, but also the control of the religious and social life of the many faithful who were uneducated. Caravale goes so far as to argue that the control of the religiosity of the semplici became the strategic priority of the Counter Reformation Church. This manifested itself in the struggle over the use of the vernacular, which became the symbol of this priority.

The way in which this control would be accomplished was through the imposition of liturgical and devotional uniformity. The author effectively demonstrates the difficulties such an approach faced. Not only did the ecclesiastical officials charged with imposing uniformity meet local resistance, but there was also a lukewarm embracing of this effort on the part of the hierarchy. While the local bishops formally endorsed the rigid norms prescribing uniformity, pastorally they were more than willing to bend the rules in light of local practice. Caravale does a good job illustrating the gap that existed between the conscience of the faithful and the legislation of the institutional Church.

The most significant discussion throughout this work focuses on the role and place of interior mental prayer in the life of the Church. Mental prayer had been emphasized by the Protestant reformers in contrast to the communal and rich medieval tradition of prayer that continued to characterize the Church's tradition in the late 1500s and early 1600s. It is here that Caravale is able to link together the two objectives of ecclesiastical censure — the stemming of Protestantism and the extirpation of superstition, which was also tied to the use of the vernacular and the existence of a diversity of local practices. The author discusses this struggle by examining the Pater Noster, which came to symbolize the complexity of the issue regarding interior mental prayer versus communal oral prayer. Caravale places the controversy within the context of Luther's commentary on the Lord's Prayer. Caravale makes clear that Luther's treatise, which emphasized spiritual and mental prayer...