Visite pastorali ed elaborazione dei dati. Esperienze e metodi ed. by Cecilia Nubola, and Angelo Turchini, and: Conoscere per governare. La diocesi di Trento nella visita pastorale di Ludovico Madruzzo (1579-1581) by Cecilia Nubola (review)

BOOK REVIEWS105 or restored cultural forms, in this case, the theater and confraternities. In a brief contrapuntal piece that evokes the protective powers of saints Sébastien and Roch in the Minervois is Hélène Berlan's timely reminder ofthe continuing power ofan older folkloric religionwimin reformed Catholicism. A final cluster of four articles focuses on charity and cultic worship. Claude-Marie Robion's contribution is designed to give apanoramic view ofthe female confraternities inspired by Saint Vincent in the Aude, tíieir success in the seventeenth century, and their slow decline in the eighteenth. Denis Fontaine analyzes the sudden popularity of Saint Joseph in RoussUlon at the end of the sixteenth century, connecting the saint's rising star to reformed Carmelite and Franciscan spirituality , initiatives of the secular clergy, and confraternities associating him with two powerful Tridentine images, the Holy FamUy and the Eucharist. Marie-Hélène Froeschlé-Chopard's two-part article first explores the popularity of the confraternity of the Rosary in eastern Provence during the same timeframe, and then, analyzing altarpieces, argues for an underlying iconographie unity in the portrayal of the Virgin and the people who surround her expressive of the contradictions implicit in rosary worship. The coUection is concluded, oddly enough, with a summary ofJean Georgelin's discussion of the Midi clergy's varied response in 1790 to the CivU Oath. These articles underscore the local diversity of a spiritual movement that continues, ironically, to be thought of in uniform and universalist terms. They also implicitly question whether we should think of them as expressions of an underlying Midi culture. Such speculations should have informed an introduction or conclusion, together with a discussion of the essays and the organization of the book. In this sense the contributors of this solid collection have not been well served by their editors. Barbara B. Davis Antioch College Visite pastorali ed elaborazione dei dati. Esperienze e metodi. Edited by Cecilia Nubola and Angelo Turchini. [Annali deU'Istituto storico italogermanico , Quaderno 34.] (Bologna: Società éditrice U Mulino. 1993· Pp. 448. Lire 50,000 paperback.) Conoscere per governare. La diócesi di Trento nella visita pastorale di Ludovico Madruzzo (1579—1581). By Cecilia Nubola. [Annali deU'Istituto storico italo-germanico, Monografía 20.] (Bologna: Società éditrice U MuUno . 1993. Pp. 647. Lire 60,000 paperback.) Ten years ago Ugo Mazzone and Angelo Turchino explored the use of pastoral visits for shedding light on the post-Tridentine church and religiosity in Le visite pastorali. Analisi di una fonte (Annali deU'Istituto storico italogermanico , Monografía 18 [Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985]). The two volumes under present consideration continue that examination. The first, the Visitepastor- 106BOOK REVIEWS ali, contains fifteen articles by the participants in a 1991 seminar in Trent on using database computerization for the study of pastoral visitation records. The second, Conoscere per govemare, results from CecUia Nubola's computerized research on the pastoral visits in the diocese of Trent. Taken together, these volumes provide both the theory and practice for conducting this type of "historical science." In his general introduction to the Visitepastorali, Angelo Turchino asserts that pastoral visits, by their nature, lend themselves readily to computer analysis . The information contained in pastoral and apostolic visitations, which are usually responses to various questionnaires, is suited to being grouped and sorted into related categories pertaining to issues of concern to the postTridentine church, for instance, the condition ofthe churches, clerical income, education, abuses, or lay offenses. Limited to time and place, me pastoral visit can be an extremely rich source for the study of local religion. The contributions of the first section of the Visite pastorali focus on the methods employed and data amassed in the study of pastoral records in (mostly) post-Tridentine Italy. CecUia Nubola led this section with a summary of her work on the visit of Ludovico Madruzzo, illuminating the rationale behind the creation of her data files, and including two long appendices in which she set out the principal files and much of her raw data. The next five articles foUowed a simUar format, including a discussion of method and experience , graphs, charts, maps, and long appendices of sample files and data. Rosella Tarchi...