The first modern study of the great reforming Bishop of Brescia (1513-1579). It contains besides a complete biography, important chapters i.a. about the Council of Trent in which Bollani participated, and the application of the Tridentine Decrees in Brescia. Eight appendices (the last one a bibliography of archival and printed sources).

Reforms of Christian Life presents a new narrative of the role of the Barnabites and Angelics, the Ursulines and the Somascans (founded in Northern Italy in the 1530s by Battista da Crema, Angela Merici, and Girolamo Miani) within sixteenth-century Italian reform movements. While historiography has considered these companies under the category of ‘Catholic Reformation,’ this book argues that they promoted an ‘unconventional’ view of perfection and of the Church that was alternative to both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and through which they wanted to reform society, rather than the ecclesiastical institution. By highlighting the complex articulation of perceptions of ‘Christian life,’ and by exploring neglected connections among devout milieus, Mazzonis considers the sodalities in continuity with a fifteenth-century ascetic-mystical current and in relation to contemporary institutes such as the Jesuits and the Oratorians, irenic reforming circles like that of Juan de Valdés, and post-Tridentine ecclesiastical reformers including Charles Borromeo. This volume shows that reforming trends were more varied and fluid than previously thought and contributes to cultural and gender analyses of the religious mentality of the period. Reforms of Christian Life is a useful tool for students and scholars of medieval and early modern religious and cultural history.

Confraternities were - and are - religious brotherhoods for lay people to promote their religious life in common. Though designed to prepare for the afterlife, they were fully involved in the social, political and cultural life of the community and could affect all men and women, as members or as the recipients of charity. Confraternities organised a great range of devotional, cultural and indeed artistic activities in addition to other functions such as the provision of dowries and the escort of condemned men to the scaffold. Other works have studied the local activities of specific confraternities, but this is the first to attempt a broad survey of such organisations across the breadth of early modern Italy. Christopher Black demonstrates clearly the extent, diversity and influence of confraternal behaviour, and shows how such brotherhoods adapted to the religious and social crises of the sixteenth century - thus illuminating current debates about Catholic Reform, the Counter-Reformation, poverty, philanthropy and social control.

Explores the role of music in the cultural, religious, and political upheavals of late Renaissance Italy, revealing how musical activity of all kinds was instrumentalized by those in power. Italian culture did not lose its vigour after 1530, but underwent a transformation.

This is a study of the colourful world of Netherlandish Catholic bishop, Mathias Hovius, and his flock during the age of the Reformation. It is drawn from one of many journals kept by Hovius whilst he was Archbishop of Mechelen.

Sketches the 'moral tradition' of human peace-making in four western European countries between the Reformation and the eighteenth century.