Disciplina dell'anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna ed. by Paolo Prodi, and Carla Penuti (review)

86BOOK REVIEWS ideas from Brian Stock (The Implications ofLiteracy, 1983) and H. U. Gumbrecht , Friederike Hassauer discusses orality and literacy in the sources concerning the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, warning that only rarely does true insight into everyday, oral culture emerge from hagiographie texts. Miracle books, however, emerge as one possible exception to this generalization . Peter Spangenberg analyzes the Old French miracles of the Virgin as a form of literary mediation between the internal world of the individual pilgrim and the complexities of external society. AU in all, although the level of interest in everyday life varies considerably from essay to essay, the collection as a whole provides valuable insight into some of the newest trends in me study of medieval pilgrimage. Steven D. Sargent Union College Schenectady, New York Disciplina dell'anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società ira medioevo ed età moderna. Edited by Paolo Prodi with the collaboration of Carla Penuti. [Annali deU'Istituto storico italo-germanico, Quaderno 40. ] (Bologna: Società éditrice il Mulino. 1994. Pp. 963· Lire 80,000 paperback) This large volume brings together thirty-mree papers arising from a conference held at Bologna in 1993. The contributions, by Italian and German scholars almost exclusively, all appear in Italian. Some are over-long, insufficiently focused, and might have benefited from greater editorial intervention, to remove the impression of a postgraduate desire to elaborate bibliographical references rather than engage in critical, selective presentation of a precise argument. But within die volume there are also some very valuable papers. The starting-point of most of the contributions, indeed, is the argument that a medieval concept of discipline, originally a monastic procedure, it is suggested , for inculcating self-discipline in fact in novices, was gradually extended in the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the early modern period to non-monastic groups and individuals, eventually to whole parts of a society and to entire societies. Not all the writers agree that the courts of rulers came to play a different, additional role in this extension, but most accept, where appropriate, that die Renaissance introduced new emphases of an educational nature into the concept of discipline, distinct from either a monastic or a 'courüy' tradition of the Middle Ages. After the introduction of Paolo Prodi himself, a first section concentrates on questions of methodology, some of it rather abstract, though the name ofFoucault also inevitably occurs, as naturally enough throughout the volume. The second section of the book begins with the clearly outstanding contribution of Adriano Prosperi, which provides a much-needed examination, conducted with his usual exemplary precision and insight, of the relationship BOOK REVIEWS87 between the Inquisition and clerics administering the sacrament ofconfession, in this case essentially in Counter-Reformation Italy. Not for the first time in his writing, a personal and brave note is also struck, in a truly moving way, in his concluding observations on possible effects of the evolution of Italian religious practice on the present state of Italian society. After some other valuable contributions, for example on priesdy formation in the CounterReformation or the developments allowed to female communities in the same period, another fine piece is offered by Louis Châtellier, tracing the extension by the Jesuits of the ideal of religious discipline to a practice open to lay members of the confraternities directed by the Society ofJesus. In a third section interesting papers include those on writers such as Della Casa, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Castiglione, and on changing attitudes to and disciplining of the poor. In the penultimate section the legislation of the Medici grand-dukes of Tuscany after die Council of Trent is analyzed, for instance, and the powers of cardinal legates at Bologna are discussed, while there is also treatment offood supply and sumptuary laws as methods ofsocial control and policing. The final section includes an important review by Gian Paolo Brizzi of the development of colleges and their internal discipline both witíiin and without larger universities in the medieval and early modern period, while provision for female orphans in early modern Florence and the gradual reception of Tridentine marriage discipline at Bologna are also addressed . A consideration of the evolution of the University of...